The Noise Machine At Work (Again)

Another lesson in how the right-wing noise machine works. Pay attention, please.

In today's Tribune-Review, there's an editorial that begins like this:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency soft-pedals rigorous analysis showing its policies kill growth and jobs while trumpeting as truth junk analysis portraying burdensome regulations as economically beneficial.

A new National Taxpayers Union (ntu.org) study makes the mendacity clear: The EPA publicly proclaims bogus findings from its second report on the Clean Air Act's costs and benefits that fit its anti-growth agenda -- but is mum about that report's contradictory findings of economic harm.

We've done this before and so I don't want to spend too much time on it.

According to the Mediamatters transparency project, the largest chunks of foundation money, by far, come from foundations controlled by the publisher of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Richard Mellon Scaife. About $1.5 million over the years (unadjusted for inflation, by the way).

So this is how the right wing noise machine works, Richard Mellon Scaife lays out gobs and gobs of money to support a conservative think tank (in this case the National Tax Payers Union). That think tank produces a report that is trumpeted on the pages of the Tribune-Review, the newspaper Richard Mellon Scaife owns.

And none of this is ever mentioned to the Trib's readership.

The circle jerk continues.