Tuesday, December 20, 2005

The Treason of the Truth

The War on the Press
For those keeping score, James Bamford's December 1 article "The Man Who Sold the War" has sparked a battle of its own -- between the investigative journalist who penned the piece and its subject, John Rendon, founder of the Rendon Group.

The Rolling Stone exposé, which ranks among 2005's best investigative pieces, presents an iron-clad case that the Bush administration -- working hand in glove with Rendon's propaganda machinery -- knowingly misled the American public in the run up to the War in Iraq. While this deception now seems obvious to a majority of Americans, no single article sets forth the particulars in such devastating detail.

In response the Rendon Group has unleashed a fusillade of PR aimed to tear down the credibility of the messenger. In a follow up letter to the editor of Rolling Stone, they claim Bamford relied on "false information and mischaracterization to create his story."

Rendon then attempts to dismantle Bamford’s credibility by highlighting eight problems in his Rolling Stone report. None of these problems speak to the main thrust of the story. Rather the Rendon Group reply is a well honed piece of misdirection, which goes to great lengths to cast doubt about the man who wrote the piece, without disputing the essential facts therein.

The Rendon Group even claims that Bamford got the meal ticket wrong. Describing a dinner interview between him and company founder John Rendon, they claim: "Mr. Bamford ordered the French wine and lamb chops. Mr. Rendon had seafood," and not otherwise, as reported in the story. Strange. Rendon seeks to impugn Bamford by offering up as evidence their CEO’s preference for fish.

Bamford's response cuts through Rendon's smoke. "The job of the Rendon Group was to use 'perception management' techniques -- propaganda," he writes. Their creation of the Iraqi National Congress and installation of Ahmad Chalabi as its head formed the basis of Bush's faulty case for going to war.

Bamford quotes ex-CIA official Robert Baer who said Rendon "was responsible for selling this war." To cap it off, Bamford produces the bill from their restaurant interview: "According to the receipt, Mr. Rendon ordered 'sate lamb chops' -- I never eat lamb chops. And just for the record, I also paid for Mr. Rendon's apple tart dessert and his coffee -- decaf black."

While plates are still spinning between these two, one thing seems clear. Rendon's assault on Bamford follows a pattern of obfuscation that’s become the MO of the chicken hawk set: By throwing a fit you can sow enough uncertainty about any media that challenge the administration’s version of the War. The facts of the reports in question often become lost in the dust up over the messenger.

Media 'Saboteurs'

Many leveling these charges against the press are now taking their critique one further. Not only are the media untrustworthy, they state, but they also are treasonous for not marching in lock-step with President Bush’s version of the war. The Rendon story plays a small part in this larger pattern.

During his December 21 show, radio siren Rush Limbaugh blasted the media for aligning with the left wing to create propaganda and "sabotage" the war effort. "These people are sabotaging our ability to wage war on this enemy," Limbaugh crowed:
The major concern is stopping these people from sabotaging our ability to wage war on this enemy because that's what the media and that's what the Democratic Party and the far left of this country have become -- saboteurs. You call them traitors if you want. You can use the word "treason". Go ahead.
Limbaugh's diatribe fits snuggly into the fabric of efforts to bully skeptical media back into line with the official view. Former Army intelligence officer Lt. Col. Ralph Peters writes in his book, "New Glory: Expanding America’s Global Supremacy," that in wartime the media "can no longer sustain their pretenses of being aloof, objective observers dispassionately recording events. The media are combatants."

According to Peters' critique, the media should act more as foot soldiers for the White House, and less as defenders of accuracy in the public interest. The Lt. Colonel repeated this theory on Fox's "The O'Reilly Factor" earlier this month, accusing an ABC news report – which revealed that the CIA removed detainees from "secret prisons" in Europe prior to Secretary of State Rice’s visit – of "killing American soldiers."

"When ABC or any other outlet gives away our national secrets, or verifies them, and underscores them by repeating what others have said, and seems to verify for the world, look, they are putting Americans at risk," Peters said, adding, "Bill, it's killing American soldiers."

To which O'Reilly added: "I do feel that the press has a responsibility to help the government in the war on terror."

And I thought the press' responsibility was to report the truth.

Not so, according to Todd Manzi of TownHall.com, a popular right-wing site that was recently spun-off from the Heritage Foundation: "The Associated Press has caused some U.S. soldiers to lose their lives," Manzi writes. "The irresponsible, antiwar-biased reporting from the Associated Press over the last four months can only have encouraged our enemy to keep trying. Terrorists may have been given the false hope that all is not lost for them. . . [AP reporters] have allowed themselves to become a pawn of our enemy."

