How Wikipedia Puts The Existence Of A Free Press At Risk, And A Free Press Will Die, Not With A Bang, But A Wiki Options Rating

[Jon Awbrey]

How Wikipedia Is Putting The Existence Of A Free Press At Risk

Wikipedia has shown us that a mass medium can be rendered so plastic and so well-leveraged that any part of it can be manipulated by a relatively small number of people, in ways that defy a free society's usual means to guard against it, so long as the special interests in question have a moderate amount of resources and the will to do so. If there are portions of the content that remain untouched, it is for two reasons only: (1) no one has conceived a stake in them yet, (2) virgin forest makes for good cover.

If you're thinking that Wikipedia is the Latest Thing in Blows Against The Empire, then you have a DoubleThink coming.

Jon Awbrey, Comment in The Guardian, 30 Jan 2009, 2:02am

[Jon Awbrey]

Good Grief, it's like Wikipediots can't comprehend anything anymore that doesn't come in the form of animated cartoons.

APCO was hatched in 1984 as a subsidiary of the Washington, D.C. law firm Arnold & Porter � best known for its years of representing the giant tobacco conglomerate Philip Morris. APCO set up fake “grassroots� organizations around the country to do the bidding of Big Tobacco. All of a sudden, “normal, everyday, in-no-way-employed-by-Philip Morris Americans� were popping up everywhere. And it turned out they were outraged � outraged! � by exactly the things APCO's clients hated (such as, the government telling tobacco companies what to do). In particular, they were “furious� that regular people had the right to sue big corporations … you know, like Philip Morris. (For details, see the 2000 report “The CALA Files� (PDF) by my friends and colleagues Carl Deal and Joanne Doroshow.)

� Michael Moore, “How Corporate America Is Pushing Us All Off a Cliff�, 19 Nov 2010

[Jon Awbrey]

Good Grief, it's like Wikipediots can't comprehend anything anymore that doesn't come in the form of animated cartoons.

APCO was hatched in 1984 as a subsidiary of the Washington, D.C. law firm Arnold & Porter � best known for its years of representing the giant tobacco conglomerate Philip Morris. APCO set up fake “grassroots� organizations around the country to do the bidding of Big Tobacco. All of a sudden, “normal, everyday, in-no-way-employed-by-Philip Morris Americans� were popping up everywhere. And it turned out they were outraged � outraged! � by exactly the things APCO's clients hated (such as, the government telling tobacco companies what to do). In particular, they were “furious� that regular people had the right to sue big corporations … you know, like Philip Morris. (For details, see the 2000 report “The CALA Files� (PDF) by my friends and colleagues Carl Deal and Joanne Doroshow.)

� Michael Moore, “How Corporate America Is Pushing Us All Off a Cliff�, 19 Nov 2010

Followup Interview �

Michael Moore Meets Wendell Potter on Countdown with Keith Olbermann : Part 1

Can You Spell A-S-T-R-O-T-U-R-F ???

Jon (IMG:http://wikipediareview.com/stimg9x0b4fsr2/1/folder_post_icons/icon9.gif)