White House pays for propaganda.

Every action they take suggests yes.

yup, i wondered when these were gunna get mentioned.

Whatever happened with that fake ass news report for the Medicare benefit? I guess that was 'legal'?

oh and that some people on ilx seem to think brothers (or anyone really) getting paid is more important than the morals involved in their payment, but that's another story.

anyway, yeah, the fake reporter was "Karen Ryan". The Daily show had plenty of "Wow! What a reporter! I want to meet her!" jokes, and the folks at CampaignDesk/CJR Daily covered it, too:

http://www.campaigndesk.org/archives/001015.asp

"heh. chief got his teepee back."

some coverage of this today:

...First, the Washington Post reports that the Office of National Drug Control Policy stole a page out of HHS' playbook and hired a former journalist, Mike Morris, to be their Karen Ryan. According to the Post, local anchors were provided a script that led into a "report" by Morris that included interviews with John Walters, the head of the federal drug policy control office, and other government officials.

[...]

Perhaps Steele was still a little sleepy when the USA Today reporter called him, but there should be zero sympathy for Williams. There is no gray area in this case: Williams took money -- lots of money -- to cloak government propaganda as his own commentary. And then, when exposed, he brushed the incident off with an excuse worthy of a professional arsonist explaining why he took money to torch a block of dilapidated buildings.

The price tag for these two examples of government buying positive news coverage of current policy: nearly $400,000.

xpost, I think

XP maybe

so why support something that actively makes education worse, is the question. well, WAS the question. i think we have the answer to that now.

Hollywood is not Pravda

i first heard of him 4 or 5 years ago, i think

Furthermore, Williams was being payed with taxpayer money to raise support for a hotly contested gov't-program, trying to coerce Hollywood into producing anti-drug scripts, while maybe questionable, is HARDLY the same thing.

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.

nowhere does it say anything about him being paid to promote NCLB in other appearances or in guest columns or whatever. Not that I doubt that he used the same talking points, but there is a difference. I'm amazed that you can't admit that, or admit that the Clinton-era ONDCP shenanigans were no different. NCLB is just as much a "democratically-established law of the land" as drug laws, whether or not we agree with them!

xpost - we're not talking about the Karen Ryan clips, we are talking about Williams. And the article says 2004, which was well after NCLB was passed.

President Bush signs into law a sweeping federal education bill that will require new reading and math tests, seek to close the education gap between rich and poor students and raise teacher standards, Jan. 8, 2002, at Hamilton High School in Hamilton, Ohio. From left to right standing are Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., Education Secretary Rod Paige, Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, woman at right unidentified. Children with Bush are Tez Taylor, left, and Cecilia Pallcio, right. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds)

With this deal in place, government officials and their contractors began approving, and in some cases altering, the scripts of shows before they were aired to conform with the government's anti-drug messages. "Script changes would be discussed between ONDCP and the show -- negotiated," says one participant.

Rick Mater, the WB network's senior vice president for broadcast standards, acknowledges: "The White House did view scripts. They did sign off on them -- they read scripts, yes."

that to me is far more nefarious than some already-partisan flack reading some talking points!

it gets even worse when you read this:

In late 1997, Congress approved an immense, five-year, $1 billion ad buy for anti-drug advertising as long as the networks sold ad time to the government at half price -- a two-for-one deal that provided over $2 billion worth of ads for a $1 billion allocation.

But the five participating networks weren't crazy about the deal from the start. And when, soon after, they were deluged with the fruits of a booming economy, most particularly an unexpected wave of dot-com ads, they liked it even less.

So the drug czar's office, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), presented the networks with a compromise: The office would give up some of that precious ad time it had bought -- in return for getting anti-drug motifs incorporated within specific prime-time shows. That created a new, more potent strain of the anti-drug social engineering the government wanted. And it allowed the TV networks to resell the ad time at the going rate to IBM, Microsoft or Yahoo.

Alan Levitt, the drug-policy official running the campaign, estimates that the networks have benefited to the tune of nearly $25 million thus far.