Cliff Kincaid, the editor of the right-wing media watchdog Accuracy in Media believes that the terrorists are using domestic forces to fight the war. Their chief American allies are the media, he writes in a December 20 editorial carried by several right-wing news sites. "That's because the [Washington] Post and other media are part of the movement to undermine our resolve at home."

The Glass White House

Ironically, the effort to tar investigative reporting as treason emanates from those under investigation for a similar crime – the leaking of information about Valerie Plame’s covert identity.

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's ongoing investigation points a steady finger not at the so called "liberal media" but within the corridors of the White House itself, at Karl Rove, Lewis Libby, Dick Cheney and others -- the self same architects of the assault on journalism. Not surprisingly, Libby -- the sole member of the cabal to be indicted thus far -- has turned his case on its head, to, again, cast stones at the media as the sources revealing the name of the undercover CIA operative.

Time -- and Fitzgerald’s ongoing investigation -- will tell whether his convenient defense will help Libby and others to slip their manacles.

But if recent history is a guide, it's a tactic that has proven successful in throwing up enough sand and smoke to cover the tracks of those fully responsible for the mess that we're all in.

Monday, December 05, 2005

Gigot's Price for Gratitude

The War on the Press
It cost taxpayers $4 million for disgraced former Corporation for Public Broadcasting chair Kenneth Tomlinson to win the gratitude of the Wall Street Journal's Paul Gigot.

In his sign off from the PBS network, Gigot praises Tomlinson for "defending the importance of balance and diversity on public television."

It was Tomlinson who skimmed $4 million in public funds to help Gigot bring the Journal Editorial Report's free market hi-jinks to PBS on Friday nights. And for that Gigot is grateful.

But he fails to mention the recent Inspector General investigation that found Tomlinson's efforts on behalf of the Editorial Report to be gross violations of federal law and the agency's own ethical codes. According to the IG report, Tomlinson:
". . . admonished CPB senior executive staff not to interfere with his deal to bring a balancing program to PBS. These actions raise questions about the extent of the former Chairman's involvement in selecting and funding of The Journal Editorial Report. Specifically, the questions involve whether he breached his fiduciary responsibilities, was directly involved programming decisions, influenced the program format increasing the cost of the program, and exceeded his role as a Board member in directing the actions of CPB staff." [my emphasis]
Maybe Gigot missed that.

Or maybe he missed the CPB's own public polling, which found that 80 percent of Americans already believed PBS to be fair and objective. Public opinion be damned; instead, Gigot and Tomlinson subscribed to the maxim: "If it ain't broke, let's make up reasons to fix it."

PBS needs "balance and diversity" they crowed, as they schemed to deliver it by airing a show peopled by white, Bush-friendly conservatives. Can't you just feel the diversity?

Gigot seems also to have not read his own emails with Tomlinson, in which the two conspire to turn public broadcasting into a bullhorn for Bush. Nor did Gigot mention that these emails indicate that Tomlinson lied before Congress, when he told Senator Inouye that he had nothing to do with the agreement that landed Gigot's news program at PBS.

The emails read like archetypal Fox News Channel banter. And their back and forth about "balance" must have pricked up the ears of FNC's media czar Roger Ailes.

Soon after the Editorial Report pulled up its stakes at public broadcasting, they announced plans to move the circus to Fox News Channel -- home to a brand of “fairness and balance” that Paul Gigot might better understand.

Thursday, December 01, 2005

Turning Back Bush's Assault on the Press

The War on the Press
America's leadership is waging a war against the journalistic standards and practices that underpin not only a free press but our democracy. The Fourth Estate is withering under an unprecedented White House assault designed to intimidate, smear and discredit investigative journalism — and allow the president and his political cronies to lie with impunity.

On December 1, White House spokesman Scott McClellan called the U.S. “a leader when it comes to promoting and advocating a free and independent media around the world.” He added, “We’ve made our views very clear when it comes to freedom of the press.” Indeed, it's clear that the Bush administration doesn't believe in it, nor do they believe in our system of checks and balances that holds leaders accountable to the public.

