Opposition Research - Opposition Research and Mass Media Ethics

Opposition Research and Mass Media Ethics

• In the 1992 U.S. presidential election, Floyd Brown headed up the Presidential Victory Committee, which backed the candidacy of George H. W. Bush. CBS Evening News reported that Floyd Brown was observed to be in the company of NBC news producer Ira Silverman as they stalked the family of Susann Coleman, a former law student of Bush's opponent Bill Clinton. Miss Coleman had committed suicide, and Brown was attempting to disseminate a rumor that she had had an affair with Clinton. Brown and associate David Bossie reportedly stalked the family of a suicide victim. In April 1992, 30 news organizations received "an anonymous and untraceable letter" by fax "claiming Clinton had had an affair with a former law student who committed suicide 15 years ago." Floyd Brown attempted to link Clinton to the 1977 suicide of this "emotionally distraught young woman, seven-months pregnant." The Bush-Quayle campaign eventually filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission against Brown, seeking to distance itself from his tactics. The group had filed its intent to air the ad with the Republican Party, and Bush's campaign director James Baker, who waited 25 days before responding to the letter, after the ad had been airing continuously. Brown has said of the incident, "If they were really interested in stopping this, do you think they would have waited that long to send us a letter?" The practice of using tips from sources such as Brown was examined in 1994 by Howard Kurtz, media analyst for the Washington Post. Kurtz surveyed the major networks, Newsweek, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and other influential media outlets, and found varying levels of use of Brown's information on David Hale as a witness in the Whitewater controversy. At this time, Brown confirmed that he had been the source of four mainstream media stories that had received attention from the Columbia Journalism Review because they bore striking resemblance to the opposition research being disseminated by Citizens United. In 2008, Floyd unveiled a new attack ad against Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, on the Fox News network, while also appearing as a real estate investor commenting on the mortgage fraud crisis.

• A 2005 analysis of digital media strategies published by the American Academy of Political Science took the view that new technologies enable "political elites" to use database and Internet technologies to do opposition research more easily, but they use data-mining techniques that outrage privacy advocates and surreptitious technologies that few Internet users understand. Data becomes "richer" about political actors, policy options, and the diversity of actors and opinion in the public sphere, but citizenship is "thinner" by virtue of "the ease in which people can become politically expressive without being substantively engaged."

• Facebook photos became a tool of opposition researchers in California's 32nd congressional district special election, 2009 to replace Hilda Solis. Front-runner Democrat Gil Cedillo sent out mailers targeting 26-year-old Emanuel Pleitez, grouping Pleitez's Facebook photos to suggest that he parties to excess with alcohol, and fraternizes with gangs. The text of the mailer suggested Pleitez, posing with a Latino stage actress and using a Latino voter registration drive hand sign, was "flashing gang signs".

• White House Communications Director Anita Dunn said of Fox News to CNN's Howard Kurtz on Reliable Sources, "They're widely viewed as, you know, a part of the Republican Party -- take their talking points, put them on the air, take their opposition research, put them on the air, and that's fine. But let's not pretend they're a news network the way CNN is."

• On October 22, 2009 Media Matters for America, a media watchdog group, issued a statement voicing support for the Obama administration and Anita Dunn: "Fox News is not a news operation. It now comprises all of the elements of a political campaign, including organizing, explicitly partisan advocacy, (highly dubious) opposition research, War Room-style attack communications and even fundraising for the Republican Party and the conservative movement."