The Rise of Right-Wing Radio Payola

ERIC BOEHLERT/Media Matters For America:

When former FreedomWorks chairman Dick Armey complained to Media Matters last week that the Tea Party group had wasted money when it paid Glenn Beck and Rush to say "nice things" about the organization on the air, Armey sounded a lot like a record label executive bemoaning the high cost of radio promotion.

Armey protested that in making the payments to the high-profile talkers, FreedomWorks was "spending too damn much" and "getting too little value out of it." The former House majority leader didn't know the details of Limbaugh's contract, but said Beck had been paid at least $1 million last year to help the organization fundraise, an effortinternal FreedomWorks documents reveal garnered the organization roughly $850,000 (not including some third party event ticket sales).

He wouldn't be the first chairman to second-guess dubious marketing or branding efforts. But in singling out the amorphous payments made to the radio shows, Armey raised questions about what the conservative group was doing showering the two programs with so much money in exchange for on-air flattery and on-air promotion.

That sounds an awful lot like payola.

It's true payola is most often associated with hit radio stations and the long-standing tradition of music industry middlemen known as indies funneling record company money to radio stations in exchange for on-air spins for new singles. But the fact is, the payola statute in America makes it a crime for radio stations to receive anything of value, like record company promotional payments, if they fail to disclose that relationship with listeners.

And what are some top-rated, right-wing radio shows now doing? They're receiving hefty payments from the likes of FreedomWorks and not always being fully transparent about getting paid to say those nice things.

In the music industry, the practice of paying off programmers and radio stations in exchange for airplay has been known as "pay-for-play." On right-wing talk radio, players seem to be practicing a deceptive game of pay-for-say.

In 2011, Politico detailed the huge payments groups like FreedomWorks and the Heritage Foundation were making to far-right radio shows, in exchange for the shows weaving the groups' initiatives into the daily program.

The relationships seemed to be built on deception [emphasis added]:

"I wish more of the grassroots knew the reality that this wasn't Rush or Sean or Beck saying these things out of the goodness of their hearts," said the leader of [conservative] one group who inquired about ads on various radio shows, but decided they were both too expensive and ethically suspect. "If the grassroots found out that these guys were getting paid seven figures a year to say this stuff, it might leave a bad taste in their mouth."

As writer David Frum stressed in the wake of the Politico article:  

Understand: We are not talking about commercials, separated from the main flow of editorial content. Heritage work is embedded and inserted directly into the editorial flow of the Limbaugh program, as if selected without regard to the money paid. 

...

 The endorsements often obscure the paid-for nature of the broadcaster's endorsement.

Again, that's akin to payola, of radio receiving promotional payments of value, payments that directly impact the programming, and not informing listeners.

I'm not suggesting anyone ought to be charged with payola, since nobody has been prosecuted for that crime in this country in decades. Even after major music companies admitted to payola infractions several years ago, the Federal Communication Commission, which has jurisdiction over the American airwaves, continued to show little interest in the issue.

Plus, even though the conservative leader quoted in the Politico piece suggested listeners didn't realize certain hosts were being paid "seven figures" to talk up right-wing sponsors, the hosts do provide minimal disclosures.

Yet the payola comparison remains an apt one I think, because it highlights what's essentially a con being played on conservative radio listeners by radio hosts and well-funded groups like FreedomWorks.

Just like hit music radio stations don't want to interrupt the flow of their programming to admit to listeners that they're play particular songs because record companies directly paid them a promotional fee, talk radio shows don't want to pull back the curtain and routinely admit they're on the take from deep-pocketed group.

The shows don't want to admit that there's a closed loop where Beck listeners, for instance, send donations to FreedomWorks, and FreedomWorks then writes a large check to Beck's show so it will help convince listeners to give more money to FreedomWorks, so it can write Beck's show another check.

EXCLUSIVE: Dick Armey Dishes On FreedomWorks' Deals With Beck & Limbaugh

JOE STRUPP/Media Matters for America:

Former FreedomWorks chairman Dick Armey says the conservative outlet that helped launch the Tea Party paid Glenn Beck at least $1 million last year to fundraise for the organization, an arrangement he said provided "too little value" for the money. 

"The arrangement was simply FreedomWorks paid Glenn Beck money and Glenn Beck said nice things about FreedomWorks on the air," Armey, the former House majority leader, told Media Matters Friday. "I saw that a million dollars went to Beck this past year, that was the annual expenditure."

Armey, who left the organization this past fall after a dispute over its internal operations, said a similar arrangement was also in place with Rush Limbaugh, but did not know the exact financial details.

