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Google hire lobby firm behind the Al Gore YouTube Fraud |
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Contributed by Nicol Wistreich |
Friday, 15 September 2006 |
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 BoingBoing is reporting today that Google have appointed controversial Washington-based lobying and 'astroturffing' firm DCI
to represent them in the US. DCI, run by Republican Party officials,
came into public controversy earlier in the year when the Washington
Post revealed it had pretended to be a 29 year old basement filmmaker
to post a YouTube video attacking Al Gore and his film An Inconvenient Truth, released this week in the UK.
Al Gore's Penguin Army
(from Wikipedia) Al Gore's Penguin Army is a video spoofing An
Inconvenient Truth, the documentary film about Al Gore's efforts to
raise awareness of global warming. The video appeared on YouTube.com,
where it was claimed to have been an amateur production by a 29-year
old in Beverly Hills, California. Controversy emerged when the source
of the video replied to inquiries made by the Wall Street Journal,
which determined that "computer routing information" showed that those
replies came from "a computer registered to DCI Group", a public
relations and lobbying firm in Washington, DCI, led exclusively by
Republican party officials. DCI has counted corporations such as
General Motors and ExxonMobil amongst its clients.
The Wall
Street Journal consulted a professor of communications who described
the spoof as "'Propaganda 101.' It contains no factual information, but
presents a highly negative image" of the former vice president." When
asked if they created the video, DCI Group responded "We do not
disclose the names of our clients, nor do we discuss the work we do on
behalf of our clients." Another source also found that sponsored links
to the Al Gore video had been placed on Google, and were taken down
after it was reported, noting that the identity of the party who paid
for the sponsored links remained unknown.
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