NEWS FLASH: Buying Fake News is Illegal
When the Bush administration doesn't like the news, and can't spin the news, it just rolls up its collective sleeves and goes out and pays (with our tax dollars) to make up the news.
Fake the news. Seems practical. Why wait for actual reporters to spread the Word of Bush when they are so easily distracted by reporting, well, actual news?
But hey, wouldn't that be WRONG? aka "covert propaganda?"
Well, yeah. It is illegal to "convey a message to the public on behalf of the government, without disclosing to the public that the messengers were acting on the government's behalf and in return for the payment of public funds." (GAO)
The rigorously non-partisan Government Accountability Office has delivered a scathing report, condemning the Bush administration's use of tax dollars to disseminate propaganda to the American public, in violation of federal law.
Seems the message about how Bush would "leave no child behind" wasn't being sufficiently touted by the media (what with all the other news to report about cuts in education spending and tax breaks for the wealthy and the hunt for those non-existent WMDs in Iraq).
So the Bush administration, using public funds (over $300,000) paid for favorable coverage, making pay-offs to conservative commentator Armstrong Williams and hiring a P.R. firm to concoct fake "news" stories praising Bush's commitment to education.
(The casting call for "reporters" must have been fun, watching all those auditioning actors try to make that statement without laughing...)
The Bush administration's Justice department lawyers and inspector general of the Education department claimed that it was perfectly OK to produce bogus "news" reports, as long as the facts were true. In other words, there was nothing wrong with hiring someone to pretend to be a reporter hyping Bush's education policies, and airing that "report" to the public as if it were actual news.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Also, illegal. The GAO spelled it out for the administration:
Read all about it in today's NYT.
Fake the news. Seems practical. Why wait for actual reporters to spread the Word of Bush when they are so easily distracted by reporting, well, actual news?
But hey, wouldn't that be WRONG? aka "covert propaganda?"
Well, yeah. It is illegal to "convey a message to the public on behalf of the government, without disclosing to the public that the messengers were acting on the government's behalf and in return for the payment of public funds." (GAO)
The rigorously non-partisan Government Accountability Office has delivered a scathing report, condemning the Bush administration's use of tax dollars to disseminate propaganda to the American public, in violation of federal law.
Seems the message about how Bush would "leave no child behind" wasn't being sufficiently touted by the media (what with all the other news to report about cuts in education spending and tax breaks for the wealthy and the hunt for those non-existent WMDs in Iraq).
So the Bush administration, using public funds (over $300,000) paid for favorable coverage, making pay-offs to conservative commentator Armstrong Williams and hiring a P.R. firm to concoct fake "news" stories praising Bush's commitment to education.
(The casting call for "reporters" must have been fun, watching all those auditioning actors try to make that statement without laughing...)
The Bush administration's Justice department lawyers and inspector general of the Education department claimed that it was perfectly OK to produce bogus "news" reports, as long as the facts were true. In other words, there was nothing wrong with hiring someone to pretend to be a reporter hyping Bush's education policies, and airing that "report" to the public as if it were actual news.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Also, illegal. The GAO spelled it out for the administration:
"The failure of an agency to identify itself as the source of a prepackaged news
story misleads the viewing public by encouraging the audience to believe that
the broadcasting news organization developed the information. The prepackaged
news stories are purposefully designed to be indistinguishable from news
segments broadcast to the public. When the television viewing public does not
know that the stories they watched on television news programs about the
government were in fact prepared by the government, the stories are, in this
sense, no longer purely factual. The essential fact of attribution is missing."
Read all about it in today's NYT.
posted by Antares at 9:44 AM
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