Astroturfing: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

astroturfing which sounds like a new teen trend of artificial grass while eating cascade pods that's right the teens have moved on from tide it's all about cascade now astroturf ping is the practice of corporations or political groups disguising themselves as spontaneous authentic popular movements it's basically fake grassroots that's why they call it astroturf II it's a very funny very clever name now you're probably familiar with astroturf II as a concept from C ads by groups with a generic populist sounding names like Americans against food taxis delivering weirdly specific messages like these Washington is talking about a new tax on Jews rates of soda they say it's only pennies well those pennies add up when you're trying to feed a family Washington if you're listening but doesn't seem like much to you can be a lot to us tell Congress no taxes on juice drinks and sodas well it won't surprise you to learn that Americans against food taxes was not started by regular Americans pooling their resources together to take out a large ad buy on national TV about their number one problem priority a proposed soda tax no it was a front group for the food and beverage industry which makes a lot more sense soda companies have a lot of money at least enough to convince the LeBron James to pretend he drinks sprite sprite diabetes you can taste and and well you might think well yeah but that's obvious I'd never fall for astroturf like that don't be quite so sure because with dark money surging in the wake of decisions like citizens united astroturf techniques are now becoming more sophisticated effective and dangerous and they are not going away so tonight we thought it might be useful to take a look at some of those techniques to help us better spot them in the future let's just start with the names themselves because sometimes groups are created with deliberately misleading names for instance the group save our tips which purportedly speaks for waitstaff is an anti minimum wage increase group funded by restaurant owners the National wetlands coalition worked on behalf of oil companies and real estate developers and the American Council on science and health has been funded by among other things fracking interests soda companies each cigarette companies and chemical manufacturers so it's pure straight-up opposite world it's like if this show is called funny time happy hour with shuttle honks John Oliver it's just demonstrable false we can't back that up and look it's not always easy to spot exactly what the group's motive is especially with an ad like this don't eat here what's with your people tossing money at the Humane Society of the United States these HSUS losers aren't even affiliated with your local pet shelter for more information go to humane watch.org that is a very strange ad because first of all if you're going to have a talking dog what would you make him such a gruff hey I'm Tony and I'm mad the Humane Society's a bunch of losers and if you disagree you can suck my dark dick and second second who would take out an attack ad on the Humane Society a rival even humane er society puppy mills self-loathing dogs it's impossible to say for sure all I can tell you is that ad is the work of Rick Berman a PR expert who's known in the industry as dr. evil he is known for his defences of controversial products from secondhand smoke to trans fats to payday loans he's also created nonprofit groups that have fought regulation of all of those things in fact it's one of those groups the concentr the Center for Consumer Freedom which was credited on that Humane Society attack ad so if is the Center for Consumer Freedom a front group full Berman's corporate clients is it at all relevant that Rick Berman has shown up at events for the pork industry and industry which has been targeted by the Humane Society in the past for the use of gestation crates or as Rick Berman insists on calling them maternity pens I can't say I legally can't say I want to are badly wanted but I've been explicitly told I can't you can probably guess but I can't say it out loud what I can say is that Berman rejects any accusation that he runs front groups for corporate clients saying there is no front because there is total transparency which is a little odd considering we don't know who's behind many of his campaigns and that message of transparency does seem to significantly change whenever he's behind closed doors because here is audio of Berman pitching his services to a group of oil executives people always ask me one question you said how do I know is that I won't be found out as a supporter of what you're doing we run all of this stuff through nonprofit organization that are insulated from having to disclose donors total anonymity see transparency but look look he is right there is total anonymity and just as a general rule if the most common question you get asked is how do I know no one will find out on doing business with you that's not a great sign if the same privacy guarantee that Hardee's gives all of its customers don't worry none of your friends family or coworkers will ever find out that you've been doing this now go and enjoy your monster thickburger before the horse meat gets cold but astroturfing is more way more than just funneling money through nonprofit front groups groups can also recruit questionable experts to lend their arguments credibility there are multiple examples of this but my favorite concerns a group called citizens for fire safety a few years back health officials in California wanted to remove a requirement that furniture contained chemical flame retardants as they had been linked to cancer but citizens for fire safety produced a burn surgeon dr. David heimbach who argued for keeping all of those flame-retardant requirements by telling them a pretty memorable story 7 week old baby was in a crib laying on a fire-retardant mattress on a non-fire retardant pillow mom put a candle in the crib candle fell over the baby sustained a 50-percent burn the entire upper half of her body was burned oh this is a tiny little person no bigger than my Italian Greyhound at home she ultimately died after about three weeks of pain and misery in the hospital now that sounds horrifying but there are some weird things about what he just said first I don't know why he felt the need to compare the size of a baby to his Italian Greyhound everyone knows what size our baby is nobody's never seen a baby so wait it's like a person but smaller tell me more doesn't use stilts how does it board a bus what I'm picturing is something about the size of five hamsters taped together a very small lawnmower a mine around the right ballpark here but second if part of you there was wondering hold on who puts a candle in their baby's crib you're not alone journalists with the Chicago Tribune wondered the exact same thing and they soon discovered that two years earlier home back and testified before a different California panel telling a weirdly similar story I will tell you about a child I took care of in April mom had a candle for sitting at beside the bed left the room for seven minutes for reasons we don't know the child that candle turned over the child sustained an 80 percent burn okay so now this is starting to sound a little suspicious how many people are putting lit candles in and around their baby's cribs oh I just put little Ethan to bed I put plenty of lit candles in his crib as a nightlight and I balance several sharp knives and open cancer pain filler right on the crib wall so he has something to look at look look home back wasn't done because just a year later he was testifying before the state legislature in Alaska and guess what a six week old baby that I took care of earlier this year mother went away there was a candle on the bureau somehow the dog knocked the candle onto the crib and the little girl sustained this seventy five percent very devastating burn wait so now there's a dog involved all of a sudden what kind of dog would do such a thing wait a second I know exactly what kind of dog a gruff needlessly Italian dog like tongue by God but God as if as if sensing that lawmakers there were questioning his motives the very next centers the home back said completely unprompted was this I am not in the pocket of anybody that makes a specific flame retardant now so be fair he's actually right about that he was not in the pocket of someone that made a specific flame retardant he was however in the pocket of citizens for fire safety who paid him $240,000 for his help and who it turned out only had three members which were the three largest makers of flame retardants in the world so I call it liar liar pants