Calling All Propaganda Busters

We filed a complaint urging incoming FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin to investigate broadcasters who distribute government-sponsored news reports without identifying their source. It's a grand public welcome to his first day on the job.

Nearly 40,000 citizens have signed our petition calling on the FCC, Congress and local broadcasters to put an end to the propaganda . If you haven't signed it, please take a moment:

www.freepress.net/action/fakenews

These petitions are now piling up on Martin's doorstep. They demand "that the Bush administration stop using our tax dollars to create fake news reports" and that the FCC punish broadcasters who beam this propaganda to unsuspecting Americans.

While it’s known that these covert "video news releases" were broadcast over hundreds of local newscasts, we've yet to put together a comprehensive roster of what programs aired on which stations, when and where. Tracking content on local newscasts is proving far more difficult than it would seem.

The local station mangers know whether they've beamed propaganda into American homes, but few are speaking out. And there's few to no local news monitoring services looking out for the public's best interests and flagging official VNR's when they air.

My request to MediaCitizens: Have you seen a government-sponsored "video news release" on your local station? I'm going to start compiling a record. But I need your help. Call your local station managers and ask them to reveal any VNR's that have come through their newsrooms. If they refuse to tell, report them to me and we'll start investigating. If they do tell, let us know about the VNR's and we'll begin compiling a public record.

The only way to stop propaganda is with a vigilant citizenry ready to call broadcasters and our government to account.

Propaganda: The Gathering Storm

Follows is helpful timeline of the gathering momentum around the propaganda story. The Bush team continues to manipulate the press undaunted. Despite significant legal questions and the cascade of criticism in the media and elsewhere, they intend to produce more video news releases to build support for Bush's Social Security, education, Iraq, anti-drug and other plans.

Already, State Department, Defense Department, Transportation Security Administration and Agriculture Department video segments have been beamed over hundreds of local TV stations. All told, at least 20 federal agencies have quietly used this tactic to cloak the administration's messages as objective television news. And it's all done at the taxpayers' expense.

Here's a brief history, replete with Democratic calls for action or, as Dowd put it, "whining letters of protest that are tossed in the Oval Office trash:"

January 4: GAO Rules 'Video News Releases' Violate Federal Law
January 7: President Asked to Renounce Covert Propaganda
January 11: GAO Asked to Investigate Covert Propaganda
January 14: FCC Chairman Calls for Payola Investigation
January 21: House Members Challenge SSA Communications Plan
January 26: Report: PR Spending Doubled under Bush
January 28: House Dems Urge President Disclose All Propaganda
February 9: Slaughter Calls on Bush to Explain Scandal
February 10: Request for Documents Related to "Journalist" Gannon
February 10: Cogressmen Call for Gannon Investigation
February 16: OPEN Government Act Introduced
February 22: GAO Reminds Agencies of Covert Propaganda Ban
February 22: Democrats Call for Gannon Inquiry
February 23: Congessmen Call for GAO Investigation
March 1: Reps. Request VNR Disclosure
March 11: White House Rejects GAO Ruling
March 16: Bush Shifts Responsibility to Broadcasters
March 21: Free Press Urges FCC Investigation

With more forceful public support this whine might reach a fever pitch. For more on this and to take action against the further spread of news fraud, see our propaganda report at Free Press.

'Divorced from Reality'

A House vote earlier this week, got almost no play in the media, though it concerned a pretender to their Estate: Jeff Gannon aka James D. Guckert.

The House Judiciary Committee rejected a resolution put forth by John Conyers' that would have required the Department of Homeland Security and Justice Department to reveal documents regarding "security investigations and background checks relating to granting access to the White House of James D. Guckert."

Conyers went to his colleagues on the Hill because the Bush administration had ignored previous requests via letter. His earlier White House missive is one among many letters from Dems that, according to Times' columnist Maureen Dowd, likely ended up in the Oval Office trash bin.

Having failed on Pennsylvania Avenue, Conyers went to Congress, telling his Judiciary Committee colleagues that "It simply defies credibility that a phony reporter, operating under an alias, who couldn't get privileges in the House or Senate press gallery, could receive scores of consecutive White House day passes without the intervention of someone very high up at the White House." The majority Republican Committee voted along party lines, striking down Conyers request while citing a Secret Service finding that the same Secret Service had done "nothing inappropriate" granting this partisan shill access to the press room.

Tim Grieve at Salon.com writes that Gannon himself declared the vote against the bill a victory for journalists of every stripe. In a statement posted on his website, Gannon said: "It appears to me that a strong majority on the committee has decided that investigating the background of journalists beyond the standards already in place is unnecessary and perhaps poses a threat to a free and independent press."

