5. Pravda, U.S.A. - the Age of GOP Propaganda

5.1 Propaganda Media

In order to separate out media behavior that gives the *appearance* of propaganda from overtly propagandistic behavior, only the following types of propaganda are covered here:

• Running "news" items which are pure propaganda, without letting viewers/readers know that it is (e.g., who the source of the "news" is)
• A willingness to push talking points or propaganda for a particular political party without disclosing to viewers/readers/listeners (ahead-of-time) that one is a paid or unpaid consultant to that same party
  • Considering their Dear Leader's love of propaganda (and dislike of exposes of his paid propagandists), conservatives in the mainstream media unsurprisingly "win" hands down on the topic of propaganda. Any media organization that tolerates this behavior (or ignores it) clearly indicates its willingness to also serve as a propaganda arm. Indeed, when one of CNN's co-founders, Reese Schonfeld, actively supports government lying and media cover-ups of Government misbehavior (truly un-American, and the opposite of liberalism and far more in line with today's so-called conservatism), it is not surprising that there are others in his midst who feel similarly.
• Actively pushing for overt, one-sided partisan propaganda (talking points) without seeking even a semblance of balance

I intentionally exclude cases where the news coverage or media behavior was propagandistic in effect but may not have been intentionally propagandistic. The main reason for this is that what is propaganda in effect is to some extent subjective. 

The cases listed below are what I have been able to collect thus far from blogs and Google searches. They demonstrate a willingness of the mainstream media (ICM) (or journalists/columnists employed by the media) to serve as a propaganda organ of the GOP, far more than any such willingness to serve as a propaganda organ for liberals or Democrats. (As CorpWatch points out, the Bush administration spent almost twice as much on propaganda PR pieces than did the Clinton administration; also see this blog post).

5.1.1 Bush Department of Health and Human Services (Medicare) fake news videos

5.1.2 Bush Department of Education fake news videos

5.1.3 Bush State Department and fake news videos

5.1.4 Bush Transportation Security Department and fake news videos

5.1.5 Bush Agriculture Department and fake news videos

5.1.6 Bush Defense Department and fake news videos

5.1.7 Bush Office of National Drug Control Policy and fake news videos

5.1.8 Other Bush administration departments and fake news videos

5.1.9 Armstrong Williams and the Bush Department of Education

5.1.10 Maggie Gallagher and the Bush Department of Health and Human Services

5.1.11 Michael McManus - the self-described ethics expert - and the Bush Department of Health and Human Services

5.1.12 Charles Krauthammer (Washington Post/Fox News) and the Bush White House 

5.1.13 California GOP Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and his fake news videos

5.1.14 Mike Vasilinda and Florida's GOP Governor Jeb Bush's administration

5.1.15 Charles Chieppo and Massachusetts' GOP Governor Mitt Romney's administration

5.1.16 Andrea Engleman and Rep. Jim Gibbons (R-NV)

5.1.17 Clear Channel and George Bush ("Our Leader")

5.1.18 Fox News and the Bush administration/GOP

5.1.19 Sinclair Broadcasting

APPENDIX (covers Jeff Gannon/Talon News and Rush Limbaugh)

5.1.1 Bush Department of Health and Human Services (Medicare) fake news videos

Amy Goldstein reported this in the Washington Post:

The Bush administration violated two federal laws through part of its publicity campaign to promote changes in Medicare intended to help older Americans afford prescription drugs, the investigative arm of Congress said yesterday.

The General Accounting Office concluded that the Department of Health and Human Services illegally spent federal money on what amounted to covert propaganda by producing videos about the Medicare changes that were made to look like news reports. Portions of the videos, which have been aired by 40 television stations around the country, do not make it clear that the announcers were paid by HHS and were not real reporters.
...
The 16-page legal opinion says that HHS's "video news releases" violated a statute that forbids the use of federal money for propaganda, as well as the Antideficiency Act, which covers the unauthorized use of federal funds.
...
Two weeks ago, the Congressional Research Service concluded that the administration potentially violated the law in a related matter, in which the Medicare program's chief actuary has said he was threatened with firing a year ago if he shared with Congress cost estimates that the Medicare legislation would be a third more expensive than the $400 billion Bush said it would cost.
...
The GAO objected to one part of the videos that were sent to TV stations this year. Each of the videos consists of three sections: video clips, information about the Medicare law and a segment called a "story package," which appears to be a news report. It is that last part that the GAO found illegal.

The English-language version of the story package concludes with a woman saying, "In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting." The Spanish version has the same ending but shows a man who identifies himself as Alberto Garcia.

Pierce said the videos are not misleading because television stations know they had been produced by the government and because the stations are free to combine parts of the government-produced material with original reporting.

But the GAO decision said the story packages ran afoul of the law forbidding federal spending on covert propaganda because "in each news report, the content was attributed to an individual purporting to be a reporter but actually hired by an HHS subcontractor."

5.1.2 Bush Department of Education fake news videos

AP/ABC (note the passage I have emphasized in bold):

The Bush administration has promoted its education law with a video that comes across as a news story but fails to make clear the reporter involved was paid with taxpayer money.

The government used a similar approach this year in promoting the new Medicare law and drew a rebuke from the investigative arm of Congress, which found the videos amounted to propaganda in violation of federal law.

The Education Department also has paid for rankings of newspaper coverage of the No Child Left Behind law, a centerpiece of the president's domestic agenda. Points are awarded for stories that say President Bush and the Republican Party are strong on education, among other factors.

The news ratings also rank individual reporters on how they cover the law, based on the points system set up by Ketchum, a public relations firm hired by the government.

The video and documents emerged through a Freedom of Information Act request by People for the American Way, a liberal group that contends the department is spending public money on a political agenda. The group sought details on a $700,000 contract Ketchum received in 2003 from the Education Department.

One service the company provided was a video news release geared for television stations. The video includes a news story that features Education Secretary Rod Paige and promotes tutoring now offered under law.

The story ends with the voice of a woman saying, "In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting."

It does not identify the government as the source of the report. It also fails to make clear the person purporting to be a reporter was someone hired for the promotional video.

Those are the same features including the voice of Karen Ryan that were prominent in videos the Health and Human Services Department used to promote the Medicare law and were judged covert propaganda by the Government Accountability Office in May.

...

At least one television station in New York used the package in 2003, substituting its own reporter for the voiceover but following the script and video provided by the department. The department, in turn, put the text of that station's story on its Web site.

5.1.3 Bush State Department and fake news videos

David Barstow and Robin Stein report in the New York Times:

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. 
...
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.
...
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. 
...
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 of the segments were broadcast in some of nation's largest television markets, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and Atlanta.

...
Yet in three separate opinions in the past year, the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress that studies the federal government and its expenditures, has held that government-made news segments may constitute improper "covert propaganda" even if their origin is made clear to the television stations. The point, the office said, is whether viewers know the origin. Last month, in its most recent finding, the G.A.O. said federal agencies may not produce prepackaged news reports "that conceal or do not clearly identify for the television viewing audience that the agency was the source of those materials."

...

Afghanistan to Memphis: An Agency's Report Ends Up on the Air

On Sept. 11, 2002, WHBQ, the Fox affiliate in Memphis, marked the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks with an uplifting report on how assistance from the United States was helping to liberate the women of Afghanistan.

Tish Clark, a reporter for WHBQ, described how Afghan women, once barred from schools and jobs, were at last emerging from their burkas, taking up jobs as seamstresses and bakers, sending daughters off to new schools, receiving decent medical care for the first time and even participating in a fledgling democracy. Her segment included an interview with an Afghan teacher who recounted how the Taliban only allowed boys to attend school. An Afghan doctor described how the Taliban refused to let male physicians treat women.

