What do you conclude when suddenly . . .

. . . several news sources are telling the same story, dropping in the same keywords, etc.? Kevin Drum observes this happening as we approach the announced date of the report on President Bush's Surge:

One way you can tell when a PR campaign is gearing up is the sudden appearance of a raft of articles all telling a remarkably similar story. So here's the remarkably similar story that's suddenly popping up everywhere regarding the surge: Sure, there might not be any political progress in Baghdad, but there's been lots of progress at the local level and that's what really matters. . . .

[J]ust be aware that this is apparently the new talking point: national reconciliation doesn't matter anymore. Tribal reconciliation is where the action is. We'll let you know how it's going six months from now.

Talking points are most easily recognized by the repetition of key phrases, which is a key technique of managing the news: political and other public figures offer repetition of phrases which are keys to a wider conceptual frame ("Support the troops"--this invokes patriotism and identifies how we feel about our soldiers with continued funding the war). So how do we distinguish between the same realization which is dawning on several people independently from the circulation of talking points from a central (propagandistic) source? That's the challenge of trying to pull back the curtain to see who is pulling the levers. Another key: who benefits?