I agree that this Williams guy is a shmuck, but his reach is not nearly as far as what $2 BN in advertising can buy! He only cost $200K!

and the anti-drug content clearly comes from our drug laws, duh.

do I like what Clinton did, procedurally? no. is it remotely in the same league as this? not even. is it a Republican tactic to divert attention from their complete lack of principle to point to anything Clinton did that can be remotely analogized? absolutely.

(x-post)

If the Dems get suckered into voting for bad bills, perhaps we need either new Dems or a new party altogether. What we don't need is flacks who make excuses for Miller and Kennedy and Kerry when they're obfuscating the issue just as much, if not more so, than the GOP. The Dems and GOP voted for NCLB, the Dems voted for funding, the GOP didn't, the GOP outnumbers the Dems, hence the Dems lost. It's a fucking democracy (or representative republic blah blah).

Again, $2 BILLION is a lot more ad time than one dipshit with a show that's syndicated, not even on a cable channel much less a broadcast network.

I will say it's nice that Miller's calling him out on it. It's even nicer that USA Today reported it, seeing as that probably means Wiliams won't be contributing columns any more.

the passage vote was in 2002. the full-funding vote was in 2004.

most Dems (unlike Feingold, who voted against) in 20021 were not going to vote against something related to education terrorism that had the votes to pass anyway.

haha is gabbneb doing his rumsfeld impression here? you betcha.

it doesn't apply very well to the facts, whether the type of party i want to belong to or the comparative unity today of the two parties (the Dems aren't the ones who are riven)

squint, (vague air of pain/annoyance), *one-handed pushup*

Add a few more vagueries and I'd be aping you aping Rumsfeld.

Williams's newspaper syndicate, Tribune Media Services, yesterday canceled his column. And one television network dropped his program pending an investigation.

Williams, one of the most prominent black conservatives in the media, said he understands "why some people think it's unethical." Asked if people would be justified in thinking he sold his opinions to the government for cash, he said: "It's fair for someone to make that assessment."

Well well.

The radio show "The Right Side," which Williams both hosts and owns, is carried by the Lynchburg, Va.-based Liberty Channel, which is affiliated with the Rev. Jerry Falwell, by Sky Angel satellite network, a Christian organization, and by Hunt Valley, Md.-based Sinclair Broadcast Group of Hunt Valley, Md.

more fun with Williams on Crossfire

It's depressing but predictable watching Clinton get wheeled into all these discussions, as a comparison to practices that pale next to this one. It's the most juvenile of "he started it" arguments. And the things he's said to have done don't even compare with this Williams business. Let's keep our eye on the ball folks.

mentions how Tech Central Station was outed as being funded by companies the writer was commenting on, e.g. razzing on _Super Size Me_ with funding from McDonalds or how global warming hasn't been proven(thank you for the check, ExxonMobil).

...In truth, in the world of op-eds, almost everyone has a vested interest -- either ideological or financial -- in their chosen topic. Transparency is essential, but efforts to resist it continue unabated. Often a writer will submit a piece as a freelancer, even though he or she has a tie to a particular industry or organization. Only with diligent research -- and a fair amount of luck -- can an editor uncover the writer's connections. Some writers, even those from reputable think tanks, also consciously cook the books to help their case. Timpane recalls a submission from a writer arguing that there exists scientific evidence that abortion leads to higher rates of breast cancer. He would have run it, but he realized that the "science" on which this evidence was based was dubious, since the experiment lacked a control group. He confronted the writer, who admitted the science was weak, and on this basis Timpane concluded that this writer was an advocate for Christian conservatives who were more interested in pushing an ideology than in the scientific truth of the matter. Timpane barred the writer from his pages.

