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ninty · **'Purely Informational' Propaganda -** 03-19-2005, 06:56 PM

[quote="The Register-Guard":e66a3] Americans should be upset to learn that in its first term the Bush administration spent $254 million on news releases that were made to look like television news reports.

The fact that stations across the country broadcast the propaganda pieces without identifying the government as their source, however, should leave people sputtering with anger.

The Bush administration is being manipulative - nothing new about that. The Clinton administration did the same thing, though on a smaller scale. Politicians are always looking for ways to improve their images, and the line between public information and promotion is blurry. The use of broadcast news formats for government press releases is deceitful - but the deceit can work only if the government has a partner. [/quote:e66a3]
[url="http://www.registerguard.com/news/2005/03/19/ed.edit.fauxnews.0319.html"]http://www.registerguard.com/news/2005/ ... .0319.html[/url]

[quote="The New York Times":e66a3]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 different 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 acknowledgment of the government's role in their production. [/quote:e66a3]
[url="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/03/13/MNGFEBOM6D1.DTL"]http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... BOM6D1.DTL[/url]

[quote="The Village Voice":e66a3]Some of the "news reports" you've seen on your local TV station may have been produced at taxpayer expense with PR specialists posing as reporters but broadcast to you as if they were objective stories composed by independent journalists.

But that's OK, according to the White House.

Before the Bush information machine was rocked by revelations that Armstrong Williams was on the Education Department payroll and White House "reporter" Jeff Gannon was backed by GOP funders, a battle was already brewing over "video news releases," which government and companies use to spread the word about the good works they do. [/quote:e66a3]
[url="http://villagevoice.com/blogs/pressclipsextra/archives/2005/03/propaganda_what.php"]http://villagevoice.com/blogs/pressclip ... a_what.php[/url]

	(#1)
ninty is Offline Major General Posts: 12,683 Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Calgary	'Purely Informational' Propaganda - 03-19-2005, 06:56 PM [quote="The Register-Guard":e66a3] Americans should be upset to learn that in its first term the Bush administration spent $254 million on news releases that were made to look like television news reports. The fact that stations across the country broadcast the propaganda pieces without identifying the government as their source, however, should leave people sputtering with anger. The Bush administration is being manipulative - nothing new about that. The Clinton administration did the same thing, though on a smaller scale. Politicians are always looking for ways to improve their images, and the line between public information and promotion is blurry. The use of broadcast news formats for government press releases is deceitful - but the deceit can work only if the government has a partner. [/quote:e66a3] [url="http://www.registerguard.com/news/2005/03/19/ed.edit.fauxnews.0319.html"]http://www.registerguard.com/news/2005/ ... .0319.html[/url] [quote="The New York Times":e66a3]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 different 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 acknowledgment of the government's role in their production. [/quote:e66a3] [url="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/03/13/MNGFEBOM6D1.DTL"]http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... BOM6D1.DTL[/url] [quote="The Village Voice":e66a3]Some of the "news reports" you've seen on your local TV station may have been produced at taxpayer expense with PR specialists posing as reporters but broadcast to you as if they were objective stories composed by independent journalists. But that's OK, according to the White House. Before the Bush information machine was rocked by revelations that Armstrong Williams was on the Education Department payroll and White House "reporter" Jeff Gannon was backed by GOP funders, a battle was already brewing over "video news releases," which government and companies use to spread the word about the good works they do. [/quote:e66a3] [url="http://villagevoice.com/blogs/pressclipsextra/archives/2005/03/propaganda_what.php"]http://villagevoice.com/blogs/pressclip ... a_what.php[/url]