chemically incapable of catching on fire oh and what Northey when a reporter called the medical examiner's office they had no record of any burn victim matching heimbach's description whatsoever so one of them did the next logical thing i thought the best thing to do was just to call him at home i said those kids you talked about did they all die in your hospital he said it wasn't factual it was anecdotal and i said but that's not what you testified and he said well I wasn't under oath okay okay well first of all you're generally expected to tell the truth even when you're not under oath and second of all anecdotes aren't the same as lies I saw Keri Russell walking out of a bakery that's an anecdote it's not a good anecdote but it is an anecdote I saw Keri Russell riding a dragon out of a bakery that is a lie although admittedly would be a way better story and look the real problem there is home backs lies worked that flame-retardant bill in California initially failed thanks in part to his testimony and and the final and paps most controversial tool in astro surfing relates to something that our current president actually loves to complain about I'll tell you what you take a look outside these are paid protesters folks the protesters are paid a lot of money by the DNC it turned out that the protesters were used to have we're bought for $1,500 apiece we have a protester by the way were you paid $1,500 to be a thug now I can't walk it quite out there is Trump angry or is he excited he's just stumbled onto a job opportunity that John Julie and Eric would actually be qualified for but for what Russ specific accusations were nonsense hey demonstrators do exist which Trump should frankly know himself because his campaign reportedly had actors who were paid $50 to cheer for him and his campaign announcement but but paid demonstrators are one of the most infuriating tools of astroturfing just just look at what happened last year in New Orleans a company called Entergy needed city council approval for a controversial power plant which it got not long after a public meeting where by sheer chance a bunch of huge power plant fans in orange shirts turned up now it later emerged that a PR firm working for Entergy hired a company called crowds on demand which recruited actors to supports in the plants they did this with a facebook ad which offered and I quote 60 to $200 e dues to help with a gig for three hours which in itself right there is a red flag dollar e dues sounds like slang for money that you'd find in a Mark Twain novel called even for the 1800s there are way too many n words in this crowd of demands even provided talking points such as folks this is 2017 we had a boil water advisory here last month and I'm tired of feeling like I live in a third world country and it seems like some of the people there took those notes and ran with them I'm tired of feeling like we're living in a third world country this is the United States of America its 2017 going on 2018 and we have to worry about these frequent water boil advisories and so on and so forth I have to be concerned that a grandmother or a son or a pet could possibly drink or take in some brain-eating ameba yeah I'll give him credit for that last but the brain-eating ameba bit was all his own he was just riffing hard at that point now now that man insists that he believed everything he said and that he wasn't paid by crowds on demand although you should know that another person there who does admit to being paid said he received instructions that read a few things to keep in mind one tell nobody will being paid to tell nobody you're being paid three media will be present do not talk to them for tell nobody you're being paid and five if somebody approaches you don't tell them you're being paid which are and this is true word-for-word the vows in a traditional Scientology wedding now if you look they're beautiful vows and you should go now if you are wondering who is behind crowds on demand let me introduce you to their CEO Adam Swart the answer to the question what if a lukewarm bottle of smirnoff ice was a person now now he's he's pretty unrepentant about what his firm does have you ever provided protesters for an event of course demonstrators of course do you see anything wrong with that personally nope do you ever feel like you're tricking people though into getting behind something that they may have not gotten behind if they didn't see all this activity there we don't trick people we engage them yeah yeah but you engage them by tricking them don't you both both of those things can be true at the same time it's like someone saying I'm not masturbating in the middle of this Pinkberry I'm just engaging the police department you're actually doing both and one doesn't make the other okay now of course what's whole ruse is predicated on people holding their nerve and not giving the game away in real time but amazingly that has happened in the small town of Camarillo I think the city needs a shake of citizens aren't shy about expressing their opinions but one chilly Wednesday night in December Prince Jordan Tyson city officials say this man stood out this case is clearly common sense because for three minutes he told the City Council what he later admits was a lie I'm just a concerned citizen coming up here and speaking to you but he's not he's a self-described struggling actor from Beverly Hills it goes by the name of Prince Jordan Tyson okay no I don't believe it I do not believe it does anything about this face this face say struggling actor from Beverly Hills to you I'm sorry this story just doesn't check out but incredibly it's true because while they know Toya's pjt initially claims to be from the area he soon had a crisis of confidence culminating in this forty minutes later Tyson came back to the podium Prince is back for one of the strangest moments the City Council has ever seen I don't agree with the reason I'm here and I was paid to be here how much were you paid hundred bucks how much $100 you're idiot Prince you just broke ground on Tim Barnes rules one two four and five now you won't get those hundred-dollar e dues which could have gone toward changing your name to literally anything else or getting a haircut that doesn't make you look like an out dente Owen Wilson when you add all of this together faith groups hiring fake experts and fake crowds which managed to affect real world change it gets pretty dispiriting and it can do real damage that goes way beyond the narrow issues that each group is trying to influence the very existence of companies like crowds on demand mean that something authentic can now be tainted in fact conspiracy boards now regularly and wrongly cite crowds on demand as providing everything from paid protesters for Charlottesville to crisis actors for the Las Vegas shooting and that is hugely dangerous because the consequences of this cannot be that everyone assumes that anyone who doesn't agree with them is astroturf you know what while skepticism is healthy cynicism real cynicism is toxic and because this problem isn't going it away going away it is now even more incumbent on us to use our judgment diligently if the Ray Liotta of docks is telling us the Humane Society is terror it's probably worth us all asking why why who might have trained him and what do they stand to gain and unfortunately until we find out a way to force astroturf groups to be more transparent and accountable that's about all we can do right now astroturf is a serious threat to our public discourse and it is critical that we are all much more aware of its dangers and since astroturf furs have left all their tools lying around at the very least we might as well use them to fight candle fire with candle fire and deliver a heartfelt message we're all Americans real people definitely not actors were just a coalition of Concerned doctors mothers teachers and kidnappers and we think you deserve the truth about astroturf furs here are the facts astroturf furs are responsible for every shark attack in American history wonder all the B's have gone after jurors shot him in the face and according to the bipartisan Institute of factual science studies every single astroturf fur has killed at least one puppy with their bare hands or maybe not we're not under oath the point is that's what surfers set this baby on fire that's not a dog that's a real baby no bigger than an Italian Greyhound her name's Eleanor and she likes for things but binky hood Bava corporate and political transparency and not being on fire and right now Elinor is open for and if you're not careful one day a pastor is going to come to your house and like your baby fire stop and structure they paid for by citizens for fresh orange juice you