In short, Ms. Clark's report seemed to corroborate, however modestly, a central argument of the Bush foreign policy, that forceful American intervention abroad was spreading freedom, improving lives and winning friends.

What the people of Memphis were not told, though, was that the interviews used by WHBQ were actually conducted by State Department contractors. The contractors also selected the quotes used from those interviews and shot the video that went with the narration. They also wrote the narration, much of which Ms. Clark repeated with only minor changes.

As it happens, the viewers of WHBQ were not the only ones in the dark.

Ms. Clark, now Tish Clark Dunning, said in an interview that she, too, had no idea the report originated at the State Department. "If that's true, I'm very shocked that anyone would false report on anything like that," she said.

How a television reporter in Memphis unwittingly came to narrate a segment by the State Department reveals much about the extent to which government-produced news accounts have seeped into the broader new media landscape.

The explanation begins inside the White House, where the president's communications advisers devised a strategy after Sept. 11, 2001, to encourage supportive news coverage of the fight against terrorism. The idea, they explained to reporters at the time, was to counter charges of American imperialism by generating accounts that emphasized American efforts to liberate and rebuild Afghanistan and Iraq.

An important instrument of this strategy was the Office of Broadcasting Services, a State Department unit of 30 or so editors and technicians whose typical duties include distributing video from news conferences. But in early 2002, with close editorial direction from the White House, the unit began producing narrated feature reports, many of them promoting American achievements in Afghanistan and Iraq and reinforcing the administration's rationales for the invasions. These reports were then widely distributed in the United States and around the world for use by local television stations. In all, the State Department has produced 59 such segments.

United States law contains provisions intended to prevent the domestic dissemination of government propaganda. The 1948 Smith-Mundt Act, for example, allows Voice of America to broadcast pro-government news to foreign audiences, but not at home. Yet State Department officials said that law does not apply to the Office of Broadcasting Services. In any event, said Richard A. Boucher, a State Department spokesman: "Our goal is to put out facts and the truth. We're not a propaganda agency."

Even so, as a senior department official, Patricia Harrison, told Congress last year, the Bush administration has come to regard such "good news" segments as "powerful strategic tools" for influencing public opinion. And a review of the department's segments reveals a body of work in sync with the political objectives set forth by the White House communications team after 9/11.

In June 2003, for example, the unit produced a segment that depicted American efforts to distribute food and water to the people of southern Iraq. "After living for decades in fear, they are now receiving assistance - and building trust - with their coalition liberators," the unidentified narrator concluded.

Several segments focused on the liberation of Afghan women, which a White House memo from January 2003 singled out as a "prime example" of how "White House-led efforts could facilitate strategic, proactive communications in the war on terror."

Tracking precisely how a "good news" report on Afghanistan could have migrated to Memphis from the State Department is far from easy. The State Department typically distributes its segments via satellite to international news organizations like Reuters and Associated Press Television News, which in turn distribute them to the major United States networks, which then transmit them to local affiliates.

"Once these products leave our hands, we have no control," Robert A. Tappan, the State Department's deputy assistant secretary for public affairs, said in an interview. The department, he said, never intended its segments to be shown unedited and without attribution by local news programs. "We do our utmost to identify them as State Department-produced products."

Representatives for the networks insist that government-produced reports are clearly labeled when they are distributed to affiliates. Yet with segments bouncing from satellite to satellite, passing from one news organization to another, it is easy to see the potential for confusion. Indeed, in response to questions from The Times, Associated Press Television News acknowledged that they might have distributed at least one segment about Afghanistan to the major United States networks without identifying it as the product of the State Department. A spokesman said it could have "slipped through our net because of a sourcing error."

Kenneth W. Jobe, vice president for news at WHBQ in Memphis, said he could not explain how his station came to broadcast the State Department's segment on Afghan women. "It's the same piece, there's no mistaking it," he said in an interview, insisting that it would not happen again.

Mr. Jobe, who was not with WHBQ in 2002, said the station's script for the segment has no notes explaining its origin. But Tish Clark Dunning said it was her impression at the time that the Afghan segment was her station's version of one done first by network correspondents at either Fox News or CNN. It is not unusual, she said, for a local station to take network reports and then give them a hometown look.

"I didn't actually go to Afghanistan," she said. "I took that story and reworked it. I had to do some research on my own. I remember looking on the Internet and finding out how it all started as far as women covering their faces and everything."

At the State Department, Mr. Tappan said the broadcasting office is moving away from producing narrated feature segments. Instead, the department is increasingly supplying only the ingredients for reports

5.1.4 Bush Transportation Security Department and fake news videos

David Barstow and Robin Stein report in the New York Times:

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." 
...
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 "reporter" covering airport safety was actually a public relations professional working under a false name for the Transportation Security Administration. 
...

5.1.5 Bush Agriculture Department and fake news videos

David Barstow and Robin Stein report in the New York Times:

It is the kind of TV news coverage every president covets.

...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.
...

Meeting a Need: Rising Budget Pressures, Ready-to-Run Segments

WCIA is a small station with a big job in central Illinois.

Each weekday, WCIA's news department produces a three-hour morning program, a noon broadcast and three evening programs. There are plans to add a 9 p.m. broadcast. The staff, though, has been cut to 37 from 39. "We are doing more with the same," said Jim P. Gee, the news director.

Farming is crucial in Mr. Gee's market, yet with so many demands, he said, "it is hard for us to justify having a reporter just focusing on agriculture."

To fill the gap, WCIA turned to the Agriculture Department, which has assembled one of the most effective public relations operations inside the federal government. The department has a Broadcast Media and Technology Center with an annual budget of $3.2 million that each year produces some 90 "mission messages" for local stations - mostly feature segments about the good works of the Agriculture Department.

"I don't want to use the word 'filler,' per se, but they meet a need we have," Mr. Gee said.

The Agriculture Department's two full-time reporters, Bob Ellison and Pat O'Leary, travel the country filing reports, which are vetted by the department's office of communications before they are distributed via satellite and mail. Alisa Harrison, who oversees the communications office, said Mr. Ellison and Mr. O'Leary provide unbiased, balanced and accurate coverage.

"They cover the secretary just like any other reporter," she said.

Invariably, though, their segments offer critic-free accounts of the department's policies and programs. In one report, Mr. Ellison told of the agency's efforts to help Florida clean up after several hurricanes.

''They've done a fantastic job,'' a grateful local official said in the segment.

More recently, Mr. Ellison reported that Mike Johanns, the new agriculture secretary, and the White House were determined to reopen Japan to American beef products. Of his new boss, Mr. Ellison reported, ''He called Bush the best envoy in the world.''

WCIA, based in Champaign, has run 26 segments made by the Agriculture Department over the past three months alone. Or put another way, WCIA has run 26 reports that did not cost it anything to produce.

Mr. Gee, the news director, readily acknowledges that these accounts are not exactly independent, tough-minded journalism. But, he added: ''We don't think they're propaganda. They meet our journalistic standards. They're informative. They're balanced.''

More than a year ago, WCIA asked the Agriculture Department to record a special sign-off that implies the segments are the work of WCIA reporters. So, for example, instead of closing his report with ''I'm Bob Ellison, reporting for the U.S.D.A.,'' Mr. Ellison says, ''With the U.S.D.A., I'm Bob Ellison, reporting for 'The Morning Show.'''

