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 acknowledgement of the government's role in their production.
(By the way, as the article mentions, this was also going on during the Clinton administration. So my objection to this is bipartisan.)
The worst part isn't so much the administrations' sending out these "reports" (although that's bad enough). No, the worst part is the TV media's use of these things. How lazy and unethical do you have to be? Reading the article, I was amazed at how many stations actually ran these things.
I ran into a similar situation while I was the news director of a radio station in northern Illinois. The State of Illinois then, as now, provided ready made news reports for radio stations. These were produced and made available by the Illinois Information Service.
IIS provided several "news" stories a day that could be accessed and recorded by phone (this was the 1980s). Now you can get them online. As I recall, they really were pretty straight forward without a lot of political bias. I'm not sure if they are still that way today.
Anyway, I used to get the feeds from time to time when things were slow to see if I could grab some bit of audio from them (almost always a lawmaker or other state government official commenting on this or that) and try to build a story around it. I don't think I ever used a report in its entirety, but I don't remember for sure. Had I done so, it would have been with full attribution as to where it was coming from. Thinking back on it though, I'm not sure even that would have been the right thing to do.
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Caught that article in NYT yesterday.
Today, I was watching WICS local news at 6:00 PM, and I watched a story covering the issue of genetically modified plants.
I for one don't feel genetically modified plants are anything new, nor anything to worry about (although it should be monitored for safety like any other food).
Still, the quality of the graphics, caught me by suprise, and I suddenly wondered if I was watching a production by - hmmm let's see, maybe Archer Daniels Midland?
It looked like a news story, there was an interview, of two professors at the University of Illinois, one which stated the great promise, the other, our need for diligence, and there was a quick sound byte or two of an organic farmer - but the clincher was the ending.
A graphic which looked more sophisticated than that produced by WICS, showing that there never has been harm to people through eating genetically altered food.
The final words of the "reporter" stated that there never has been any harm to anyone due to genetic alteration of food.
Cut to the familiar, and local, talking head who named the "reporter", not one I've ever heard of before.
Local, but not local, biased, but not biased.
Yup, I'd say a carefully crafted bit of corporate propaganda, and this time not even Sinclair Broadcasting's!
Now, in Mexico, newspapers are controlled by the government monopoly on newsprint. Sure, newspapers can print what they want, Mexico, is free!
Of course, if you operate a newspaper you'll need paper to print it on, and you must arrange purchases through the government - which can make it hard to get if they don't like what you have to say.
But the government in Mexico doesn't really need to act with such a heavy hand - why?
Because they do a lot of advertising in newspapers. Newspapers in Mexico would have a hard time surviving without government advertising.
This advertising, is a bit different than the type we Gringos would expect. The advertising is in the form of, you guessed it, NEWSARTICLES. The newspapers are not allowed to indicate that it is a government sponsored advertisement, but they do the one thing they are allowed to do - use a slightly different font.
So regular readers of the newspaper, spot the propaganda, while others may miss it.
Seems the U.S. is slowly, in so many ways devolving into a third world state.
ETK
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