It's amusing to see Gannon now defend an institution that he had devoted much of his "career" to tearing down.

Gannon's feeble star refuses to go to black. Emboldened by the heavy traffic on his website, He's taken to whoring of a different sort. Like so many others awash in the media, Gannon's attempting to cash in his sad 15 minutes for a lifetime of high-paid punditry. In an interview to appear this Sunday, he tells the New York Times' Deborah Solomon that he’d like to get back into journalism: "I’m hoping someone will offer me a job as a commentator or one of those political analysts that you see on the news shows all the time.”

Ummmm . . . I doubt even Fox News Channel would touch that one.

Who's "divorced themselves from reality" now?

Bush: Propaganda a Laugh

Here's the latest from Washington's propaganda follies. Sadly, Bush thinks it's all a joke. His Justice Department gives the thumbs up to more fake news reports, despite a congressional report that they are breaking federal laws that prohibit the covert spread of government propaganda. What’s more disturbing is a DC press gaggle that laughs along with a joke told at its expense.

It seems our president takes America's legal system about as seriously as he does our free press. Meanwhile, the best the media can do is to provide the laugh track to their own demise:

QUESTION: Mr. President, earlier this year you told us you had wanted your administration to cease and desist on payments to journalists to promote your agenda. You cited the need for ethical concerns and the need for a bright line between the press and the government. Your administration continues to make the use of video news releases, which are prepackaged news stories sent to television stations, fully aware that some or many of these stations will air them without any disclaimer that they are produced by the government.

The comptroller general of the United States this week said that raises ethical questions. Does it raise ethical questions about the use of government money to produce stories about the government that wind up being aired with no disclosure that they were produced by the government?

BUSH: There is a Justice Department opinion that says these pieces are within the law so long as they're based upon facts, not advocacy. . . . And I expect our agencies to adhere to that ruling, to that Justice Department opinion. This has been a longstanding practice of the federal government to use these types of videos. The Agricultural Department, as I understand it, has been using these videos for a long period of time. The Defense Department, other departments have been doing so. It's important that they be based upon the guidelines set out by the Justice Department. Now, I also -- I think it would be helpful if local stations then disclosed to their viewers that this was based upon a factual report and they chose to use it. . . But evidently in some cases that's not the case.

QUESTION: But the administration could guarantee that's happening by including that language in the pre-packaged report?

BUSH: You mean a disclosure, "I'm George W. Bush and I..."

(LAUGHTER)

QUESTION: Well, some way to make sure it couldn't air without the disclosure that you believe is so vital.

BUSH: You know, Ken, I mean, there's a procedure that we're going to follow and the local stations ought to -- since there's a deep concern about that -- ought to tell their viewers what they're watching.

Propaganada Special Report

Check out MediaCitizen's special report on "Ghosts in the Media Machine" produced for Free Press in my new capacity as Campaign Director.

And take action to Stop the White House from using hundreds of millions of your tax dollars to manipulate public opinion.

Ghosts in the Media Machine

"State-run media" is a phrase normally reserved for regimes such as North Korea that manipulate and censor all public information. Media in the United States were thought to be free of such autocratic control, but recent maneuvers by the Bush administration should make all of us stand up and take notice.

After recent revelations that several "journalists" have been working as propagandists on the White House payroll, more are beginning to wonder how free America’s press actually is.

Each passing week adds a new chapter to the story line. In early January, the $240,000 Armstrong Williams took from the Department of Education headlined national news. This single event sparked public outrage and compelled 20,000 people to join Free Press in demanding that Federal Communication Commission Chairman Michael Powell launch a probe of Williams. Since then two other journalists have admitted being on the take: Maggie Gallagher and Michael McManus.

Next came pseudonymous "Jeff Gannon" with his backdoor pass to the White House. Now we're learning the White House has set up a Social Security "war room" -- using taxpayer funds to aggressively lobby the press on behalf of Bush’s privatization plan.

Despite the cascade of criticism in the media and elsewhere, the Bush team continues to manipulate the press. Renewed tactics include the latest "video news report" propaganda designed to build support for Bush's education, Medicare and anti-drug and other plans. The State Department, Defense Department, Transportation Security Administration and Agriculture Department have produced similar "news" segments for local TV. All told at least 20 federal agencies have quietly used this tactic to cloak the administration's messages as objective television news. And it's all done at the taxpayers' expense.

We are witnessing a systemic pattern of abuse by an executive branch that is siphoning up taxpayer money to covertly manipulate the Fourth Estate. But while some in Congress have taken up the call for investigations, they have yet to raise this issue beyond a probe into a few bad actors, such as Williams, to finger the source of the problem.