Mr. Gee said the customized sign-off helped raise ''awareness of the name of our station.'' Could it give viewers the idea that Mr. Ellison is reporting on location with the U.S.D.A. for WCIA? ''We think viewers can make up their own minds,'' Mr. Gee said.

Ms. Harrison, the Agriculture Department press secretary, said the WCIA sign-off was an exception. The general policy, she said, is to make clear in each segment that the reporter works for the department. In any event, she added, she did not think there was much potential for viewer confusion. ''It's pretty clear to me,'' she said.

5.1.6 Bush Defense Department and fake news videos

David Barstow and Robin Stein report in the New York Times:

The 'Good News' People: A Menu of Reports From Military Hot Spots

The Defense Department is working hard to produce and distribute its own news segments for television audiences in the United States.

The Pentagon Channel, available only inside the Defense Department last year, is now being offered to every cable and satellite operator in the United States. Army public affairs specialists, equipped with portable satellite transmitters, are roaming war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq, beaming news reports, raw video and interviews to TV stations in the United States. All a local news director has to do is log on to a military-financed Web site, www.dvidshub.net, browse a menu of segments and request a free satellite feed.

Then there is the Army and Air Force Hometown News Service, a unit of 40 reporters and producers set up to send local stations news segments highlighting the accomplishments of military members.

''We're the 'good news' people,'' said Larry W. Gilliam, the unit's deputy director.

Each year, the unit films thousands of soldiers sending holiday greetings to their hometowns. Increasingly, the unit also produces news reports that reach large audiences. The 50 stories it filed last year were broadcast 236 times in all, reaching 41 million households in the United States.

The news service makes it easy for local stations to run its segments unedited. Reporters, for example, are never identified by their military titles. ''We know if we put a rank on there they're not going to put it on their air,'' Mr. Gilliam said.

Each account is also specially tailored for local broadcast. A segment sent to a station in Topeka, Kan., would include an interview with a service member from there. If the same report is sent to Oklahoma City, the soldier is switched out for one from Oklahoma City. ''We try to make the individual soldier a star in their hometown,'' Mr. Gilliam said, adding that segments were distributed only to towns and cities selected by the service members interviewed.

Few stations acknowledge the military's role in the segments. ''Just tune in and you'll see a minute-and-a-half news piece and it looks just like they went out and did the story,'' Mr. Gilliam said. The unit, though, makes no attempt to advance any particular political or policy agenda, he said.

''We don't editorialize at all,'' he said.

Yet sometimes the ''good news'' approach carries political meaning, intended or not. Such was the case after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal surfaced last spring. Although White House officials depicted the abuse of Iraqi detainees as the work of a few rogue soldiers, the case raised serious questions about the training of military police officers.

A short while later, Mr. Gilliam's unit distributed a news segment, sent to 34 stations, that examined the training of prison guards at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri, where some of the military police officers implicated at Abu Ghraib had been trained.

''One of the most important lessons they learn is to treat prisoners strictly but fairly,'' the reporter said in the segment, which depicted a regimen emphasizing respect for detainees. A trainer told the reporter that military police officers were taught to ''treat others as they would want to be treated.'' The account made no mention of Abu Ghraib or how the scandal had prompted changes in training at Fort Leonard Wood.

According to Mr. Gilliam, the report was unrelated to any effort by the Defense Department to rebut suggestions of a broad command failure.

''Are you saying that the Pentagon called down and said, 'We need some good publicity?''' he asked. ''No, not at all.''

5.1.7 Bush Office of National Drug Control Policy and fake news videos

Ceci Connolly (Washington Post):

Shortly before last year's Super Bowl, local news stations across the country aired a story by Mike Morris describing plans for a new White House ad campaign on the dangers of drug abuse.

What viewers did not know was that Morris is not a journalist and his "report" was produced by the government, actions that constituted illegal "covert propaganda," according to an investigation by the Government Accountability Office.

In the second ruling of its kind, the investigative arm of Congress this week scolded the Bush administration for distributing phony prepackaged news reports that include a "suggested live intro" for anchors to read, interviews with Washington officials and a closing that mimics a typical broadcast news sign off.

Although television stations knew the materials were produced by the Office of National Drug Control Policy, there was nothing in the two-minute, prepackaged reports that would indicate to viewers that they came from the government or that Morris, a former journalist, was working under contract for the government.

"You think you are getting a news story, but what you are getting is a paid announcement," said Susan A. Poling, managing associate general counsel at the GAO. "What is objectionable about these is the fact the viewer has no idea their tax dollars are being used to write and produce this video segment."

...

In one video, titled "Urging Parents to Get the Facts Straight on Teen Marijuana Use," news stations were provided a script for the news anchor. It reads: "Despite the fact that marijuana is the most widely used illicit drug among today's youth, many parents admit they're still not taking the drug seriously. Now, the nation's experts in health, education and safety have joined the Drug Czar to speak directly to parents about the very real risks of teen marijuana use. Mike Morris has more."

After interview snippets with John Walters, who heads the drug control policy office, and other experts, the story closes with the voiceover: "This is Mike Morris reporting."

In another, the announcer appears to be "reporting" on a news conference by drug control officials, when "in reality, they are just paid to say a script," Poling said. "In essence, they're actors."

The drug control agency distributed at least seven prepackaged news reports to 770 TV stations. At least 300 news shows used some portion of the materials, though it was impossible to determine how many aired the full prepackaged story or just portions such as "sound bites," Riley said.

If the videos had been identified as coming from the federal agency, that would have been legal, Poling said. But the television package looks like authentic independent journalism.

5.1.8 Other Bush administration departments and fake news videos

David Barstow and Robin Stein report in the New York Times:

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.

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.

It is also a world where all participants benefit.

Local affiliates are spared the expense of digging up original material. Public relations firms secure government contracts worth millions of dollars. The major networks, which help distribute the releases, collect fees from the government agencies that produce segments and the affiliates that show them. The administration, meanwhile, gets out an unfiltered message, delivered in the guise of traditional reporting.

The practice, which also occurred in the Clinton administration, is continuing despite President Bush's recent call for a clearer demarcation between journalism and government publicity efforts. "There needs to be a nice independent relationship between the White House and the press," Mr. Bush told reporters in January, explaining why his administration would no longer pay pundits to support his policies.

In interviews, though, press officers for several federal agencies said the president's prohibition did not apply to government-made television news segments, also known as video news releases. They described the segments as factual, politically neutral and useful to viewers. They insisted that there was no similarity to the case of Armstrong Williams, a conservative columnist who promoted the administration's chief education initiative, the No Child Left Behind Act, without disclosing $240,000 in payments from the Education Department.

What is more, these officials argued, it is the responsibility of television news directors to inform viewers that a segment about the government was in fact written by the government. "Talk to the television stations that ran it without attribution," said William A. Pierce, spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services. "This is not our problem. We can't be held responsible for their actions."

Yet in three separate opinions in the past year, the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress that studies the federal government and its expenditures, has held that government-made news segments may constitute improper "covert propaganda" even if their origin is made clear to the television stations. The point, the office said, is whether viewers know the origin. Last month, in its most recent finding, the G.A.O. said federal agencies may not produce prepackaged news reports "that conceal or do not clearly identify for the television viewing audience that the agency was the source of those materials."

It is not certain, though, whether the office's pronouncements will have much practical effect. Although a few federal agencies have stopped making television news segments, others continue. And on Friday, the Justice Department and the Office of Management and Budget circulated a memorandum instructing all executive branch agencies to ignore the G.A.O. findings. The memorandum said the G.A.O. failed to distinguish between covert propaganda and "purely informational" news segments made by the government. Such informational segments are legal, the memorandum said, whether or not an agency's role in producing them is disclosed to viewers.

