Time.com Editor Says Americans More Willing to Trust 'Horse's Mouth' than Media

ABC News is taking seriously charges in the left-wing blogosphere that a YouTube video spoofing Al Gore's global warming movie is really financed by a big oil company.

The belief is that the movie was made to look homespun but is really "actually came from a slick Republican public relations firm called DCI, which just happens to have oil giant Exxon as a client."

Time.com online editor Ana Marie Cox, who used to run the Wonkette blog, says that today people are more likely to "believe something that comes straight from the horse's mouth," than the mainstream media. This is why the film was made to look amateurish, she says, because people are suspicious of anything that looks too slick.

At first blush, "An Inconvenient Spoof" seemed like a scrappy little homemade film poking fun at Gore and his anti-global warming crusade.

In the movie, Gore is seen boring an army of penguins with his lecture and blaming global warming for everything, including Lindsay Lohan's thinness.

But when the Wall Street Journal tried to find the guy who posted this film — listed on YouTube as a 29-year-old — they found the movie didn't come from an amateur working out of his basement.

The film actually came from a slick Republican public relations firm called DCI, which just happens to have oil giant Exxon as a client.

Exxon denies knowing anything about the film, and DCI says, "We do not disclose the names of our clients, nor do we discuss the work we do on behalf of our clients."

Ana Marie Cox says people are more likely to trust a movie that looks homemade than the mainstream media.

Ana Marie Cox, the Washington editor of Time.com, said Americans have come to distrust the mainstream media.

"They're more likely to believe something that comes straight from the horse's mouth," Cox said.

Public relations firms have long used computer technology to create bogus grassroots campaigns, which are called "Astroturf."

Now these firms are being hired to push illusions on the Internet to create the false impression of real people blogging, e-mailing and making films.

"People will become more savvy, and then the people who are making the fake videos will become more savvy about how to cover it up," Cox said.

So next time you're reading something on the Internet from a "real person" pushing a movie or defending an actor's alcohol-fueled rant — be wary. That real person might actually be a hired gun, selling you an idea through deception.