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ORIGINAL RESEARCH

Bill Berkowitz
August 14, 2008

David Bossie's big play

It won't be a post-Labor Day blockbuster or win critical acclaim, but Bossie's Citizens United is rolling out 'Hype: The Obama Effect,' an anti-Obama documentary that aims to make waves

Regnery has published a major anti-Obama book -- David Freddoso's "The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate" -- and 2004 Swiftboater Jerome Corsi has written his -- "The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality." All sorts of folks are peddling anti-Obama t-shirts, mugs, bumper stickers and more. Now it's David Bossie's turn for a big politico/merchandizing play.

Although still a relatively young man, Bossie, the president of Citizens United, has been a political mudslinger for a nearly two decades. He gained some national notoriety in the 1990s when he was relentless in his pursuit of Bill and Hillary Clinton, and later that decade was fired from his position as an investigator for a House committee. Earlier this year, Bossie "took out classified newspaper ads in Columbia University's newspaper and the Chicago Tribune ... searching for [Obama's] ... term paper," supposedly a thesis on Soviet nuclear disarmament, Jim Popkin, NBC News Senior Investigative Producer, reported in late July. Although he couldn't find it, he wrote in an e-mail to NBC News that "A thesis entitled Nuclear Disarmament, written at the height of The Cold War in 1983, might shed some light upon what Barack Obama thought about our most pressing foreign policy issue for 40-plus years (U.S.-Soviet Relations)."

Obama effect

Bossie's biggest play this election season is the production of an anti-Obama film: On the eve of the Democratic Party convention in Denver, Citizens United Productions will premiere its full-length documentary, "Hype: The Obama Effect." The film is unlikely to be a blockbuster, it thus far hasn't generated the buzz Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 911" did before its release, and will surely not be hitting the festival circuit. In fact, thus far, there are no movie houses listed under the "Theater" section of the hypemovie.com website, scheduled to show the film.

However, according to Politico, Bossie, who co-produced the film, which was directed and written by Alan Peterson -- who also directed "Fahrenhype 9/11," a response to Moore's award-winning documentary -- "hopes the documentary will land in about a dozen theaters, but [recognizes that its] primary distribution will come via mail-order sales, with DVDs selling for approximately $25." Bossie pointed out that the film will be available for rental at Netflix and Blockbuster, and sold at Barnes & Noble, Borders and on Amazon.com, with possible downloads available online at iTunes and other sites.

Alan Peterson, according to Reidblog (The Reid Report Blog), is "a sometime actor/director/producer. ... IMDB Pro lists just three credits for him: an acting turn in the 2007 [film] ‘The Haunting of Marsten Manor,' ... ‘Fahrenhype 9/11' ... [which] was released straight to DVD ... and 1999's memorable ‘Fortune Cookie,' if you remember movies you've neither heard of nor seen."

Ever since Senator Hillary Clinton was defeated in the Democratic Party primaries by Senator Barack Obama -- thereby making Citizens United's film "Hillary: The Movie," which took 18 months and millions of dollars to produce, politically useless -- the organization has been concentrating on readying the Obama documentary for distribution. Bossie is also the author of the "Hillary: The Politics of Personal Destruction," a book released in early March of this year.

In late July, Citizens United (website), announced the launching of its "Hype: The Obama Effect" website (website). Ten days later, Bossie claimed that the site had received 250,000 hits since its launch.

The web site features a nearly five-minute trailer -- which includes Obama's appearance on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" -- and a "30 Second Television Ad" which promotes "Hype" through sound-bites from such notable conservatives as Kenneth Blackwell, the former secretary of state of Ohio who after being defeated for Ohio's governor took up residence as Senior Fellow for Family Empowerment at Washington, D.C.'s Family Research Council -- "It's only when you begin to peel back the layers that you begin to see a disturbing pattern," Blackwell says of Obama in the ad; MSNBC's commentator Tucker Carlson, former Clinton aide, Fox News Channel contributor and best-selling author, Dick Morris, and the Rev. Joe Watkins, a frequent MSNBC commentator.

Citizens United maintains that through "interviews with political leaders, media experts, and social commentators," the film "provides ... "in-depth analysis": "HYPE goes to Illinois and interviews those who know the Senator's record as a state legislator ... [goes] on the road with the campaign and experience[s] the enthralled crowds as they are consumed by the HYPE ... [has] Washington insiders analyze Senator Obama's Senate record, his views on abortion, his statements on the second amendment, his plan for a troubled economy, and his foreign policy."