Even if agencies do disclose their role, those efforts can easily be undone in a broadcaster's editing room. Some news organizations, for example, simply identify the government's "reporter" as one of their own and then edit out any phrase suggesting the segment was not of their making.

So in a recent segment produced by the Agriculture Department, the agency's narrator ended the report by saying "In Princess Anne, Maryland, I'm Pat O'Leary reporting for the U.S. Department of Agriculture." Yet AgDay, a syndicated farm news program that is shown on some 160 stations, simply introduced the segment as being by "AgDay's Pat O'Leary." The final sentence was then trimmed to "In Princess Anne, Maryland, I'm Pat O'Leary reporting."

Brian Conrady, executive producer of AgDay, defended the changes. "We can clip 'Department of Agriculture' at our choosing," he said. "The material we get from the U.S.D.A., if we choose to air it and how we choose to air it is our choice."

Spreading the Word: Government Efforts and One Woman's Role

Karen Ryan cringes at the phrase "covert propaganda." These are words for dictators and spies, and yet they have attached themselves to her like a pair of handcuffs.

Not long ago, Ms. Ryan was a much sought-after "reporter" for news segments produced by the federal government. A journalist at ABC and PBS who became a public relations consultant, Ms. Ryan worked on about a dozen reports for seven federal agencies in 2003 and early 2004. Her segments for the Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of National Drug Control Policy were a subject of the accountability office's recent inquiries.

The G.A.O. concluded that the two agencies "designed and executed" their segments "to be indistinguishable from news stories produced by private sector television news organizations." A significant part of that execution, the office found, was Ms. Ryan's expert narration, including her typical sign-off - "In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting" - delivered in a tone and cadence familiar to television reporters everywhere.

Last March, when The New York Times first described her role in a segment about new prescription drug benefits for Medicare patients, reaction was harsh. In Cleveland, The Plain Dealer ran an editorial under the headline "Karen Ryan, You're a Phony," and she was the object of late-night jokes by Jon Stewart and received hate mail.

"I'm like the Marlboro man," she said in a recent interview.

In fact, Ms. Ryan was a bit player who made less than $5,000 for her work on government reports. She was also playing an accepted role in a lucrative art form, the video news release. "I just don't feel I did anything wrong," she said. "I just did what everyone else in the industry was doing."

It is a sizable industry. One of its largest players, Medialink Worldwide Inc., has about 200 employees, with offices in New York and London. It produces and distributes about 1,000 video news releases a year, most commissioned by major corporations. The Public Relations Society of America even gives an award, the Bronze Anvil, for the year's best video news release.

Several major television networks play crucial intermediary roles in the business. Fox, for example, has an arrangement with Medialink to distribute video news releases to 130 affiliates through its video feed service, Fox News Edge. CNN distributes releases to 750 stations in the United States and Canada through a similar feed service, CNN Newsource. Associated Press Television News does the same thing worldwide with its Global Video Wire.

"We look at them and determine whether we want them to be on the feed," David M. Winstrom, director of Fox News Edge, said of video news releases. "If I got one that said tobacco cures cancer or something like that, I would kill it."

In essence, video news releases seek to exploit a growing vulnerability of television news: Even as news staffs at the major networks are shrinking, many local stations are expanding their hours of news coverage without adding reporters.

"No TV news organization has the resources in labor, time or funds to cover every worthy story," one video news release company, TVA Productions, said in a sales pitch to potential clients, adding that "90 percent of TV newsrooms now rely on video news releases."

Federal agencies have been commissioning video news releases since at least the first Clinton administration. [eRiposte emphasis] An increasing number of state agencies are producing television news reports, too; the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department alone has produced some 500 video news releases since 1993.

Under the Bush administration, federal agencies appear to be producing more releases, and on a broader array of topics.

A definitive accounting is nearly impossible. There is no comprehensive archive of local television news reports, as there is in print journalism, so there is no easy way to determine what has been broadcast, and when and where.

Still, several large agencies, including the Defense Department, the State Department and the Department of Health and Human Services, acknowledge expanded efforts to produce news segments. Many members of Mr. Bush's first-term cabinet appeared in such segments.

A recent study by Congressional Democrats offers another rough indicator: the Bush administration spent $254 million in its first term on public relations contracts, nearly double what the last Clinton administration spent. [eRiposte emphasis]

Karen Ryan was part of this push - a "paid shill for the Bush administration," as she self-mockingly puts it. It is, she acknowledges, an uncomfortable title.

Ms. Ryan, 48, describes herself as not especially political, and certainly no Bush die-hard. She had hoped for a long career in journalism. But over time, she said, she grew dismayed by what she saw as the decline of television news - too many cut corners, too many ratings stunts.

In the end, she said, the jump to video news releases from journalism was not as far as one might expect. "It's almost the same thing," she said.

There are differences, though. When she went to interview Tommy G. Thompson, then the health and human services secretary, about the new Medicare drug benefit, it was not the usual reporter-source exchange. First, she said, he already knew the questions, and she was there mostly to help him give better, snappier answers. And second, she said, everyone involved is aware of a segment's potential political benefits.

Her Medicare report, for example, was distributed in January 2004, not long before Mr. Bush hit the campaign trail and cited the drug benefit as one of his major accomplishments.

The script suggested that local anchors lead into the report with this line: "In December, President Bush signed into law the first-ever prescription drug benefit for people with Medicare." In the segment, Mr. Bush is shown signing the legislation as Ms. Ryan describes the new benefits and reports that "all people with Medicare will be able to get coverage that will lower their prescription drug spending."

The segment made no mention of the many critics who decry the law as an expensive gift to the pharmaceutical industry. The G.A.O. found that the segment was "not strictly factual," that it contained "notable omissions" and that it amounted to "a favorable report" about a controversial program.

And yet this news segment, like several others narrated by Ms. Ryan, reached an audience of millions. According to the accountability office, at least 40 stations ran some part of the Medicare report. Video news releases distributed by the Office of National Drug Control Policy, including one narrated by Ms. Ryan, were shown on 300 stations and reached 22 million households. According to Video Monitoring Services of America, a company that tracks news programs in major cities, Ms. Ryan's segments on behalf of the government were broadcast a total of at least 64 times in the 40 largest television markets.

Even these measures, though, do not fully capture the reach of her work. Consider the case of News 10 Now, a cable station in Syracuse owned by Time Warner. In February 2004, days after the government distributed its Medicare segment, News 10 Now broadcast a virtually identical report, including the suggested anchor lead-in. The News 10 Now segment, however, was not narrated by Ms. Ryan. Instead, the station edited out the original narration and had one of its reporters repeat the script almost word for word.

The station's news director, Sean McNamara, wrote in an e-mail message, "Our policy on provided video is to clearly identify the source of that video." In the case of the Medicare report, he said, the station believed it was produced and distributed by a major network and did not know that it had originally come from the government.

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

"Absolutely not."

Little Oversight: TV's Code of Ethics, With Uncertain Weight

"Clearly disclose the origin of information and label all material provided by outsiders."

Those words are from the code of ethics of the Radio-Television News Directors Association, the main professional society for broadcast news directors in the United States. Some stations go further, all but forbidding the use of any outside material, especially entire reports. And spurred by embarrassing publicity last year about Karen Ryan, the news directors association is close to proposing a stricter rule, said its executive director, Barbara Cochran.