If left unchecked this White House will continue to:
  • manipulate the media "message" by producing propaganda, putting journalists on the government payroll and tightly scripting all public events;

  • dismiss all dissenting views in the media as biased and politically motivated;

  • undermine public trust in journalism using the right-wing “echo chamber” to sow hostility toward reporters who challenge the official line; and

  • eliminate access to information making it nearly impossible for journalists to investigate vast areas of the federal government.
The Bush administration is more inhospitable to truth and an informed citizenry than any before it. In fact, the administration seeks the opposite: a public that buys a carefully constructed myth over reality. This deception has manifest in seven lines of attack:
  1. Infiltrating public broadcasting with party loyalists
  2. Manufacturing fake news and propaganda
  3. Bribing journalists to flack for the administration
  4. Gutting the Freedom of Information Act
  5. Deceiving media (and the U.S. public) about Iraq
  6. Stifling dissent within mainstream media
  7. Consolidating media control into the hands of the elite
The damage already done is reflected in plummeting public faith in reporters and the unrelenting stream of lies flowing from the White House into mainstream news.

This crisis can be attributed in part to the failure of big media corporations and some journalists to meet the basic responsibilities of the press in a democratic society. But the Bush administration's wholesale assault on a free press is also to blame. This White House has gone well beyond the cynical maneuvers of past administrations and implemented a scheme to tear down journalism and erode civil liberties.

Free Press (my colleagues and I) has launched a campaign to defend democracy from the war on diverse and independent media. The campaign will exert grassroots and lobbying pressure to implement policies that hold our leadership accountable and ensure that abuses of press freedom are not repeated by this and future administrations.

With an unprecedented campaign to undermine and stifle independent journalism, Bush & Co. have demonstrated astonishing contempt for the Constitution. This report shows the scope and intensity of the administration's assault on press freedoms by illustrating seven areas of abuse.

1. Infiltrating Public Broadcasting with Political Operatives

The War on the Press
White House loyalists from within the Corporation for Public Broadcasting have launched a crusade to remake PBS, NPR and other public media into official mouthpieces.

This campaign was led by Karl Rove confidant Kenneth Tomlinson, who left the CPB board in disgrace after a recent Inspector General's report found he violated federal law to monitor and influence PBS programming and used "political tests" to hire Patricia Harrison, a former co-chair of the Republican Party, as president of the agency.

The Inspector General levels a scathing indictment of Tomlinson's back-room maneuvering to manipulate content but it stops short of revealing the extent to which the White House orchestrated his efforts.

Missing from the report is email traffic between Tomlinson and Rove — provided to the IG by investigators at the State Department. Also missing is a "separate investigative report, along with specific evidence indicating possible wrongdoing," that the IG made available to the CPB board. This evidence, which may reveal the White House's hand in manipulations of public broadcasting programming, sits under lock and key at the heavily partisan CPB.

While Tomlinson is gone, he left behind a cast of GOP operatives who are reluctant to release the potentially damaging information. Newly elected CPB Chairwoman Cheryl Halpern and Vice Chairwoman Gay Hart Gaines are both major fundraisers for GOP candidates and causes. New CPB President Harrison has stacked CPB offices with former State Department officers skilled in "public diplomacy" and propaganda.

2. Manufacturing Fake News

The War on the Press
The Bush administration has mounted a widespread effort to produce "video news releases," or VNRs, which are broadcast as real news to millions of unsuspecting Americans. At least 20 federal agencies have distributed this propaganda.

The White House has spent more than twice any other administration to create counterfeit news. In 2004 alone, the Bush administration spent $90 million on PR contracts, drawn from a $254 million taxpayer slush fund set up to manufacture White House-friendly propaganda.

Thus far, four separate Government Accountability Office investigations have found the White House violated laws that prohibit government use of taxpayer money to spread "covert propaganda" without attribution. Objectionable activities include a video news release where PR flack Karen Ryan gives the Bush tutoring program "an A-plus"; and commissioned newspaper articles that praised the Education Department's role in promoting "science literacy." Readers were never informed of the government's role in placing the article, which appeared in numerous small newspapers around the country.

The GAO's pronouncements against un-attributed propaganda have gone unheeded. Press officers for several of the federal agencies in question recently told the New York Times that disclosure requirements did not apply to government-made television news segments, which they insisted are "factual, politically neutral and useful to viewers."

On September 30, the GAO correctly shot down that sophistry, saying that pre-packaged government news is inherently not factual because "the essential fact of attribution is missing."

While some in Congress have taken up the call for more investigations, they have yet to look beyond isolated incidents. As more evidence comes to light we're able to assemble a case against this administration that goes much further, involving a systemic campaign to covertly manufacture news and manipulate public opinion in favor of presidential policies.