"I put it down now as basically as paid advertising for FreedomWorks by Beck," Armey said, calling it a mistake.

Media Matters contacted Armey after Mother Jones magazine published a leaked copy of the document FreedomWorks prepared for its Winter 2012 board of directors meeting. That document alluded to "embedded media programs" for fundraising that featured the two conservative radio hosts and claimed that fundraising efforts featuring them raised nearly $1.3 million in 2012, not including event ticket sales from third-party vendors. 

From the leaked FreedomWorks document:   

Mother Jones further reported that the organization "plans to continue its financial support for Glenn Beck's media enterprise, including sharing a TV studio with and leasing office space to the Washington bureau of TheBlaze, Beck's website and TV network."

Armey said he was told of the Beck arrangement when it first began, but that it would only cost the organization about $250,000 a year. "Once that was approved by the trustees, it then took on a life of its own, it got bigger than we understood it to be. All of a sudden it was we are paying Limbaugh as well as Beck." FreedomWorks did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Beck has been reading on-air appeals for FreedomWorks since at least April 2010. In June of that year, Media Matters reported that the organization was using Beck's endorsement to raise money. Politico highlighted the relationship as an example of a conservative group "paying hefty sponsorship fees to the popular talk show hosts" in exchange for "regular on-air plugs." The FreedomWorks document leaked to Mother Jones states that their fundraising relationship with Limbaugh began in 2012.

According to Armey, such programs are ineffective.

"If Limbaugh and Beck, if we were using those resources to recruit activists and inform activists and to encourage and enthuse activists, that's one thing," Armey explained. "If we are using these things to raise money; one, it's a damned expensive way to raise money; and two, it makes raising money an end on to itself not an instrumental activity to support the foundation work that our organization does."

Armey also said the relationship with Beck expanded to include rallies that were co-sponsored by Beck and FreedomWorks, and included appearances by FreedomWorks President and CEO Matt Kibbe.

Armey said he objected to these events, dubbed FreePACs, because they often charged admission to FreedomWorks activists.

A review of promotional information for the events found $20 was a standard donation requested at some of the locations, while a Dallas, TX., FreePAC last summer charged prices as high as $971.

"You don't charge activists to attend rallies. I would consider that wholly inappropriate behavior," Armey said. "There was a lot of resentment on the part of the activists. They would naturally expect that they are providing the activist power and think that they have a right to attend."

"The principal value to anyone from the relationship with Beck was Matt Kibbe, who got to share Beck's stage with him," Armey said, adding that he found out about the July 2012 Dallas rally after his name was already being used to promote it.

"They put out an email under my name that had more information than I had," he recalled. "That is why when I resigned I had them cease and desist using my name."

Armey said he began looking into the specifics of the Beck and Limbaugh arrangements last year after hearing from others in the organization that such activities were being done without his knowledge.

"I had come to the point where I don't know how much we are spending on Beck and Limbaugh, but we are spending too damn much and we are getting too little value out of it," Armey said. "It was something I only found out about after inquiring into the affairs in September or October.

"Starting in January of last year, in that general neighborhood, what we had was a pattern that Kibbe got into a pattern of consistently working out arrangements with people without telling me what he was doing," Armey added. "They had people issue directives, 'don't tell Armey about this.' I had people close to me saying there is something fishy here, you better look into it."

Armey pointed out that any reports of revenue raised through the Beck and Limbaugh arrangements does not take into account the money paid to them in the deal.

"It is like federal budgeting," he said. "We count the receipts we get from people who have sent in money, and we, meaning they, I am not a part of it anymore, do not count what the funds that are laying out are. They don't say, we paid Beck a million dollars and we had this program where we raised $300,000, you had a net cost of $600,000, or whatever the numbers are."  

But don't expect those payments to end: FreedomWorks' leaked 2013 budget plan includes "Glenn Beck Radio Ads," "Blenn Beck TV," "TheBlaze Action Center," and the "Rush Limbaugh Contract."

Palm Trees Come To Cleveland: FreedomWorks Uses Discredited Footage In New Ohio Anti-Union Ad

By Judd Legum

FreedomWorks, a right-wing group bankrolling the Tea Party, has a new advertisement it is planning to run in Ohio supporting Gov. John Kasich’s union-busting efforts. The advertisement tries to paint union protesters in Ohio as violent thugs. One problem: the ad uses footage from an old union protest in California.

How do we know? This is the same footage from California, which features palm trees, that was used by Bill O’Reilly just days ago. He used it to argue that the protesters in Wisconsin were violent thugs. Here’s the video evidence produced by TP’s Jeff Spross:

Bill O’Reilly’s stunt inspired Wisconsin protesters to mockingly carry inflatable palm trees in Madison:

The larger point is that these protests have been remarkably peaceful, which forces the right to distort the truth.

