Got a call from something called "Advocates Inc" to book a guy on my radio show to talk about "the Egypt situation". Did a little research and found myself knee-deep in corporate lies about Net Neutrality. Didn't know Egypt was connected to Net Neutrality did ya?
Got a call from a booking agent called Advocates Inc. who wanted me to have a guy named Motely on my showThe Fairness Doctrine to talk about the "situation in Egypt". Motely is the head of something called stopnetregulations.org (no link - they don't deserve it).
Hmmm, I thought, - what does corporate slander against the government have to do with Egypt? When you go to stopnetregulations.org. you get redirected to the Center for Individual Freedoms, which is festooned with all of the photoshop catalogue photos of fierce eagles and happy suburban people corporate astroturf sites love. Turns out, CFIF was founded by tobacco lobbyist and former Burston Marsteller flack Thomas Huber (lampooned in the movie "Thank you for Smoking" and runs stopnetregulations as a project for the telco's.
The pitch I got from the flack on the phone was that Egypt's shutting down the internet is the next step to a government takeover of the American internet. She also informed me that Americans are outraged - outraged, you hear - that the FCC is trying to take over the internet with tyrannical and unconstitutional regulations to enforce a secret Net Neutrality tyranny. And would I please, please have Mr. Motely on my show.
So, this is the latest corporate opportunistic lie - first Egypt, then the US takes over the internet and only by defeating Net Neutrality can we protect the internet from government tyranny.
What worries me is not that the telco's are shilling lies based on Egypt. It is that I don't get similar calls from progressives. I am having an expert on the air that I located myself to talk about the internet and the Egyptian revolution, and it won't be Mr. Motely. It will be a progressive (tune in Friday at 10 AM PST to learn who www.cyberstationlive.com.) But it is a symptom of the corporate control of what people think they know - they have the money to call radio stations and TV producers. We don't, but we keep pushing back. When you hear people repeat the corporate lie that it is first Egypt then the US internet to fall to government net neutrality tyranny, remind them that it is the phone companies that throttle packets. Net Neutrality will prevent that.