The Bush Propaganda Ministry
Just how pervasive has the Bush Propaganda been? Today's NY Times has a story on the scandal:
"Thank you, Bush. Thank you, U.S.A.," a jubilant Iraqi-American told a camera crew in Kansas City for a segment about reaction to the fall of Baghdad. A second report told of "another success" in the Bush administration's "drive to strengthen aviation security"; the reporter called it "one of the most remarkable campaigns in aviation history." A third segment, broadcast in January, described the administration's determination to open markets for American farmers.
To a viewer, each report looked like any other 90-second segment on the local news. In fact, the federal government produced all three. The report from Kansas City was made by the State Department. The "reporter" covering airport safety was actually a public relations professional working under a false name for the Transportation Security Administration. The farming segment was done by the Agriculture Department's office of communications.
Under the Bush administration, the federal government has aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. In all, at least 20 federal agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years, records and interviews show. Many were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the government's role in their production.
This winter, Washington has been roiled by revelations that a handful of columnists wrote in support of administration policies without disclosing they had accepted payments from the government. But the administration's efforts to generate positive news coverage have been considerably more pervasive than previously known. At the same time, records and interviews suggest widespread complicity or negligence by television stations, given industry ethics standards that discourage the broadcast of prepackaged news segments from any outside group without revealing the source.
Some reports were produced to support the administration's most cherished policy objectives, like regime change in Iraq or Medicare reform. Others focused on less prominent matters, like the administration's efforts to offer free after-school tutoring, its campaign to curb childhood obesity, its initiatives to preserve forests and wetlands, its plans to fight computer viruses, even its attempts to fight holiday drunken driving. They often feature "interviews" with senior administration officials in which questions are scripted and answers rehearsed. Critics, though, are excluded, as are any hints of mismanagement, waste or controversy.
Some of the segments were broadcast in some of nation's largest television markets, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and Atlanta.
As with the Guckert/Gannon scandal, we have fake 'reporters' working for fake 'news agencies,' tossing scripted softballs whose real goal is to pass pro-Bush propaganda through the corporate media to influence Americans.
Don't expect the compliant corporate media to give this much air time, as this scandal not only makes them look bad, as well, but their compliance was actually necessary for the scheme to work. The simple and unmistakable fact that America no longer has an independent press, the now-extince Fourth Estate envisioned by our Founding Fathers as our protection from tyranny, should terrify Americans. Yet, most will never know of this, because the very people who are supposed to inform Americans of this have sold their souls to the Bush Administration.
While the myth of the 'liberal media' lives on, the facts indicate that it is not only as mythical as tales of Atlantis, but that the opposite is true. The corporate media has become the lapdog of the Bush Administration, and has chosen not to fulfil their duty to inform Americans of the truth, but to instead feed Americans Bush Stories.
Source: NY Times
"Thank you, Bush. Thank you, U.S.A.," a jubilant Iraqi-American told a camera crew in Kansas City for a segment about reaction to the fall of Baghdad. A second report told of "another success" in the Bush administration's "drive to strengthen aviation security"; the reporter called it "one of the most remarkable campaigns in aviation history." A third segment, broadcast in January, described the administration's determination to open markets for American farmers.
To a viewer, each report looked like any other 90-second segment on the local news. In fact, the federal government produced all three. The report from Kansas City was made by the State Department. The "reporter" covering airport safety was actually a public relations professional working under a false name for the Transportation Security Administration. The farming segment was done by the Agriculture Department's office of communications.
Under the Bush administration, the federal government has aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. In all, at least 20 federal agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years, records and interviews show. Many were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the government's role in their production.
This winter, Washington has been roiled by revelations that a handful of columnists wrote in support of administration policies without disclosing they had accepted payments from the government. But the administration's efforts to generate positive news coverage have been considerably more pervasive than previously known. At the same time, records and interviews suggest widespread complicity or negligence by television stations, given industry ethics standards that discourage the broadcast of prepackaged news segments from any outside group without revealing the source.
Some reports were produced to support the administration's most cherished policy objectives, like regime change in Iraq or Medicare reform. Others focused on less prominent matters, like the administration's efforts to offer free after-school tutoring, its campaign to curb childhood obesity, its initiatives to preserve forests and wetlands, its plans to fight computer viruses, even its attempts to fight holiday drunken driving. They often feature "interviews" with senior administration officials in which questions are scripted and answers rehearsed. Critics, though, are excluded, as are any hints of mismanagement, waste or controversy.
Some of the segments were broadcast in some of nation's largest television markets, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and Atlanta.
As with the Guckert/Gannon scandal, we have fake 'reporters' working for fake 'news agencies,' tossing scripted softballs whose real goal is to pass pro-Bush propaganda through the corporate media to influence Americans.
Don't expect the compliant corporate media to give this much air time, as this scandal not only makes them look bad, as well, but their compliance was actually necessary for the scheme to work. The simple and unmistakable fact that America no longer has an independent press, the now-extince Fourth Estate envisioned by our Founding Fathers as our protection from tyranny, should terrify Americans. Yet, most will never know of this, because the very people who are supposed to inform Americans of this have sold their souls to the Bush Administration.
While the myth of the 'liberal media' lives on, the facts indicate that it is not only as mythical as tales of Atlantis, but that the opposite is true. The corporate media has become the lapdog of the Bush Administration, and has chosen not to fulfil their duty to inform Americans of the truth, but to instead feed Americans Bush Stories.
Source: NY Times
posted by American Bad OZ @ 3/13/2005 10:23:00 AM
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