Republican Party blanket email story gains momentum

Earlier in the week we reported that dozens of newspaper editors published a letter endorsing President George W Bush' stance on the US economy.

And we also revealed that users on the Team Leader initiative could win a range of merchandise depending on points they accumulated on that site.

Now a number of mainstream US outlets have taken up the story, including the Washington Post and Slate.

Here is the Washington Times piece, based on UPI's Capital Comment and the Slade article. [Adamson, that's Slate, not Noddy Holder's Slade. You're fired. Ed.]

And here's one from PC World.

Apparently 50 newspapers uncritically published the article, with the full list here.

This site, called Fight Back Against Killer Astroturf, also has other "Letters to Editors" that appear to have been blanket emailed as part of a similar Pro-Bush scheme, along with their publication date.

As this is an INQUIRER Gutterwatch piece, we have to once more point out again that when times are lean on the letters page, editors are sometimes forced to run any old drivel. Rumours are rife that sometimes letters are - shock - even made up by journalists at their editors' command.

Anyway, some more has emerged on the "Astroturf" phenomenon, named after fake "grass root" support.

The URL for the "GOP Team Leader" site appears to be linked to the CapWiz site, which is the home of e-advocates, according to screenshot. That's a subsidiary of Capitol Advantage and the owner of congress.org which apparently also brought us the "Salute" letter - which starts "have you noticed a difference in the salute given by our military men and women as President Bush walks by" - and which is well Googled up, here.

The original Salute article appears here. µ

* MEANTIME, The Bristol Herald Courier had eight of these kind of letters and wrote a column about the phenomenon, here.

See Also
Republican Party blanket emailed newspaper editors
Google hunts down "President Bush is demonstrating genuine leadership"
US political parties: an apology