UPDATETabitha Hale of FreedomWorks responds via Twitter. She defends the ad, claiming it does not "indicate" that "it was Ohio footage." She makes this claim even though the ad is called "Save Ohio," it is scheduled to air in Ohio, it is defending Ohio Governor John Kasich, discusses Ohio union protesters and flashes the word "Ohio" on the screen five times.

FreedomWorks CEO Goes To Bat For BP, Calls Oil Spill ‘A Natural Disaster’

By Ben Armbruster

During an interview today with FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbe on ABC’s Top Line, host Karen Travers noted that the cover of his upcoming book — Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto — says “lower taxes plus less government equals more freedom.” Travers then asked, “How does that less government sentiment square with this massive government effort down there in the Gulf to contain the spill?”

In response, Kibbe was able to kill two birds with one stone: deflect criticism from BP and his own personal philosophy by saying that he expects government to act “when there is a natural disaster”:

KIBBE: Well I think if you look at what’s happened down there, it’s a sad story of government incompetence as well as negligence on the part of BP. And I think what you have to look at is when there is a natural disaster like this we do expect our government to do some things and to do them well. And the whole point of limited government is you want the government to be competent at those few things that we need it to do and this is an example where the government was asleep at the switch and there’s a series of regulations that led to deep drilling as opposed to more economical and safer options.

Watch it (starting at 4:00):

Of course, natural disasters are uncontrollable events such as earthquakes, hurricanes, and tornadoes. Tens of millions of gallons of oil flowing into the Gulf of Mexico due to an oil company’s negilgence and misconduct does not qualify. In fact, just last year, BP opposed stricter safety and environmental rules proposed by the U.S. Minerals Management Service. A BP executive tried to fight off the new regulations on Capitol Hill, saying that drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) has been shown to be “both safe and protective of the environment.”

Even though Kibbe lobbed the obligatory “negligence” charge at BP, what he didn’t explain is that he might have an interest in deflecting blame away from the oil giant. As ThinkProgress reported last month, FreedomWorks worked with BP to build grassroots support for opening up large sections of both the East and West coasts to new oil drilling. BP listed the group as part its “significant grassroots supporters” on a PowerPoint slide at a presentation by the BP-funded front group “Consumer Energy Alliance” at a conference in 2007.

Beck Officially Partners With Corporate Lobbyist Front Group To Help Elect Far-Right Republicans

By Amanda Terkel

While the Tea Party movement has tried to portray itself as organic and grassroots, it has had, in reality, several powerful, well-funded interests backing it up. Two of those entities have been Fox News host Glenn Beck and Dick Armey’s corporate front group FreedomWorks. Beck regularly cheerleads for the protests, often broadcasts live from their events, and has even helped them raise money. FreedomWorks staffers have given valuable logistical and administrative astroturf support to the Tea Parties.

Today on its Twitter page, FreedomWorks announced that it was officially partnering with Beck:

The tweet links to a video on the YouTube page of FreedomWorks Action — the c4 advocacy arm of the organization — of Beck explaining the partnership:

BECK: I have to tell you, this was a hard decision for me to take on FreedomWorks, and here’s why: because I don’t want to send the message to you that the way to restore our republic is through the political process only. And I was afraid that you would hear “FreedomWorks” and you would say, “Well, wait a minute, what does that mean? I think you do. I think you do. I think you need to get onto every bandwagon you can get onto right now.”

I want to send you the message that FreedomWorks is the only– and we’ve looked — the only organization that we have seen that really truly has the organizational power (the other one is like the NRA is also like this). They have the infrastructure, they have the organizational power, they have the ability to get information to people quickly, en masse.

And we must, must, must link arms with people. Everybody plays a different role. My message to you is to shore yourself up personally, with history, with faith, and with your own personal finances. That is my course that I am charting. I’ve got to move away from the political stuff. That is what kept me up last night. But political stuff has got to be done. You have to pay attention. There are things that are happening in Washington that you have to know about. We need the Tea Party protests to continue. We need to organize and reach out to each other. So I want you to go to Freedomworks.org, because freedom works.

Listen here:

Beck’s pairing with FreedomWorks is a perfect marriage of their economic interests. Both groups are Tea Party profiteers, exploiting the fears of the conservative base to enrich themselves personally. Beck may do more than just promote the Tea Parties: FreedomWorks Action has made clear that it has a list of “targets” in the 2010 elections — all of whom happen to be Democrats or Independents — that it will be going after. The candidates the group is supporting are far-right conservatives like Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, and Pat Toomey. Despite the everyman, outsider image he likes to portray, Beck’s partnership means that he will be working even closer with a bevy of DC insiders.

