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ORIGINAL RESEARCH

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 (website), 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.

Jesson recently appeared on the Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes" program -- the video of which is featured at the BornAliveTruth website. In addition to coverage in the New York Times, CNN, the Washington Times and the Associated Press, the organization's launch received blanket coverage from such like-minded sites as Conservative Grapevine, Catholic News Service, LifeSiteNews, LifeNews, Stop the ACLU, OneNewsNow, WorldMag.com and many more.

The Mokena, Illinois-based BornAliveTruth.org's "Mission Statement" declares that it is "a 527 political organization whose mission is to educate the public on the IL Born Alive Infants Protection Act and Barack Obama's record opposing this act."

According to a "Description Statement" on its website, the organization maintains that it is a "non-partisan issues advocacy organization dedicated to the proposition that any infant born alive is entitled to receive medical attention and be treated as a human being. We work to inform the public of the importance of this issue, legislative efforts to protect born alive infants, and how our elected officials have voted on born alive protections. BornAliveTruth.org is your best source for information about this issue and our activities."

In the "Know the Facts" section of Barackobama.com the Obama campaign provided a lengthy point-by-point rebuttal of BornAliveTruth.org's charges as well as charges by other anti-abortion groups (see "The Truth Behind False, Outrageous Lies about Obama and ''Born Alive.'')

In late August, FactCheck.org, a well-respected project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, which describes itself as "a nonpartisan, nonprofit, 'consumer advocate' for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics," looked closely at the issue after the National Right to Life Committee claimed that Obama had conducted "four-year effort to cover up his full role in killing legislation to protect born-alive survivors of abortions":

At issue is Obama's opposition to Illinois legislation in 2001, 2002 and 2003 that would have defined any aborted fetus that showed signs of life as a "born alive infant" entitled to legal protection, even if doctors believe it could not survive.

Obama opposed the 2001 and 2002 "born alive" bills as backdoor attacks on a woman's legal right to abortion, but he says he would have been "fully in support" of a similar federal bill that President Bush had signed in 2002, because it contained protections for Roe v. Wade.

We find that, as the NRLC said in a recent statement, Obama voted in committee against the 2003 state bill that was nearly identical to the federal act he says he would have supported. Both contained identical clauses saying that nothing in the bills could be construed to affect legal rights of an unborn fetus, according to an undisputed summary written immediately after the committee's 2003 mark-up session.

Whether opposing "born alive" legislation is the same as supporting "infanticide," however, is entirely a matter of interpretation. That could be true only for those, such as Obama's 2004 Republican opponent, Alan Keyes, who believe a fetus that doctors give no chance of surviving is an "infant." It is worth noting that Illinois law already provided that physicians must protect the life of a fetus when there is "a reasonable likelihood of sustained survival of the fetus outside the womb, with or without artificial support."

FactCheck.org also pointed out that while in the ad Jessen says that "'if Senator Obama had his way, I wouldn't be here,' She's wrong. Anyone born in Illinois under the same circumstances as Jessen (who was actually born in California) would have been protected under the state's law as it stood, with or without the legislation that Obama opposed."

Jill Stanek's crusade

BornAliveTruth.org was founded in July of this year and is headed by Stanek, a former Chicago-area nurse who in January 2003 was named by World magazine as one of the 30 most prominent pro-life leaders of the past 30 years.

Stanek, who blogs at Pro-life Pulse (website), tells her story on the group's website:

In 1999, I discovered that Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois, where I worked as a labor and delivery nurse, was leaving babies who survived induced labor abortions to die in the soiled utility room.

I personally held one of these infants 45 minutes until he gasped his last breath.

When I explained my experience to hospital administrators, they refused to stop their horrific treatment of these infants.

After going public, my story immediately grabbed the attention of legislators and media, which resulted in the introduction of the Illinois Born Alive Infants Protection Act.

Christ Hospital fired me in August 2001 for reasons related to my public statements.

I testified before Barack Obama in the Illinois Senate Judiciary Committee and Health and Human Services Committee as well as the US House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution.

On August 5, 2002, I joined President George W. Bush for his signing of the federal version of the Born Alive Infants Protection Act.

When asked if she thought the BornAliveTruth ads were examples of "Swiftboating," Stanek said that she thought that the term Swiftboating "has taken on an unpleasant and inaccurate meaning." After all, she noted, "The swiftboating ads were proven to be true."

Stanek said that she didn't "mind being considered an organization that is negatively impacting Barrack Obama. I don't mind that our publicist [CRC Public Relations] was a publicist for the Swift Boaters. It is a badge of honor. I am happy to be associated with a publicist that has proved to be very successful in a 527 endeavor."

