{"id":1661,"date":"2010-05-25T22:13:06","date_gmt":"2010-05-25T22:13:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/discovery.org\/tech\/2010\/05\/25\/holier_than_thou\/"},"modified":"2024-10-15T21:56:40","modified_gmt":"2024-10-15T21:56:40","slug":"holier_than_thou","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/tech\/2010\/05\/25\/holier_than_thou\/","title":{"rendered":"Free Press: Holier than thou"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><i>National Journal<\/i> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationaljournal.com\/njmagazine\/ll_20100522_4145.php\">notes<\/a> ($) that while <a href=\"http:\/\/www.freepress.net\/\">Free Press<\/a> frequently taps the media to slam its opponents as fronts for special interests who won&#8217;t reveal their funding, much of Free Press&#8217;s own funding is concealed.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Free Press staff members &#8220;want to call everyone else a front group &#8230; [but] they don&#8217;t subject themselves to the same scrutiny,&#8221; [Phil] Kerpen [of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.americansforprosperity.org\/national-site\">Americans for Prosperity<\/a>] contended.  The charges of Astroturfing that Free Press aims at other groups, [Mike] McCurry [a former White House spokesman, who now runs Public Strategies Washington, a government-relations firm whose <a href=\"http:\/\/www.artsandlabs.com\/\">Arts+Labs<\/a> coalition supports the telecoms in the net-neutrality debate] said, carry &#8220;a little whiff of hypocrisy.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Always better to debate the arguments, isn&#8217;t it?  Shooting the messenger is usually an act of desperation that tends to reveal the weaknesses in one&#8217;s case.  As this revelation shows, it can also make one look foolish.<br \/>\nThe article points out that Free Press &#8212; which is urging Democratic policy makers to regulate the Internet and enact subsidies for media professionals &#8212; is &#8220;firmly allied with media professionals who provide content to niche markets.&#8221;  It&#8217;s former press chief, Jen Howard, is now the press secretary for FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, and its talking points and arguments match the statements of administration officials.<br \/>\nAccording to McCurry, the group and its allies &#8220;hate everything about capitalism, corporations and profit-making.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>National Journal notes ($) that while Free Press frequently taps the media to slam its opponents as fronts for special interests who won&#8217;t reveal their funding, much of Free Press&#8217;s own funding is concealed. Free Press staff members &#8220;want to call everyone else a front group &#8230; [but] they don&#8217;t subject themselves to the same scrutiny,&#8221; [Phil] Kerpen [of Americans for Prosperity] contended. The charges of Astroturfing that Free Press aims at other groups, [Mike] McCurry [a former White House spokesman, who now runs Public Strategies Washington, a government-relations firm whose Arts+Labs coalition supports the telecoms in the net-neutrality debate] said, carry &#8220;a little whiff of hypocrisy.&#8221; Always better to debate the arguments, isn&#8217;t it? Shooting the messenger is usually<a class=\"ellipsis article-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/tech\/2010\/05\/25\/holier_than_thou\/\"><span> Read More &rsaquo;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":219,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[58,91],"tags":[],"coauthors":[112],"class_list":["post-1661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-net-neutrality","category-politics"],"acf":[],"author_names":["Hance Haney"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/219"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1661\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1661"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1661"}],"wp:action-assign-author":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discovery.org\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post\/1661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}