3. Bribing Journalists to Flack for the Administration

The War on the Press
The administration has paid pundits to sing its praises. Earlier this year, TV commentator Armstrong Williams pocketed $240,000 in taxpayer money to laud Bush's education policies. Three other journalists have since been discovered on the White House dole; and Williams admits that he has "no doubt" that other paid Bush shills are still on the loose.

The administration has even exported these tactics. According to the Los Angeles Times, the U.S. military is now secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish stories written by American troops.

Over the past five years, the White House has set aside more than a quarter billion dollars to hire public relations firms to infiltrate our news system with fake news.

A report by the Government Accountability Office found the White House violated federal law by buying favorable news coverage from Williams in advance of the 2004 elections. Michael Massing wrote in the New York Review of Books that the GAO report "presents chilling evidence of the campaign that officials in Washington have been waging against a free and independent press."

The GAO has issued scathing reports on the White House's illegal use of taxpayer money to produce "covert propaganda" on four separate occasions. But Attorney General Alberto Gonzales refuses to prosecute these crimes. The official silence speaks volumes. Without legal recourse, an emboldened White House continues to manipulate the news and deceive Americans.

4. Gutting the Freedom of Information Act

The War on the Press
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) enshrines the public's right to access government records. In the past five years, FOIA has been gutted by an administration that would rather cloak its operations from public scrutiny.

In 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a chilling memorandum advising federal agencies that the Justice Department would defend their decisions to deny FOIA requests.

Many have since taken action to fend off public requests for disclosure. Since President Bush entered office, there has been a more than 75 percent increase in the amount of government information classified as secret each year — from 9 million in 2001 to 16 million by 2004.

Yet an even more aggressive form of government information control has gone un-enumerated and often unrecognized in the Bush era, as government agencies have restricted access to unclassified information in libraries, archives, Web sites, and official databases, according to Steven Aftergood, director of the project on government secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists.

"Less of a goal-directed policy than a bureaucratic reflex, the widespread clampdown on formerly public information reflects a largely inarticulate concern about ‘security,'" Aftergood writes. "It also accords neatly with the Bush administration's preference for unchecked executive authority."

In their 2004 report, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press provide a rundown of actions taken by public officials to turn basic government information into state secrets. RCFP executive director Lucy Dalglish wrote that many Bush administration actions in fighting the war against terrorism were designed to undermine FOIA. Dalglish and her journalist members hoped that the government's post-September 11 move toward non-disclosure on all matters would be viewed as temporary or emergency measures.

"Unfortunately, that has not been the case," Dalglish reported. "Led by secrecy-loving officials in the executive branch, secrecy in the United States government is now the norm."

The restrictions have now grown so tight that the American Society of Newspaper Editors last fall issued a "call to arms" to its members, urging them to "demand answers in print and in court" to stop this "deeply disturbing" trend.

5. Lying to the Press (and the Public) about the Iraq War

The War on the Press
The White House saw the battle for domestic popular opinion as one of the main fronts in the war in Iraq. With the help of a compliant media, truth became the first casualty in their campaign to whip up support.

Eight months before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, top level British intelligence officers reported that the White House had told them that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed" to fit the administration's aim of removing Saddam Hussein.

This proved to be the pattern throughout the run-up to the war — during Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address, in Condoleeza Rice's congressional testimony, and throughout Colin Powell's presentation to the United Nations about weapons of mass destruction — as officials manipulated and fabricated information to make their case.

Later, when this faulty intelligence was disputed, the administration chose to attack those reporting the truth rather than admit to their own lies and misinformation. As Frank Rich recently wrote in the New York Times, the administration's "web of half-truths and falsehoods used to sell the war did not happen by accident; it was woven by design and then foisted on the public by a P.R. operation built expressly for that purpose in the White House."

Among other things, this P.R. campaign involved:

    1. dressing up evidence provided by unreliable sources from within the Iraqi National Congress;
    2. concealing from Congress intelligence that disputed links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's regime; and
    3. exaggerating WMD claims made by a "mentally unstable" Iraqi defector.
      As their deception begins to unravel before the public, Bush, Cheney and their White House colleagues have "stayed the course," choosing to repeat past untruths in the hope that mainstream media will again err on the side of authority and present the administration's lies unchallenged.

      6. Stifling Dissenting Views in the Media

      The War on the Press
      The Bush administration has established a hierarchy for journalists seeking interviews with top administration officials, granting access to those networks and newspapers that give the White House the most favorable coverage. At the same time, they've stonewalled those who seek to challenge administration talking points.