It's against federal law to use public funds to infiltrate our press with "covert propaganda." minority calls for a concerted probe have sounded a hollow echo through the halls of the Capitol. Washington remains under the thrall of the majority Republican Party, which would rather ignore this simmering scandal. Moreover, Alberto Gonzalez's Justice Department appears unwilling to take the next step: a criminal investigation into the administration’s use of millions of taxpayer dollars to push fake "news" upon Americans.

Washington’s silence speaks volumes. Without popular dissent, an emboldened White House will continue to throw up obstacles to full disclosure. It is now up to the public to do what our elected officials are unwilling or unable to: pressure our government to exert proper legal scrutiny of possible White House propaganda crimes.

This Free Press/MediaCitizen special report reviews the evidence and guides you to a series of actions you can take to defend our free press and turn the tide against government-sponsored propaganda.

1. A Propaganda Slush Fund Courtesy of U.S. Taxpayers
2. Jeff Gannon’s White House Maneuver
3. Armstrong Williams and the White House Payola Trail
4. Propagandists on the Pentagon Payroll
5. The Demise of FOIA and the Special Prosecutor

A Taxpayer Slush Fund

This White House won't hesitate funneling considerable taxpayer sums to fund Bush-friendly public relations campaigns. At least $300,000 went to prominent pundits in exchange for their on-air and in-print allegiance. Another "journalist" received pay from an organization allied with prominent Texas Republicans an eyelash length removed from the Bush campaign, while simultaneously publishing "news" articles that contained full passages lifted verbatim from White House press releases. And in dozens of cases, federal agencies succeeded in infiltrating local newscasts with phony reports promoting the president's policies.

Thus far, three separate Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigations have found these actions violated laws that prohibit government use of taxpayer money to spread "covert propaganda." But the GAO's pronouncements have gone unheeded. Press officers for several of the federal agencies in question recently told The New York Times that these prohibitions did not apply to government-made television news segments, which they insisted are "factual, politically neutral and useful to viewers." And on March 11, the Justice Department and Office of Management and Budget circulated a memorandum instructing all executive branch agencies to ignore the GAO findings.

And while some in Congress have taken up the call for more investigation, 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 pattern of abuse to quietly manipulate the Fourth Estate and sway public opinion in favor of presidential policies.

In 2004 alone, the Bush administration spent more than $88 million in taxpayer money on PR contracts, drawn from a slush fund that's amassed more than $250 million in tax dollars over the past four years. The three public relations firms that received the most in federal contracts from this fund are Ketchum Incorporated ($97 million) Matthews Media Group ($52 million) and Fleishman Hillard ($41 million). It's unclear exactly how much public largesse went to create "covert propaganda;" many of these companies are refusing to divulge whether they used millions in taxpayer dollars to deploy faux journalists to flack for the policies favored by the president and his cronies.

The White House has paid people to pose as television reporters praising the benefits of the new Medicare law, which the administration had proffered midst the Bush campaign to win votes from elderly Americans with promises of lowering the costs of their prescription medicines.

Faux-journalist Karen Ryan became infamous in media circles for fronting this series of Bush-friendly "video news releases" that duped local television newscasters broadcast across the country as real news. The Medicare bill wasn't the only controversial piece of legislation that the Bush administration turned to Ryan for help supporting. She also "reported" for Bush policy in a 2003 video news release that sang the praises of the No Child Left Behind Act. On a similar front the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) has produced eight Video News Releases that the GAO found violated laws against undisclosed publicity and propaganda.

Now comes news that the administration has set up a "war room" inside the Treasury Department to pump out information to sell President Bush's Social Security plan. The internal, taxpayer-funded effort will run a "political campaign" replete with television advertisements, grass-roots organizing and lobbying from business and other groups that support the Bush plan. It's unclear whether video news releases are a part of the White House's Social Security plan, but over the last four years, at least 20 federal agencies have used this tactic distributing hundreds of government-produced television news segments via local news outlets.

The Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 (22 U.S.C. ' 1461), forbids the domestic dissemination of U.S. government authored or developed propaganda or "official news" deliberately designed to influence public opinion or policy. The law singles out materials that serve "a solely partisan purpose." In the past, the GAO has found that administration agencies violated this and other federal restrictions when they disseminated editorials and newspaper articles written by the government or its contractors without disclosing the conflict of interest.

By law, Americans have the right demand transparency of their government, especially as regards use of tax dollars. But one-party rule in Washington, combined with the recent demise of the special-prosecutor statute and ongoing efforts to defang the Freedom of Information Act, has stripped Americans of any means to uncover the extremes to which this White House has gone.