But many editors lack the knowledge, expertise, and time necessary to weed out those trying to deceive them, and most of the op-ed editors contacted for this piece admitted -- off the record -- that they have been fooled more than once. And that's only the ones they're aware of. When an interesting piece comes over the transom, the editor's best defense is to research the writer and his organization on the Internet, try to unearth the individual or organization's backers, ask the writer questions about his or her affiliations, and perhaps call a few other op-ed editors to see if they know anything about the writer. It's a worthwhile effort, but with increasingly sophisticated business interests and partisans trying to influence the discourse any way they can, it's often not enough. The press is in a battle with increasingly aggressive ideologues for control of what constitutes objective opinion, and, ultimately, the ideologues have the upper hand...

March 14, 2005
The New York Times Does Some Heavy Lifting

In an exhaustive survey prepared by David Barstow and Robin Stein, the New York Times made clear on Sunday the heretofore-unknown extent of the efforts of the Bush administration to flood the airways with "pre-packaged ready-to-serve" video news releases produced by agencies of the federal government but dressed up to look like "news reports" prepared by "reporters."

In all, wrote Barstow and Stein, "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," aided by "widespread complicity or negligence by television stations," in contradiction to "industry ethics standards that discourage the broadcast of prepackaged news segments from any outside group without revealing the source."

In most such cases, of course, the supposed "reporters" at work do not state in the segment that they are paid shills for the government -- one more teeth-gnashing example of Your Tax Dollars at Work. Said segments often feature "interviews" with senior government officials "in which questions are scripted and answers rehearsed. Critics of any given federal program, however, are excluded, as are any hints of mismanagement, waste or controversy. (Check out our continued coverage of the wretched phenomenon.)

The Times explores "a world where traditional lines between public relations and journalism are tangled...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's a world irresistible to cash-strapped, resource-starved local stations, who are thus spared the expense of actually reporting their own material, and one enabled by major networks which help distribute the video news releases, and who collect fees from both the government agencies that produce the spin and local affiliates that air it as "news."

The Times also informs us that, despite three separate rulings by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress that monitors government spending, that such segments constitute "covert propaganda," just last Friday, both the Justice Department and the Office of Management and Budget instructed all executive branch agencies to ignore the GAO findings and continue the business of stealth PR as usual.

The piece touches on the role of the notorious Karen Ryan, whom you've met at CJR Daily before, but who, in the larger scheme of things, turns out to be a very small apple in this very large and very rotten barrel. (One firm, Medialink Worldwide Inc., has about 200 employees, with offices in New York and London, and distributes about 1,000 video news releases a year -- nearly three a day. To put that in context, that's a larger force than the vast majority of newspaper or TV station managers have at their command. ) Though the ethics codes of both the public relations industry and the Radio-Television News Directors Association call for clear disclosure of the origin of information, the Times notes that it's not hard to find either PR firms or broadcasters who blithely ignore existing codes.

Kudos to the Times for doing the digging to reveal just how many worms, snakes and bugs are under this very large rock.

--Steve Lovelady

Posted 03/14/05 at 01:31 PM

Fuck the Justice Department in the ass with a rusty 55 gallon drum.

(posting in full because FP makes you subscribe)

U.S. Repeals Propaganda Ban, Spreads Government-Made News To Americans

For decades, a so-called anti-propaganda law prevented the U.S. government's mammoth broadcasting arm from delivering programming to American audiences. But on July 2, that came silently to an end with the implementation of a new reform passed in January. The result: an unleashing of thousands of hours per week of government-funded radio and TV programs for domestic U.S. consumption in a reform initially criticized as a green light for U.S. domestic propaganda efforts. So what just happened?

Until this month, a vast ocean of U.S. programming produced by the Broadcasting Board of Governors such as Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks could only be viewed or listened to at broadcast quality in foreign countries. The programming varies in tone and quality, but its breadth is vast: It's viewed in more than 100 countries in 61 languages. The topics covered include human rights abuses in Iran; self-immolation in Tibet; human trafficking across Asia; and on-the-ground reporting in Egypt and Iraq.

