The Market Works!
by evanmcmurry
More in-depth reporting from the conservative blogosphere:
The bloggers involved, none of whom regularly cover Eastern European politics, say they were pitched by a public relations firm to write the stories, but that they weren’t compensated for them, unlike bloggers who wrote in support of the Malaysian government.
You don’t hear the it’s-cool-because-I-did-it-for-free excuse coming from the right too often. Question from the back: if they weren’t doing it for the money…?
A Flea in the Fur of the Beast 
It’s worth re-reading the 2007 story where a Harper’s writer posed as a representative of Turkmenistan, and got all these DC lobby shops vying to clean up the bad human rights reputation that country’s authoritarian regime had in Washington. It’s fascinating. http://archive.truthout.org/article/their-men-washington-undercover-with-dcs-lobbyists-hire