Whether a stricter ethics code will have much effect is unclear; it is not hard to find broadcasters who are not adhering to the existing code, and the association has no enforcement powers.

The Federal Communications Commission does, but it has never disciplined a station for showing government-made news segments without disclosing their origin, a spokesman said.

Could it? Several lawyers experienced with F.C.C. rules say yes. They point to a 2000 decision by the agency, which stated, "Listeners and viewers are entitled to know by whom they are being persuaded."

In interviews, more than a dozen station news directors endorsed this view without hesitation. Several expressed disdain for the prepackaged segments they received daily from government agencies, corporations and special interest groups who wanted to use their airtime and credibility to sell or influence.

But when told that their stations showed government-made reports without attribution, most reacted with indignation. Their stations, they insisted, would never allow their news programs to be co-opted by segments fed from any outside party, let alone the government.

"They're inherently one-sided, and they don't offer the possibility for follow-up questions - or any questions at all," said Kathy Lehmann Francis, until recently the news director at WDRB, the Fox affiliate in Louisville, Ky.

Yet records from Video Monitoring Services of America indicate that WDRB has broadcast at least seven Karen Ryan segments, including one for the government, without disclosing their origin to viewers.

Mike Stutz, news director at KGTV, the ABC affiliate in San Diego, was equally opposed to putting government news segments on the air.

"It amounts to propaganda, doesn't it?" he said.

Again, though, records from Video Monitoring Services of America show that from 2001 to 2004 KGTV ran at least one government-made segment featuring Ms. Ryan, 5 others featuring her work on behalf of corporations, and 19 produced by corporations and other outside organizations. It does not appear that KGTV viewers were told the origin of these 25 segments.

"I thought we were pretty solid," Mr. Stutz said, adding that they intend to take more precautions.

Confronted with such evidence, most news directors were at a loss to explain how the segments made it on the air. Some said they were unable to find archive tapes that would help answer the question. Others promised to look into it, then stopped returning telephone messages. A few removed the segments from their Web sites, promised greater vigilance in the future or pleaded ignorance.

Friends of the Earth reports this:

The Department of the Interior (DOI) has been producing and releasing the same kind of misleading video news releases that have already generated controversy at other federal agencies. Responding to a Freedom of Information request from environmental groups Friends of the Earth and Bluewater Network, DOI provided several prepackaged video news releases that fail to disclose to TV viewers that they are government products.

 “The American people deserve to know when their tax dollars are being used to create government propaganda that they are unknowingly watching on TV,” said Korey Hartwich, policy analyst at Friends of the Earth. “The GAO has already said that the government should not be producing this kind of propaganda. It’s time for the Bush administration to put a stop to it, in every department of government.”

Two releases contained no identifying information at all on the video footage itself:

*  A release on producing methane hydrates from the ocean has no audio or video ID of DOI at the beginning of the footage, and ends with the audio, “In Tampa, Pam Forrester reporting.”

*  A release on West Nile Virus also had no audio or video ID of DOI at the beginning of the footage, ending with the audio sign-off, “This is Porter Versfelt reporting.”

“The Bush administration’s continued and wide spread use of mock news reports makes it nearly impossible for the average citizen to participate meaningfully in their government,” said Sean Smith, Bluewater Network’s public lands director.  “Moreover, this media manipulation has a corrosive effect on the public’s faith in TV reporting and may cause reasonable people to question the source and truthfulness of any story that is favorable to the Bush agenda.”

A third release, also on West Nile Virus, had no audio or video ID of DOI at the beginning of the footage. This release did have an audio ID on sign-off, “For the CDC and USGS this is Pam Forrester.”

“These releases are not just ‘the facts,’ said Hartwich. “They’re ‘the facts’ as interpreted by and chosen by whatever government officials were involved in producing these releases. The issue here is one of transparency: to function as fully-informed democratic decision-makers, we must know who prepared ‘the facts’ we’re looking at.”

5.1.9 Armstrong Williams and the Bush Department of Education

As USA Today pointed out:

Seeking to build support among black families for its education reform law, the Bush administration paid a prominent black pundit $240,000 to promote the law on his nationally syndicated television show and to urge other black journalists to do the same.
The campaign, part of an effort to promote No Child Left Behind (NCLB), required commentator Armstrong Williams "to regularly comment on NCLB during the course of his broadcasts," and to interview Education Secretary Rod Paige for TV and radio spots that aired during the show in 2004.

Williams said Thursday he understands that critics could find the arrangement unethical, but "I wanted to do it because it's something I believe in."

The top Democrat on the House Education Committee, Rep. George Miller of California, called the contract "a very questionable use of taxpayers' money" that is "probably illegal." He said he will ask his Republican counterpart to join him in requesting an investigation.

Let me just pick this additional post from Atrios, for convenience.

They Write Letters

Lautenberg, Kennedy, and Reid write to President Bush.

Excerpt:

In addition to the illegality of these actions taken by your Administration, we believe that the act of bribing journalists to bias their news in favor of government policies undermines the integrity of our democracy. Actions like this were common in the Soviet Union, but until now, thought to be long extinguished in our country.

These revelations regarding Mr. Williams are the latest – and most disturbing – in a series of actions by your Administration to manipulate public opinion through covert propaganda. On May 19, 2004, the GAO found that your Administration illegally spent taxpayer funds on covert propaganda by paying Ketchum Incorporated to produce fake news stories promoting the image of the new Medicare law.

Full letter.

...

Williams wrote about NCLB here, here, here, and here.

5.1.10 Maggie Gallagher and the Bush Department of Health and Human Services

Link:

Universal Press Syndicate columnist Maggie Gallagher says a Saturday column in The Washington Post retracted a claim about her.

"I would not call it a retraction," responded Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt, who wrote the column, when reached by E&P.

Added Howard Kurtz, the Post writer who broke the story about Gallagher receiving $21,500 from the Department of Health and Human Services to write marriage-themed material, "The only retraction is in Maggie Gallagher's imagination."

Hiatt's column discussed various columnists, including Gallagher, involved in controversies this month. He wrote that Gallagher "should have disclosed her government payments in columns on the subject," and that writing an opinion column and doing consulting work for the government are roles that "coexist uneasily." Hiatt also wrote: "We have not written editorials about Gallagher; she was not paid to covertly espouse administration views in her column."

Gallagher apparently interpreted this last line as a retraction. In a Saturday e-mail to E&P, the columnist said she had sent a Friday letter to the Post "asking the paper [to] retract the specific claim the Bush administration paid me 'to help promote the president's proposal.' For, as I wrote, 'whether Howard Kurtz and The Washington Post acknowledge it or not, it is this specific charge and not the question of disclosure that is feeding the media coverage.'"

To which Gallagher added: "This morning, the editorial leadership of The Washington Post has done an honorable thing by retracting the charge." Then she quoted Hiatt's line about how Gallagher "was not paid to covertly espouse administration views in her columns."

While people are free to interpret an opinion piece any way they want, said Hiatt, he's "not in a position to retract" content generated by the news side of the Post.

Kurtz told E&P there's "nothing to retract" in his article about Gallagher. "My original story made it crystal clear that Maggie Gallagher was paid by the Department of Health and Human Services to directly work on the president's marriage initiative through such efforts as writing brochures and ghostwriting a magazine article for a top department official," he said. "The article never suggested nor do I believe she was paid to somehow influence her [other] writing."

He added: "Ms. Gallagher, after apologizing for her mistake, is playing some kind of semantic game by proclaiming her innocence of something that The Washington Post never accused her of. My story was carefully done and accurate, and no correction is necessary."

