Nearly every day, my overloaded email in-box is peppered with pleas from viewers asking—no, begging—me to investigate tales of the implausible and unbelievable. They’re convinced that the truth is being hidden from them on a massive scale. That someone is manipulating what they see on the news and online. Conspiring to hide select facts and advance particular narratives. Colluding on plots to smear certain people.
Their suspicions are correct, even if their notion of truth is often confused. In fact, the confusion is often by grand design.
At the end of campaign 2016, one story they urge me to investigate is #Pizzagate. It’s a twisted conglomeration of unthinkable accusations about Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and her inner circle. “News” of this shocking scandal has been circulating on the Internet, and conspiracy theorists believe the mainstream press is covering it up. The allegations are whispered about and forwarded through social media, quasi-news sites, blogs, and videos posted by nameless sources. The stories are filled with names of real people and places, blended with fabricated tales of child rape, a porn ring, and a pizza parlor supposedly trafficking in underage sex through a basement tunnel. A mysterious video posted under the moniker “Anonymous” promises that the final week of the campaign will reveal irrefutable evidence of indictable crimes. The sources of this as-yet unrevealed information, according to the video, have been contacted by the FBI, which is getting ready to sweep in and make arrests.
I’m busy working on pressing stories for my weekly news program, Full Measure. But I poke around in case there’s anything to any of it. I look at the websites. I check out the videos. I consult sources who might know if there are real law enforcement investigations under way. I quickly detect telltale signs of misinformation.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump faces his own parade of false accusations, and I’m getting emails about those as well. Viewers want to know why I’m not reporting on the story about him having raped a child. I look into that one, too. There’s a lawsuit pending, and the players involved are at least as dubious as the ones promulgating #Pizzagate. Still, the Trump story gets picked up by the likes of the New York Daily News, Politico, BuzzFeed, New York magazine, the Independent, and the Atlantic. As cameras gather for a news conference to hear the sordid tale from the supposed rape victim, she evaporates. There are more concocted stories—that Trump’s New York City modeling agency was “caught trafficking young girls and hiding them in basements”; that Trump is a secret “plant” who entered the presidential campaign as a pettifogger, surreptitiously working to get Clinton elected; and that he’s a stooge of Russian president Vladimir Putin in a “Manchurian candidate” scenario—a reference to the 1962 film about an American soldier who was brainwashed into carrying out communist plots.
Not a day goes by without the voting public getting pummeled by countless narratives—some based on grains of truth; others wholly invented for the audience. Racist, Wall Street lackey, crooked, liar, cheat, white nationalist, socialist, womanizer, misogynist, corrupt, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, anti-immigrant, basket of deplorables, fraudster, loser, alt-right, delusional, dangerous, mentally ill, pay-for-player, and tax cheat. Assisted by ideologues, shady political operatives, and dark Internet outfits seeking moneymaking clicks, Campaign 2016 shatters all records in the smear department.
In this environment, the ability to execute a character assassination becomes more pivotal than any other singular campaign strategy. Operatives spring into action, exploiting the latest technology and tactics. Once relegated to grocery store tabloids, smears now figure prominently in most every mainstream news publication. Reporters pursue sordid narratives with the fervor of Jimmy Olsen chasing an exclusive for the Daily Planet. Smears become embedded in the fabric of our everyday existence. So common, we barely flinch at the most audacious claims. With distrust of the news media at an all-time high, a skeptical public looks to alternative information sources and becomes easier to bamboozle. It’s in this space, devoid of principles, where smears and fake news thrive. It’s no longer a stretch for news consumers to believe that the press is covering up important stories or is in the tank for corporate and political interests.
We didn’t get here overnight. The past two decades have served as an ideal incubator for an industry of smears and fake news. The tools and tactics have evolved from old-school to high-tech. Incredible amounts of money change hands, yet some of the most damaging smears can be accomplished with little more than an idea and an Internet connection. By 2016, a Pew Research Center report found more than 44 percent of the American adult population got its news on Facebook, which had 1.09 billion active daily users. Some of that news is true. Some of it’s not. Today, an entire movement can be started with a few bogus Twitter accounts and 140 characters or less.
“You don’t have to spend millions on political ad buys anymore,” observes one operative in the business. “You can spark wildfires with just a tiny little stick now, which is a new thing.”
What, exactly, is a smear?