      The White House sends advance teams of handlers to all Bush events to screen audience members and reporters for loyalty to the president and his policies. They eject possible "troublemakers" who might disrupt their contrived public forum.

      The White House Press Office turned press conferences into parodies by seating a friendly faux journalist, former male escort Jeff Gannon, amid reporters and then steering questions to him when tough issues arose. They refuse to answer tough questioners such as veteran journalist Helen Thomas, effectively silencing reporters who might challenge the president or his aides.

      The administration's efforts have been amplified by a disciplined and well-organized "echo chamber" of blogs, newspapers, newsletters, journals and radio and televison broadcasters under the influence of conservatives and the Christian right. Often working hand in glove with the White House, these outlets systematically discredit mainstream media that question the official line. This criticism works it way from blogs and other fringe Web sites up the media food chain into radio talk show banter — from the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Mark Levin, and Laura Ingraham — until it's picked up by more mainstream news outlets.

      As Michael Massing writes in his recent report on journalism "an unscrupulous critic can spread exaggerated or erroneous claims instantaneously to thousands of people, who may, in turn, repeat them to millions more on talk radio programs, on cable television, or on more official ‘news' Web sites." This echo chamber effect has effectively placed White House talking points once considered absurd at the center of media discourse; all the while dismissing as "biased" or "liberal" journalists who question their accuracy.

      "We were biased," veteran TV journalist Bill Moyers recently explained about his PBS news show NOW, which came under frequent attack from the right. "Biased … in favor of uncovering the news that powerful people wanted to keep hidden."

      "Conflicts of interest at the Department of Interior, secret meetings between Vice President Cheney and the oil industry, backdoor shenanigans by lobbyists at the FCC, corruption in Congress, neglect of wounded veterans returning from Iraq, Pentagon cost overruns, the manipulation of intelligence leading to the invasion of Iraq… We were way ahead of the news curve on these stories," Moyers said, "and the administration turned its hit men loose on us."

      It's no surprise, then, that an administration that is willing to browbeat dissenting views in the media would seek also to attack so many other fundamental acheivements of our democracy.

      7. Consolidating Media Control in the Hands of the Elite

      The War on the Press
      The Bush administration has worked with the most powerful media corporations – like News Corp, Sinclair and Clear Channel – in an effort to rewrite media ownership laws in a manner that accelerates consolidation and monopoly control of information.

      In 1983, 50 corporations owned a majority of the news media. In 1992, fewer than two dozen companies owned 90 percent of the news media. In 2003, the number fell to a total of six. The escalated consolidation of media has precipitated the collapse of journalistic values and the rise of profit-driven "infotainment" and "celebrity news." Driven by bottom-line concerns, corporate media executives have cut overseas newsrooms from their payrolls. As a result, international reporting dropped nearly 80 percent in the past two decades.

      History has shown that the relaxation of media ownership rules always leads to more market consolidation and less competition and diversity in news. Greased by extensive campaign contributions and pressured by intensive lobbying, Washington policymakers have abandoned antitrust enforcement and pursued policies to encourage greater media concentration.

      The Republican-controlled Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will announce plans to rewrite the ownership rules soon – it could happen as early as February. Unless the public mobilizes to oppose efforts to make Big Media even bigger, the FCC will pass rules that would unleash a new wave of media consolidation and allow conglomerates to swallow up hundreds of independent media outlets.

      Conclusion

      In a famous 1945 opinion, Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black said that "the First Amendment rests on the assumption that the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public, that a free press is a condition of a free society." In other words, a free press is the sine qua non of the entire American Constitution and republican experiment.

      Our democracy demands a diverse and independent media. The Bush administration's attack on the foundations of self-government requires a response of similar caliber. Unless lawmakers, the press and the public mobilize to hold the White House accountable for all its assaults on journalism, such abuses will be repeated in the future by this and other administrations. We can reform our media to become a servant of democracy that is stronger than the lies of George Bush, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove. But we need to act now while the damage of the last five years can still be undone.

      Bush’s War on the Press

      The War on the Press
      America's leadership is waging a war against the journalistic standards and practices that underpin not only a free press but our democracy. The Fourth Estate is withering under an unprecedented White House assault designed to intimidate, smear and discredit investigative journalism — and allow the president and his political cronies to lie with impunity.

