Thursday, July 20, 2006

 

Anti-Astroturf Campaign

Q: Why should the voice of a paid shill be given equivalent weight to the voice of a genuinely concerned citizen?
A: It shouldn't.

Trevor Cook and Paull Young, PR professionals who believe that public relations can be an ethical pursuit, have started an anti-Astroturf campaign on their NewPR wiki.

They ask people to state:
We oppose the practice of astroturfing [definition, definition] in any form. The practice should never be a part of a public relations campaign as it is anti-democratic, unethical, immoral and often illegal.
We will attempt to raise awareness of this practice, expose it for what it is, and encourage our fellow communicators to join us in opposition.
We call for all professional communication bodies to strongly, publicly and actively oppose astroturfing; alongside PR agencies, individual practitioners and bloggers.
I've seen the use of astroturfing by the Telcos and the Cablecos in the Network Neutrality campaign, and I agree with Tom Evslin when he says, "Unless your livelihood depends on preventing further creative destruction resulting from Internet innovation, it’s almost impossible to be against the principle of Internet neutrality . . . " -- Indeed!

Of course, no discussion of telecom and Astroturf should ignore Bruce Kushnik and Teletruth's leadership!

Anti-Astroturf? I'm in! With both feet.

Thanks to David Weinberger for pointing this out!

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