That depends on who you ask. One man’s smear is another man’s truth. In simple terms, it’s an effort to manipulate opinion by promulgating an overblown, scandalous, and damaging narrative. The goal is often to destroy ideas by ruining the people who are most effective at communicating them. What you may not know is that a lot of this manipulation is done through methods that are utterly invisible to the average consumer. Paid forces devise clever, covert ways to shape the total information landscape in ways you can’t imagine. Their goal is to fool you. Public ideas are meticulously orchestrated to appear random. Op-eds printed in major news publications are ghostwritten by paid agents in the name of shills who rent the use of their signature. Private eyes dig up dirt on enemies by dumpster-diving for embarrassing information and compromising material.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson cites his own dicta for a successful modern-day smear. First, it must be inherently interesting and, preferably, salacious. That means anything of a tabloid nature—sex, greed, or venal sin. Second, the smear has to be explainable in a sentence or two. Even better if it can be encapsulated in a catchy phrase. “War against women.” “Crooked Hillary.” “Gun show loophole.” And finally, the smear must confirm what a lot of people want to believe. If it’s too disconnected from the realm of the desirable or credible, it won’t work. For example, Carlson says, smearing the pope by claiming there’s video of him worshipping Satan probably wouldn’t work. It’s too far from the realm of what most people would consider credible. But link a Catholic figure to a male prostitute and that may be enough in the minds of the audience to make them think it might be true. It confirms their preexisting suspicions. Repeat it often enough and it becomes undeniable—something “everybody knows.”
Professor Mark Feldstein of Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland is author of Poisoning the Press: Richard Nixon, Jack Anderson, and the Rise of Washington’s Scandal Culture. Before becoming a professor, Feldstein was an award-winning investigative reporter and producer at ABC, NBC, and CNN. As a journalist who stepped on toes of the influential and political, he says he found himself the target of many smear campaigns by powerful interests—“beaten up, subpoenaed, sued, and detained.” In 1998, as an NBC producer investigating alleged misconduct by United Nations troops in Haiti, his correspondent and crew were forced off the road by armed guards who stole their notes, belongings, and camera equipment. The U.S. embassy notified them that the Haitian police had opened some sort of criminal investigation into them and that they were about to be arrested. They were being set up. They left.
Feldstein has a view similar to that of Carlson on the ingredients for a successful smear.
“A lot of what resonates has to do with whether it seems consistent with the persona or whether it resonates with some issue that’s radioactive in society,” he notes. “The rumor about Hillary throwing the lamp at Bill [Clinton]. . . if someone said that about Laura Bush it wouldn’t gain currency because it’s so at variance with who she seems to be.”
As corporations and political operatives jockey for control, they’ve found uncanny success in exploiting news organizations, quasi-news outlets, and brokers of so-called fake news to lend legitimacy to their efforts. We in the news media have allowed ourselves to become co-opted by political, corporate, and other special interests. We permit them to dictate the story du jour. We let them dominate the opinions we consult and quote. We plaster our news reports with political pundits not offering independent opinions but serving their masters. We’ve invited political operatives into our fold as consultants, pundits; and even made them reporters, anchors, and managers in our newsrooms. We’ve become a willing receptacle for, and distributor of, daily political propaganda. And because we invite both sides to feed us, we call it fair. In many ways, some media outlets have become little more than thinly veiled political operations.
Adding to distrust of the media are stark changes in how the news has come to operate. Policies that once firewalled news from opinion, that resisted interference from political and advertising interests—voop! Evaporated. Relationships and practices regarded as the most egregious breaches of ethics a few years back are now commonly accepted. Now, intermingling is not only tolerated, it’s encouraged.
They’ve figured out how to marginalize those who are still seeking the facts. Not long ago, if a journalist reported a true but damaging story about a key political figure, the politician might try to deny the report and discredit the reporter—but the effort wouldn’t gain much traction.
It’s different today.
Now, the news story, reporter, and outlet are hit with highly organized, offensive smears. Strategic communications firms spring into action. False information, rumors, and innuendo are circulated against the reporters on blogs and social media. Negative “press releases” are dispatched to long email lists of reporters and pundits. Pretty soon, these astroturf efforts drown out the real story and overtake the news narrative. Politico, Infowars, The Huffington Post, Breitbart, Salon, Vox, The Right Scoop, Mother Jones, Rolling Stone, Wired, DailyKos, the Washington Post, the New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, the Hill, BuzzFeed, and Mediaite are some of the media entities known to peddle clickable concoctions of legitimate news and sometimes-good journalism alongside partisan opinions, vicious agendas, misinformation, mischaracterizations, and smears against other journalists. It blurs together until there’s virtually no meaningful distinction between credible reporting and propaganda.
One of the biggest casualties is nonpartisan investigative journalism. The PR spinmeisters, corporate collusion, and political flacks have made it increasingly difficult for good reporters to do independent reporting on important topics. Good reporters hate what’s happened to the news.
The disturbing dominance of this “transactional journalism” has further opened the floodgate to clandestine collusion between reporters and special interests. As a result, it can be impossible to separate fact from fiction. Even self-proclaimed truth-tellers and fact-checkers have been co-opted.
“Everybody’s in fucking battle mode all the time,” a notable player in this murky universe tells me.
