Slick new "non-partisan" right-wing site

Fri, 2010-11-26 00:57

thorin_bane

No doubt has money being pumped in from the same donors as the fraser CD howe and candian tax payers, who revealed themselves as tory cons just last month.

Fri, 2010-11-26 22:52

#3

Doug

"iPolitics is privately funded by a family with a long history in journalism, literary and public affairs initiatives."

So yeah, you're probably right. Also, if you have a look at the staff it's not exactly encouraging - Conservatives and some businessy Liberals.

Sat, 2010-11-27 01:08

#4

laine lowe laine lowe's picture

Hill & Knowlton (lobbyists) and Lang Michener (high profile law firm) are corporate sponsors and their page feature financial market updates. Don Newman is a senior advisor at another corporate "sponsor", Bluesky Strategy Group (it seems like the site might be a publicity tool for this group).

Sat, 2010-11-27 02:33

#5

Ripple

I've known Hill and Knowlton as a public relations firm - strategic communications as they call it these days. They were the firm working with Talisman Energy when there was a divestment campaign around their operations in Sudan.

Tue, 2010-12-14 14:01

#6

George Victor

Monbiot points out today how the bastards have worked it for some time:

Reclaim the Cyber-Commons

Posted: 13 Dec 2010 12:29 PM PST

The internet is being captured by organised trolls. It's time we fought back.

"For his film (Astro)Turf Wars, Taki Oldham secretly recorded a training session organised by a rightwing libertarian group called American Majority. The trainer, Austin James, was instructing Tea Party members on how to "manipulate the medium"(11). This is what he told them:

"Here's what I do. I get on Amazon; I type in "Liberal Books". I go through and I say "one star, one star, one star". The flipside is you go to a conservative/ libertarian whatever, go to their products and give them five stars. ... This is where your kids get information: Rotten Tomatoes, Flixster. These are places where you can rate movies. So when you type in "Movies on Healthcare", I don't want Michael Moore's to come up, so I always give it bad ratings. I spend about 30 minutes a day, just click, click, click, click. ... If there's a place to comment, a place to rate, a place to share information, you have to do it. That's how you control the online dialogue and give our ideas a fighting chance."

Over 75% of the funding for American Majority, which hosted this training session, comes from the Sam Adams Alliance(12). In 2008, the year in which American Majority was founded, 88% of the alliance's money came from a single donation, of $3.7m(13). A group which trains rightwing libertarians to distort online democratic processes, in other words, was set up with funding from a person or company with a very large wallet."