Digby had some fun tracking down Ms. Gallagher's writings. Here is one snippet:

Maggie has been telling everyone who will listen, ad nauseum, that she has been a "marriage expert" for twenty years. But for ten of those years, fully half of her career, she was an unwed mother. That's quite a CV.

Kathy Grier was kind enough to send along some links to a few of the rare Maggie writings in which she admits to her little moral boo-boo.
Here's the evidence. (I know it's early in the day, but you should pour yourself a stiff drink before you read it. You're going to need it. Wow.)

And here's an interview with the hedonistic San Francisco liberal mag, Salon, in which she says "I was an unwed mother for ten years."

Let's just say that there isn't a paper trail showing that quote amongst her voluminous writings for right wing publications. She certainly doesn't mention it when she's hectoring girls about sex out of wedlock or decrying the husbandless home.

One can understand how difficult it is to find a mate and all, but if you believe so strongly that children should not be raised without both parents, ten years seems like quite a long time to wait to find a father for your child. There are matchmaking services on the Right that could have found Maggie a nice Christian man from Ardmore, Oklahoma who needed a mother for his five children. Maggie believes that any father is better than no father (unless he's gay, of course) so the proper thing to have done would be for her to sacrifice her "career" as a "marriage expert" and you know, actually get married to any man who would have her in order to provide a proper home for her son. Otherwise she's just another liberal feminazi putting her own need to live where she wanted and put her education to work and find a man she loved before the needs of her child. What will we tell the children?

This is an epidemic on the right. Gallagher reminds me of Susan Carpenter McMillan anti-abortion zealot (and Paula Jones stylist) who was revealed to have had two abortions to which she had never admitted.

I'm beginning to feel sorry for the poor sincere red state schmucks who believe in all this traditional values stuff. A bunch of slick, elitist, wingnut hucksters are taking them to the cleaners.

5.1.11 Michael McManus - the self-described ethics expert - and the Bush Department of Health and Human Services

Link:

"Ethics & Religion" columnist Michael McManus, after not acknowledging wrongdoing in a statement last weekend, is now asking readers for "forgiveness" for failing to disclose that his Marriage Savers organization received federal money.

In his Feb. 5 column posted today at MarriageSavers.com, McManus wrote that the Marriage Savers organization, of which he's president and co-founder, "received $10,200 from the Department of Health and Human Services to meet with local leaders organizing 'Healthy Marriage Initiatives.' ... Second, I wrote columns praising the [Bush] administration for its 'Healthy Marriage Initiative,' without disclosing that Marriage Savers had received a consulting fee. In retrospect, that was a conflict of interest. I am truly sorry. I ask the forgiveness of newspapers publishing my column and of you, as readers."

He also wrote: "What's particularly painful, I write a column called 'Ethics & Religion' and am guilty of an ethical lapse."

McManus self-syndicates "Ethics & Religion" to about 35 newspapers. One of them, the Reading (Pa.) Eagle, ran an editorial today explaining why it's dropping the column. The editorial -- which a Feb. 1 E&P story had reported was coming -- stated that McManus "clearly violated journalistic ethics" by "promot[ing] the Bush agenda without disclosing [he] had been paid to do so."

5.1.12 Charles Krauthammer (Washington Post/Fox News) and the Bush White House 

Link:

The controversy began when Post staff writers Dan Balz and Jim VandeHei reported January 22 that the White House process of preparing Bush's inaugural address included "consultation with a number of outside experts," including Krauthammer and Weekly Standard editor William Kristol. On January 24, Media Matters for America demonstrated that both Kristol and Krauthammer subsequently praised Bush's speech on FOX News Channel while failing to disclose their private consultations with White House officials. Kristol also wrote a laudatory article about the speech for The Weekly Standard without disclosing any private connection to it.

A January 29 Post article by staff writer and media critic Howard Kurtz quoted Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt, who publishes Krauthammer's column, as saying that the contention that Krauthammer consulted on the speech -- as reported January 22 by the Post's news department -- "is false"; Hiatt also wrote in a January 29 column that Krauthammer "has gotten a bum rap." But Kurtz quoted Liz Spayd, the paper's assistant managing editor for national news, as saying: "We stand by the story we wrote. We have a firsthand source who says it was crystal clear a primary purpose of the meeting was to seek advice on both Bush's inaugural and State of the Union speeches."

Kristol described to Kurtz a breakfast he had with Peter Wehner, director of the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives, and presidential speechwriter Michael Gerson, in November 2004 to discuss "themes for the second term and included in that, themes for the inaugural." Kristol said the inaugural address was not discussed "concretely." Wehner told Kurtz he may have discussed the speech with Kristol but wasn't sure.

Kurtz reported that the invitation to a January 10 White House meeting attended by Krauthammer said: "What should this administration do/say more of -- and what should it do/say less of? What are the key achievable goals we should aim for during the next four years?" Kurtz reported that Wehner, who attended the meeting along with Gerson, White House counselor Dan Bartlett, and White House senior adviser Karl Rove, among others, asked Krauthammer "to lead off the discussion on 'spreading liberty to the Middle East.'" Krauthammer described the meeting to Kurtz as "an informal, off-the-record discussion of U.S. Middle East policy. ... This meeting was not designed to be the exercise in speech preparation. Nor did I have that impression during the meeting itself that it was. If I had, I would have mentioned it when commenting on it." Wehner told Kurtz the meeting was "pretty much divorced" from Bush's inaugural address.

On January 30, Post ombudsman Michael Getler weighed in, writing that "Krauthammer has since told the Post that the speech never came up at the meeting, that he did not consider himself to have been consulting in any way on it, and that if it had come up, he would have disclosed it." Getler did not address the point that Post news editor Spayd was quoted in Kurtz's article the previous day as saying that the newspaper stands by its story that a "primary purpose of the meeting was to seek advice on both Bush's inaugural and State of the Union speeches."

Krauthammer and Spayd can't both be correct, and Getler, while appearing to accept Krauthammer's statement, was apparently unwilling or unable to resolve the conflict.

Getler concluded: "If they [Krauthammer and Kristol] were involved in some fashion in helping shape the themes of the speech, and were then going to comment on it, they should have acknowledged their role or participation. Even better, in my view, would be for columnists, generally, to stay out of White House advisory deliberations. They have ample opportunity to lay out their thoughts in public."

Leaving aside the January 22 Post report that Krauthammer consulted on the inaugural address, which he denies, the issue of the disclosure of the White House meeting and any advice Krauthammer may have given remains. Kurtz wrote that Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, "said a columnist who offered the White House foreign-policy advice should disclose that when writing on the subject." Rosenstiel told Kurtz: "If there is nothing wrong with doing it, there's nothing wrong with sharing it. ... Journalists owe their first allegiance to their audience." Rosenstiel added that another "potential problem" is that "policymakers like to meet with journalists and ask their advice as a way of co-opting them."

Kurtz's article confirmed that both Kristol and Krauthammer privately consulted with high White House officials about presidential policies and communications. Subsequently, both Kristol and Krauthammer have written and commented publicly on the administration without disclosure. For example, eleven days after meeting at the White House to discuss what Wehner called "spreading liberty in the Middle East," Krauthammer wrote a January 21 column headlined "Tomorrow's Threat," in which he argued: "The great project of the Bush administration -- the strengthening and spread of democracy -- is enjoying considerable success."

Hiatt told Kurtz that "Post editorial board members are not permitted to offer politicians private advice," but "obviously I have less ability to set rules for people who don't work for me."

