Bush's assault on the American media
White House spokesman Scott McClellan feigned surprise. He told the press: "We are concerned about the reports of planted stories." McClellan reminded me of Captain Renault in the movie Casablanca who also feigned surprise when he said he was "shocked, shocked to find there was gambling going on here."
The reality is that the Bush administration has launched a concerted campaign to undermine the independence of the American media. The campaign is showing that the Busheviks fear the existence of an informed public almost as much as they do another attack on domestic soil. The campaign involves manufacturing fake news, not just in Iraq, but also the US, as well as the bribing and intimidating of journalists.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. Let's begin with the bogus news. In early 2003 local television stations in the US aired what looked like a typical news report. A narrator identifying herself as Karen Ryan explained the changes in Medicare brought by 2003 Medicare Drug Improvement and Modernization Act. Ryan "reported" that the new changes should help seniors to "stay healthy and have a better quality of life."
Ryan, the media learned, was a former journalist turned public relations specialist who owned a PR firm in Washington, DC. She had contracted with the US Health and Human Services Department's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to produce the Video News Release (VNR) promoting Medicare's new drug benefit.
A media firestorm erupted when it was learned that several stations aired the VNR without identifying its sponsor, and many critics questioned the ethics of using VNRs in broadcast journalism. John Stauber, Executive Vice President for the Washington DC based Center for Media and Democracy, described the use of the material as "plagiarism."
He explained to me: "When a print reporter or editor lifts verbatim from a press release, doesn't identify the source, and puts it out as news, that's plagiarism. Likewise, the use of VNRs is plagiarism because the media has routinely pawned them off on the public as authentic television news reports, and they make no effort to verify the accuracy of the sponsors' claims." The centre is a non profit dedicated to ensuring quality local television.
The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) defended the VNR as the television equivalent of the print news release. In an article at its website, the PRSA complained Ryan was "thrust into the centre of the mud-wrestling pit that is the nation's capital" and that her name had been "summarily dragged through the sludge."
The US Government Accounting Office (GAO) issued a report, revealing that 20 federal agencies had produced and distributed VNRs during the Bush administration and concluded that the Bush administration had violated rules against "publicity and propaganda." The administration countered that the GAO report "fails to recognize the distinction between covert propaganda and purely informational video news reports."
But how would you describe fake and deceptive stories broadcast on television stations without any acknowledgement that they were prepared by the federal government rather than by local journalists?
Further, in pursuit of their propaganda campaign, the Busheviks have not been content simply to manufacture the news. They have also have also bribed reporters into championing its policies. The most high profile example of this has been prominent conservative newspaper columnist and television commentator Armstrong Williams, who received payments of $240,000 from the federal Education Department at the same time he was promoting the Bush administration's education policies in his columns. Williams said that he has no doubt other journalists were still on Bush's payroll, singing his praises.
In addition to buying off unethical and greedy journalists, the Busheviks have also moved to intimidate the media. Bush has summoned newspaper editors to his office in an effort to prevent publication of stories he considers damaging to national security. What I've seen of the Bush administration the past three years, however, I believe it's more a move to protect its incompetent behind.
Bush reportedly had meetings with the Washington Post and New York Times executive editors before their newspapers published stories about the existence of secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe that have been used to interrogate terror suspects and the use of wiretaps without court orders to spy on Americans.
After meeting with New York Times editors about their newspaper's article about domestic spying, Bush described the leak of classified information as harmful. But what many media analysts consider shameful was the New York Times holding of the story about domestic spying for more than a year after its editors had earlier meetings with the Busheviks. You remember the New York Times? That was the newspaper that played a big role in pushing the US into a disastrous war with Iraq because it fed the American public bogus information about weapons of mass destruction.
These are a few of the examples of how the Bush administration has attempted to spin the news, confuse the American people with misinformation and bribe the messengers. Such a strategy, no doubt, undermines the press's integrity, although no one knows for sure what the Busheviks attack on the media will have on health of American democracy. Bush still has three years left in office to hammer away.
Yes, it's a good idea for the US to promote democracy abroad. But at the same time its leadership should not be adopting strategies that undermine it at home.