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Sharyl Attkisson
Harper
June 27th, 2017/ ISBN 9780062468161
Non-Fiction / U.S. Politics / U.S. Media
Reviewed
by Elise Cooper
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Only
a handful of journalists can be respected, trusted, and believed:
Sharyl Attkisson falls into this category. She is an author
and investigative reporter who hosts the syndicated TV news
series Full Measure. (http://fullmeasure.news) ; Attkisson is
a whistle blower of sorts in educating the public about the
biased media. Her latest book The Smear reveals the tactics
used to influence opinions in order to obscure the truth.
In the beginning of this book she discusses the propaganda campaign
used by the OSS, the predecessor to the CIA. They had asked
the legendary Marlene Dietrich to sing “Lili Marlene”
in German and English in order to make the Axis forces feel
homesick and realize they were fighting for the wrong side.
She contrasts this with Hitler’s chief propagandist Joseph
Goebbels’ playbook, which calls for creating a big lie,
the bigger the better to get more people to believe it; repeat
it often enough so it becomes the truth; and persistence is
the most important requirement for success.
Today’s media and Leftists seem to take a page, not out
of the OSS, but out of Goebbels strategy. Attkisson wants to
inform Americans on the tactics used by political operatives
on both sides as well as corporate operatives. These tactics
fall into categories of “Astroturf, and Transactional
Journalism,” all tools of the smear campaign. She told
American Thinker her definition of a smear, “Taking a
sprinkle of truth and perverting it into a weapon of mass destruction
to advance an undisclosed larger goal, often political or financial.
Smear campaigns take something that many times has a grain of
truth and amplifies it to accomplish the annihilation of their
target.”
In reading this book people will become more aware about the
world of opposition research and the dirty tricks those in power
use to influence opinions. They have an agenda to prop up or
destroy any narrative that goes against their beliefs by using
the smear tactic to create an impression of widespread support
or falsehoods when the opposite is true. Even movies are not
out of the realm of these smear artists.
One way the operatives do this is by Astroturf, an “idea
to keep the public from ever knowing exactly who is behind a
particular effort to sway opinion. I describe it in my book
as a way to saturate our consciousness, where we are made to
think everyone believes something. It’s similar to the
bandwagon approach. If you do not agree with a narrative, you
are made to believe you’re an outlier, afraid to say what
you think because ‘no one’ agrees with you. The
idea is to give the impression there’s widespread support
for or against an issue when there may not be.”
Attkisson noted, 13 Hours, the movie, about the attack in Benghazi,
was not very flattering to the Obama Administration and Hillary
Clinton. “They could not directly impeach those heroes
that put their life on the line; instead, they sought to ‘controversialize
the movie itself,’ in an attempt to keep people from seeing
it. For example, Vox put up a review that pans the movie even
though the writer only saw the trailer. Many others falsely
pointed out that the movie was a box office flop; yet, the true
narrative is that it was the number two-grossing new movie release
in the US during its opening week.”
She explains why she considers these astroturf smear campaigns,
“Whether intentional or not, the players include a familiar
group of media outlets known for advancing liberal narratives
and to be on the Media Matters agenda. The information put forward
is misleading, and in some cases, inaccurate to further a narrative
instead of the truth. Finally, some of the efforts seem disingenuous
and use recognized astroturf language.”
Transactional journalism refers to the “friendly, mutually
beneficial relationships that have developed between reporters
and those on whom they report. It’s when the relationships
cross a line.” Falling into that category are some political
pundits. Take for example CNN’s Donna Brazile, a Democratic
party operative, who secretly slipped Hillary Clinton an advance
question for a CNN town hall with Bernie Sanders. Attkisson
noted, “We are not keeping an adequate firewall, giving
the very people access to the newsroom who are trying to sway
our opinion and shape news coverage. I am often not sure what
these pundits on both sides add, besides propaganda talking
points. As I discuss in the book, Media Matters and its groups
claim to have coached and trained hundreds of these pundits
on everything from messaging to facial expressions and body
language, so they can appear on television news shows and effectively
distribute narratives. This is part of what I call the soft
‘infiltration’ of the news media. We haven’t
done a good job at staying at arms length from the interests
who seek to use us as tools.” For example, Fox News has
hired one of the Obamacare architects who basically got everything
wrong about Obamacare. Yet, he is now commenting on the new
health care plan Attkisson wonders, “Why is he being put
forth as an expert in anything?”
As an investigative reporter she is an expert at detecting smear
campaigns and warns, “One smear artist I interviewed said
nearly every image you run across in daily life, whether it’s
on the news, a comedian’s joke, a meme on social media
or a comment on the Internet, was put there for a reason. It’s
like scenes in a movie, he said. Nothing happens by accident.
Sometimes people have paid a great deal of money to put those
images before you. What you need to ask yourself isn’t
so much ‘is it true,’ but ‘who wants me to
believe it and why?’” This is why everyone should
be reading The Smear, to find out how they do it, who is doing
it, and what to look for regarding these dirty tactics.
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