      On December 1, White House spokesman Scott McClellan called the U.S. “a leader when it comes to promoting and advocating a free and independent media around the world.” He added, “We’ve made our views very clear when it comes to freedom of the press.” Indeed. It's clear that the Bush administration doesn't believe in it, nor do they believe in our system of checks and balances that holds leaders accountable to the public.

      If left unchecked this White House will continue to:
      • manipulate the media "message" by producing propaganda, putting journalists on the government payroll and tightly scripting all public events;

      • dismiss all dissenting views in the media as biased and politically motivated;

      • undermine public trust in journalism using the right-wing “echo chamber” to sow hostility toward reporters who challenge the official line; and

      • eliminate access to information making it nearly impossible for journalists to investigate vast areas of the federal government.
      The Bush administration is more inhospitable to truth and an informed citizenry than any before it. In fact, the administration seeks the opposite: a public that buys a carefully constructed myth over reality. This deception has manifest in seven lines of attack:
      1. Infiltrating public broadcasting with party loyalists
      2. Manufacturing fake news and propaganda
      3. Bribing journalists to flack for the administration
      4. Gutting the Freedom of Information Act
      5. Deceiving media (and the U.S. public) about Iraq
      6. Eliminating dissent within mainstream media
      7. Consolidating media control into the hands of the elite
      The damage already done is reflected in plummeting public faith in reporters and the unrelenting stream of lies flowing from the White House into mainstream news.

      This crisis can be attributed in part to the failure of big media corporations and some journalists to meet the basic responsibilities of the press in a democratic society. But the Bush administration's wholesale assault on a free press is also to blame. This White House has gone well beyond the cynical maneuvers of past administrations and implemented a scheme to tear down journalism and erode civil liberties.

      Free Press (my colleagues and I) has launched a campaign to defend democracy from the war on diverse and independent media. The campaign will exert grassroots and lobbying pressure to implement policies that hold our leadership accountable and ensure that abuses of press freedom are not repeated by this and future administrations.

      With an unprecedented campaign to undermine and stifle independent journalism, Bush & Co. have demonstrated astonishing contempt for the Constitution. This report shows the scope and intensity of the administration's assault on press freedoms.To read the rest of the report, follow these links:

      Infiltrating Public Broadcasting

      The War on the Press
      White House loyalists from within the Corporation for Public Broadcasting have launched a crusade to remake PBS, NPR and other public media into official mouthpieces.

      This campaign was led by Karl Rove confidant Kenneth Tomlinson, who left the CPB board in disgrace after a recent Inspector General’s report found he violated federal law to monitor and influence PBS programming and used “political tests” to hire Patricia Harrison, a former co-chair of the Republican Party, as president of the agency.

      The Inspector General levels a scathing indictment of Tomlinson’s back-room maneuvering to manipulate content but it stops short of revealing the extent to which the White House orchestrated his efforts.

      Missing from the report is email traffic between Tomlinson and Rove — provided to the IG by investigators at the State Department. Also missing is a “separate investigative report, along with specific evidence indicating possible wrongdoing,” that the IG made available to the CPB board. This evidence, which may reveal the White House’s hand in manipulations of public broadcasting programming, sits under lock and key at the heavily partisan CPB.

      While Tomlinson is gone, he left behind a cast of GOP operatives who are reluctant to release the potentially damaging information. Newly elected CPB Chairwoman Cheryl Halpern and Vice Chairwoman Gay Hart Gaines are both major fundraisers for GOP candidates and causes. New CPB President Harrison has stacked CPB offices with former State Department officers skilled in “public diplomacy” and propaganda.

      To read the rest of the report on the attacks against journalism, follow these links:

      Manufacturing Fake News

      The War on the Press
      The Bush administration has mounted a widespread effort to produce “video news releases,” or VNRs, which are broadcast as real news to millions of unsuspecting Americans. At least 20 federal agencies have distributed this propaganda.

      The White House has spent more than twice any other administration to create counterfeit news. In 2004 alone, the Bush administration spent $90 million on PR contracts, drawn from a $254 million taxpayer slush fund set up to manufacture White House-friendly propaganda.

      Thus far, four separate Government Accountability Office investigations have found the White House violated laws that prohibit government use of taxpayer money to spread “covert propaganda” without attribution. Objectionable activities include a video news release where PR flack Karen Ryan gives the Bush tutoring program “an A-plus”; and commissioned newspaper articles that praised the Education Department’s role in promoting “science literacy.” Readers were never informed of the government’s role in placing the article, which appeared in numerous small newspapers around the country.