Channel: LastWeekTonight

Views: 9,065,696

Rating: 4.856648 out of 5

Keywords: last week tonight astrotirfing, astroturfing, john oliver astroturfing

Id: Fmh4RdIwswE

Length: 18min 34sec (1114 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 12 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Heda1]

Fun fact, fried chicken is healthy and nutritious, the government wants to limit how much delicious fried chicken you can eat. Join us in keeping our children safe from the lack of fried chicken.

Paid for by the national chicken awareness group.

Definitely not a front for KFC and Tyson.

[u/inksmudgedhands]

Here's the website for Crowd on Demand.

They are not even subtle about what they do. Right on their front page, you have "Your home for protests, rallies, advocacy, audiences, PR stunts and political events. Services available nationwide."

Scroll down a bit and under "Protests, Rallies and Advocacy," you will find, "Whether your organization is lobbying to gain approval of a project, move forward a legislative initiative, bring additional pressure within complex litigation or trying to see swift and effective action in another way, we can set-up protests, coordinate phone-banking initiatives and create non-profit organizations to advance your agenda."

The question I am asking is who are these "actors" who are willing to do these incredibly unethical things for a little bit of cash?

[u/Increase_Vitality]

One of his better subjects as of late, but hands down the best part was

$60 to $200 dollarydoos??

Tobias! Did you take part in some paid protests?

[u/PhAnToM444]

John finally did a show about Reddit!

We did it guys!

[u/WigglestonTheFourth]

Astroturfing companies must be raking in the cash. $60-$100 to show up to a 3 hour event funded by political money? Those actors are getting shit to push agendas.

[u/Sisiwakanamaru]

Al Dente Owen Wilson

I lost it. 🤣🤣🤣

While skepticism is healthy, cynicism, real cynicism is toxic

I Could not agree more. with this

[u/kingguy459]

Making a company to hire semi-professional actors for the purpose of a political lie. Totally legal.

[u/earwig20]

Anyone got a mirror that works in Australia?

[u/chaosfire235]

I'm pretty surprised he didn't go into social media astroturfing. Gaming websites where your anonymous and can have multiple accounts to affect discourse is a real problem, especially on Reddit.