In the past, Beck has picked up the opposition research and talking points of another corporate-funded front group, Americans for Prosperity (AFP). His character-assassination campaign directed at Van Jones was fueled by AFP’s policy effort to kill green jobs. Beck also followed AFP’s lead in calling net neutrality an attack on freedom of speech.

Update On Friday, Beck had his worst ratings in 2010.

BP Worked With FreedomWorks And The Chamber To Build ‘Grassroots’ Support For More Drilling

By Lee Fang BP has long touted itself as a “green” company interested not only in oil and other fossil fuels, but in

renewable energy like wind and solar. But as Rebecca Lefton reported on ThinkProgress last week, BP barely invests anything in clean energy — most of its green campaign is actually just a massive advertising gimmick to conceal the truth about the company.

While BP has spent hundreds of millions building its brand, it has offshored the dirty work of promoting expanded drilling to right-wing front groups and trade associations. In a 2007 PowerPoint presentation obtained by ThinkProgress, BP appears to have been interested in fighting to open up protected waters to new offshore drilling. The presentation, organized by the BP-funded front group “Consumer Energy Alliance,” was delivered at the American Gas Association’s marketing meeting in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. The presentation calls for a five-year plan to build grassroots support to open wide swaths of both the East and West coasts to new drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf:

– Slide 5 depicts a map of “undiscovered technically recoverable resources on Federal OCS” along the East coast, from Maine to Florida, and on the West coast, from Washington to California.

– Slide 7 notes that expanding OCS access “provides univeral benefits to all sectors.” The page pitches the campaign to aid both the oil and natural gas industry.

– Slide 9 lists the 5 year plan “strategic priorities,” including “military/veterans groups,” “energy consumers,” “editorial boards/letters to the editor,” and “academia & think tanks.”

– Slide 14 lists the groups involved in doing grassroots outreach. Under “affiliated groups,” FreedomWorks — a right-wing “grassroots” group that helped plan the tea parties and continues to lobby aggressively against clean energy reform — is listed along with the 60 Plus Association, the American Conservative Union, and others. U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute are some of the trade associations involved. Slide 14 also shows that BP is one of the member companies supporting the campaign.

Trade associations openly represent the needs of industry, so many industry groups like API have delicately tried to defend offshore drilling, but without explicitly defending the actions of BP. However, FreedomWorks portrays itself as simply a citizen-based group. In reality, FreedomWorks has a long history of orchestrating public support for its corporate and lobbyist backers.

Bullied’ Geico fires actor who insulted tea partiers

By Daniel Tencer

That assertive voice at the end of those "Geico gecko" ads which tells you that "15 minutes can save you 15 percent or more on car insurance" may soon sound a little different.

That's because car insurer Geico has fired the ads' voice-over actor after he left a sarcastic and critical message on the phone lines of FreedomWorks, one of the more prominent Tea Party organizations.

In a press release Wednesday, actor Lance Baxter -- who goes by the stage name D.C. Douglas and doesn't do the voice of the iconic "Geico gecko" -- said he had been the target of a pressure campaign by FreedomWorks and that the group had effectively "bullied" the car insurer into firing him.

A day after FreedomWorks head Matt Kibbe wrote a column for BigGovernment.com in which he gave out Baxter's phone number and urged followers to call the actor, "Geico held auditions to replace Mr. Douglas' voice on the campaign," the press release asserted.

"Feel free to contact Lance," Kibbe's blog posting stated. "He was so kind to provide his number in the voicemail. Call his employer too."

In the phone message to FreedomWorks, which Baxter says he left March 23, Baxter says: "Hi there, I'm doing a paper about FreedomWorks ... and I just have one more piece of information I need to get from you guys. I just need to know what the percentage is of people that are mentally retarded who work for the organization and are members of it."

Before hanging up, he adds: "I'm wondering what your plans are-- how to spin it when one of your members does actually kill somebody. Wondering if you've got a PR spinning routine planned for that, or are you just going to take it when it happens."

(Raw Story has chosen not to link to the audio of the message because it contains Baxter's phone number.)

Baxter says that, while he doesn't blame Geico for getting rid of him following the controversy, he does object to what he sees as people being harassed and losing their jobs for their political opinions.

"We can't let these kinds of tactics become the norm in our country. If we do, then anybody can lose their job just for voicing an opinion," he said in his statement, adding that he is seeking lawyers to represent him in the matter "pro bono."

