Whispering campaign
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A whispering campaign or whisper campaign is a method of
disclose
wrongdoings of the powerful without repercussions.
Marketing
Other tactics include "buying" drinks and giving away cigarettes to patrons without making known that the benefactor is a representative of the company. More recently, companies are also paying bloggers to mention products or causes. As a form of astroturfing, companies hire employees to post comments on blogs, forums, online encyclopedias such as (on Wikipedia), etc. to steer online conversations in their desired direction.
Politics
 | This section may lend undue weight to certain ideas, incidents, or controversies. (April 2013) |
Whisper campaigns in the
slave women
.
Whisper campaigns are frequently used in
US President Grover Cleveland was the target of a whisper campaign in 1884, when Republicans claimed that he had fathered an illegitimate child while he was still Governor of New York. US President Franklin D. Roosevelt was frequently a topic of whisper campaigns resulting from his support of the New Deal
and his poor health.
During the
2000 Republican presidential primary, Senator John McCain, whose adopted daughter is a dark-skinned child from Bangladesh, was the target of a whisper campaign, which implied that he had fathered a black child out of wedlock. Voters in South Carolina were reportedly asked in a push poll, "Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain if you knew that he fathered an illegitimate black child?".[1] In addition, on the week of the nomination vote, dozens of radio stations were inundated with calls on this topic, and talk show
hosts were asked what they thought of McCain's fathering of a black child out of wedlock.
In 2018, when the question of what the United States should do about the
disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi was an open question, a whispering campaign was mounted that attacked the character of Khashoggi.[2][3]
See also
- Black propaganda
- Call-out culture
- Chinese whispers
- Defamation
- Fraser Committee
- Fear, uncertainty, and doubt
- Smear campaign
- Swiftboating
- Whisper network
References
- ISSN 0027-8378. Retrieved 2016-05-10.
- ^ Robert Costa; Karoun Demirjian (October 18, 2018). "Conservatives mount a whisper campaign smearing Khashoggi in defense of Trump". The Washington Post. Retrieved October 19, 2018.
- ^ Ron Kampeas (October 19, 2018). "Pro-Israel Voices Join Smear Campaign Against Jamal Khashoggi". The Forward. Retrieved October 20, 2018.
External links
Look up whispering campaign in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.