Exerting influence on public opinion
This op-ed article in the NY Post explains how the Pew Charitable Trusts, along with the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Ford Foundation and George Soros' Open Society Institute spent over $120,000,000 behind the scenes to create the false impression that there was a "mass movement" afoot clamoring for campaign-finance reform.

The Beeb, which is about to lay off some more people spent some good money on a survey that supposedly showed some gratifying results:

Respondents said they wanted to see a UN becoming "significantly more powerful in world affairs", and registered an average support of 64%.

The poll of 23,518 people was conducted by the international polling firm GlobeScan, together with the Program on International Policy Attitudes (Pipa) at the University of Maryland

Gratifying to the Beeb, and to the UN. The Beeb didn't pay anyone to conduct any surveys on whether the licensing fees should continue, but continue they will.

Yesterday's Star Ledger asks Embryonic research offers huge medical and economic rewards. Why isn't the Bush administration buying?. The author didn't look into the facts on funding, or the facts on stem-cell use which show that real results have been obtained by non-embryonic stem cells.

Over at Samizdata, Gabriel Syme comments about fake news: "For myself, I am not too worried about "covert propaganda" in government broadcasts provided there is an individual somewhere in the process who will simply blog about it on his blog..."

Speaking of blogs, don't miss Arthur's post on the latest Iraqi survey (not featured on the BBC news), and catch his 5th installment of good news from the Islamic world, the special pro-democracy edition.