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Stories about: "law media group"

Boeing Accused Of Covert, Coordinated Op-Ed Smear Campaign Against Space X

from the disinformation-nation dept

For years we’ve noted how the American press has an absolutely horrible tendency to run guest Op-Eds without disclosing the author’s financial conflicts of interest(s). Jesse Jackson, for example, can sometimes be found comparing efforts to bring competition to the cable box to racism in the 60s, without disclosing the cable industry’s underlying influence. Similarly, former Representative and fair use champion Rick Boucher can often be found praising CISPA, denying a lack of competition in broadband or attacking net neutrality in Op-Ed pages nationwide on behalf of AT&T with zero disclosure of his real financial motivations.

The act of republishing these missives without clearly disclosing financial conflicts of interests isn’t just unethical, it pollutes the national discourse, undermines already shaky trust in media, and contributes to a sound wall of disinformation as giant companies try to sell their latest megamerger, pass anti-consumer regulations and legislation, undermine a competitor, or justify terrible behavior.

One more recent example of this phenomenon comes courtesy of Boeing, which is being accused of running a covert smear campaign against Space X via media outlets that fail to adequately disclose ulterior financial motives of Op-Ed authors.

Back in August, just around the time that Boeing was hyping the company’s Starliner spacecraft program, a series of Op-Eds began showing up in newspapers nationwide attacking Space X and its allegedly unsafe fueling practices. The articles, which appeared everywhere from the Houston Chronicle to the Washington Times, all purported to simply be worried about astronaut safety. All were penned by Richard Hagar, who worked for NASA during the Apollo program, but now resides in Tennessee. All implied repeatedly that Space X was ignoring safety standards and putting astronauts at risk.

But amusingly, when Ars Technica tried to track down Hagar, they discovered that he didn’t actually write the vast majority of the Op-Eds published in countless news outlets nationwide under his name. Instead, the missives were penned by a PR and policy shop with an expertise in astroturf and other disingenuous messaging:

“To try to understand his viewpoint, Ars attempted to reach Hagar by phone and email in September. In the course of this process, we learned that he did not actually submit many of these op-eds.

In fact, based upon our research, at least four of the six op-eds that we located were submitted by two people with gmail.com addresses. Their names were Josh Brevik and Casey Murray. Further research revealed that two people with these names worked as “associates” at a Washington, DC-based public relations firm named Law Media Group or LMG. We reached out to multiple editors at papers that ran the op-eds, and they confirmed that no LMG affiliation was disclosed to them. Attempts to reach Julian Epstein, the chief executive of LMG, by phone and email were unsuccessful.”

Boeing is an LMG client, and has worked previously for the company on past projects by “developing messaging” and crafting a “social media campaign amplifying our nationwide chorus of genuine American voices supporting Boeing.” Boeing is also Space X’s only competitor in the commercial crew program, so the mathematics here should be fairly obvious. Law Media Group (LMG) was busted for this exact sort of thing ten years ago and apparently absolutely nothing has changed, making it abundantly clear just how little most people care about this sort of disinformation.

News outlets have little incentive to crack down on this kind of disingenuous dreck, as they don’t want to anger the companies footing the bill. Most Americans are totally clueless about the perils on zero transparency in this regard, so public pressure to actually do something about it for many media outlets remains largely nonexistent. And while you could pass a law mandating that corporations are free to speak as long as they speak for themselves, countless corporations would certainly be quick to claim their ability to spread misleading nonsense via covert intermediaries violates their First Amendment rights.

Aside from applying continuous public pressure on news outlets to behave more transparently and ethically, it’s a problem that doesn’t seem to have an obvious solution.

