Propaganda nation

It's the most talked about New York Times article on the internet right now - "Under Bush, a new age of prepackaged television news" by David Barstow and Robin Stein. I'm giving you the link to the Smirking Chimp reprint because the New York Times requires a registration (recommended; it doesn't take that much time to do it and then your computer remembers!). The Bush administration, in addition to paying off journalists to write favorable articles, has been producing videos that are made to look like news reports but are really public relations creations:

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.

It's a long article but well worth reading. Once again, I want to share with you that I simply do not watch television news anymore. I get my news from the internet - mainly from British and Canadian newspapers. I do not want to subject myself to the manipulation of the media being carried out today by this unethical administration.