"Will Senator Obama's actions match his eloquence in the toughest job in the world, or will his rapt and motivated crowds be left with little substance at the end of the day? ‘HYPE: The Obama Effect' lays out the truth." Amongst those interviewed for the film are: Blackwell; Carlson; Morris; Watkins; Michael Barone, a political analyst and journalist best known for being the principal author of "The Almanac of American Politics"; former United Nations ambassador John Bolton; Frank Gaffney, the founder and president of the Center for Security Policy; Jim Geraghty, a regular contributor to National Review Online and National Review; former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee; Rep. Duncan Hunter; former columnist Robert Novak; Illinois state Senator Patrick O'Malley and former state Sen. Steve Rauschenberger; author and columnist Shelby Steele; Armstrong Williams, longtime radio talk show host; and, Byron York, White House correspondent for National Review magazine and a columnist for The Hill.

Citizens United intends to release four documentaries this year on video: Newt Gingrich on the energy crisis; stories from Iraq veterans; a tribute to Ronald Reagan; and an examination of the controversial ABC-TV miniseries "The Path to 9/11," which was condemned by Clinton supporters and has yet to be released on home video by the network.

Bossie's business

In a July 20, 2004, Salon profile of Bossie -- with a pugnacious title and subtitle "You can't teach an old attack dog new tricks: Partisan hack David Bossie raised political sliming to an art form against Bill Clinton. Now he's out to smear John Kerry and Michael Moore. Why does anyone in the media still take him seriously?", Eric Boehlert called him "a political hit man by trade" and a "renowned Republican dirty trickster" who spent the 1990s "often at the epicenter of churning out stories about President Clinton, deftly feeding the press and Capitol Hill investigators outlandish -- and usually unsubstantiated -- assertions about White House wrongdoing."

According to a July 6, 2002, archived version of his Citizens United profile, SourceWatch, a project of the Center for Media and Democracy pointed out, Bossie was "State Youth Director for Linda Chavez for U.S. Senate (MD) in 1986; and, the Maryland State Deputy Youth Director for Reagan/Bush re-elect in 1984." The same 2002 profile states: "From 1988 to 1990, Bossie was the Director of Programs for the Leadership Institute which trains young men and women in campaign technology, student publications and the operations of Congress."

In the late 1980s he worked as an aide to former Kansas Senator Bob Dole. Bossie hooked up with Floyd Brown's Citizens United in the early 1990s. One of his assignments was to go to Arkansas and dig out the dirt about the Clintons. In the May 6, 1998 edition of Salon, David Corn reported that "at one point, Bossie got into a fistfight in Arkansas with a private detective who claimed Bossie had welshed on a $10,000 payment for anti-Clinton material."

In 1992, Bossie harassed the family of a suicide victim. "An anonymous and untraceable letter" was faxed to some 30 news organizations "claiming Clinton had had an affair with a former law student who committed suicide 15 years ago," an "emotionally distraught young woman, seven-months pregnant" named Susan Coleman. Bossie repeatedly attempted to contact the family for "confirmation" of the affair. With help from former Washington DC police officer James Murphy, Bossie went so far as to follow Susan's mother to a hospital in Augusta, Georgia, where her husband was seriously ill and recovering from a stroke. They "burst into the sick man's room and began questioning the shaken mother about her daughter's suicide." (Source: CBS News, July 13, 1992, quoted at The Allodium web site)

"Not long into the Clinton Presidency, Citizens United produced the video 'Clinton Chronicles,' based largely on dirt Bossie had been digging in Arkansas," Dave Gonzo reported in American Politics Journal. "The video, filled with a plethora of factual errors and uncorroborated or dis-proven rumors, has been almost completely discredited."

Bossie came early to the idea of impeaching President Clinton: In August 1994, Bossie, Director of Government Relations and Communications for Citizens United, and Howard Phillips, a long-term conservative activist who headed the Conservative Caucus, held a press conference addressing the "Latest Whitewater Developments, Impeachment Possibility."

In 1998, Bossie was fired from his job as chief investigator for the US House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform and Oversight -- which was investigating alleged Clinton White House campaign finance abuses -- for releasing selectively edited transcripts of former Clinton administration official Webster Hubbell's prison conversations.

