bush spending $254 million of tax dollars to make fake news telling the public how great he is doing. Original Article March 17, 2005 Molly Ivins Phony news is just propaganda AUSTIN, Texas Calling all conservatives. Yo, libertarians. Also, wing nuts, believers in black-helicopter conspiracies and mouth-foaming denouncers of government and all its works yoo-hoo. Where are these people when you need them? THEY are making us pay to have ourselves brainwashed. All good conspiracy theories begin with they and in this case, its the usual suspect of the right wing: the ever-evil federal government. Rush Limbaugh, get on this case. Stealth propaganda now goes by the beguiling moniker pre-packaged news. And our government, the one supposedly run by us, is using our money to secretly brainwash us. Is this gross, or what? No joke, this is seriously creepy: The U.S. government is in the covert propaganda business, and its not aiming this stuff at potential terrorists, its aiming it right square at your forehead. The New York Times did a huge Sunday take-out on the practice of pre-packaged news by government agencies. The governments news-making apparatus has produced a quiet drumbeat of broadcasts describing a vigilant and compassionate administration. The Bush administration did not invent this practice its an adaptation of a corporate public relations ploy. P.R. firms make what look like normal news segments designed to fit into regular news broadcasts, but they are actually sales pitches. You have probably wondered, This is news? when you see a report along the lines of: This is Joe Doaks reporting from the World Headache Remedy Expo on a terrific new advance in headache cures that has everyone here really excited. The product that has the whole Expo buzzing is Megaconglomerates new remedy No Brain, No Pain. It completely wipes out your headache by wiping out your entire brain, so that you become so stupid you believe this segment is actual news. Or words to that effect. Were not talking about the old public service announcements that used to hand out useful info clearly attributed to the government: Uncle Sam wants you to stop smoking, or, Its a good idea to get your child a polio vaccination: This message brought to you by the Health Department. Its bad enough that corporate shills burn up journalistic credibility with this cheap trick, but the government has produced hundreds of these fake news segments. The Clinton administration started this vile practice, and the Bush administration has doubled it, spending $254 million on public relations contracts in its first term, twice what the last Clinton administration spent. I suspect it is part and parcel of Karl Roves mania for message control. So how did something this sleazy become so common? Money. The Times reports: It is ... a world where all participants benefit. Local affiliates are spared the expense of digging up original material. Public relations firms secure government contracts worth millions of dollars. The major networks, which help distribute the releases, collect fees from the government agencies that produce segments and the affiliates that show them. The administration, meanwhile, gets out an unfiltered message, delivered in the guise of traditional reporting. The only patsy in the set-up is you, sitting there thinking youre seeing something real AND paying for the fake news with your taxes. Of course, the television stations that play along with this deserve all the opprobrium that can be heaped on them. Thanks for corrupting journalism, guys thanks for burning everyones credibility. The Radio-Television News Directors Association code of ethics says: Clearly disclose the origin of information, and label all material provided by outsiders. But many stations dont, even those in large city markets with strong professional reputations. More stations are going to more news shows because theyre cheaper to produce but they are not adding reporters or editors, theyre just stretching their staffs thinner and thinner. This is happening across the board in the news business. Its about money. Meanwhile, back at government propaganda central, the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, has held that the government-produced news segments may constitute covert propaganda. Glad somebody noticed. But, the Times reports, just last Friday the Justice Department and the Office of Management and Budget circulated a memo telling all the executive branch agencies to ignore the GAO. The memo says the GAO failed to distinguish between covert propaganda and purely informational news segments. Well, gee, I guess its purely informational when you see a joyful Iraqi-American, in a segment on the reaction to the fall of Baghdad, saying: Thank you, Bush. Thank you, U.S.A. Another segment described in the Times reports another success in the Bush administrations drive to strengthen aviation security. The fake reporter calls it one of the most remarkable campaigns in aviation history. That would be informational if it werent misinformational, instead. As the Times reported the next day in an unrelated story, the governments aviation security program is, in fact, riddled with dangerous loopholes. If I were a hawk-eyed conservative looking