AP: Bush Ad Surfaces As News Story on Schools. The Bush administration has promoted its education law with a video that comes across as a news story but fails to make clear the reporter involved was paid with taxpayer money. The government used a similar approach this year in promoting the new Medicare law and drew a rebuke from the investigative arm of Congress, which found the videos amounted to propaganda in violation of federal law.
You expect this kind of sleazy stuff from the White House. But the people who deserve even more condemnation are any TV stations that run these press releases in news programs without making clear what they’re doing.
Comments
Posted by: Owen on October 11, 2004 07:19 AM
“You expect this kind of sleazy stuff from the White House” – Is that all that you can say about this?
Why in hell should we expect, or accept, or tolerate this kind of behavior from the chief of state? If we don’t have as a minimum standard of expectation that elected officials obey the laws they’re sworn to uphold, aren’t we acknowledging an ethical entropy that now sets a new and lower standard?
Looking beyond the instant issue, the aggregation of scandals petty and major is appalling, and should offend Republicans and Democrats alike. Is the current administration now the model for future governments? Increasingly, the reform and independent parties, and even (shudder) the libertarians are sounding more profoundly democratic and ethical than the traditional stewards of the political process.
Yes, the media should be ashamed, and so should other elected officials, regulatory and law enforcement agencies. If their passivity is the result of public apathy to corruption, what future do we have to look forward to? Responsible journalists should be expressing outrage and encouraging a voter backlash for the sake of our nation. Dan, you’re right to criticize, but wrong to shrug off the behavior from the leader of the free world.
Posted by: Dave Pentecost on October 11, 2004 07:58 AM
This is just the latest in the degrading of news. As a 20 year veteran of the networks, I know how often a VNR (video news release) handout will be used as a free source of footage. Rarely, a whole story will be adapted. In my experience the pharmaceutical companies are most successful in placing material. This collusion between corporate PR (whose people gleefully count the free appearances of their messages) and TV professionals is deplorable. But I agree that we expect this by now from the party that will try any dirty trick. It doesn’t mean we shrug it off. It means we work for a regime change.
Posted by: Tom on October 11, 2004 01:03 PM
Well, being that this is the second time one of these has been snagged in 2004 – and the second with Karen Ryan “reporting,” it’s safe to say that while we’re all out here “getting it,” the government still thinks this is a good idea. It’s one thing to pitch a story to a news organization – it’s another one to use VNRs and not have them labeled as such. Media organizations who are compliant to let these things run should be held just as accountable.
Posted by: query on October 12, 2004 09:09 AM
The Democrats’ nominee for the Presidency in 2000, Al Gore, was a state-paid “journalist”, as an officer in Vietnam.
Why no railing against *him* as having been some hack government press agent distorting the war in Southeast Asia?
Hypocrisy, thy name is the Democrat Party.
Posted by: Kevin Hayden on October 11, 2004 03:23 AM
The media that plays along deserves rebuke. And the strange silence from the pulpits about unethical and illegal actions also delegitimizes their claims as defenders of anything but hypocrisy.