{"id":1048,"date":"2005-03-14T04:10:38","date_gmt":"2005-03-14T12:10:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/2005\/03\/free_and_fraudulent\/"},"modified":"2005-03-14T04:10:38","modified_gmt":"2005-03-14T12:10:38","slug":"free_and_fraudulent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2005\/03\/free_and_fraudulent.html","title":{"rendered":"FREE AND FRAUDULENT"},"content":{"rendered":"

I intended to write a fuller item than yesterday’s<\/FONT><\/B><\/A> about The
\nMessage Machine<\/FONT><\/B><\/A>, which gives an extraordinary rundown on how the Bush
\nregime has propagandized the American press through the use of Video News Releases (VNRs).
\n

<\/P>
\n

The piece, which started out on the front page of Sunday’s New York Times and jumped to a
\nhuge inside spread taking up another page and half in the print edition, was so rich in illustrations
\nof government propaganda airing as “news” on presumably independent TV stations that it was
\ndifficult to choose which to cite.<\/P>
\n

I intended to cite the most salient points. This, for instance:<\/P>
\n


\n

In all, at least 20 federal agencies … have made and distributed hundreds of
\ntelevision news segments in the past four years, records and interviews show. Many were
\nsubsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the
\ngovernment’s role in their production. …
\n

<\/P>
\n

In most cases, the “reporters” are careful not to state in the segment that they work for the
\ngovernment. … Some reports were produced to support the administration’s most cherished policy
\nobjectives, like regime change in Iraq or Medicare reform. Others focused on less prominent
\nmatters. …<\/P>
\n

It is a world where government-produced reports disappear into a maze of satellite
\ntransmissions, Web portals, syndicated news programs and network feeds, only to emerge
\ncleansed on the other side as “independent” journalism.<\/P><\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n

<\/P>
\n

I intended to cite this, too:<\/P>
\n


\n

[I]n three separate opinions in the past year, the Government Accountability
\nOffice, an investigative arm of Congress that studies the federal government and its expenditures,
\nhas held that government-made news segments may constitute improper “covert propaganda”
\neven if their origin is made clear to the television stations. …
\n

<\/P>
\n

[But] on Friday, the Justice Department and the Office of Management and Budget circulated
\na memorandum instructing all executive branch agencies to ignore the G.A.O.
\nfindings.<\/P><\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n

<\/P>
\n

Then I tuned into this morning’s broadcast of Democracy Now!<\/FONT><\/B><\/A> and decided to
\nlet it do the heavy lifting for me. In an interview, John Stauber of PR Watch, which monitors the
\npress, was as impressed with the piece as I was. Noting its wealth of detail about “the widespread
\nuse of fake news,” he said the piece was “the first mainstream media expos\u00e9 of any length and
\ndepth” on the subject. Additionally, he pointed out that it “really puts the wood to the Bush
\nadministration, which has spent $250 million” to create and distribute fake news.<\/P>
\n

Democracy Now! anchor Amy Goodman noted further what is even more frightening than the
\nfraud perpetrated on viewers of TV news: It’s hard to distinguish between the fake news produced
\nby the government and the real news produced by independent TV stations. This was an acute
\nobservation the Times piece did not make. (It couldn’t be expected to do everything<\/I>.)<\/P>
\n

Anyway, I intended to finish right there. But I can’t. I feel impelled to cite Karen Ryan — a
\nformer ABC and PBS journalist who became a public relations consultant and impersonated a
\n“reporter” in various government-produced “news” segments — as the perfect illustration of an
\nunwillingness to take personal responsibility for spreading “covert propaganda.”<\/P>
\n

The Times notes that she “cringes at the phrase.” She regards covert propaganda as “words
\nfor dictators and spies.” She feels uncomfortable being called a “paid shill” for the Bush regime.
\nYet she says she feels she did nothing wrong. Is she to blame that her “segments on behalf of the
\ngovernment were broadcast a total of at least 64 times in the 40 largest television markets”? Is she
\nto blame that even those, the Times reports, “do not fully capture the reach of her work?”<\/P>
\n


\n

Ms. Ryan said she was surprised by the number of stations willing to run her
\ngovernment segments without any editing or acknowledgement of origin. As proud as she says
\nshe is of her work, she did not hesitate, even for a second, when asked if she would have
\nbroadcast one of her government reports if she were a local news director.
\n

<\/P>
\n

“Absolutely not.”<\/P><\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n

<\/P>
\n

The contradiction is mind-boggling. And Ryan is scarcely alone in failing to take personal
\nresponsibility. The Times cites two news directors, Kathy Lehmann Francis (recently of WDRB in
\nLouisville, Ky.) and Mike Stutz (of KGTV in San Diego, Ca.), who claimed they “would never
\nallow their news programs to be co-opted by segments fed from any outside party, let alone the
\ngovernment.” Yet taken together, WDRB (a Fox affiliate) and KGTV (an ABC affiliate) showed a
\ntotal of three dozen government- and corporate-produced “news” segments without revealing
\ntheir origin to viewers.<\/P>
\n

One especially fascinating instance of domestic propagandizing came at WHBQ in Memphis,
\nTenn. The station appeared to have a reporter in Afghanistan interviewing Afghan women when,
\nin fact, she was using footage of interviews conducted by the U.S. State Department. The
\nreporter, furthermore, didn’t know the government had produced them. “[She] said it was her
\nimpression at the time that the Afghan segment was her station’s version of one done first by
\nnetwork correspondents at either Fox News or CNN,” the Times reported.<\/P>
\n

Finally, to wrap up:<\/P>
\n


\n

The Pentagon Channel, available only inside the Defense Department last
\nyear, is now being offered to every cable and satellite operator in the United States. Army public
\naffairs specialists, equipped with portable satellite transmitters, are roaming war zones in
\nAfghanistan and Iraq, beaming news reports, raw video and interviews to TV stations in the
\nUnited States. All a local news director has to do is log on to a military-financed Web site,
\nwww.dvidshub.net, browse a menu of segments and request a free satellite
\nfeed.<\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n

<\/P>
\n

One unit of 40 military reporters and producers — the Army and Air Force Hometown News
\nService — is “set up to send local stations news segments highlighting the accomplishments of
\n[local] military members.” Larry W. Gilliam, the unit’s deputy director, told the Times, “We’re the
\n‘good news’ people.” They filed 50 stories last year, which “were broadcast 236 times in all” and
\nreached 41 million U.S. households. Makes the Swift Boat ads look like child’s play.<\/P>
\n

Meantime, Dear Leader and his minions have no intention of backing off. Just the other day,
\non a separate front, he appointed his Texas crony Karen Hughes to polish up the U.S. image
\nabroad<\/B><\/STRONG><\/FONT><\/A>. He has tarnished America’s reputation so badly it’s
\ndoubtful even her well-known skills as a propagandist will help. But if it’s any consolation, her job
\nat the State Department — undersecretary for “public diplomacy” — will keep her too busy to pull
\nfast ones on news directors in this country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I intended to write a fuller item than yesterday’s about The Message Machine, which gives an extraordinary rundown on how the Bush regime has propagandized the American press through the use of Video News Releases (VNRs). The piece, which started out on the front page of Sunday’s New York Times and jumped to a huge […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1048","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-gU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1048\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}