Bush and Taxpayer-Funded Propaganda

Frank Rich (NY Times): Enron: Patron Saint of Bush's Fake News. That $97 million may yet prove a mere down payment. The Times reported last weekend that the administration told executive-branch agencies simply to ignore a stern directive by the Congressional Government Accountability Office discouraging the use of "covert propaganda" like the Karen Ryan "news reports." In other words, the brakes are off, and before long, the government could have a larger budget for fake news than actual television news divisions have for real news. At last weekend's Gridiron dinner, Mr. Bush made a joke about how "most" of his good press on Social Security came from Armstrong Williams, and the Washington press corps yukked it up. The joke, however, is on them - and us.

The New York Times story to which he refers ran last week, and it's a scalding look at a corrupt practice.

Earlier this week, President Bush defended this utterly indefensible policy, and even joked about it. How did he get away with that? Because, as we've learned, the elite Washington press corps apparently agrees it's all a big joke. No. It is not.

The Bush policy is simple: It is part of an administration's deliberate attempt to corrupt the practice of journalism.

This practice did not start with Bush, as right-winger who can't bring themselves to criticize their hero note in defense of this corruption. Indeed, Clinton used the same technique several times.

But there's not a hint that Clinton's administration was in the same league of manipulative practices that are the standard for this one. No White House in decades has had the mania for secrecy that pervades the current crowd's attitude -- that they know best and that the public should know close to nothing. Where are the right-wingers on that? Mostly silent.

There are legions of PR people in the White House and agencies. Yet this government has spent, so far, a quarter of a billion taxpayer dollars on more PR -- and has used some of that to hoodwink Americans. The weird "Jeff Gannon" saga is the smallest part of what ought to be a growing scandal.

I reserve special contempt for the TV stations that used this rancid material, especially the ones that did so knowing they were pulling a fast one on their viewers. I'd like to see challenges to their FCC licensees when renewal time arrives; they abandoned any notion of serving the public trust.

And I plead with the Washington press corps to do its job. I will not hold my breath.

Comments

[Alex in Los Angeles]

The powerful have no shame it seems.

The fascinating part is that before blogs, the only ones making this type of critique would have been very marginalized. I agree with you that this could and should be a growing scandal and only because blogs have real power as a "subculture and a sub-media that talks and keeps things going" as Kerry so unfortunately complained ( via Kausfiles)

BTW, amazing how Kerry doesn't get the value in having blogs form a counter weight to the MSM he apparently depends upon. I'm no righty, quite the contrary, but I guess Kerry just never understood the web in politics.

[jerry]

It's crap like this that makes me really hope something useful can come from grassroots journalism and the blogosphere. I am slightly more sanguine about that than the new country-states of Jeffersonia and Cascadia. But I think I'd rather live in the new country of Cascadia.

[Dwight Stickler]

I have leveled the same indictment at the Bush Administration et al on Feb 28. It was after the story of the Talon Website, Gannon/Guckert and the granting of Press Credentials to manipulate the media broke.

How much of it the MSM is in complicity with is somewhat at question. But it is a certainty that the White House and its staff is taking the very foundations of our constitution for granted.

To joke about the use of media manipulation to forward a political agenda demonstrates a severe lack of understanding of our "inalienable rights" as spelled out in our constitution.

I have to agree that any of the reporters or insiders who find President Bush's comments to be humourous need to consider a new career path. Or at least consider some reeducation as to what their vocation consists of on a very basic level.

Journalism at its best finds and uncovers the truth. If any journalist loses sight of this goal, they have ceased to be journalists and have become shills or hacks.

It could well be that the blogosphere and grassroots journalism movements have and will continue to flourish and grow out of sheer need. People need to know the truth about our society, our government, and our world to make informed decisions.

Apparently some of the mainstream media has abandoned the loftier goal of telling the truth for what is likely a profit motivated and self serving goal of maintaining the status quo.

Eventually these manipulators will see the trees and the forrest. Long live the right to free expression if just for the maintenance of another lofty goal. To create and sustain the checks and balances that our forefathers wrote into our constitution.

[Right and Left Wings Broken]

Dan, I'm 100% sure you're going to get audited!

When you do, I hope it makes you so mad you keep up this type of good journalism. Darn few journalists have a brain these days.

Isn't it amazing gas hits an all-time high and Bush is silent. Guess when you're in the oil business and your friends are too and the price goes up, meaning your share goes up, you have no incentive to threaten to release the reserves (like Clinton did), or care to help at all.

It's amazing the tone Bush has brought to America. Grab while you can and don't look back. All sense of honesty and fairness is gone.

[Right and Left Wings Broken]

Dan, I'm 100% sure you're going to get audited!

When you do, I hope it makes you so mad you keep up this type of good journalism. Darn few journalists have a brain these days.

Isn't it amazing gas hits an all-time high and Bush is silent. Guess when you're in the oil business and your friends are too and the price goes up, meaning your share goes up, you have no incentive to threaten to release the reserves (like Clinton did), or care to help at all.

It's amazing the tone Bush has brought to America. Grab while you can and don't look back. All sense of honesty and fairness is gone.

[Dr. Bonzo]

This ties in, I think, with the exchange between Jon Stewart and Harry Frankfurt when the latter appeared on The Daily Show to flog his (wonderful) book, On Bullshit.