      The GAO’s pronouncements against un-attributed propaganda have gone unheeded. Press officers for several of the federal agencies in question recently told the New York Times that disclosure requirements did not apply to government-made television news segments, which they insisted are “factual, politically neutral and useful to viewers.”

      On September 30, the GAO correctly shot down that sophistry, saying that pre-packaged government news is inherently not factual because “the essential fact of attribution is missing.”

      While some in Congress have taken up the call for more investigations, they have yet to look beyond isolated incidents. As more evidence comes to light we’re able to assemble a case against this administration that goes much further, involving a systemic campaign to covertly manufacture news and manipulate public opinion in favor of presidential policies.

      To read the rest of the report on the attacks against journalism, follow these links:

      Bribing Journalists to Flack for the White House

      The War on the Press
      The administration has paid pundits to sing its praises. Earlier this year, TV commentator Armstrong Williams pocketed $240,000 in taxpayer money to laud Bush’s education policies. Three other journalists have since been discovered on the White House dole; and Williams admits that he has “no doubt” that other paid Bush shills are still on the loose.

      The administration has even exported these tactics. According to the Los Angeles Times, the U.S. military is now secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish stories written by American troops.

      Over the past five years, the White House has set aside more than a quarter billion dollars to hire public relations firms to infiltrate our news system with fake news.

      A report by the Government Accountability Office found the White House violated federal law by buying favorable news coverage from Williams in advance of the 2004 elections. Michael Massing wrote in the New York Review of Books that the GAO report “presents chilling evidence of the campaign that officials in Washington have been waging against a free and independent press.”

      The GAO has issued scathing reports on the White House’s illegal use of taxpayer money to produce “covert propaganda” on four separate occasions. But Attorney General Alberto Gonzales refuses to prosecute these crimes. The official silence speaks volumes. Without legal recourse, an emboldened White House continues to manipulate the news and deceive Americans.

      To read the rest of the report on the attacks against journalism, follow these links:

      Gutting the Freedom of Information Act

      The War on the Press
      The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) enshrines the public’s right to access government records. In the past five years, FOIA has been gutted by an administration that would rather cloak its operations from public scrutiny.

      In 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a chilling memorandum advising federal agencies that the Justice Department would defend their decisions to deny FOIA requests.

      Many have since taken action to fend off public requests for disclosure. Since President Bush entered office, there has been a more than 75 percent increase in the amount of government information classified as secret each year — from 9 million in 2001 to 16 million by 2004.

      Yet an even more aggressive form of government information control has gone un-enumerated and often unrecognized in the Bush era, as government agencies have restricted access to unclassified information in libraries, archives, Web sites, and official databases, according to Steven Aftergood, director of the project on government secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists.

      “Less of a goal-directed policy than a bureaucratic reflex, the widespread clampdown on formerly public information reflects a largely inarticulate concern about ‘security,’” Aftergood writes. “It also accords neatly with the Bush administration’s preference for unchecked executive authority.”

      In their 2004 report, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press provide a rundown of actions taken by public officials to turn basic government information into state secrets. RCFP executive director Lucy Dalglish wrote that many Bush administration actions in fighting the war against terrorism were designed to undermine FOIA. Dalglish and her journalist members hoped that the government’s post-September 11 move toward non-disclosure on all matters would be viewed as temporary or emergency measures.

      “Unfortunately, that has not been the case,” Dalglish reported. “Led by secrecy-loving officials in the executive branch, secrecy in the United States government is now the norm.”

      The restrictions have now grown so tight that the American Society of Newspaper Editors last fall issued a “call to arms” to its members, urging them to “demand answers in print and in court” to stop this “deeply disturbing” trend. The conservative columnist William Safire complained that “the fundamental right of Americans, through our free press, to penetrate and criticize the workings of our government is under attack as never before.”

      To read the rest of the report on the attacks against journalism, follow these links:

      Lying about the War

      The War on the Press
      The White House saw the battle for domestic popular opinion as one of the main fronts in the war in Iraq. With the help of a compliant media, truth became the first casualty in their campaign to whip up support.

      Eight months before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, top level British intelligence officers reported that the White House had told them that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed” to fit the administration’s aim of removing Saddam Hussein. This proved to be the pattern throughout the run-up to the war — during Bush’s 2003 State of the Union Address, in Condoleeza Rice’s congressional testimony, and throughout Colin Powell’s presentation to the United Nations about weapons of mass destruction — as officials manipulated and fabricated information to make their case.