for waste, fraud and abuse in government spending, Id go after this one faster than small-town gossip. CROW EATEN HERE: Speaking of misinformation, I managed to mess up completely myself in a recent column by throwing Claude A. Allen into a list of judges being renominated by Bush for the federal courts. Allen is not on the list of renominations. I deeply regret the error. Ivins is a syndicated columnist. http://washingtontimes.com/commentary/20050315-084505-2521r.htm Getting the drift By Paul Greenberg I almost drove off the road when I heard it, the shock was so great. I really should have known better than listen to the "news" on National Propaganda Radio instead of the classical music station. But it's kind of a duty. Know Your Enemy and all that. At first nothing seemed amiss. There was the ageless Daniel Schorr going on in that soporific way of his that can make five minutes seem an eternity, when suddenly he said something about George Bush perhaps having been right. I had to pull over and get my bearings. Too much coffee, I figured. It had to be my caffeinated imagination working overtime, an aural hallucination, a hoax, an early April Fool's joke. Whatever it was, it couldn't be real. I resolved to stick to Mozart. But later that day, an e-mail arrived from an equally astonished friend, who not only confirmed what I had heard but sent along a copy of a piece by Mr. Schorr in the not all that good but very gray Christian Science Monitor, in which he said, well, read it for yourself, in undeniable black and white: "WASHINGTON (CSM) -- Something remarkable is happening in the Middle East -- a grass-roots movement against autocracy without any significant 'Great Satan' anti-American component. ... The movements for democratic change in Egypt and Lebanon have happened since the successful Iraqi election on Jan. 30. And one can speculate on whether Iraq has served as a beacon for democratic change in the Middle East. During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, President Bush said that 'a liberated Iraq can show the power of freedom to transform that vital region.' He may have had it right." Wow. The moral: Keep the faith. Even in American liberals. They may be the last to get it, but they're starting to. First the New York Times acknowledges the courage and vision of this much-bashed president, and now comes praise from ... Daniel Schorr. On NPR. And that wasn't all. The miracles kept coming. Here was Kurt Andersen in, of all blue-state publications, New York magazine: "Our heroic and tragic liberal-intellectual capaciousness is facing its sharpest test since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Back then, most of us were forced, against our wills, to give Ronald Reagan a large share of credit for winning the Cold War. Now the people of this Bush-hating city are being forced to grant the merest possibility that Bush, despite his annoying manner and his administration's awful hubris and dissembling and incompetence concerning Iraq, just might -- might, possibly --have been correct to invade, to occupy, and to try to enable a democratically elected government in Iraq. ... "It won't do simply to default to our easy predispositions -- against Bush, even against war. If partisanship makes us abandon intellectual honesty, if we oppose what our opponents say or do simply because they are the ones saying or doing it, we become mere political short-sellers, hoping for bad news because it's good for our ideological investment." Wow. Talk about intellectual honesty. And intellectual courage. Kurt Andersen has to know saying such things risks disappointing his natural audience, the Bush-bashers who look to commentators like him for the strength to shake off any sign of good news out of the Middle East. The guy deserves a salute or, if that is too military a gesture for his tastes, then a respectful nod of the head. At this rate, that overworked epithet "knee-jerk liberal" will lose all meaning. Kurt Andersen now has contributed the best, shortest description around for those betting against American policy in this war on terror: political short-sellers. Perfect. As perfect as Jeane Kirkpatrick's phrase back in the Reagan years for those who saw this country, not our adversaries, as the chief source of danger to the world: the Blame America First crowd. Speaking of short-sellers, there will always be those who never lose faith in the bright, shining possibility of American defeat. Here is Nancy Soderberg, who served on the National Security Council during the Clinton administration and long sleep, as she tried to keep up her spirits on the Jon Stewart show: "It's scary for Democrats," she began, "I have to say." But refusing to give up, she added: "Well, there's still Iran and North Korea, don't forget. There's still hope for the rest of us. ... There's always hope that this might not work." Later, after her words embarrassed her, Miss Soderberg said she was just kidding. She could have fooled me. Only after being hard-pressed would she give the Bush administration any credit for these hopeful developments in the Middle East. But you have to forgive her. It can't be easy rooting for tyranny these days. Paul Greenberg is a nationally syndicated columnist.