Overheard on the Web, and other Web links From The Herald's Research Editor
Sunday, February 27, 2005
Getting attention
One column really struck me this weekend, it's this one by Maureen Dowd: Swifties Slime Again (registration may be required). Dowd discusses the new anti-AARP campaign by United Seniors Association, a subsidiary of USA Next, a lobbying organization, which is using the publicists who designed the Swift Boat veterans campaign against John Kerry. (Washington Monthly called United Seniors Assn a "soft-money slush fund" for the pharmaceutical industry.) Last week bloggers were in an uproar over a proposed online ad for the organization which hinted that AARP was against the military and pro-homosexual. Of the ad, Dowd says:
"...part of the sinister beauty of the Swift Boat method is its viral quality: it slips into a host body - "Inside Politics," say - and hijacks it. An ad it showed briefly on the Internet has now been replicated free, all over the world, and, yes, it is now being transmitted through the Op-Ed page of The New York Times."
It is amazing how quickly these ideas take hold across the country. All that campaign money and soft money for propaganda. And it works. Seems like we've read predictions of this..... posted by liz at 6:37 PM
Elisabeth (Liz) Donovan was a Herald librarian for 10 years, and Research Editor for 13 years. She came to The Herald in 1981, following several years at the
Washington Post. She started blogging in 2000, with a news research blog, followed by the blog at Herald.com in 2003. A frequent speaker and writer on news research, she was honored in 2004 by the
News Division of the Special Libraries Association for her contributions to
the field.
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