{"id":3914,"date":"2005-04-06T13:26:49","date_gmt":"2005-04-06T17:26:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/3914.html"},"modified":"2005-04-06T13:26:49","modified_gmt":"2005-04-06T17:26:49","slug":"even-now-there-may-be-more-fake-news-segments-on-the-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/even-now-there-may-be-more-fake-news-segments-on-the-way\/","title":{"rendered":"Even now, there may be more fake-news segments on the way"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Bush gang’s penchant for creating fake-news segments — with our money — is well documented<\/a>. As we learned a couple of weeks ago, at least 20 federal agencies have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years. In all, the administration spent over a quarter-billion dollars on generating professional-quality propaganda videos, aired as news, without disclosing the government’s role to viewers.<\/p>\n

But for all the outrage and consternation this practice has caused, let’s not loose sight of the fact that the Bush administration plans to keep on doing what it’s been doing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Medicare administrator Mark McClellan on Tuesday wouldn’t rule out using government-produced video news releases in the future to inform seniors about the new Medicare prescription drug benefit. <\/p>\n

A congressional agency, the Government Accountability Office, has concluded that the made-for-TV releases, which mimic actual news segments, may violate a ban on government propaganda. But a Justice Department opinion found that they don’t as long as the information is truthful.<\/p>\n

In testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, McClellan said Medicare would “fully comply with the law” regarding government-made video news releases. But he wouldn’t pledge to ban their use, which Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., and Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., pressed him to do.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The word that keeps coming to mind is chutzpah.<\/i>
\n
\nThe administration keeps suffering embarrassments in this area — from the fake-news to the pundits on the payroll — but refuses to make any changes to its policies. These guys just don’t care — they get caught abusing the public trust and undermining the very idea of an independent media, but they refuse to apologize and reject any suggestion that they change course.<\/p>\n

Also remember, we’re not just talking about politics here — the GAO has concluded that the fake-news segments are illegal<\/b>.<\/p>\n

[V]ideo news releases [that make it easy to edit out the government’s role] constitute covert propaganda and violate federal laws that prohibit the use of public money for such purposes, according to the GAO. In a May 2004 investigation of so-called VNRs touting the new Medicare drug benefit, the GAO held that the videos’ failure to name Medicare as their source violated a portion of the federal Anti-Deficiency Act dealing with propaganda. The provision bans spending public funds on “materials that are self-aggrandizing, purely partisan in nature, or covert as to source,” the GAO report said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But since the GAO has no enforcement power, the White House has decided that it sees the law differently and will ignore the GAO’s conclusion.<\/p>\n

Opponents have limited options here. The administration won’t budge<\/a>, Republicans in Congress won’t hold hearings, and Alberto Gonzales’ Justice Department hardly seems poised to leap into action to investigate. There’s been some talk<\/a> about the FCC getting involved, but the agency hasn’t expressed any interest yet.<\/p>\n

Any chance significant public outrage will generate a change? Nah, I didn’t think so either.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Bush gang’s penchant for creating fake-news segments — with our money — is well documented. As we learned a couple of weeks ago, at least 20 federal agencies have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years. In all, the administration spent over a quarter-billion dollars on generating professional-quality […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3914\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}