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from: Save the Internet

Groups Manipulated To Spread Telco Propaganda

And you thought Telco Astroturfing was bad enough.

Bruce Kushnick of Teletruth exposes the dirty ways that AT&T and Verizon manipulate public opinion by “co-opting” not-for-profit groups and aligning their leaders against Net Neutrality — even when it’s in the worst interests of their constituents.

Over the last few weeks groups representing minorities, disabled and low-income constituents have been hyping AT&T and Verizon efforts to stop any Net Neutrality legislation, Kushnick writes.

These groups appear to be saying that blacks, Hispanics, seniors, poor, deaf or disabled persons universally oppose the principle that maintains the Internet’s level playing field – that they want to help “these ‘poor’ misunderstood companies” deliver better services. But there’s more to it than that.

Follow the Money

“What do these groups have in common?” asks Kushnick. “They all receive funding from AT&T and/or Verizon, and then lobby for them.”

This is nothing new. The phone companies have a storied history of broken promises to deliver faster broadband to disadvantaged communities in exchange for favorable P.R. from their leaders.

Taken alone, this is outrageous. Yet it’s but one shady tactic in the phone companies’ multi-million dollar campaign to destroy the principle that prevents them from manipulating (they like to say “shaping”) content on the Internet and taking away users’ ability to choose for themselves.

Coin-Operated Analysis

According to Ed Mierzwinski of SavetheInternet.com member US Pirg, creating such propaganda has long been the business model of one of the Bells’ main outside PR firms — Issue Dynamics.

Blogging about Issue Dynamics in 2005, Mierzwinski reports that the PR firm helped create a “think tank” known as the New Millennium Research Council (NMRC) with the sole intention of dressing up Bell-friendly opinions and hoisting them before the public as objective economic analysis.

NMRC is just one in a long line of coin-operated think tanks — a list that includes the Phoenix Center, Heartland Institute, Progress and Freedom Foundation and the Cato Institute among others — that routinely trade industry-friendly analysis for corporate dollars.

Selling Out The Public

And this brand of sock puppetry is just one voice in the Telco choir — a congregation the includes “consumery” sounding groups, pro-competition sounding payola pundits, other PR firms, lawyers and lobbyists. They have all been convened to create “a very loud ’sound wall’ of consumer support that actually doesn’t exist,” according to Karl of Broadband Reports.

It’s a collection of shills and sellouts, which in 2006 alone cost the phone companies more than $175 million to assemble. But it’s money spent at the expense of those who need a faster, more open and accessible Internet the most.

About these groups Kushnick concludes: “while they themselves benefit from the phone companies’ funding, [they] certainly harm their own constituents.”

Net Neutrality should be debated openly, based upon the merits of the issue. But when so many players secret away telco money to spread propaganda, it’s hard to separate those on the take from those who really want a better Internet for us all.