Salon has a piece up today that should totally change the way people view letters to the editor in their local paper.
In short: the author reveals how she was recruited by the McCain campaign to be one of six ghostwriters. The writers were assigned the task of producing fake letters to the editor intended to be signed and submitted by other people.
According to Phil Tuchman (campaign staffer), the letters “will be sent to our campaign offices in battle states. Ohio. Pennsylvania. Virginia. New Hampshire. There we’ll place them in local newspapers.”
The process goes something like this:
1. The McCain campaign recruits ghostwriters- often not American (e.g. dutch, russian, polish)
2. The ghostwriters compose letters praising McCain and Palin. They are encouraged to write in another voice (e.g. a mom, a millionaire, a begger) – in other words, to lie.
3. the letters are then sent to state campaign offices
4. local supporters review the letters and, when they find one they like, they sign it
5. dozens of these letter are then sent to local newspapers – increasing the chances of having one of them accepted
Here are some examples…
-
Harry Knopp
Budget Watch