Baxter speculated that Geico was quick to sever its relationship with him because the company is "already on FreedomWorks' boycott list for pulling their ads from Glenn Beck's show."

On his blog, Baxter writes that he was "inundated with calls and hang-ups" after Kibbe wrote about him, "but they died after a day."

He continued, "Geico made a quick corporate decision to drop me from the campaign ten hours after Matt Kibbe’s blog post appeared. Obviously not because of the magnitude of Matt Kibbe’s self-serving revenge campaign, as it was just a tempest in a teapot (pun intended), but because of the fear that has become synonymous with the Tea Bagger Party: The potential for the wackos of the party to get very loud and dangerous."

Kibbe's response to Baxter's firing, in a BigGovernment article Wednesday, was subdued and barely addressed the controversy.

"Americans covet our freedom of speech," he wrote. "We have a sacred right, enshrined in the Constitution, to show up, protest and challenge government policies that are bad for America. Freedom: it’s an insurance policy we should all buy."

M.C.L comment: Here comes another segment of what grinds Johnny C's gears, those in the right wing/conservative movement are the thinnest skin bunch of bullies that crawl out of the septic tank.These losers can say anything they want, called anyone out their name and incite violence yet if there's a pushed back from someone their first response is either whine loud and long enough until that person lose their job or get their brain dead followers to harass that person until that person back tracks because they're worried about their safety because those loons do become violent.

Take out the part where Baxter calls them mentally retarded because it's offensive to link people who actually are mentally handicap with these freaks and klans folks that make up the tea party movement. He did ask a legitimate question what would be the spin that "Freedom Works" come up with if one of their sheep take the right wing rhetoric to the next level and actually harms someone?

Would "Freedom Works" take responsibility or will they do what Glenn Beck does when one of his fanboys kills someone throw them under the bus and tell people violence is wrong then go back inciting people to act in a violent manner?

Pressed On FreedomWorks’ Connections To Tea Parties, Dick Armey Lashes Out At TP As ‘Juvenile Delinquents’

By Lee Fang

On Thursday, Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks partnered with an anti-health reform group pushing to privatize Medicare to host a Republican rally outside the Capitol. Alongside speakers such as Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) and Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), Armey proclaimed, “Give me liberty or give me death. Well, Barack Obama is trying to make good on that.”

Speaking to reporters and ThinkProgress after the rally, Armey pretended that the upcoming 9/12 anti-Obama march on D.C. was entirely “grassroots,” and that his corporate-backed group only provided “consulting.” In fact, most of the groups paying for the rally are front groups and phony think tanks fully-funded by big business to create an image of public and academic support for their special interest agenda. One of the most visible organizations mobilizing the protest this Saturday is the Tea Party Patriots group. As Talking Points Memo has reported, the Tea Party Patriots’ listserv is managed by FreedomWorks staffer Tom Gaitens. Not only is the list managed by FreedomWorks, but Armey’s staffers have final say on decisions such as the logo for the event this Saturday. Tea Party Patriots does not even hide its close affiliation with corporate front groups, since it lists FreedomWorks as a coalition partner. The Tea Party Patriots listserv was used to distribute the infamous memo from a Tea Party Patriots volunteer detailing how town hall attendees should “rattle” Democrats by interrupting their events with coordinated yelling and shrieks.

When ThinkProgress asked Armey about this close relationship with the Tea Party Patriots, he erupted in rage. He also denied even knowing his own employee:

Q: Mr. Armey you said you have no affiliation with the Tea Party Patriots group that’s organizing this rally, but isn’t it true that your staff members manage the Tea Party Patriots list serv?

ARMEY: Absolutely not.

Q: So Tom Gaitens is not connected to your–

ARMEY: Who? First of all who is Tom Gaitens?

Watch it:

Armey proceeded to call the ThinkProgress reporter a “juvenile delinquent.” Armey has lashed out before at critical questions, attacking Joan Walsh, saying “I am so damn glad you can never be my wife ’cause I surely wouldn’t have to listen to that babble from you every day.”

Gaitens — who helped organize the very first pilot “tea party” protests in February and demanded that “folks … need to intimidate Congress” — is listed multiple times on the FreedomWorks’ website as the Florida Outreach Director for Armey. He has not only won awards from FreedomWorks, but he also helped organize a tea party this year where Armey was the main speaker.

Of course, Armey’s deception is the very basis on which FreedomWorks gins up support for its causes. FreedomWorks maintains several other domain addresses to promote tea party events. Last year, the Wall Street Journal exposed FreedomWorks for building “amateur-looking” websites to promote the lobbying interests of Armey.