Crummy production values, but free!
The New Zealand Herald — Good reading. Yet another indictment of the US Media. Sigh. It never ends.
The Bush administration has produced news look-alike video propaganda clips and successfully persuaded television news stations across the country to air them uncritically and, often, uncut. As many as 20 government departments have produced fake news that stations relayed as though they had produced the segments themselves according to the standard rules of journalism, the New York Times reported.
Both the Bush and the Schwarzenegger administrations have gone so far as to script introductory lines for the news anchor to read out – noting with satisfaction that in many cases their scripts have been followed to the letter
“State-run media” is a phrase normally reserved for regimes such as North Korea that manipulate and censor all public information. Media in the United States were thought to be free of such autocratic control, but recent maneuvers by the Bush administration should make all of us stand up and take notice.
After recent revelations that several “journalists” have been working as propagandists on the White House payroll, more are beginning to wonder how free America’s press actually is.
Each passing week adds a new chapter to the story line. In early January, the $240,000 Armstrong Williams took from the Department of Education headlined national news. This single event sparked public outrage and compelled 20,000 people to join Free Press in demanding that Federal Communication Commission Chairman Michael Powell launch a probe of Williams. Since then two other journalists have admitted being on the take: Maggie Gallagher and Michael McManus
Next came pseudonymous “Jeff Gannon” with his backdoor pass to the White House. Now we’re learning the White House has set up a Social Security “war room”—using taxpayer funds to aggressively lobby the press on behalf of Bush’s privatization plan.
Nothing beats the Dan rather scandal! Nice try liberals!
The scary part is that the Bush supporters actually support this type of behavior. Bush could do anything and they would support him. Oh, I forgot, he already has done stuff that the Republicans should be upset about and they still support him. The blind leading the blind! Bush is not a Republican, he is just downright scary!
Author Tom Fenton was on the Daily Show the other night with his book “Bad News”. He says the mainstream media has hollowed itself out by eliminating foreign and investigative correspondents, and piggy-backing on the news wires, leading to the “echo chamber” effect of the modern news cycle. The amount of actual, unique reporting and fact gathering has dropped substantially.
“Old news” some will say, but this guy seems like the first credible source from inside the media to truly make the case.
The governement handing premade reports to lazy news organizations merely exploits this trend.
I don’t see why this is the government’s fault, and why phrases like “state run” media come up. Clearly the decision to run the reports lies with the news organizations. Goverment is just playing the PR game like the private sector does.
Obviously it should stop. But it highlights the weaknesses in the media, not the power of government.
P.S. Where can I look up the “standard rules of journalism.”
Rather’s memos where never proven to be fraudulent, and Killian’s secretary stated that, whether or not she wrote them, the content was about right. Molly Ivins wrote a book back in 2000 proving that Bush went AWOL — the real scandal is how the media hid the facts about Bush, while at the same time spreading the Swift Boat lies about Kerry far and wide.
Governments in most modern countries will put the most favorable spin in the press releases. The problem is when does favorable spin become government propaganda. The criminal act is when someone purposefully circumvents the law.
I doubt that there will ever be any repercussions from these episodes. The Republicans will not do it to themselves and the Democrats will not bring it back up if they ever return to power.
You might fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, and that is just what the Republicans have done in the past decade. Regardless of how history views Bush, the damage is being done today.
Dan Rather is a responsible journalist. Through his career he has consistently been a good, impartial reporter. He might have made an error of judgment, but instead of attacking him, lets start discussing Novak or O’Rielly.
Just my 2 cent rant.
Oops. Although I watch the Daily Show every night, I forgot that I first read about “Bad News” in the Sainsbury post on this blog.
On that note, I doubt there will hell to pay over underreported architectural trends. I think my world would still be the same if I hadn’t read here about that new French bridge/viaduct.
Nothing liberal activist organizations haven’t done, reporting some dire environmental or health warning based on junk science, in the hopes of gaining sympathy and/or public funding. The lazy media lapps it up up without question and airs it as fact. The Bush administration is just trying the get its side of the story out.
CBS got screwed. I think the whole thing was a setup. CBS was given information intended to damage CBS. It was a professional hatchet job. These are nasty people pulling this crap. These people who do this sort of shit should be brought to justice. It isn’t over yet, you can count on that.
If Dan Rather lost his job for using a bogus source, shouldn’t all those local TV producers also lose their jobs for using a bogus news source?
Hank
Oh, I forgot. Here are two other good links on this:
The main NYTimes article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/politics/13covert.html?
A good interview
http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/21493/
We’re talking HALF A BILLION of YOUR tax dollars to secretly PROPOGANDIZE YOU!
“verycheeky” may think this is a liberal payback for Dan Rather, but I think is a MAJOR SCANDAL and needs full investigation. Heads should roll.
HALF A BILLION TAX DOLLARS! Get your mind around that.
On top of that, lots of people think it is in direct violation of specific anti-propoganda laws.
Hank
Even though this still sounds like a job application, John — I’m involved in the same campaign with my local online newspaper.
We could use a proper threaded forum to carry forward some of these topics. Aside from the proto-flamers who think these topics reduce to I’m a Liberal/I’m a Conservative, nyah, nyah! — you have aggregated a fair number of folks with widely-varied, often-differing points of view — who might enjoy a longer discussion than the short period before something scrolls off the page.
I’d love to have, say, a thorough discussion with T.C. about the important of engineering and architectural trends — or a general round on mobility for those who are [or will be] challenged and might benefit from the recent 4-wheel Segway design. I think any of these would continue to reach out and expand participation in the larger blog.
Ed, I intend on adding a true forum such as you describe in the months ahead
??? this behaviour was covered on NPR months ago. From what I remember, this happens from both sides from time to time…”News” reports that are actually produced by those with self-interests.
I would think they’d only fool those w/ no critical thinking skills, although unfortunately that’s a large % of the US population. 🙁
j.
I 2nd Ed’s emotion. Though I probably won’t spend much time on architecture and Segways. 🙂 Many interesting discussions are pushed off the front page before their time.
I don’t see how or why we’ve gone backwards from the fully threaded days of Usenet.
I get the message..I’m working on it.
I disagree – I think forums tend to break down into cyclic arguments. (like the aforementioned I’m a Liberal/I’m a Conservative) At least with the blog comments people keep it short and the thread gets to expire – which keeps people from turning it into their own soapbox.
John, did you read the thread from your “The Clogging Factor” column? Here’s a nice quote from that thread: “My pet cat Mona Lisa eats telephone salesmen.” Just wonderful.
Doug wrote:
>> Nothing liberal activist organizations haven’t done, reporting some dire environmental or health warning based on junk science, in the hopes of gaining sympathy and/or public funding.
This difference? HALF A BILLION of YOUR tax dollars paid for this.
Remember when the conservatives used to get their panties in a bunch over 90 million spent for the arts? But half a billion for covert propaganda targeting our own citizens? Noooooo problem man. It’s all minor.