Chris Alger
03-13-2005, 01:19 PM
As if we needed another nail in the coffin of the independent press, now comes the revelation that the Bush Administration, expanding on Clinton precedent, is trying to formalize the already ironclad symbiosis between the media industry and the White House. Most of the “free press,” and especially television news, already amounts to a subsidized adjunct of the public relations industry where most “news” either originates from the state and its supporters or is modulated and truncated by pro-government propaganda. What little that actually escapes this system (and a lot of what is not) is routinely denounced by the right as excessively hostile, adversarial reporting by a Bush-hating liberal press.
Now the White House is directly but covertly producing TV news segments for a public that isn’t told that what they are watching is the state’s own and pony show. People presumably want independent news since they are willing to pay for it in the form of cable fees and time wasted on advertising. Now we have the spectacle of them paying for it in a third manner, directly with their own tax dollars, and not getting what they agreed to pay for in the first place, all taking place over a public airwave system that the "people" purportedly own. The consumers are paying for products they don't want three times, the government gets tax-subsidized propaganda and the "news" business gets free products to sell. All courtesy of people who walk around saying (and the media likes to inform us) that "free markets produce free minds."
One might expect Fox to complain, since Murdoch pays for his own pro-Bush propaganda out of pocket. I doubt you’ll see this mentioned on Fox as anything but a throw-away. Two of the Fox “headlines (http://www.foxnews.com/ today )” are “Prince William Falls Off Horse” (I’m not joking) and “Bush, Press Share Laughs.” Given the persistence of “liberal bias” canard, they have a lot to laugh about.
From this morning’s New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/politics/13covert.html?pagewanted=1&th)
“Under Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged Television News”
David Barstow and Robin Stein (what follows is the first few paragraphs of a longer story)
_______________________
It is the kind of TV news coverage every president covets.
"Thank you, Bush. Thank you, U.S.A.," a jubilant Iraqi-American told a camera crew in Kansas City for a segment about reaction to the fall of Baghdad. A second report told of "another success" in the Bush administration's "drive to strengthen aviation security"; the reporter called it "one of the most remarkable campaigns in aviation history." A third segment, broadcast in January, described the administration's determination to open markets for American farmers.
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 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.
This winter, Washington has been roiled by revelations that a handful of columnists wrote in support of administration policies without disclosing they had accepted payments from the government. But the administration's efforts to generate positive news coverage have been considerably more pervasive than previously known. At the same time, records and interviews suggest widespread complicity or negligence by television stations, given industry ethics standards that discourage the broadcast of prepackaged news segments from any outside group without revealing the source.
Federal agencies are forthright with broadcasters about the origin of the news segments they distribute. The reports themselves, though, are designed to fit seamlessly into the typical local news broadcast. In most cases, the "reporters" are careful not to state in the segment that they work for the government. Their reports generally avoid overt ideological appeals. Instead, the government's news-making apparatus has produced a quiet drumbeat of broadcasts describing a vigilant and compassionate administration
Some reports were produced to support the administration's most cherished policy objectives, like regime change in Iraq or Medicare reform. Others focused on less prominent matters, like the administration's efforts to offer free after-school tutoring, its campaign to curb childhood obesity, its initiatives to preserve forests and wetlands, its plans to fight computer viruses, even its attempts to fight holiday drunken driving. They often feature "interviews" with senior administration officials in which questions are scripted and answers rehearsed. Critics, though, are excluded, as are any hints of mismanagement, waste or controversy.
Some of the segments were broadcast in some of nation's largest television markets, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and Atlanta.
An examination of government-produced news reports offers a look inside a world where the traditional lines between public relations and journalism have become tangled, where local anchors introduce prepackaged segments with "suggested" lead-ins written by public relations experts. It is a world where government-produced reports disappear into a maze of satellite transmissions, Web portals, syndicated news programs and network feeds, only to emerge cleansed on the other side as "independent" journalism.
Now the White House is directly but covertly producing TV news segments for a public that isn’t told that what they are watching is the state’s own and pony show. People presumably want independent news since they are willing to pay for it in the form of cable fees and time wasted on advertising. Now we have the spectacle of them paying for it in a third manner, directly with their own tax dollars, and not getting what they agreed to pay for in the first place, all taking place over a public airwave system that the "people" purportedly own. The consumers are paying for products they don't want three times, the government gets tax-subsidized propaganda and the "news" business gets free products to sell. All courtesy of people who walk around saying (and the media likes to inform us) that "free markets produce free minds."
One might expect Fox to complain, since Murdoch pays for his own pro-Bush propaganda out of pocket. I doubt you’ll see this mentioned on Fox as anything but a throw-away. Two of the Fox “headlines (http://www.foxnews.com/ today )” are “Prince William Falls Off Horse” (I’m not joking) and “Bush, Press Share Laughs.” Given the persistence of “liberal bias” canard, they have a lot to laugh about.
From this morning’s New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/politics/13covert.html?pagewanted=1&th)
“Under Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged Television News”
David Barstow and Robin Stein (what follows is the first few paragraphs of a longer story)
_______________________
It is the kind of TV news coverage every president covets.
"Thank you, Bush. Thank you, U.S.A.," a jubilant Iraqi-American told a camera crew in Kansas City for a segment about reaction to the fall of Baghdad. A second report told of "another success" in the Bush administration's "drive to strengthen aviation security"; the reporter called it "one of the most remarkable campaigns in aviation history." A third segment, broadcast in January, described the administration's determination to open markets for American farmers.
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 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.
This winter, Washington has been roiled by revelations that a handful of columnists wrote in support of administration policies without disclosing they had accepted payments from the government. But the administration's efforts to generate positive news coverage have been considerably more pervasive than previously known. At the same time, records and interviews suggest widespread complicity or negligence by television stations, given industry ethics standards that discourage the broadcast of prepackaged news segments from any outside group without revealing the source.
Federal agencies are forthright with broadcasters about the origin of the news segments they distribute. The reports themselves, though, are designed to fit seamlessly into the typical local news broadcast. In most cases, the "reporters" are careful not to state in the segment that they work for the government. Their reports generally avoid overt ideological appeals. Instead, the government's news-making apparatus has produced a quiet drumbeat of broadcasts describing a vigilant and compassionate administration
Some reports were produced to support the administration's most cherished policy objectives, like regime change in Iraq or Medicare reform. Others focused on less prominent matters, like the administration's efforts to offer free after-school tutoring, its campaign to curb childhood obesity, its initiatives to preserve forests and wetlands, its plans to fight computer viruses, even its attempts to fight holiday drunken driving. They often feature "interviews" with senior administration officials in which questions are scripted and answers rehearsed. Critics, though, are excluded, as are any hints of mismanagement, waste or controversy.
Some of the segments were broadcast in some of nation's largest television markets, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and Atlanta.
An examination of government-produced news reports offers a look inside a world where the traditional lines between public relations and journalism have become tangled, where local anchors introduce prepackaged segments with "suggested" lead-ins written by public relations experts. It is a world where government-produced reports disappear into a maze of satellite transmissions, Web portals, syndicated news programs and network feeds, only to emerge cleansed on the other side as "independent" journalism.