      Later, when this faulty intelligence was disputed, the administration chose to attack those reporting the truth rather than admit to their own lies and misinformation. As Frank Rich recently wrote in the New York Times, the administration’s “web of half-truths and falsehoods used to sell the war did not happen by accident; it was woven by design and then foisted on the public by a P.R. operation built expressly for that purpose in the White House.”

      Among other things, this P.R. campaign involved:
      1. dressing up evidence provided by unreliable sources from within the Iraqi National Congress;
      2. concealing from Congress intelligence that disputed links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s regime; and
      3. exaggerating WMD claims made by a “mentally unstable” Iraqi defector.
      As their deception begins to unravel before the public, Bush, Cheney and their White House colleagues have “stayed the course,” choosing to repeat past untruths in the hope that mainstream media will again err on the side of authority and present the administration’s lies unchallenged.

      To read the rest of the report on the attacks against journalism, follow these links:

      Eliminating Dissent in the Media

      The War on the Press
      The Bush administration has established a hierarchy for journalists seeking interviews with top administration officials, granting access to those networks and newspapers that give the White House the most favorable coverage. At the same time, they’ve stonewalled those who seek to challenge administration talking points.

      The White House sends advance teams of handlers to all Bush events to screen audience members and reporters for loyalty to the president and his policies. They eject possible “troublemakers” who might disrupt their contrived public forum.

      The White House Press Office turned press conferences into parodies by seating a friendly faux journalist, former male escort Jeff Gannon, amid reporters and then steering questions to him when tough issues arose. They refuse to answer tough questioners such as veteran journalist Helen Thomas, effectively silencing reporters who might challenge the president or his aides.

      The administration’s efforts have been amplified by a disciplined and well-organized “echo chamber” of blogs, newspapers, newsletters, journals and radio and televison broadcasters under the influence of conservatives and the Christian right. Often working hand in glove with the White House, these outlets systematically discredit mainstream media that question the official line. This criticism works it way from blogs and other fringe Web sites up the media food chain into radio talk show banter — from the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Mark Levin, and Laura Ingraham — until it’s picked up by more mainstream news outlets.

      As Michael Massing writes in his recent report on journalism “an unscrupulous critic can spread exaggerated or erroneous claims instantaneously to thousands of people, who may, in turn, repeat them to millions more on talk radio programs, on cable television, or on more official ‘news’ Web sites.” This echo chamber effect has effectively placed White House talking points once considered absurd at the center of media discourse; all the while dismissing as “biased” or “liberal” journalists who question their accuracy.

      “We were biased … in favor of uncovering the news that powerful people wanted to keep hidden,” veteran TV journalist Bill Moyers, a frequent target of partisan attacks, recently explained about his PBS news show NOW.

      “Conflicts of interest at the Department of Interior, secret meetings between Vice President Cheney and the oil industry, backdoor shenanigans by lobbyists at the FCC, corruption in Congress, neglect of wounded veterans returning from Iraq, Pentagon cost overruns, the manipulation of intelligence leading to the invasion of Iraq… We were way ahead of the news curve on these stories,” Moyers said, “and the administration turned its hit men loose on us.”

      To read the rest of the report on the attacks against journalism, follow these links:

      Consolidating Media Control with the Elite

      The War on the Press
      The Bush administration has worked with the most powerful media corporations – like News Corp, Sinclair and Clear Channel – in an effort to rewrite media ownership laws in a manner that accelerates consolidation and monopoly control of information.

      In 1983, 50 corporations owned a majority of the news media. In 1992, fewer than two dozen companies owned 90 percent of the news media. In 2003, the number fell to a total of six. The escalated consolidation of media has precipitated the collapse of journalistic values and the rise of profit-driven “infotainment” and “celebrity news.” Driven by bottom-line concerns, corporate media executives have cut overseas newsrooms from their payrolls. As a result, international reporting dropped nearly 80 percent in the past two decades.

      History has shown that the relaxation of media ownership rules always leads to more market consolidation and less competition and diversity in news. Greased by extensive campaign contributions and pressured by intensive lobbying, Washington policymakers have abandoned antitrust enforcement and pursued policies to encourage greater media concentration.

      The Republican-controlled Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will announce plans to rewrite the ownership rules soon – it could happen as early as February. Unless the public mobilizes to oppose efforts to make Big Media even bigger, the FCC will pass rules that would unleash a new wave of media consolidation and allow conglomerates to swallow up hundreds of independent media outlets.

      To read the rest of the report on the attacks against journalism, follow these links: