Enterrpise Ethics -- July 3, 2007 -- The birth of a viral meme

Carlton Vogt's

Enterprise Ethics

Volume 5, No. 6 July 3, 2007

The birth of a viral meme

The Internet has meant that truth and lies can travel at the speed of light

The Internet is a wonderful thing -- he says, as he writes his email newsletter -- but, like most wonderful things, it has a dark side.

We can find information instantly. Search technology is enabling individuals and businesses in ways we never imagined 10 years ago. Viral marketing allows advertisers to get their stories out in an ever-expanding and interlinked web, much more efficiently than the old PTA "phone trees." Plant a seed on one site. It soon spreads to 10 more sites. Those 10 sites each spread it to 10 other sites. And, pretty soon your message can be seen in millions of places.

But we can use the same viral method to spread bad things too. Let's suppose someone wants to expose me to the world as an "environmentalist." While that may seem benign enough to some, I use it as an example, because to some people it's right up there with "child molester" and "terrorist."

I was at a party at a friend's house a few years ago and met his father for the first time. In making conversation with "Dad," I mentioned that I wrote about air quality, which I did at the time. Dad nearly dropped his pig in a blanket, took a step back, as if I had just told him I had plague, squinted at me, and said, "Don't tell me you're one of those environmentalists," with a snarl on the last word. To keep peace in the family, I assured him I only wrote about them, excused myself, and went off in search of some cheese dip.

So, if someone wanted to tar me with that brush -- and, for the record, I do care about the environment, and there's nothing wrong with it, but let's suppose I wasn't one -- they would simply go to a blog site, write something about me, and carefully drop in the off-hand "fact" that I was an environmentalist.. This can't be a full-frontal accusation, because that would give me the opening to refute it. They have to slip it in almost innocuously.

Then, someone on another blog repeats what they saw on the first blog, and another quotes that, and another quotes that. Pretty soon, it's "well established" that "Vogt is an environmentalist," which is the cue for one of the members of the so-called mainstream media to pick it up -- after all, it's all over the blogoshpere. This now kicks the blogoshpere into hyper-drive because it's now a "fact" reported in the mainstream media.

The rest of the journalism pack picks up the meme, and by the end of the week, I am to environmentalism what Emeril Lagasse is to "bam."

Very few people actually witness memes being born. Like giant pandas, they are very tiny at birth, but can grow to tremendous size very quickly. By the time most people see them, they are already quite developed.

However, I do believe that I may have witnessed the birth of a viral meme -- if only by accident. Perhaps, as they do with comets, they will name it after me.

It would come as no surprise that the health-care industry has an interest in blunting the effects of Michael Moore's new movie, Sicko -- which, for the record, I have not yet seen. And, it would also come as no surprise that the industry's allies in the corporate world would enlist in the effort.

Early on, CNN -- which is owned by Time Warner, the corporate giant that owns roughly a bazillion other media outlets, give or take a gazillion -- did a "fact check" on the movie and found that it was "surprisingly accurate." That two-word phrase tells me that CNN began its "fact checking" with the null hypothesis that the movie was going to be inaccurate. When it wasn't, they were "surprised." The rest of the article then quibbled with a few points in the movie, but the disappointment was palpable. The null hypothesis was destroyed.

Would that CNN were so assiduous in "fact checking" its own stories. But I digress.

That wasn't the meme in question. That came later. Sunday, I read a story from the AP, which included the throwaway "fact" that a big disappointment in Moore's effort was that health-care industry officials weren't given an opportunity to present their side of the story. Boo-hoo.

Before we go on, let me explain about the AP. It is not, as some might imagine, an independent news agency, turning over rocks to find the truth. AP is a co-op. It is owned by the "member newspapers," which in this day and age means the corporate "profit centers," we used to call "local newspapers." The AP board is a veritable Who's Who of the highly concentrated corporate media. So, it's part of the club.

Now, it's important to remember that the health-care industry long ago issued a pre-emptive fatwah against Moore. Anyone who worked for the health-care industry and was seen even looking in the general direction of Moore, much less talking to him, would never work in that business again. It was the gag order to end all gag orders. And the AP writer would have known that had she bothered to read her own agency's files. So, it rang a little hollow to me to then complain that the poor victimized health-care industry wasn't given a "chance to tell its side of the story."

I got where I did in the news business, because I have a keen eye for things buried deep within reams of other verbiage. In short, I can spot a story a mile away. This seemingly throw-away line tingled my antennae, and I immediately emailed a friend and alerted him to what may have been the birth of a meme, and asked him to keep an eye out.

I didn't have to wait long. On Monday, in of all places, a tech blog, I saw the meme again. Poor health-care officials had been denied the opportunity to tell their side of the story. Again, it was buried in the depths of a seemingly innocuous story about the movie.

Later, I was pointed to a mailing sent out from Google's advertising group targeting health-care advertisers. While it didn't repeat the meme exactly, it implied as much and, of course, offered the advertisers a paid spot on Google to "get their story out," as if the health-care industry has been silent for so many years.

I find it fairly disingenuous that an industry, which spends billions of dollars enticing doctors to write prescriptions, which runs endless ads trying to get us to buy medications we don't need, and which funded the odious "Harry and Louise ads" to thwart health-care reform back in the '90s could, with a straight face, claim it was being denied the opportunity to get its story out.

The Google appeal upped the ante, though, and may have introduced a new twist on the meme. "Moore’s film portrays the industry as money and marketing driven, and fails to show healthcare’s interest in patient well-being and care."

As with everything else, so much depends on what you mean by words. "Healthcare's interest in patient well-being and care." What do they mean by "healthcare?" Here's where the trouble starts.

Are doctors and nurses interested in patient well-being and care? With few exceptions, definitely. Are allied health-care workers interested? Sure. They're obviously not in it for the money -- because the money just isn't there. And, so on down the line.

But these aren't the people that Moore is talking about. Moore is talking about the system, the industry, the corporations, not the people in the trenches. You don't even need to see the movie to see that patient well-being and care comes pretty far down on the corporate scale of values. Profit occupies the first spot. More Profit occupies the second. And Even More Profit occupies the third.

In fact, most health-care workers are as much victims of "the system" as are the patients. They are not, in many cases, allowed to treat patients the way they want because of the corporate regulations. Many health care workers are promoting the movie, because they feel it points up the wretched state of affairs within the system.

Health-care workers, for the most part, are dedicated compassionate people. It is the corporations that hire administrators and give them incentives to deny as much care as possible. The way you succeed in that business is to keep people from getting care. And you will get a bonus, if you do.

That cat escaped from the bag decades ago. This transcript from the tapes of Richard Nixon tells the whole story.

In 1971, Edgar Kaiser, the son of the founder of Kaiser Permanente, one of the first big HMOs, went to see John Ehrlichman, a top aide to President Nixon, to lobby the Nixon White House to pass legislation that would expand the market for health maintenance organizations (HMOs). Ehrlichman reported this conversation to Nixon on February 17, 1971. The discussion, which was taped, went like this:

Ehrlichman: I had Edgar Kaiser come in...talk to me about this and I went into it in some depth. All the incentives are toward less medical care, because the less care they give them, the more money they make.

President Nixon: Fine.

The next day, Nixon publicly announced he would be pushing legislation that would provide Americans "the finest health care in the world."

I don't know whether the Google piece deliberately conflated health-care workers with the system that controls them, but the effect is the same whether it was deliberate or not.

This, combined with the supposed victimization of the industry in "not being allowed to respond" seems to be gaining some viral steam, working its way through the Internet. I could be wrong. Internet memes, like baby pandas, have a high mortality rate.

Some lunkheads, probably the paid corporate shills who populate the Internet discussion boards, are trying to draw a connection between Moore's movie and the fact that UK doctors were involved in the recent bomb plots. That one is so ridiculous that only Rush Limbaugh and his dittohead acolytes would find it compelling.

But the meme about multi-billion dollar corporations not being able to get their story out looks like it might be a winner. Look for it to come to a media outlet near you.

And I can't let the celebration of our democracy's birthday pass without this observation on our society's values.

Yesterday, the resident of the White House commuted the 30-month sentence of a political operative who was involved in, and who obstructed justice in, a putative act of treason -- betraying the identity of an undercover agent for political reasons during a time of war. It was, some said, "no big deal."

In May, a secretary at the Coca Cola Company was sentenced to eight years in jail for attempting to betray the company's secret formula. At her sentencing, the judge imposed a sentence that was greater than that asked for by prosecutors. Said the Judge: "this is the kind of offense that cannot be tolerated in our society." Apparently, this was a "big deal." No commutation has been forthcoming.

What kind of society do we have when we can tolerate, and in some quarters celebrate, the betrayal of a covert agent by the very government she serves, but cannot tolerate the revealing of the recipe for colored fizzy water? Happy July 4!