Media antarabangsa mendedahkan perbuatan Perdana Menteri, Datuk Seri Najib Razak mengupah media Amerika Syarikat untuk memburuk-burukkan reputasi Ketua Umum KEADILAN, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim.
“Bayaran dibuat kepada beberapa wartawan konservatif Amerika yang bekerja di Huffington Post, San Francisco Examiner, Washington Times, Natinal Review dan Red State.
“Maklumat diperoleh Jabatan Keadilan yang difailkan bawah Akta Pendaftaran Agen Asing untuk menyerang tokoh pro-demokrasi itu. Kempen itu bermula Mei 2008 hingga April 2011 dan ia diketuai oleh Joshua Trevino.
“Trevino menerima bayaran USD389,724,70,” tulisan portal BuzzFeed bertarikh semalam, dipetik .
Mengikut portal itu, antara 10 nama yang terlibat memburuk-burukkan nama Anwar ialah Ben Domenech; Pengarah Pusat Demokrasi Amerika, Rachel Ehrenfeld; Editor majalah Commentary, Seth Mandel; Penulis Red State, Brad Jackson dan beberapa nama lagi.
Ben Domenech, bekas blogger Washington Post menulis mengenai senario politik Malaysia.
“Tugas saya ialah menulis tentang pergaduhan politik di sana dan memberi pendapat saya sendiri,” katanya dipetik portal berpangkalan di Manhattan, New York itu.
Naib Presiden Yayasan Dasar Awam Texas, Chuck Devore berkata, ia perkara biasa untuk diupah dan dibayar oleh sumber luar.
“Ia bukanlah sesuatu yang luar biasa bagi penulis bebas untuk dibayar dari pelbagai sumber, seperti yang dilakukan oleh Trevino,” katanya lapor BuzzFeed.
Sam Mandel pula mengakui dibayar oleh Joshua dan tidak mengetahui wujudnya entiti lain di belakangnya.
“Saya penulis blog berkaitan isu Israel dan anti-semitisme. Kemudian Joshua hampiri saya dan memperkatakan tentang Anwar yang membuat komen anti-semitik dan bergabung dengan organisasi anti-Israel.
“Saya tidak mengetahui ia ada kaitan dengan kerajaan Malaysia dan saya hanya tahu, saya dibayar oleh Joshua,” katanya dipetik ~ Keadilandaily
Ini sebahagian artikel..
Covert Malaysian Campaign Touched A Wide Range Of American Media
A range of mainstream American publications printed paid propaganda for the government of Malaysia, much of it focused on the campaign against a pro-democracy figure there.
The payments to conservative American opinion writers — whose work appeared in outlets from the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner to the Washington Times to National Review and RedState — emerged in a filing this week to the Department of Justice. The filing under the Foreign Agent Registration Act outlines a campaign spanning May 2008 to April 2011 and led by Joshua Trevino, a conservative pundit, who received $389,724.70 under the contract and paid smaller sums to a series of conservative writers.
Trevino lost his column at the Guardian last year after allegations that his relationship with Malaysian business interests wasn't being disclosed in columns dealing with Malaysia. Trevino told Politico in 2011 that "I was never on any 'Malaysian entity's payroll,' and I resent your assumption that I was."
According to Trevino's belated federal filing, the interests paying Trevino were in fact the government of Malaysia, "its ruling party, or interests closely aligned with either." The Malaysian government has been accused of multiple human rights abuses and restricting the press and personal freedoms. Anwar, the opposition leader, has faced prosecution for sodomy, a prosecution widely denounced in the West, which Trevino defended as more "nuanced" than American observers realized. The government for which Trevino worked also attacked Anwar for saying positive things about Israel; Trevino has argued that Anwar is not the pro-democracy figure he appears.
The federal filing specified that Trevino was engaged through the lobbying firm APCO Worldwide and the David All Group, an American online consulting firm. The contract also involved a firm called FBC (short for Fact-Based Communications), whose involvement in covert propaganda prompted a related scandal and forced an executive at The Atlantic to resign from its board.
According to the filings, Trevino was also employed to write for websites called MalaysiaMatters and MalaysiaWatcher.
Trevino's subcontractors included conservative writer Ben Domenech, who made $36,000 from the arrangement, and Rachel Ehrenfeld, the director of the American Center for Democracy, who made $30,000. Seth Mandel, an editor at Commentary, made $5,500 (his byline is attached to the National Review item linked to above). Brad Jackson, writing at the time for RedState, made $24,700. Overall, 10 writers were part of the arrangement.
"It was actually a fairly standard PR operation," Trevino told BuzzFeed Friday. "To be blunt with you, and I think the filing is clear about this, it was a lot looser than a typical PR operation. I wanted to respect these guys' independence and not have them be placement machines."
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