Monday, October 19, 2009
The Yes Men Expose . . . How Useless the MSM Is [Iain Murray]
Jaws dropped around Washington today as Reuters reported on a press release
from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce announcing that high-profile
defections had led to a reversal of their stance against the
job-destroying global-warming bill.
Far more jaws dropped, however, in disbelief that Reuters could have
fallen for such an obvious hoax. The press release is not on the
Chamber's website, but on a fake one. And who owns it? That happy band of anti-capitalist culture jammers, The Yes Men.
What amazes me is that this sort of fact-checking takes just a
couple of mouse clicks. The Yes Men are not good at hiding their
identity. In fact, here's what happened when they tried to pull a stunt on libertarian groups a couple of years back and got rumbled.
All of which suggests that major news organizations are simply
machines for regurgitating press releases, real or not, that accord
with their view of where the world should be going. That's what the Yes
Men have exposed, not corporate pusillanimity (although there's a
fair amount of that around). For that, a reluctant doff of the flat cap
to them, even if it wasn't what they thought they were doing.
10/19 12:49 PM
Share
