(Astro) Turf Wars Over Public Opinion

Baseball Player Bill "Spaceman" Lee was once asked whether he preferred playing on grass or Astroturf. "I don't know," he replied. "I never smoked Astroturf."

Today's medianote is from Mark Glazer's excellent MediaShift blog. In a recent post, he takes on so-called "Astroturf" letter-writing campaigns. An astroturf campaign occurs when a political organization encourages a spate of synthetic political letter-writing through the savvy use of digital technology. Organizations such as Focus on the Family and Move On have web sites where you can click on an issue (Focus on the Family is against gay marriage, for example) and be fed general talking points or specific paragraphs that can be easily cut and pasted into a letter and sent off to a local newspaper or politician.

Suddenly, local newspaper editors are getting multiple letters about an issue, like gay marriage, and it can be hard to tell when it's the actual words of the letter writers and when it's something cribbed from a web site. Mr. Glaser finds this practice deceptive and unethical. The MC101s were less outraged. One student said it was like signing a petition: the important thing is that the signer is a real person and that the letter accurately reflects the signer's opinion.

But should newspaper editors try to keep these astroturf letters from taking root in their letters to the editor columns? In that case, the MC101s generally preferred natural sod over astroturf.

***AUDIOPOST DELAYED I've created my audioblogger post, but as of 2:10 on Tuesday it hasn't shown up online. When it does, I'll add it to my written comments. And if it doesn's show up at all, I'll re-record it. No biggie. I wasn't terribly articulate on this one anyway.

***WEDNESDAY, 7:25 A.M. I've re-recorded the post. It's below and, unfortunately, I'm still not very articulate discussing this medianote.