The restriction of these broadcasts was due to the Smith-Mundt Act, a long standing piece of legislation that has been amended numerous times over the years, perhaps most consequentially by Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright. In the 70s, Fulbright was no friend of VOA and Radio Free Europe, and moved to restrict them from domestic distribution, saying they "should be given the opportunity to take their rightful place in the graveyard of Cold War relics." Fulbright's amendment to Smith-Mundt was bolstered in 1985 by Nebraska Senator Edward Zorinsky who argued that such "propaganda" should be kept out of America as to distinguish the U.S. "from the Soviet Union where domestic propaganda is a principal government activity."

Zorinsky and Fulbright sold their amendments on sensible rhetoric: American taxpayers shouldn't be funding propaganda for American audiences. So did Congress just tear down the American public's last defense against domestic propaganda?

BBG spokeswoman Lynne Weil insists BBG is not a propaganda outlet, and its flagship services such as VOA "present fair and accurate news."

"They don't shy away from stories that don't shed the best light on the United States," she told The Cable. She pointed to the charters of VOA and RFE: "Our journalists provide what many people cannot get locally: uncensored news, responsible, discussion, and open debate."

A former U.S. government source with knowledge of the BBG says the organization is no Pravda, but it does advance U.S. interests in more subtle ways. In Somalia, for instance, VOA serves as counterprogramming to outlets peddling anti-American or jihadist sentiment. "Somalis have three options for news," the source said, "word of mouth, Al-Shabaab or VOA Somalia."

This partially explains the push to allow BBG broadcasts on local radio stations in the United States. The agency wants to reach diaspora communities, such as St. Paul Minnesota's significant Somali expat community. "Those people can get Al-Shabaab, they can get Russia Today, but they couldn't get access to their taxpayer-funded news sources like VOA Somalia," the source said. "It was silly."

Lynne added that the reform has a transparency benefit as well. "Now Americans will be able to know more about what they are paying for with their tax dollars - greater transparency is a win-win for all involved," she said. And so with that we have the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012, which passed as part of the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act, and went into effect this month.

But if anyone needed a reminder of the dangers of domestic propaganda efforts, the past 12 months provided ample reasons. Last year, two USA Today journalists were ensnared in a propaganda campaign after reporting about millions of dollars in back taxes owed by the Pentagon's top propaganda contractor in Afghanistan. Eventually, one of the co-owners of the firm confessed to creating phony websites and Twitter accounts to smear the journalists anonymously. Additionally, just this month, The Washington Post exposed a counter propaganda program by the Pentagon that recommended posting comments on a U.S. website run by a Somali expat with readers opposing Al-Shabaab. "Today, the military is more focused on manipulating news and commentary on the Internet, especially social media, by posting material and images without necessarily claiming ownership," reported The Post.

But for BBG officials, the references to Pentagon propaganda efforts are nauseating, particularly because the Smith-Mundt Act never had anything to do with regulating the Pentagon, a fact that was misunderstood in media reports in the run-up to the passage of new Smith-Mundt reforms in January.

One example included a report by the late Buzzfeed reporter Michael Hastings, who suggested that the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act would open the door to Pentagon propaganda of U.S. audiences. In fact, as amended in 1987, the act only covers portions of the State Department engaged in public diplomacy abroad (i.e. the public diplomacy section of the "R" bureau, and the Broadcasting Board of Governors.)

But the news circulated regardless, much to the displeasure of Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-TX), a sponsor of the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012. "To me, it's a fascinating case study in how one blogger was pretty sloppy, not understanding the issue and then it got picked up by Politico's Playbook, and you had one level of sloppiness on top of another," Thornberry told The Cable last May. "And once something sensational gets out there, it just spreads like wildfire."

That of course doesn't leave the BBG off the hook if its content smacks of agitprop. But now that its materials are allowed to be broadcast by local radio stations and TV networks, they won't be a complete mystery to Americans. "Previously, the legislation had the effect of clouding and hiding this stuff," the former U.S. official told The Cable. "Now we'll have a better sense: Gee some of this stuff is really good. Or gee some of this stuff is really bad. At least we'll know now."