Well-loved by conservatives, Bossie was given the Ronald Reagan Award from the Conservative Political Action Conference in 1999. A few years ago, journalist Max Blumenthal reported that Bossie called himself an "accidental filmmaker." At the 2006 Liberty Film Festival in Hollywood, Bossie told Blumenthal that "We need to use all the political tools available to us. Whether it's a thirty-second TV spot or a full-length feature, we need offensive political tools."

There's no question Bossie has become a master of creating "offensive tools." It remains to be seen whether there will be an audience for "Hype: The Obama Effect" or whether Bossie will be preaching to the choir.

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MORE ORIGINAL RESEARCH

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December 12, 2008

Media Matters Action Network acquires MediaTransparency.org from Cursor, Inc.

Today, Media Matters Action Network and Cursor, Inc. jointly announced the sale of Cursor, Inc.'s website MediaTansparency.org to Media Matters Action Network. Together they released the following statements:

“This sale is a win-win for both parties,” said Rob Levine, president of Cursor, Inc. “We've been trying for some time to institutionalize our organization and websites but have unfortunately been unable to raise the funds necessary to carry on our labor-intensive tasks. As the primary tool for tracking the funding of conservative organizations and their representatives who appear in the media, MediaTansparency.org is an excellent fit for Media Matters as they continue to expand their efforts to hold the media accountable.”

“MediaTransparency.org is a tremendous resource for anyone seeking to hold the media to task. We are thrilled to have this important and dynamic tool in our belt,” said Eric Burns, president of Media Matters Action Network. “Cursor, Inc., has done an outstanding job developing MediaTransparency.org, the most robust database of its kind available today. The wealth of data they have assembled on the funding behind conservative organizations is unparalleled.”

Read the full report >

Bill Berkowitz
October 10, 2008

BornAliveTruth.org plays loose with the facts in targeting Obama

Head of anti-abortion group claims Obama 'supports infanticide'

Two weeks ago, BornAliveTruth.org, an anti-abortion group headed by Jill Stanek, launched a major attack on Sen. Barack Obama with a very personal and heart-wrenching television advertisement aimed at the voters in the toss-up states of New Mexico and Ohio. The ad, which according to Stanek cost the organization $338,000 to run -- in addition to what it is paying its public relations firm, CRC Public Relations -- was titled "The Gianna ad," and features Gianna Jesson, who is identified as an "Abortion Survivor."

"My name is Gianna Jesson, born 31 years ago after a failed abortion," Jesson states in the ad. "But if Barack Obama had his way, I wouldn't be here. Four times Barack Obama voted to oppose a law to protect babies left to die after failed abortions. Senator Obama, please support Born Alive Infant Protection. I'm living proof these babies have a right to live."

The ad, paid for by conservative philanthropist Raymond Ruddy, "singles out Obama's efforts while in the Illinois Senate to defeat the Born Alive Infants Protection Act," according to the Associated Press' Jim Kuhnhein. The AP story reported that "Obama and abortion rights forces in Illinois have said the bill would have undermined the landmark Supreme Court case on abortion, Roe v. Wade."

The BornAliveTruth spot has garnered a great deal of media attention for both Jesson and Stanek. In a late-September telephone interview, Stanek told Media Transparency that both she and Jesson have made a number of television and radio appearances. According to Stanek, in its first two weeks, the ad garnered more than 200,000 hits on YouTube and other websites that have made it available.

Read the full report >

Bill Berkowitz
September 26, 2008

PAC man

Our Country Deserves Better PAC aims to 'define' Obama's 'weaknesses' and make him 'an unacceptable choice to serve as our nation's next president and Commander in Chief'

He maintains that the newly-launched anti-Obama political action committee is not tied, nor related, to the campaign of Sen. John McCain and that it is not out to Swiftboat Sen. Barack Obama. The PAC intends to "define [his] weaknesses as a candidate, and thus make him an unacceptable choice to serve as our nation's next president and Commander in Chief." One of the group's earliest fundraising pitches, posted at the TownHall Spotlight, is titled "Barack Obama Sinks To A New Low." And among its ready-for-prime-time television advertisements are spots titled, "Obama Mocks America's Christian Heritage," "Obama's Patriotism Problems" and "Obama's Wrong Values."

He also pointed out that the PAC has clearly defined ethical lines that it will not cross when criticizing Obama.

Meet Joe Wierzbicki, the coordinator of Our Country Deserves Better PAC.