The smear is a malleable creature, without loyalties or compunction. It’s equally happy to be the tool of government, corporations, special interests, Democrats, or Republicans. All aim to be its master. But some prove far better at it than others.
That’s where the smear artist comes in: a character assassin driven by passion, ideology, and money. The smear business is interminable and eminently profitable. It’s silently turned into one of the largest white-collar industries in Washington, D.C. It’s making thousands of people rich. It’s becoming one of our biggest global exports.
Within these pages are smear secrets exposed. Some are buried in emails and government documents never meant for outside eyes. More come from current operators who agreed to reveal tricks of the trade as long as they could remain anonymous. Together, we’ll trace the incredible money that pours into major smear efforts, and we’ll review the fatalities. And you’ll see how, once in a great while, a smear backfires. The operator may find herself in the crosshairs, as did Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz in 2016 when WikiLeaks exposed some of the duplicitous shenanigans Wasserman-Schultz’s DNC conducted against the party’s own presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.
In my thirty-five years as a journalist, I’ve encountered countless operatives who are pros at peddling smears. They don’t say that’s who they are or what they do. They pose as advocates, watchdogs, tipsters, and public relations agents. They work at global law firms, PR companies, crisis management groups, nonprofits, think tanks, blogs, and strategic communications firms. They send me research, ask to have coffee, press a business card into my palm, whisper into my ear, invite me into their fold, and point me to “sources.” They use tried-and-true propaganda techniques to attempt to persuade reporters like me to further their narratives. In fact, if they’re really good, they convince us it’s all our idea: we’re expert journalists whose connections and skills have gotten us an exclusive story!
And if we aren’t useful to the effort? We might find ourselves the target of a smear. It happened to me.
In my two decades as a national television investigative reporter, I make it a practice to follow the facts wherever they lead. My exposés on giant corporations like Enron and the pharmaceutical companies, on charities such as the Red Cross, and on problematic initiatives under Democrats and Republicans alike have been recognized with top journalism awards. As a result, I’ve made enemies of some of the most powerful interests on the planet. The subjects of my stories deploy their apparatus to controversialize and silence my reporting. Yes, independent-minded reporters like me have plenty of public defenders, but they aren’t among the powerful. We don’t have important friends in high places or retainers with expensive PR firms. Our supporters lack the kind of influence that money can buy. They don’t control a bevy of fake news sites to do their bidding.
As a target, I’ve learned to sniff out smears a mile away. They’re inescapable. Turn on the TV. Fire up the computer. Flip on the radio. News, entertainment, philanthropy, advertising, social media, book reviews, rumors, memes, nonprofits, even comedy acts—they’re all used in smear campaigns. We’re living amid an artificial reality, persuaded to believe it’s real by astroturf engineered to look like grassroots. Success of the paid forces hinges on their ability to remain virtually invisible. To disguise what they do and make it seem as if their work is neither calculated nor scripted. It must appear to be precisely what it is not.
Nothing is more exemplary of these efforts than the sudden frenzy over fake news. I find an Internet search returns no common mentions of “fake news” among news stories until precisely the moment an orchestrated effort was launched in September of 2016. It’s quickly followed by an October announcement from President Barack Obama, in which he claims there’s a burning need to “curate” news on behalf of the public. From that point forward, the topic of fake news dominates headlines on a daily basis. It’s as if the media has its assigned narrative and is marching forward. Headlines read, “The Real Danger of Fake News,” “How Fake News Helped Donald Trump Win,” “Why Facebook and Google Are Struggling to Purge Fake News,” “How to Fix the Fake News Problem.” But it isn’t the public that’s clamoring for content to be filtered, censored, or otherwise “curated.” The push is coming from corporate, political, news, and special interests who want to dominate the narrative and crush information that’s contrary. Can they be trusted to separate fact from fiction?
Many will not survive the smear.
How can somebody with no power, no megaphone, and no media cooperation begin to counter the propaganda muscle of a government-corporate-media attack? Victims frequently express hopelessness and desperation. Pushing through the day as the target of a character assassination can take every ounce of mental strength. Imagine trying to focus on your job or family while professional smear artists engage in a 24/7 operation to discredit and controversialize you. To them, it’s second nature. They’ve perfected their techniques. They maintain a constant pressure. Their slander alienates your bosses, clients, colleagues, and the general public. They isolate you from your support system. Eventually, your own family and friends start to wonder about you. You feel the icy chill of distancing from those you consider closest.
So, what do you get out of this journey? The truth. You’ll see how public consensus is shaped and how opinion strings are pulled. Not by ordinary citizens, but by people whose names you’ve never heard. By the time you finish this book, you’ll have become adept at recognizing smear campaigns—and maybe seeing through them.
Today you’re viewing the world through foggy glasses. I’ll help you take them off, wipe them clean, and see things more clearly.