Astroturf

The Jawa Report has a big post, example of the kind of investigative reporting bloggers do and the MSM no longer does, tentatively linking the Obama campaign with anti-Palin smears. Even if it wasn’t Barry’s campaign directly, it seems like his friends include an awful lot of sock puppets.

Our research suggests that a subdivision of one of the largest public relations firms in the world most likely started and promulgated rumors about Sarah Palin that were known to be false. These rumors were spread in a surreptitious manner to avoid exposure.

It is also likely that the PR firm was paid by outside sources to run the smear campaign. While not conclusive, evidence suggests a link to the Barack Obama campaign. Namely:

• Evidence suggests that a YouTube video with false claims about Palin was uploaded and promoted by members of a professional PR firm.
• The family that runs the PR firm has extensive ties to the Democratic Party, the netroots, and are staunch Obama supporters.
• Evidence suggests that the firm engaged in a concerted effort to distribute the video in such a way that it would appear to have gone viral on its own. Yet this effort took place on company time.
• Evidence suggests that these distribution efforts included actions by at least one employee of the firm who is unconnected with the family running the company.
• The voice-over artist used in this supposedly amateur video is a professional.
• This same voice-over artist has worked extensively with David Axelrod’s firm, which has a history of engaging in phony grassroots efforts, otherwise known as “astroturfing.”
• David Axelrod is Barack Obama’s chief media strategist.
• The same voice-over artist has worked directly for the Barack Obama campaign.

This suggests that false rumors and outright lies about Sarah Palin and John McCain being spread on the internet are being orchestrated by political partisans and are not an organic grassroots phenomenon led by the left wing fringe.

Update:

No doubt pure coincidence:

UPDATE: Within an hour of this post going up, YouTube videos implicating Ethan Winner were yanked, sockpuppet accounts deleted, and more importantly, the Wikipedia entry on David Axelrod began to edit out mentions of his well known astroturfing campaigns. Hmmm, it sounds to me like we’re on to something.

We have backups of all the deleted websites, and will update as soon as we can.

Further Update:

The scraping sound you hear are Astroturfing articles being shoveled into the memory hole. This is getting fun.