In the ever-expanding universe of Republican Party-sponsored/related groups attacking Sen. Barack Obama, add Our Country Deserves Better PAC to the list. Run by veteran California-based Republican Party conservative activists Sal Russo and Howard Kaloogian, Our Country Deserves Better PAC is a recently launched political action committee -- a committee organized to spend money for the election or defeat of a candidate -- that has several provocative pieces in the hopper.

In a series e-mail exchanges, PAC Coordinator Joe Wierzbicki told me that the Rancho Santa Marga, California-based entity hopes to "raise in excess of $1 million by Election Day," to run a series of anti-Obama television ads in as many as "ten states."

Read the full report >

Bill Berkowitz
September 3, 2008

Freedom's Watch smearing Democratic Congressional candidates with false robo-calls

'Shady soft money group' going after Senate and House seats

Early last month the Republican lobbying group Freedom's Watch (FW) launched a series of television and radio advertisements criticizing congressional Democrats for going on vacation instead of staying in Washington and dealing with energy legislation. One ad urged supporters to "Tell Mark Udall," the Colorado Democratic Congressman now running for a Senate seat, "to show up to work and start fixing Colorado's energy crisis."

Freedom's Watch, which made its first public appearance with a $15 million radio and television advertising campaign aimed at maintaining Congressional support for President Bush's Iraq troop "surge" [escalation] just prior to General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker's Congressional appearances in late-August 2007, is now attacking Democrats in a number of House and Senate campaigns.

Tony Feather, a veteran of past GOP campaigns, recently signed on "to run" Freedom's Watch's "new Senate-focused wing," the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza recently reported. Feather, who will oversee the group's work in a number of Senate contests, was "intimately involved in the founding of Progress for America, a 527 group aligned with Republicans that spent millions on advertisements during the 2004 presidential election," the newspaper reported. Feather is a partner in Feather, Larson & Synhorst, "a do-it-all Republican consulting firm with strong ties to the Bush team."

In addition to its new focus on a handful of Senate seats, Freedom's Watch is commissioning misleading or false robo-calls in dozens of Congressional races. The House campaign is being led by Carl Forti, the former communications director at the National Republican Congressional Committee. In early July, PolitickerOH.com reported that FW was running advertisements / robo calls "against nine state lawmakers in eight different states." According to Kyle Kutuchief, writing for The Point, the organization "has been making robo-calls into the 16th Congressional District falsely attacking Democratic Candidate John Boccieri for voting for a gas tax in the State of Ohio in 2003."

Read the full report >

Bill Berkowitz
August 20, 2008

Republicans resurrecting Jeremiah Wright as campaign issue

Conservative philanthropy funded Media Research Center astonishingly claims news networks held collective tongues on the Wright affair

In 1962, two years after losing the presidency to John F. Kennedy, Richard M. Nixon ran and lost the governor's race in California. At a post-election press conference, Nixon famously told reporters that they wouldn't "have Richard Nixon to kick around any more, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference." It wasn't. He won the presidency in 1968, escalated the Vietnam War, was re-elected in 1972, and two years later he was forced to resign in disgrace over the Watergate Affair.

These days, one can easily imagine that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright might wish -- in his heart of hearts -- that the press, the cable news networks, conservative pundits, the headline writers and Republican Party operatives didn't have Jeremiah Wright "to kick around any more."

Thanks to conservative philanthropy and the Republican echo machine, the story about the relationship between the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Senator Barack Obama will be with us through Election Day and beyond. Whether Obama wins or loses, there will be much post-election analysis about how much the Wright Affair hurt the campaign.

Read the full report >

Bill Berkowitz
August 6, 2008

Defining Obama 24/7

Conservatives try to make presidential race about Democratic nominee, painting him as unreliable

As Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama trekked toward the final Democratic primaries, and it looked inevitable that Obama would be the Democratic Party's presidential nominee, conservative pundits and cable television talk-show hosts, a host of blogs, and a number of newly formed organizations began intensifying their attacks on Obama, embarking on the early stages of one of Karl Rove's most effective political strategies: Directly attack the opponent's strengths. In the case of Obama, this means turning his very popularity into a negative, defining him as effete and more interested in celebrity before the Democrat can introduce and define himself to the larger nation.

Two new anti-Obama books, "The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality" (Threshold Editions, August 2008) by Jerome Corsi -- the co-author of "Unfit for Command," the 2004 book that contained false attacks on Senator John Kerry's military service -- and "The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate," by David Freddoso -- a former writer for the conservative weekly, Human Events and National Review Online staff reporter -- are aimed at taking the attacks to a mainstream audience.

