The ads were designed for a target audience that would amplify their messages rather than for voters in general.

As you might've guessed by now, I see all this in terms of network effects. In computer security, there's a Denial of Service attack called a "smurf attack", which uses a property of misconfigured routers to amplify a single ping into hundreds of pings directed at a target host or network, flooding it with traffic. What you're describing here is almost exactly the same thing, just done on a different network and with a different payload. Food for thought, eh?

Tim

Sometimes I write a little tersely. I feel I should expand on my comment a little bit. I'm a professional hacker, my main job for the last 10 years has been breaking into client networks & then telling them how to fix them. I'm pretty good at it. I say this because I recognize what BC04 is doing; they're exploiting a vulnerability in the way the media works, a predictability in their approach to reporting the news.

In the security field, if you know how your target will react, you can shape your message such that when the target processes it (in this case preparing it so it can be passed on to a TV or newspaper audience), they'll leave it intact & pass it on essentially unchanged. The main method they seem to use is to include details that take time & effort to track down; this seems to be too much bother for today's hyper-rushed new cycle. The result is they get their message broadcast uncritically to the widest possible audience. When a retraction or correction comes (if it does at all), it almost always hits a much smaller population. The media feels absolved of responsibility because they reported the facts.

Last night I caught Jon Stewart on Nightline, he made pretty much exactly this point:

Koppel: "There is a difference between facts which are reported immediately [and the truth]. The truth may not catch up for another week or two."

Stewart: "That's a vulnerability in the system. The media is getting creamed. They need to take a more active role in safeguarding the public trust."

The question is, how do we fix the hole? Increased accountability would seem to be a part of it, as would making those verifying details more accessable to the pundits. A combination of carrot & stick I guess.

Tim