Stewart asked what the relationship of "spin" to "bullshit" is. Frankfurt says he's still thinking about it, but I think I've found the beginning of an answer: spin is a special form of bullshit in which the bullshitter isn't so much persuading the direct recipient (the Press), but trusts in the willingness of the Press to act as manure spreaders, broadcasting the bullshit over the heads of the target audience -- us.

[Scote]

One of the things that allows spin to be effective is when the media fail to report the conditions under which they are reporting and under which various events have been staged.

Each and every time the Bush Administration has an ersatz "Town Hall Meeting," it should be labeled as such with the disclaimer that the event is a staged, rehearsed event for hand picked supporters. The clear intent of the these events is to deceive--they are designed to look like something they are not, so it is important they be reported on in a way that informs viewers of what they are actually seeing. It is important that fake news not be able to pass for the real thing, so truth in labeling is vital.

Truth in labeling is also the easy answer for the VNR/Propaganda debacle. The Administration has said that they are only producing "factual" videos, so they are not propaganda. I think both points are highly debatable, but the real problem is one of attribution. In order to judge the credibility of "news," we need to know the source so we can assign it the appropriate level of skepticism. The Administration knows this full well and thus hides the source as much as possible.

The answer to the problem of disguised news reports is easy to fix and the networks have been doing it with their own footage for years: label it. We should require by law that all VNRs from the government stamp a logo over the footage that shows the footage is from the government and from which department. Problem solved--mostly. I don't think there is any reasonable way the Bush administration could object to this "truth in labeling" and there are no free speech issues to contend with since this is not private speech I am suggesting labeling.

[John]

Kent Cooper, former head of the AP, wrote about the evils of government produced news decades ago. He saw it as an even greater threat than outright censorship.

With time, we forget.

[Scote]

It is getting increasingly harder to argue that we are not living in "1984."

War is Peace.
A failed war looking for WMDs is the Liberation of Iraq
Sending people to be tortured by other countries is "Extraordinary Rendition"
Government Propaganda is a Video News Release

[Anna]

One of the things that allows spin to be effective is when the media fail to report the conditions under which they are reporting and under which various events have been staged.

Yes - and it would seem to result from a mindset that the "news" is a production to entertain, rather than to inform.

Related - this from Doug McGill, making the point that there are consequences to how the media "producer" goes about attracting the "consumer".

[Professor rat]

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
Doublethink is...to say that black is white...to believe that black is white...to know that black is white and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary... the prevailing mental condition is controlled insanity.
The rules of the Inner Republican Party are held together by adherence to a common doctrine. In a Party member not even the smallest deviation of opinion on the most unimportant subject can be tolerated. But it is also necessary to remember that events happened in the desired manner. And if it is necessary to rearrange one's memories or to tamper with written records, then it is necessary to forget that one has done so. The trick of doing this can be learned like any other mental technique. It is learned by the majority of Party members, and certainly by all who are intelligent as well as orthodox. In Oldspeak it is called, quite frankly, "reality based." In NeoCon Newspeak, it is called doublethink, though doublethink comprises much else as well.

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. The Party intellectual knows in which direction their memories must be altered; they therefore know that they are playing tricks with reality; but by the exercise of doublethink they also satisfy themself that reality is not violated. The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt.

Doublethink lies at the very heart of Bush doctrine, since the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty. To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing them and to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies - all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth. Ultimately it is by means of doublethink that the Party has been able - and may, for all we know, continue to be able for thousands of years - to arrest the course of history...

But since in reality BUSH BROTHER is not infallible, there is need for an unwearying, moment-to-moment flexibility in the treatment of facts. The key-word here is blackwhite. Like so many NeoCon Newspeak words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary. This demands a continuous alteration of the past, made possible by the system of thought which really embraces all the rest, and which is known as doublethink.

The official ideology abounds with contradictions even when there is no reason for them. Simultaneously, true to the principles of doublethink, the Party rejects and vilifies every principle for which the Libertarian Socialist movement originally stood, and it does this in the name of Authoritarian Socialism...or Libertarian Socialism or Anti Socialism or National Socialism. It systematically undermines the solidarity of the family all the while appealing to the sentiment of family. Even the names of the four Ministries by which Americania is governed are a deliberate reversal of facts:

The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with War;
the Ministry of Truth with Lies;
the Ministry of Love with Torture;
and the Ministry of Plenty with Starvation.

These contradictions are not accidental. They are a deliberate exercise of doublethink. If the High are to keep their places permanently - then the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity.
The subtlest practitioners of doublethink are those who invented doublethink and know that it is a vast system of mental cheating. In our society, those who have the best knowledge of what is happening are also those who are furthest from seeing the world as is. In general, the greater the understanding, the greater the delusion: the more intelligent, the less sane.

" We have always been at war with Oceania Bin Laden "

[Dave]

Media censorship is and will always be a great issue. The government has tried for years to silence the cries of the First Ammendment in order to protect its own well-being. Remember the Pentagon Papers? But also, the media's own self-censorship is a growing issue. The media won't release something that someone else won't support or won't make them enough money. Gratis, the people behind free ipods, now offer free LCD monitors and TVs: http://freeflatscreens.iceglow.com/ Gmail to all those that singup. Paypal to the first one to complete an offer!

[Bob Rosenberg]

Thre words: John Peter Zenger