GRASS-ROOTS EFFORTS OF YORE RESODDED WITH 'ASTROTURF'

Saturday, March 22, 2003

Once upon a time there was grass-roots politics. Now there's astroturf.

With due acknowledgement to the holder of that trademark for a product used in landscaping, among journalists the term is used to refer to a political product -- fake grass-roots activity.

For instance, the kind that's generated by slick Web sites promising ``Click here, and we'll send your message to everybody in Congress'' or to a long list of newspapers.

It's a plague.

If you've ever enlisted yourself in a campaign of this kind, you probably know by now that it is their message that is being sent, not yours. And in the process of sending it, the people operating the site have acquired your name, your e-mail address and a pretty good idea of what pushes your buttons. The individually tailored fund-raising messages won't be long in coming.

No one knows how much of this stuff actually gets published. Editors see so much of it that they get pretty good at weeding it out. But in any case, they have help. Several hundred people belong to an e-mail list maintained by the National Conference of Editorial Writers. Anyone who suspects a letter didn't originate with the person who claims to have written it posts the text of the letter to the list. If another paper has received the same letter, bingo! That's all she wrote.

In some cases, literally. A good many papers refuse to print further letters from people who've been caught putting their names to astroturf.

They are, after all, plagiarists. A few papers even publicly identify writers who have attempted to pass off others' work as their own.

There's little doubt about the intent to deceive. The Farm Animal Reform Movement, one of the worst offenders, enrolls people it calls ``FARM reps'' who give permission for their names to be used.

A site dedicated to consumer activism describes FARM's scheme as follows.

The group faxes letters to local papers, each one ``signed'' by the FARM rep in that area. ``Each time we fax letters to the editors,'' new reps are told, ``we simultaneously e-mail a copy to you, so you can anticipate receiving a call from your editor confirming that you wrote/sent the letter.''

That is, when your local paper asks you whether you wrote the letter, you are instructed to lie about it.

It doesn't even work very well, now that so many people are comparing notes. Just as the 13th stroke of a clock invalidates not only itself but the 12 strokes that came before it, the second identical or near-identical letter discredits all other letters that resemble it.

And by making hundreds of editors hypersensitive to the possibility of deception on FARM's pet issues, it has probably discouraged the publication of a much larger number of genuine letters.

A different kind of astroturf surfaced on the list a few weeks ago, when editors shared their suspicions about a couple of noticeably similar op-ed submissions both of which touted the same medical product. I won't identify it because the purpose of the submissions was to get free publicity, and I am disinclined to oblige.

A little further investigation revealed that the pieces did not come directly from ``Professor X'' or ``Doctor Y,'' as they appeared to. Instead, all the messages were sent from the same computer, which we traced to the bulk e-mail division of Cable & Wireless USA.

Not a good sign.

Professor X was appalled to discover what was going on. He had, he told me, originally been asked if he'd allow his name to be used on a promotional piece, and he refused. He is, however, genuinely enthusiastic about the product and so he agreed to look over a draft, which he revised and sent back. But he didn't know how it was being distributed, nor that other authors had been similarly recruited.

A certain amount of ghost writing is acceptable. Newspaper editors do know that when they receive or solicit commentary from someone busy enough or important enough to have his own media staff, he's probably not scratching it out himself with a quill pen on parchment. But that's open and aboveboard. What pushes Cable & Wireless USA over the line is the deliberate attempt to conceal its role, and its clients' role, in generating the articles.

In fact, concealment is a selling point, according to the Cable & Wireless USA Web site.

It boasts that its system evades attempts to block spam, and also that each recipient of a company's mass e-mail ``sees the messages as being individually delivered to them.'' In addition, the message shows only the company's name in the ``From'' address.

By now, Professor X assures me, the company that produces this product understands what a public relations disaster Cable & Wireless USA engineered for it. At hundreds of newspapers, any expression of opinion favorable to the company or its product has been rendered suspect and the only safe way to deal with that suspicion is not to publish.

Astroturf doesn't do you any good. It doesn't do your favorite causes any good. Stay off it.