Krauthammer has yet to disclose his private meeting with top White House officials to his readers in his column -- syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group and published by Hiatt -- even as he continues to write about the administration, and the Post is apparently leaving the decision on whether to do so up to him.

5.1.13 California GOP Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and his fake news videos

Dion Nissenbaum in the San Jose Mercury News:

Had they been produced by the federal government, the mock TV reports touting Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's pet projects probably would have been deemed ``covert propaganda'' by congressional investigators.

It's not the use of taxpayer dollars to pay a former TV reporter to produce videos trumpeting the governor's agenda that would cross the line. It's the failure to explicitly tell viewers that they are produced by the government.

Whether the Schwarzenegger videos run afoul of state laws is being examined by both the California attorney general and lawyers in the Legislature. But the governor's decision to adopt a disputed strategy used by the Bush administration has the former actor who prides himself on being a master of marketing and media savvy fending off accusations that he's gone too far.

``You would have to believe that most of California's local TV news directors just fell off the turnip truck if you feed them anchor scripts and one-sided tape packages from the Schwarzenegger propaganda ministry,'' said Marty Kaplan, associate dean at the USC Annenberg School for Communication. ``Paying for them with taxpayer money, and pretending they're garden-variety video news releases, compounds that arrogance by extending that contempt to the public.''

The unfolding debate in California mirrors the controversy in Washington, where President Bush used federal funds to produce hundreds of videos that look like TV news reports on everything from his health care proposals to his anti-drug policies.

Administration officials in Washington and Sacramento have argued that there was no intent to deceive television viewers, that all the videos begin with statements informing news directors that they were produced by the government.

Federal warning

But the U.S. Government Accountability Office has concluded in a series of decisions issued over the past 10 months that, at least at the federal level, that isn't good enough. And the independent congressional watchdog drove that point home last month in a memo sent to all federal agencies warning them to be vigilant about not breaking anti-propaganda laws.

``It is not enough that the contents of an agency's communication may be unobjectionable,'' wrote Comptroller General David M. Walker. ``Neither is it enough for an agency to identify itself to the broadcasting organization as the source of the prepackaged news story.''

Walker didn't knock the videos themselves. He simply said the government must ensure that the news reports themselves, not just the lead-ins, make it clear where they come from.

``Prepackaged news stories can be utilized without violating the law,'' wrote Walker, ``so long as there is clear disclosure to the television viewing audience that this material was prepared by, or in cooperation with, the government department or agency,''

Video news releases, as they are known, have become a popular public-relations tool over the past two decades. Drug companies use them to send TV stations video of their latest pill. Environmental groups hand out video of e-waste sites in Asia.

Studies have found that hundreds of television stations routinely use portions of video news releases. But it was last year's Bush administration videos that sparked a debate over the use of mock news stories by both the government and media.

Schwarzenegger isn't the first California governor to use the tactic. Democratic Gov. Gray Davis issued a couple of Labor Day videos talking up the California worker and state economy. But Schwarzenegger has taken the strategy to the next level by using the news-story format to publicize some of his most contentious proposals -- from diluting teacher tenure rules to blocking orders that would put more nurses in state hospitals.

$5,000 spent

In all, the administration estimates that it has spent about $5,000 on five videos. Most follow the same format: They open with suggested introductory text for news anchors to read, followed by the news story narrated by Tim Herrera, a former television journalist.

Herrera, one of the administration's multimedia communications specialists, includes footage of the governor at various public events, interviews with government officials and clips of restaurant employees or nurses on the job supporting the administration position. Unlike traditional news reports, these contain no critical views, something the administration says it's not obligated to do.

``The government has the right to advocate and state a position and, in many cases, is obligated to do that, and doing that through a video format is a way to reach more people,'' said Herrera, a Democrat who spent nearly two decades in broadcast journalism.

State law does block use of some state services ``for political, sectarian, or propaganda purposes.'' And the Legislature's attorneys initial review has found no authority for the administration to use taxpayer money to create the videos.

Even if officials should have done more to clearly identify the videos as government-produced, some media analysts said the responsibility to the viewer lies more with television stations than the Schwarzenegger administration.

``The onus is on the journalist,'' said Susan Rasky, a former New York Times reporter now working as a senior lecturer at the University of California-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. ``Nobody twists our arms to use these, and my feeling is that anything we get from the government in one way or another is designed to promote the government's view.''

If anything, said Rasky, the hubbub underscores just how scripted Schwarzenegger's administration has become and how little access journalists have to the governor.

5.1.14 Mike Vasilinda and Florida's GOP Governor Jeb Bush's administration

Via Bonddad at Dailykos, comes this story in Florida's Herald Tribune:

At the same time one of Florida's most visible television reporters brought the news to viewers around the state, he earned hundreds of thousands of dollars on the side from the government agencies he covered.

Mike Vasilinda, a 30-year veteran of the Tallahassee press corps, does public relations work and provides film editing services to more than a dozen state agencies.

His Tallahassee company, Mike Vasilinda Productions Inc., has earned more than $100,000 over the past four years through contracts with Gov. Jeb Bush's office, the Secretary of State, the Department of Education and other government entities that are routinely part of Vasilinda's stories.

Vasilinda also was paid to work on campaign ads for at least one politician and to create a promotional movie for Leon County. One of his biggest state contracts was a 1996 deal that paid nearly $900,000 to air the weekly drawing for the Florida Lottery.

Meanwhile, the freelance reporter's stories continued to air on CNN and most Florida NBC stations, including WFLA-Channel 8 in Tampa.

On Friday, Vasilinda told the Herald-Tribune that his business dealings with state government don't influence his reporting.

"I have processes in place to make sure the products we put out for our news clients are free from bias from any source," Vasilinda said. "We absolutely keep arm's length between the two divisions of our company."

But Bob Steele, a journalism ethics professor at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, said Vasilinda's state government work "certainly raises some red flags."

"Journalists should be guided by a principle of independence, and their primary loyalty should be to the public," Steele said. "When journalists have loyalties to a government office or government agencies, those competing loyalties can undermine journalistic independence."

Vasilinda's stories reach millions of viewers because he sells them through Capitol News Service, the television wire service he founded and runs in Tallahassee. NBC and other stations subscribe to Capitol News Service and then can download and air any segments done by Vasilinda or the reporters who work for him.

...

Vasilinda said his situation is nothing like Williams' because he has not personally promoted any government programs or appeared in any of the videos his business produced.

In fact, Vasilinda has a reputation for being among the most aggressive reporters covering government in Tallahassee.

"No one has ever suggested that our coverage, in any way, is soft on anybody," Vasilinda said. "The proof is in the pudding."

Steele said that argument doesn't work because being unbiased is only partly about what gets on the air.

"We don't know everything he passed up, questions he didn't ask, issues he didn't explore," Steele said.

Many of the agencies that have contracted with Vasilinda were unable to provide details of the contracts late Friday.

In January, a Herald-Tribune reporter left repeated messages with Gov. Bush spokeswoman Alia Faraj requesting information about whether any journalists have received money from state agencies.

...

State officials from several agencies said Vasilinda Productions has created promotional videos, filmed public service announcements featuring prominent government officials and made copies of videos and compact disks for agencies. Several years ago, Vasilinda Productions produced a back-to-school video featuring then-Education Commissioner Charlie Crist who went on to become Attorney General and is now considered a contender for governor in 2006.

The fact that Vasilinda works for government agencies is widely known among reporters and government officials in Tallahassee.