Filed Under: disinformation, fake news, opeds, smear campaign, space
Companies: boeing, law media group, spacex

Finally, RIAA Front Group Admits That Forcing YouTube To Police Site Doesn't Work Well

from the wasn't-expecting-that dept

Here’s one I certainly didn’t expect. A group known for spreading a bunch of bogus RIAA talking points about the evils of YouTube seems to be admitting two odd things: (1) that it’s impossible to expect YouTube to accurately police all the content on its site and (2) that sharing entire published news articles is clearly not copyright infringement. The group in question is the “Content Creators Coalition” — last seen around these parts whining about the DMCA’s safe harbors on a site that only exists because of them. And it seems that bizarre and self-contradictory publicity stunts are basically the norm for this group. They’ve specifically been whining about how one of their videos got taken down on YouTube over an apparent terms of service violation. They complained, and YouTube reviewed it, and put the video back up. But, the Content Creators Coalition is using this to argue… something about how YouTube is trying to censor criticism?

It really doesn’t make much sense, because it actually seems to be a pretty blatant admission by the Content Creators Coalition that their other bugaboo — about how YouTube doesn’t take down infringing content fast enough — is completely silly as well. Proactively policing the millions upon millions of videos uploaded to the site (for free, mind you) is nearly impossible to do correctly. The article itself (published by the Google-hating News Corp.-owned NY Post) tries to attack YouTube’s moderation features, but actually makes the perfect argument for why it’s silly to expect an open platform like YouTube to police everything:

While videos of ISIS beheadings somehow slipped past YouTube censors, the video streaming site didn?t have any problems finding a playful ad campaign by some indie musicians ? and promptly pulling the plug on it.

Right. Which is why it’s great that we can now add the Content Creators Coalition to those who think that forcing YouTube to police and filter content on its platform is silly and will lead to unnecessary and misguided takedowns. Glad to have them on board.

Now, the only reason I even know about this article is that it was sent to me by Eric Jotkoff at Law Media Group. If you don’t remember Law Media Group, they’re the secretive lobbying PR shop that seems to specialize in attacking Google with really sketchy practices, such as insisting that corn farmers will be hurt by Google partnering with Yahoo, or by publishing faked op-eds, such as one about how awful net neutrality was — but “written” by a guy who actually was in favor of net neutrality.

And when I say that Jotkoff and Law Media Group sent me that NY Post article, I do mean sent it to me. He sent me the entire article in an email. So that appears to be Law Media Group, on behalf of the Content Creators Coalition, admitting that sending around entire news articles is not infringing. Now, I’d argue that there’s a good fair use case to be made for sharing full articles via email in such situations. But I wouldn’t really expect a group like Law Media Group, which regularly sends me emails about the importance of stronger copyright on behalf of a whole bunch of groups that all seem to parrot the RIAA’s talking points (coincidence, I’m sure?), to basically admit that reposting full articles from companies like News Corp. is fair use.

I’ve asked Eric to confirm that this is the official stance of the organization, but, perhaps not too surprisingly, I have not heard back at the time of publication.

Filed Under: content moderation, fair use, filters, full articles, moderation, takedowns
Companies: content creators coalition, law media group, riaa

Tech Lobbying/PR Firm Outed For Faked Op-Eds

from the what-will-the-corn-farmers-do? dept

We get tons of PR spam here at Techdirt, most of which is simply an attempt to get us to write about this or that startup or product launch. It pretty much all gets trashed. Occasionally we hear from various tech lobbyists as well, pushing an angle on a story that supports the angle they’re pushing. But one of the oddest experiences we’ve had was with a firm called LawMedia Group, which we wrote about earlier this year when Declan McCullagh outed the group as having allegedly composed a letter from a group of corn farmers somehow opposed to Google and Yahoo working together. Why corn farmers would be interested in such things isn’t clear — but McCullagh pulled back some of the curtain on the way these sorts of lobbyist groups act, picking a somewhat random “group” and then writing these sorts of letters and simply placing the group’s name on the top — even if (as in the corn farmers/internet advertising situation) the group has nothing to do with the issue at hand.

