Table Of ContentContents
Cover
Title Page
Author’s Note
Introduction
Chapter One
Birth of the Modern Smear: Spies, Bork, and the Clintons
Chapter Two
David Brock’s Smear Frontier
Chapter Three
The Smear Industrial Complex: Smear Merchants and
Scandalmongers
Chapter Four
Media Matters (but Money Matters More)
Chapter Five
Plausible Deniability: Conjuring an Astroturf Reality
Chapter Six
Transactional Journalism: The Black Market Information Trade
Chapter Seven
The Anti-Smear Candidate (and the Disloyal Opposition)
Chapter Eight
The Road to the Conventions
Chapter Nine
General Election
Chapter Ten
Brave New World of #FakeNews (and Chilling Efforts to Censor It)
Epilogue: The Smear Gone Global
Acknowledgments
Index
About the Author
Also by Sharyl Attkisson
Copyright
About the Publisher
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The content of this book is drawn from extensive reporting and research as
well as my own opinions, experiences, observations.
Some proceeds from this book are being donated to the Brechner Center for
Freedom of Information at the University of Florida. A donation was also
made to Project Censored.
A lie gets halfway around the world
before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.
Introduction
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
