What I've sort of worked out is that there's a triangle, with government, media, and corporations at the corners, and in the middle of the triangle, there are "think tanks" and these "Astro Turf" groups (which are think tanks rebranded as "concerned citizens"). Basically, corporations and vested interest groups set up these front-groups, then politicians who wish to support the corporate agenda can cite the "think-tank" as if it was independent scholarship, and the media can print their views (shared by the corporate owners and advertisers of the paper) as if they were independent scholarship.
This is the main difference between media in the USA and in Australia/UK/Europe. When there is a "big question" here in Australia, they almost always turn to
qualified university professors to give an opinion most of the time. But in the USA, it's often someone from a corporate "think-tank" that is the go-to expert: So-and-so from the such-and-such-Institute/Foundation, and not "Dr So-and-so of "such-and-such-University". Hint: anything called an "institute" or a "foundation" is a corporate entity reliant on sponsors, not an actual center of learning.
Some more cool groups:
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Americans For Tax Reform" <= this group is actually really insidious. They are based in Washington and ever since Clinton was elected that have a weekly Wednesday meeting of the conservative "right-think" for that week: basically the official conservative spin on the weeks events. This gets faxed out to over 1000 conservative radio stations, papers and TV news. It's suspected it's one of the reasons for all the conservatives having the same "spin" on a number of news items at the same time: Rush Limbaugh has
a famous line where he says "I just got a fax that has some incredible information on it", in regards to some Anti-Clinton information. In the book, this utterance is dated to March 10, 1994 - a thursday, the day after the meeting. Even GW Bush was known to visit The Meeting, cap in hand.
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Citizens for a Sound Economy" - sold themselves as a consumer rights group but was actually all about
lobbying to change laws in favor of it's corporate donors. It has strong ties to the origins of the Tea Party - many of the key players involved with the early CSE's lobbying for the tobacco industry seem to have been involved with the origins of the Tea Party, suggesting that the Tea Party is just one massive Astro Turf operation.
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National Wetlands Coalition" (which is a "green" group sponsored by Exxon and Texaco). Wants to protect only the important wetlands - i.e the bits with no oil or gas.