Category Archives: Education

Smear Campaign Tools Exposed: Sockpuppet Theater

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By trying to hide your identity when you leave a comment, you’re trying to influence everyone else’s perception of how credible the article is by pretending to be a disinterested third party who’s just offering a fair critique.
–David Martosko, Director of Research, Center for Consumer Freedom

Poor Richard Berman. It’s hard to drum up support for unpopular causes like destroying wages and benefits for teachers, convincing pregnant women to consume toxic mercury, and downplaying the significance of having loved ones killed by drunk driving.

But of all the atrocities Richard Berman is paid to defend, perhaps the most repugnant is animal cruelty.

So what does the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) do when they can’t find an unethical college graduate or industry shill to pose as an expert and spout junk science? When there’s nobody to take up the cause of brutalizing animals or demonizing their rescuers, HumaneWatch falls back on a particularly dirty tactic: sockpuppets.

In real life, a sockpuppet is a mockery, a figure of inanimate cloth and button eyes that mouths whatever words the wearer says. It is a fictional persona worn over the hand of the puppetmaster.

On the internet, sockpuppets are more sinister. They are fake personalities masquerading as real people, and they are used to manipulate others into thinking there is credible support for an idea. For example, someone seeking to discredit the Humane Society of the United States could pose as a veterinarian, relying on the authority that comes with a vet’s education and experience without actually possessing those qualities. That’s precisely what HumaneWatch chief David Martosko did in order to deceive animal lovers.

But manipulation is just the tip of the iceberg. Martosko also assumed the identity of a fictional activist for much more nefarious purposes. He used this identity to compromise the accounts of bloggers, politicians, authors, and activists who oppose the abuses of CCF’s corporate clients, spying on them, monitoring them, and in at least two instances, attempting to incite violent or criminal comments to use against those individuals.

To David Martosko’s disappointment, the animal welfare community was more principled than CCF’s employees.

And Martosko? He’s now the U.S. Political Editor for a conservative tabloid, The Daily Mail.

Please feel free to save these graphics to your hard drive, link to them directly on this site, or share on social media.

http://www.stophumanewatch.org/blog/sockpuppets

View and share previous weeks’ graphics from our Resources page.

Smear Campaign Tools Exposed: Legal Intimidation

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We always have a knife in our teeth.
–Richard Berman

Online promotion for Center for Consumer Freedom’s failed anti-lawyer campaign, LawsuitAddiction.com.

Richard Berman despises trial lawyers, and his front groups frequently rage against “frivolous lawsuits,” “fat-cat lawyers,” and a “cabal” of attorneys.

But apparently, that loathing only applies to lawyers working for the public good.

When news came out that Berman was attempting to smear animal welfare groups through a phony “shelter advocacy” group, shelters were outraged by the deception. Berman then attempted to silence them through a campaign of legal intimidation, sending cease and desist letters to a number of shelters and animal welfare bloggers, including Washington Animal Rescue League, Humane Society of Berks County, Richmond SPCA, San Francisco SPCA, Ecorazzi, and Ohmidog.

Many of these shelters took down their comments rather than be faced with defending a meritless, but costly lawsuit.

In order to cast doubt on the victim’s words, Berman and his front groups focus on trivial errors, or even create bold misstatements of fact. In response to Time Magazine’s coverage of Berman’s underhanded tactics in which they stated that HumaneWatch.org paid for advertisements attacking the Humane Society of the United States, Berman’s attorneys objected, claiming that it was the Center for Consumer Freedom that paid for them.

HumaneWatch is an alias of the Center for Consumer Freedom. (Source: 2011 Form 990 tax return)

In reality, HumaneWatch.org is the Center for Consumer Freedom, and is actively doing business as HumaneWatch. Berman’s attorneys protested that Berman is not a lobbyist: he’s a former lobbyist (at least, on paper). They protested the claim that CCF represented the tanning bed industry: it was another of Berman’s deceptive campaigns that failed to downplay the dangers of tanning beds.

Despite nitpicking from Berman’s attorneys, the essence of the article is correct, just as animal shelters’ outrage over Berman’s phony shelter group was correct. Although Berman protested that “HSSP isn’t my group,” HSSP is operated by Berman and Company staff, out of Berman and Company’s offices. As with Berman’s other front groups, a significant portion of its “nonprofit” donations were funneled into Berman’s PR firm and into Berman’s pockets.

The purpose of this legal intimidation is clearly not to set the record straight, but to use Berman’s ill-gotten wealth to bully whistleblowers into silence.

In the case of Richard Berman — an attorney himself — crying crocodile tears about legal intimidation while simultaneously using it to harass animal welfare advocates is doubly offensive.

Please feel free to save these graphics to your computer, link to them directly on this site, or share on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

http://www.stophumanewatch.org/blog/intimidation

View and share previous weeks’ graphics from our Resources page.

Smear Campaign Tools Exposed: Manipulating Numbers

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On average, people should be more skeptical when they see numbers. They should be more willing to play around with the data themselves.
–Nate Silver

Richard Berman’s smear campaigns like the Center for Consumer Freedom and the Center for Union Facts frequently rely on distorted numbers to give their corporate spin the illusion of credibility. In fact, the core of Berman’s HumaneWatch campaign is its easily-repeated claim that the Humane Society of the United States gives less than 1% of its funds to pet shelters.