Read the full report >

Bill Berkowitz
August 1, 2008

Anti-gay politics continues to drive Don Wildmon's American Family Association

California's Proposition 8 draws big-buck supporters, while Wildmon declares that outcome of 'culture wars' depends on turning back gay marriage

Two different -- yet ultimately interlinked -- issues relating to the "homosexual agenda" are agitating the folks at the Tupelo, Mississippi-based headquarters of Donald Wildmon's American Family Association (AFA) these days. One is your basic AFA-sponsored boycott; the other, according to Wildmon, will determine the final outcome of America's "culture wars."

Wildmon is simultaneously leading an effort to boycott the fast food giant McDonald's, and marshaling the troops in support of Proposition 8, a California ballot initiative that would reverse the state's Supreme Court recent decision in support of gay marriage.

Why McDonalds? A short time back, the home of the Hamburgler donated $20,000 to the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC) in exchange for membership in the NGLCC and a seat on the group's board of directors. That outraged Wildmon, the undisputed kingpin of calling boycotts against companies that might have a scent of gay-friendliness.

Read the full report >

Bill Berkowitz
July 11, 2008

A president desperately seeking a legacy

George W. Bush goes back to touting 'compassionate conservatism' and the 'successes' of his faith-based initiative

In 2004, at the annual White House Correspondents Dinner, President Bush's contribution to the evening's entertainment was his narration of a slide show that pictured him looking around the Oval Office for weapons of mass destruction. In one of the shots, Bush is looking under some furniture and remarked: "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be here somewhere."

Flash forward four years: At this year's dinner, Bush played highlights from a number of his previous appearances. In a wise decision, he left the WMD skit -- which was roundly criticized for making fun of the issue that was the driving force behind the invasion of Iraq, which has led to deaths of thousands of Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis -- out of the highlight package.

These days, Bush is no longer concerned about whether WMD existed in Iraq.

Instead, he is desperately seeking a legacy; anything that he can latch onto that might trump the fact that a majority of Americans believe that he will go down as one of the worst presidents in U.S. history. His search for a legacy could prove as futile as the search for WMD. At this point, it appears that it has landed him back he started a week after his inauguration in 2001; touting his faith-based initiative and "compassionate conservatism."

On January 29, 2001, a little over a week after the start of his first term, Bush, surrounded by Christian, Jewish, and Muslim clergy, unveiled his faith-based initiative by issuing an executive order creating the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (OFBCI). He followed that up with another executive order that eventually established Faith-Based and Community offices at 11 federal agencies.

While Bush's faith-based initiative has spread its tentacles to a host of federal, state and local government agencies -- 35 governors and more than 70 mayors, both Democratic and Republican, have established programs modeled after the federal faith-based and community initiatives program – Congress has never even come close to passing legislation legally enacting it.

Read the full report >

Bill Berkowitz
June 24, 2008

'Battling for America's Soul'

The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property leaps headlong into the showdown over same-sex marriage in California

They've been around for more than 30 years; trace their roots to a Brazilian anti-communist dissident Catholic; wear colorful outfits during their protests on college campuses; and apparently have enough spare change to fund three 4,000+ word simultaneously-placed advertisements in three national dailies.

Of all the conservative organizations that will be getting involved in the same-sex marriage showdown in California, one of the least known is a Catholic outfit called the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP). TPF isn't a fly-by-night letter-head-only group that suddenly formed to get in on what promises to be one heck of a battle.

On June 5, in response to the California Supreme Court's ruling in support of same-sex marriage, TPF issued a press release announcing the publication of two-page advertisements critical of the decision, appearing "simultaneously" in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Times, costing the group perhaps as much as three-quarters of a million dollars.

The ads, which explicitly called for civil disobedience, were titled "Battling for America's Soul: How Homosexual 'Marriage' Threatens Our Nation and Faith -- the TFP Urges Lawful and Conscientious Resistance."

Read the full report >

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Media Transparency writers

ORIGINAL RESEARCH

David Bossie's big play

It won't be a post-Labor Day blockbuster or win critical acclaim, but Bossie's Citizens United is rolling out 'Hype: The Obama Effect,' an anti-Obama documentary that aims to make waves

Bossie's business

MORE ORIGINAL RESEARCH