June 27 - July 3, 1996 / Volume V, No. 26

Often, an ends-justify-the-means approach is the rule - in an atmosphere of intense competition, it takes the toughest tactics to stay afloat, let alone to win. In this atmosphere, poll results have become more important than the righteousness of ideas or the integrity of the approach.

We've got Jerry Sanders financing his campaign through business funds. Though he was at least partially caught, we can be reasonably sure he's not the only one. We see the chairman of the AK Republican Party chastising Anchorage Assembly members for nonpartisan voting in a nonpartisan election. And everywhere you look, someone is trying to 'move' you on the issues, coax a POM (public opinion message), or otherwise 'make it easy' for you to participate in the public process - through a sophisticated organizational structure.

...it's unfortunate that those with more resources get the benefit of more speech, more action and more power, while the rest of us are forced to either join them or languish in our own individual obscurity.

One of the most common and abhorrent practices is mass-creation of letters to the editor by professionals. Letters are composed in dark boiler rooms on antiquated computers by articulate writers intimately familiar with the issues. The organizations then seek supporters willing to sign off on letters the signers haven't written.

Political organizations and politically interested industry groups know that letters to the editor are rarely screened, and that the people who agree to sign off on the letters will probably lie and back them up, seeking to avoid problems all around and support the cause.

The same thing is done with public opinion messages, letters to state representatives, and every other expression of public opinion. People are even paid to hold up signs in support of certain issues. Just off the top of my head, I'd wager more than a third of statewide 'public opinion' is created and managed by professional organizations - industry groups and grassroots coalitions that call themselves 'citizens' to strike that all-important chord with the voters.

Numbers have taken the place of ideals in today's capitalist structure of politics. If an organization is confident in its mission, all that remains is to convince the public, by any means necessary, to support the cause. This can involve distortion of the facts, key omissions, and glitzy ads that only tell one side of the story.

As newspapers, it's our responsibility to confine the letters page to the voice of individual people, and to ensure that the named author actually wrote the letter. How can we ensure that letters are real when most of the alleged authors will probably lie to us? I don't know. But clearly opinion pages shouldn't be packed with the opinions of well-funded organizations able to mobilize dozens of letters on a single issue - especially if the nature of authorship is misrepresented.

Increasingly, the public process is dictated by organizations that can muster large amounts of power through their funding, connections and knowledge of tactics. Real letters by real people are dwarfed by the sheer amount of opinions and activism generated by these organizations.

This unethical process of 'stuffing the ballot box' is probably more difficult to catch in the myriad offices of politicians and industry leaders these misrepresented opinions end up in. And frankly, these officials care less about the integrity of opinion than the force of its dissemination - lots of POMs mean that whoever is behind them is able to bring a good deal of public pressure to bear. However, as newspapers, it's our job to care.

In America, everyone has the right to lobby public officials and send letters to the editor; freedom of speech and action are guaranteed. But it's unfortunate that those with more resources get the benefit of more speech, more action and more power, while the rest of us are forced to either join them or languish in our own individual obscurity.

To these organizations, I say: please don't draft letters to the editor and pass them off as the work of isolated individuals. And to the newspapers in the state, I say: do your best to research the source of the letters you receive, and make clear to your readers that misrepresented authorship poses a serious ethical problem.