Due to the excerpt requirement for Guardian articles, this is highly edited so please read the original.
P.S., Be aware that the author is a liberal blogger as well.
A common practice in the PR world that long precedes Al Gore's invention is the creation of "independent third parties" and "objective sources" to validate what the PR effort wants validated (or stigmatized).
For many years, they have called radio music DJs and talk radio to tout (or trash) a stock, or an artist, a movie, a product, a political candidate. The DJ almost always knows that he is being "used" and accepts it as part of the game. Indeed, some DJs openly discuss which such "independent" efforts are done skillfully or not.
Most interesting are the political crisis created by the PR effort of a politician, knowingly promoted by the media, and then swallowed by the naive public.
Examples
The naive believe the PR lie that the Vietnam war was "unpopular" back home when in fact, after the '68 convention PR campaign Pro-war Humphrey came in 2d to even more pro-war Nixon with the most pro-war Wallace coming in 3d and the anti-war candidates obtaining less than 1% of the vote. Again in '72 pro-war Nixon trounced pro-appeasement McGovern.
A good example on a local level is how Jane Byrne beat the Chicago Democrat Machine with a masterful PR campaign masterminded by her media savvy husband and implemented by a person who kept popping up on TV and other media as the "independent objective voice of the common man" when in fact he was Jane Byrne's driver, advisor and most effective campaign operative.
Does anyone really think that current issues such as anti-immigrant, pro-immigrant, etc just happened to pop up without someone manipulating the PR campaigns to selectively present facts and ignore others facts... and to create facts that in fact are bogus?
On FreeRepublic, generally referred to as "DNC talking points"...