Paid Advocacy

For all the left's raging about right-wing think tanks, foundations, and other organizations influencing the public dialogue by supporting some mouthpiece or other, they sure do a lot of it themselves. The latest example is the new UN advocacy blog, UN Dispatch, paid for by Ted Turner's UN Foundation. This is the same left-wing group which had an NBC / NPR reporter on the payroll.

As Michelle Malkin notes, the blog is as open to diverse ideas about the UN as you would expect. In a broadcast email that Michelle received, one of the UN bloggers, Peter Daou, formerly of the Kerry campaign, writes:

You can see from the UN Dispatch blogroll - which will continue to expand - that this is not about "discrediting conservative critics," as the above-mentioned sources allege, but about engaging in a wide-ranging and productive debate.

But then again they have this Media Matters-quoting Fox-bashing post:

Media Matters: "A promotion for a FOX News special report titled Breaking Point: U.N. Blood Money: Kofi Annan Under Fire promised that the hour-long special would deliver "shocking new information" on corruption in the United Nations oil-for-food program. Instead, viewers were treated to a host of glaring omissions, dubious sources, falsehoods and distortions, smears, and innuendo.

Dig the crazy synergy! Next thing you know Media Matters employee Oliver Willis will be calling on Brit Hume to resign and complaining about GOPUSA.

I think that the left has lately helped itself somewhat by copying some of the right's investments in incubating and circulating ideas. The question remains whether or not the general public will ultimately buy what the left is selling- regardless of the improved sales technique. Most of what they're selling is rather negative, in the sense that they know what they're against but can't articulate what exactly they're for.

That question aside, they can't credibly keep up the Talon News complaints while left-wing organizations like the UN Foundation and Media Matters are spreading paid opinion around.

Update: More at Donald Sensing, OxBlog, Lean Left, and Crooked Timber.

Late Update: This article at QandO precisely describes what I'm talking about.