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Passing along an editorial from our sister paper, The Eagle-Tribune, dealing with a disturbing trend among political public relations firms and other advocacy groups. The practice, called “Astroturfing,” uses mailing lists to generate enough letters to the editor to suggest widespread support for an issue. Another variant gives letter writers a template to follow, meaning we get several letters on a topic with the same wording.

In any case, it’s wrong. We run as many letters as possible, from as many viewpoints as possible. Astroturfing is an abuse of that policy.

The Eagle-Tribune edit:

The Eagle-Tribune and all media outlets, print or online, welcome letters to the editor. At their best, they generate a robust discussion of issues that are important to readers.

We don’t welcome fake letters, however. Rather than presenting an honest view of reader opinion, those who generate them seek to manipulate and distort it. This is fraudulent, and ought to be treated as such.

That is what is so obviously wrong about the letter campaign launched by the Boston office of the Dewey Square Group, a national political consulting firm hired by America’s Health Insurance Plans. The company used the names of real people from the area in an attempt to create the appearance of “grassroots” support for Medicare Advantage, a form of private health insurance for elders that is partially funded by the government.

The people who “signed” those letters said they had never seen, signed or sent them.

Sadly, this is not unusual. It is so common, in fact, that it has a nickname | Astroturf | to signify a phony grassroots campaign. In this case, the people generating the letters were not customers of Medicare Advantage. They were the people running Medicare Advantage, hoping to preserve their government funding, which the Obama administration has threatened to cut.

Two spokeswomen for the Dewey Square Group defended the practice, suggesting that the seniors could have forgotten writing or signing the letters. They also contended that the importance of the issue outweighed any possible confusion in the minds of readers or even legislators who might see those letters.

This is classic “end justifies the means” thinking. And it is as phony as the campaign itself.

This is not about whether it is an important issue | it is. Good, affordable health care for senior citizens ought to be important to us all. It is also not about whether America’s Health Insurance Plans deserves a seat at the table during the debate | it does. Every interested party does.

But it ought to be clear exactly who everybody at the table is, or is representing, and what they have at stake. In this case, letters to the editor came from a political consulting firms, while posing as letters from average senior citizens.

That alone is troubling. The fact that Dewey Square’s leaders don’t see anything wrong with it is most troubling of all.

With all the talk about the demise of newspapers,  maybe we should be flattered that PR firms and advocacy groups still think it’s worth putting one over on us and our readers. But it still doesn’t make it right.