In our case, as mentioned, the folks at LawMedia Group started out by acting as if we were close friends, and then insisting that they had some really secret info that was damaging to FCC boss Kevin Martin. It’s no surprise why they would approach us on the subject — as we’ve written critically about Martin for years. After ignoring repeated requests for a phone call during which this info would be “revealed,” I finally said that if they had anything they wanted me to see, just send it over. And so they sent a bunch of stuff that basically confirmed what was well known: Kevin Martin has friends who work at AT&T. Shocking, right, that a telco regulator might have friends at a telco? But, of course, it was positioned in a way to make it look really secretive, even to the point of suggesting that Martin really worked for AT&T. In other words, it was totally bogus. I told the guy at LMG that the info seemed pretty pointless, and never spoke to him again — though he and other colleagues keep emailing stories that might make Martin look bad.

Now Declan is back with more stories of questionable activities by LawMedia Group, including what would appear to be a series of op-ed pieces published in newspapers using the names of people who don’t even agree with what’s in the op-ed, but, from the sound of it, may have effectively rented their name out to LMG to use in the op-ed. Most of the article focuses on a guy in Boston who is in favor of net neutrality, but had an op-ed published under his name that strongly argues against net neutrality. The guy admitted that LMG had something to do with it, but refused to provide details. However, when asked his opinion on net neutrality, proceeded to stay stuff in direct contradiction with what was in the op-ed under his name.

While somewhat sleazy tactics like this may be every day business in Washington DC, it’s good to see it exposed, especially when it’s being done so egregiously. At the very least, maybe it’ll get LMG to stop bothering me with bogus conspiracy theories about Kevin Martin.

Filed Under: astroturfing, fcc, lobbyists, telecom policy
Companies: law media group

Boy, Those Corn Farmers Sure Are Interested In Internet Politics

from the something's-not-right-here... dept

You may recall last summer, an NBC Universal exec tried to convince Congress that corn farmers were very, very concerned about movie piracy, coming up with an obviously laughable theory that more piracy would hurt corn farmers by having fewer people buy popcorn in the theaters (forgetting, of course, that people eat popcorn at home too — and that popcorn isn’t exactly a significant portion of corn farmer revenue these days). Anyway, it appears those “corn farmers” sure are busy when it comes to keeping politicians aware of what’s happening on the internet. Declan McCullagh found it odd that a group of corn farmers had sent a letter to Congress demanding Congress investigate the potential harm done by a Google-Yahoo advertising deal. It didn’t take much investigating for McCullagh to figure out that the letter wasn’t actually written by corn farmers, but by a secretive lobbying/PR firm called Law Media Group, which was clear from the metadata on the corn farmers’ letter.

McCullagh then explores how these lobbying groups basically get other groups to put their name on various letters, quoting one anonymously saying: “You go down the Latino people, the deaf people, the farmers, and choose them…. You say, ‘I can’t use this one–I already used them last time…’ We had their letterhead. We’d just write the letter. We’d fax it to them and tell them, ‘You’re in favor of this.'” Amusingly, McCullagh notes, a Latino group also wrote a letter of concern about the Yahoo-Google deal, just hours after the farmers did.

As for Law Media Group, McCullagh talks a bit about how secretive they are, and tries to dig out what cable firm or telco might really be behind the letter. He notes that AT&T claims it used to work with Law Media Group, but no longer does and wasn’t behind the letter. I can say with near certainty that Law Media Group doesn’t work with AT&T anymore… because representatives from Law Media Group have spent the last few months trying to get me to say bad things about AT&T. They contacted me a few months back insisting they had some really damaging info on FCC chair Kevin Martin. They sent over the “evidence,” which basically could be summed up as: Kevin Martin has good friends who work or worked at AT&T. Oh really? That’s like sending over documents saying that Kevin Martin is a Republican. It’s not news. Ever since then, though, someone from Law Media Group sends me various alerts and press releases that all seem to be at the expense of cable industry foes. So, I’d say it’s pretty likely that the “corn farmers” are really just representing the cable industry here. Hope they at least get a discount on those ever increasing cable TV rates.

Update: Declan now has a follow up, where LMG insists it had nothing to do with the letter other than to create the PDF. It also denies any lobbying activity, though McCullagh points out that the company filed disclosure forms for lobbying earlier this year — to which LMG had no response.

Filed Under: advertising, corn farmers, lobbyists
Companies: law media group