Stanek recently told LifeNews.com that "We're hearing from the media Obama's people are telling them they have no comment on the Gianna ad, that Obama didn't vote for Born Alive because it would undermine Roe. Even if that were true, which it is not, am I hearing Obama admit he supports infanticide if it would otherwise interfere with legalized abortion?"

The major donor to BornAliveTruth -- a 527 allowed to raise money from individuals in unlimited amounts -- is Raymond Ruddy, who is described by the AP as "a prominent anti-abortion philanthropist in Massachusetts who supported Mitt Romney for president in the GOP primary."

In 2004 Ruddy, who sits on the board of the Reston, Virginia-based Maximus, a giant government services provider that is heavily involved in welfare privatization, donated nearly $400,000 to Dr. James Dobson's Focus on the Family Action's anti-gay marriage campaigns. He also gave $117,916 to the anti-abortion Your Catholic Vote, a group that mounted an anti-Kerry campaign attacking the Massachusetts Senator in newspaper ads that ran across the country. For the 2006 midterms Ruddy and Swift Boat Veterans for Truth financier Carl Lindner kicked $847,000 into Common Sense Ohio that ran push polls and deceptive ad campaigns in seven states.

Publicity for BornAliveTruth is being handled by CRC Public Relations (website). Founded in 1989 by a group led by CRC's current chairman, Leif Noren, the company, headed by its current president, Greg Mueller, provides "strategic counsel" for "designing ... media program to tactical implementation, [and] ... delivers a full range of media relations services in today's 24 hour news cycle."

According to its website, "CRC clients include some of the world's largest corporations, industry groups, non-profit organizations, associations and legislative & public policy initiatives. Whether you are launching a new product, facing an imminent crisis, or looking to educate the public, CRC helps you achieve your objectives through customized public relations programs."

CRC's client list includes conservative advocacy groups, think tanks, links to the Republican Party, conservative philanthropy funded organizations, and media outfits such as Americans for Fair Taxation, Americans for Hope, Growth & Opportunity, the Discovery Institute, the Federalist Society, the Manhattan Institute, the Media Research Center, the National Republican Congressional Committee, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Parents Television Council, Regnery Publishing, and Walden Media.

SourceWatch, a project of the Center for Media and Democracy, has reported that earlier this year the Alexandria, Virginia-based CRC was involved "in an attempt to hold Senator Charles Schumer responsible" for the collapse of California's IndyMac Bank. SourceWatch reported that in late June Schumer, the chair of Congress' Joint Economic Committee, "went public with his concerns about the bank." A number of former bank employees -- with the assistance of CRC -- claimed that the Senator's negative assessments of IndyMac led to a run on the bank, "with depositors taking out a net $1.3 billion in the following two weeks," according to the Los Angeles Times.

The former employees accused Schumer of "a malicious, politically motivated act." CRC circulated a letter from the employees to California Attorney General Jerry Brown to major media. "The letter, signed mostly by former staffers at IndyMac's now-shuttered mortgage operation, asks Brown to investigate Schumer and to prosecute him under a state law making it a misdemeanor to spread false and damaging statements or rumors about a bank," the Los Angeles Times reported.

CRC was also a major player in the Swiftboating of Sen. John Kerry during the 2004 presidential campaign. The firm "was paid $165,000 for repping both the Swift [Boat Veterans for Turth] ... and the conservative book company Regnery Publishing," which published Jerome Corsi's best-selling book, "Unfit for Command," William Triplet reported in Variety, in February of 2006.

BornAliveTruth is not the only anti-abortion group in play against Obama. According to FEC filings, the National Right to Life Political Action Committee has spent slightly over $154,000 thus far this year, while the Life and Liberty PAC has spent $978,000 to defeat Obama. CQ MoneyLine recently reported that the Susan B. Anthony List, which opposes abortion, "has given $175,000 to candidates and political committees opposed to abortion this election ... [and] has also spent over $100,000 running ads against Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama and other abortion rights candidates."

Stanek also told Media Transparency that although she had been contacted by the McCain campaign in July for information about Obama, she hadn't heard from them since that time. At this point, it is unclear whether BornAliveTruth will continue to exist beyond November. For now, she is making media appearances, continuing to raise money for "educational endeavors in general," and is dedicated to defeating Barack Obama.

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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.”

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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."

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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."

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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.

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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)."

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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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."

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Media Transparency writers

ORIGINAL RESEARCH

BornAliveTruth.org plays loose with the facts in targeting Obama

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

Jill Stanek's crusade

MORE ORIGINAL RESEARCH