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