However, when you look beneath the glib summary and examine the numbers yourself, you find that those numbers have been blatantly misrepresented.

In order to reach that figure, HumaneWatch ignores any form of aid other than a hand-out of cash. They exclude grants for animals other than cats or dogs, as if those were the only animals worthy of care. They disregard dozens of animal welfare programs, including shelter and adoption advocacy programs.

To artificially minimize the work of the HSUS, HumaneWatch reduces its program expenses — expenses in excess of one hundred million dollars — to an arbitrary subset of those expenses, the one million dollars in direct cash grants made to dog and cat shelters. And of that amount, they randomly ignore programs vital to saving shelter pets, such as spay/neuter programs, veterinary care assistance, feral cat trap/neuter/return, and pet retention programs.

Despite the availability of HSUS tax returns and program expenses, few people bother to check the numbers for themselves. As a result, the 1% myth is one of Berman’s most successful distortions.

Deception and distortions of this kind are one of the primary weapons of Berman’s smear campaigns, but they only work when the readers are unfamiliar with Berman’s legacy of deceit. That’s why we’re releasing a series of graphics exposing the unethicals weapon in Berman’s arsenal of character assassination. Each graphic in the series will highlight a different deceptive scheme, perfect for reposting under a Berman op-ed, letter to the editor, or in response to a HumaneWatch supporter who may not understand the false nature of that smear campaign.

Please feel free to save these graphics to your hard drive, link to them directly on this site, or share on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

http://www.stophumanewatch.org/blog/manipulation

View and share previous weeks’ graphics from our Resources page.

The power of (mis)quotations

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Quotations allow the reader to hear a story in the teller’s own words, with their true voice and passion. They are a window to the speaker’s soul.

And therein lies their power. When people read a quotation, they assume it is a faithful reporting of the speaker’s words.

Whenever we quote, edit or otherwise interpret what people tell us, we aim to be faithful to their meaning, so our stories ring true to those we interview.
— NPR Ethics Handbook

But what if your goal is to portray a respected animal lover as a cold, animal-hating psychopath?

If you’re Richard Berman and his hired guns, you lie.

Time after time, Berman and his smear campaigns have twisted quotes from animal activists into something unrecognizable. Consider this interview on with Wayne Pacelle on Iowa Public Radio:

Whatever your motivation for having the animal, whatever the use, you’ve got a responsibility to provide lifetime care… But if you can’t provide care for the horses, then you euthanize the animal. You can euthanize them by bringing a veterinarian out, or you can even shoot an animal in the head. We’re not saying that animals have to live indefinitely, and you have to make heroic efforts to extend the life of every animal. We’re saying that creating a commercial incentive to slaughter horses, and then having people opportunistically or disreputably gather them up, funnel them into the horse slaughter pipeline, is really catching perfectly healthy horses into the slaughter pipeline.

USDA says 92% of the horses sent to slaughter are perfectly healthy animals. This is a commercial enterprise, and we wouldn’t do this to dogs and cats. Would we set up a plant outside of Des Moines or Cedar Rapids to kill the unwanted dogs and export the meat to some foreign country? No! We would be outraged, because we have values about these animals.

Now, if you’re a credible source, you provide enough of the quote to give the reader context. But if you are CCF’s HumaneWatch, you do this:

Wayne Pacelle’s vision for horses: “Shoot [a horse] in the head.”*
Iowa Public Radio, July 2013

When one Stop HumaneWatch reader posted Pacelle’s quote in its entirety to the HumaneWatch Facebook page, they were immediately blocked by the page moderator. Clearly, the intent was not to convey Pacelle’s words; it was to deliberately misrepresent what he said. And that’s a dishonest tactic they frequently rely on.

Deception and distortions of this kind are one of the primary weapons of Berman’s smear campaigns, but they only work when the readers are unfamiliar with Berman’s legacy of deceit. That’s why we’re unveiling a series of graphics exposing another unethical weapon in Berman’s arsenal of character assassination. Each graphic in the series will highlight a different deceptive scheme, perfect for reposting under a Berman op-ed, letter to the editor, or in response to a HumaneWatch supporter who may not understand the false nature of that smear campaign.

Please feel free to save these graphics to your hard drive, link to them directly on this site, or share on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

I do get annoyed when reporters take my comments out of context in order to suit their agenda.
— Richard Berman, The Food Channel, October 6, 2010

http://www.stophumanewatch.org/blog/misquotes

View and share previous weeks’ graphics from our Resources page.

Berman’s Vermin

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The Center for Consumer Freedom (which runs HumaneWatch) recently purchased a full-page ad attacking the Humane Society of the United States. Of course the ad –- published in The Washington Examiner — was filled with the usual array of half-truths, innuendo, and misleading statements that Richard Berman specializes in.

We don’t have a multi-million dollar budget paid for by disreputable corporations, but when Rick Berman throws a hand grenade, we’re happy to pick it up, pull the pin, and throw it back.

We therefore present Berman’s Vermin, a factual, seven point examination of Richard Berman and his unsavory tactics. Many people wrongly assume that HumaneWatch is a watchdog group, or that it is concerned about animal welfare. Please share this graphic on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest to help set the record straight!


Download in JPEG or PDF format.

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