At a press conference in front of other reporters in 1996, then-Sen. Jack Latvala, a Republican from Palm Harbor, singled out Vasilinda for accepting the lottery contract.

But viewers around the state have never been told of Vasilinda's broad financial ties to state government.

In fact, several television executives at Florida's NBC affiliates -- stations associated with but not owned by NBC -- said they were unaware of Vasilinda's contracts and would not comment on them until they had more information.

CNN, which aired a Vasilinda story on Terri Schiavo on Thursday, did not return phone calls seeking comment.

The only NBC-owned news station in Florida, WTBJ in Miami, said it will review the situation with Vasilinda and won't run any stories he produces until they have completed the review.

WFLA News Director Forrest Carr said he knew that Vasilinda had been hired by the state but did not know how many contracts or how much money Vasilinda had been paid.
...

5.1.15 Charles Chieppo and Massachusetts' GOP Governor Mitt Romney's administration

Raphael Lewis (Boston Globe):

The Boston Herald yesterday ended its relationship with an op-ed columnist who is also working as a promotional writer for Governor Mitt Romney's administration after learning that the writer had failed to disclose a separate contract with the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority.

Charles D. Chieppo began a contract worth up to $32,000 with the convention center in February to organize a conference to promote the state's tourism industry. The Globe reported yesterday that Chieppo also began a $10,000 contract with the Romney administration this week to pen op-ed pieces and material touting the governor's environmental policies.

Gwen Gage, a spokeswoman for the Herald, said Thursday that the paper's editorial page editor, Rachelle Cohen, had approved Chieppo's environmental consulting work with the administration because he had disclosed it and because he agreed not to write about any topics related to his contract. However, Chieppo did not disclose the convention center contract; Cohen learned about it when a Globe reporter called yesterday seeking comment.

''Rachelle did not know about that [contract], and the deal that she had with Charlie was that he disclose any consulting work that he was doing," Gage said.

Herald publisher Patrick Purcell issued a brief statement saying, ''Upon further review, the Boston Herald has decided to sever our relationship with Charles Chieppo."

Though he lost the Herald op-ed column, Chieppo apparently will continue working under the two state contracts.

Chieppo, who began writing on the Herald's op-ed page in January, said in an interview yesterday that it did not occur to him that he should have informed Herald editors about his convention center authority work, which pays $100 an hour. A former member of the authority's board of directors, Chieppo said he is forbidden by state ethics rules from accepting money for writing about the authority and thus never considered it an issue.

''It just didn't occur to me to be an issue because it was in an area that I was precluded from writing about anyway due to ethics rules, and clearly, that was an error in judgment on my part," Chieppo said.

5.1.16 Andrea Engleman and Rep. Jim Gibbons (R-NV)

Las Vegas Sun:

Rep. Jim Gibbons paid a veteran television reporter $8,000 for consulting last year while she was working as a freelance reporter for a Reno radio station, according to campaign finance reports.

A Federal Election Commission document filed by Gibbons, R-Nev., lists the payment to Andrea Engleman on Nov. 30, 2004, weeks after she had been fired as co-host of the television news program Nevada Newsmakers. At the time the contract was in effect, Engleman said, she was compiling reports for KOH-AM radio in Reno.

Gibbons' spokeswoman, Amy Spanbauer, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal for a Tuesday report that Engleman was hired to conduct postelection analysis for the congressman.

"It was our understanding that she was not contracting with any media at the time," Spanbauer said.

Spanbauer said Engleman performed the work in December and has not done any work since. However, she said, future consulting work was a possibility.

"It depends on what she does with her career," Spanbauer said.

Engleman, the former director of the Nevada Press Association, said the consulting work proposal was made by Gibbons' wife, Dawn Gibbons, a former Republican state assemblywoman.

Shortly after her Nov. 9, 2004, firing from Nevada Newsmakers, Engleman said, she and Dawn Gibbons met for a previously scheduled lunch.

"Dawn talked to me at the end of November and wanted to know how I was going to get through Christmas," Engleman said. "Frankly, they did it more to help me. They asked me to do some research."

Engleman, 64, declined to specify the type of research she did for the congressman. She said the contract was for December only.

Dawn Gibbons did not respond to a message left by the Review-Journal.

Engleman said she didn't sever all reporting ties when she took the consulting job. She said she was working as a freelance reporter for KOH at the time and that she cleared her consulting work with the station.

Also see Crooks and Liars.

5.1.17 Clear Channel and George Bush ("Our Leader")

From Raw Story:

A billboard recently put up in Orlando bearing a smiling photograph of President Bush with the words “Our Leader” is raising eyebrows among progressives who feel the poster is akin to that of propaganda used by tyrannical regimes.

RAW STORY confirmed the billboard’s existence Monday evening. The billboard pictured, which is on I-4, says that it is a “political public service message brought to you by Clear Channel Outdoor.”

A second billboard bearing the same image along the same route says it was paid for by Charles W. Clayton Jr. Clayton’s firm, Charles Clayton Construction, said he was traveling this week and couldn’t be reached for comment.

The Clear Channel-sponsored billboard was not lit up for drivers Monday evening. The Clayton billboard was.

In response to inquiries from RAW STORY and the Associated Press, Clear Channel Outdoor issued a statement asserting that the billboard’s content was the product of the local office of the company, and not a corporate decision.

It appeared to confirm that Clear Channel did indeed place the billboard in question.

“Clear Channel Outdoor markets are operated locally,” Tony Alwin, Senior Vice President, Creative for Clear Channel Outdoor, said. “Local managers determine what copy to use when a location has time that is not sold to an advertiser.”

Clear Channel Outdoor Orlando said they could not respond to requests for comment this week because their press person was “away.” They referred calls to their San Antonio corporate parent, which did not return two messages for comment.

The Orlando Associated Press bureau said they had seen at least one sign but didn’t plan a story. They suggested that the signs would only become a story were there a public response to the billboards, and that the county in which they were situated would probably meet the signs with “a warm response.”

One Orlando resident penned a concerned letter to the (registration-restricted) Orlando Sentinel on Saturday about the billboard. As the site is restricted to members, the letter appears below.

“The first thing I thought was, when was the last time I have seen a president on a billboard?” wrote resident Dianna Lawson. “Didn’t Saddam Hussein have his picture up everywhere? What next, a statue?”

Orlando Sentinel Letters Editor Dixie Tate said they wouldn’t have printed the letter were it false. Other reporters at the Sentinel told RAW STORY they’d also seen the billboard.

Others said they’d seen a similar sign in Jacksonville along I-95.

“We don’t do political advertising,” said Jacksonville Clear Channel sales representative Brad Parsons. He said the photograph was probably bogus.

A second Jacksonville rep acknowledged the company did political advertising but only when paid for by a third party. When asked if he would look at the picture for verification, he declined to give out his email address.

Common Cause, the public interest advocacy group, said the billboard probably wasn’t a violation of campaign finance regulations, but expressed concern about Clear Channel’s history and their use of billboard space to support the Administration.

“I think it sort of exemplifies the fact that big media companies are going to do all they can to stay on the good side of the administration because they’re very concerned about any efforts in Congress to challenge their ownership,” Common Cause Vice President for Advocacy Celia Wexler said Tuesday.

“Clear Channel has a history of weighing in in controversial ways that don’t respect the diversity of opinion,” she added. “It is in keeping with Clear Channel’s vision of the world which is to not take seriously an effort to serve the public interest or be non-partisan.”

[You can read more about Clear Channel in Section 5.3]

5.1.1