Giving ‘True Lies’ a whole new meaning

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: incompetent chief executive who can’t win policy debates on the substance, uses public funds to create fake news videos. This time, it isn’t President Bush; it’s Schwarzenegger.

Using taxpayer money, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration has sent television stations statewide a mock news story extolling a proposal that would benefit political boosters in the business community by ending mandatory lunch breaks for many hourly workers.

The tape looks like a news report and is narrated by a former television reporter who now works for the state. But unlike an actual news report, it does not provide views critical of the proposed changes. Democrats have denounced it as propaganda. Snippets aired on as many as 18 stations earlier this month, the administration said.

You’d have thought someone capable enough to lead the nation’s largest state would be able to keep up on current events. When Bush tried this stunt, an independent investigation concluded that the administration had broken the law regarding publicly-financed propaganda. It was all over the news, even in California. So, Schwarzenegger, in his infinite wisdom, learns from the ordeal by doing the exact same thing.

A Schwarzenegger spokesman said the video is “just like any other press release, only it’s on video.” Except that’s total nonsense. The fake news project was not only made to appear like a real news segment; it even gives stations suggested text to be read by a news anchor: “If approved, the changes would clear up uncertainty in the business community and create a better working environment throughout the state.”

Of course, the video itself as painfully inane.

The video shows construction workers, waitresses, nurses, farmworkers and a forklift operator at their jobs, and includes interviews with a farmer and a restaurant manager. The narrator says the proposal would permit workers to “eat when they are hungry, and not when the government tells them.”

The tape makes no mention that organized labor opposes the changes, or that workers would have a harder time suing employers over missed meal breaks.

The video “is clearly propaganda,” said Assembly Labor Committee Chairman Paul Koretz (D-West Hollywood). The tape is “completely one-sided.”

Schwarzenegger is usually a half-way clever politician. My bet is he sees this as a win-win situation: his administration gets stations to run the fake news segment, so it gets airtime. If that’s where it ends, so be it. But if exposed for using publicly-funded propaganda, Schwarzenegger’s segment will probably get a whole new round of airtime, this time for free, as stations report on the controversy.

It’s as if Schwarzenegger has picked up on all of Karl Rove’s most offensive instincts.