1. Introduction: Ghosts in the Media Machine
2. Jeff Gannon's White House Maneuver
3. Armstrong Williams and the White House Payola Trail
4. Propagandists on the Pentagon Payroll
5. The Demise of FOIA and the Special Prosecutor

Williams and the Payola Trail

Earlier this year, USA Today revealed television commentator Armstrong Williams to be a front man for a scheme in which $240,000 in taxpayer money was quietly siphoned from the U.S. Treasury via global PR agency Ketchum Inc so that Williams could sell Bush's controversial education policies to black America during an election year.

Neither Williams nor the Department of Education disclosed these payments to the public. Instead, he flacked for Bush policy in an egregiously dishonest fashion via print, radio, television and online news outlets, including conducting an interview with Education Secretary Rod Paige on Sinclair stations.

Williams maintained he was acting as "an entrepreneur" who had no formal training in journalism. Still, he seemed more than willing to play a journalist on television. He added that the FCC has no jurisdiction over him because he isn't a licensed broadcaster, a statement that seems blind to the FCC's own rules on payola, which state if agents "are paying persons other than the licensee to have records aired, and not disclosing that fact to the licensee, the person making such payments, and the recipient, are subject to fine, imprisonment or both."

In 2004 alone, the Bush administration spent more than $88 million on public relations contracts, drawn from a slush fund that's amassed more than $250 million in tax dollars over the past four years. It's unclear exactly how much public largesse went to create "covert propaganda;" but we know that at least three pr firms quietly received tens of millions of dollars each to deploy faux journalists to flack for the conservative policies favored by the president.

Williams told the media that he intends not to pay back any of the pr money he's received unless forced. Thanks in part to the efforts of Free Press e-activists, the FCC has now promised an investigation of the legality of the Williams transaction under these same anti-payola laws.

Since early January two other pundits on the White House dole have emerged since the USA Today exposé, and Williams himself has publicly indicated that he has "no doubt" that there are others loose in the media machine.

With continued public scrutiny more paid pundits will likely emerge from the dark.

1. Introduction: Ghosts in the Media Machine
2. A Propaganda Slush Fund Courtesy of U.S. Taxpayers
3. Jeff Gannon's White House Maneuver
4. Propagandists on the Pentagon Payroll
5. The Demise of FOIA and the Special Prosecutor

Mr. Gannon's White House Maneuver

A recent high-profile case of media abuse involves faux-correspondent Jeff Gannon, who for nearly two years received daily credentials from the White House press office to attend briefings and, when the occasion arose, lob "softball" questions at Press Secretary Scott McClellan.

He became a useful escape hatch for McClellan, especially when grilling by other journalists got intense. Gannon – whom we now know to be James D. Guckert – continued to come to the aid of the White House throughout the election year, even though the Standing Committee of Correspondents earlier in 2004 had refused to issue him a permanent pass, citing questionable ties between Gannon's news organization, Talon News, and its wealthy Republican supporters in Texas.

The Talon News' correspondent showed his true colors during the live broadcast of a January 26 presidential press conference when he asked Bush a question about the White House Social Security plan. The request was a poorly disguised dig at Bush's political foes, whom Gannon described as people "divorced from reality." This partisan ploy backfired. A subsequent investigation by bloggers found Gannon to be gaining special access to the White House, each day exploiting a credentialing loophole set up to provide visiting journalists with a temporary pass.

McClellan has pleaded ignorance in the resulting furor over Gannon's free pass, saying: "In this day and age, when you have a changing media, it's not an easy issue to decide, to try to pick and choose who is a journalist." This appears to contradict evidence at hand. In the 10 months since the Standing Committee refused Gannon's credentials, the fact that he worked for an outlet that simply promoted one political party was no secret within White House press circles. The line between reporter and propagandist had been crossed so many times that this administration didn't give Gannon's intransigence a second thought.

1. Introduction: Ghosts in the Media Machine
2. A Propaganda Slush Fund Courtesy of U.S. Taxpayers
3. Armstrong Williams and the White House Payola Trail
4. Propagandists on the Pentagon Payroll
5. The Demise of FOIA and the Special Prosecutor

Propagandists on the Pentagon Payroll

This is the same White House that has spoken openly about their intense campaign to circumvent the mainstream media "filter" and communicate "good news" about the war in Iraq directly to the public. The administration has spent $62 million in taxpayer money to launch Arabic-language satellite news station Al-Hurra, a thinly veiled effort to spread US-friendly propaganda and win Arab hearts and minds across the Middle East. This same administration thinks there nothing to stop them from attempting to win over Americans in the same way.

According to Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, in the run-up to the War in Iraq the Pentagon handed "global strategic communications consultancy" the Rendon Group a multi-million-dollar contract to sell Americans on a preemptive war in Iraq. Both Rendon and the Pentagon have kept steadfastly quiet on exactly what this involved. Seymour Hersh has since reported that Rendon had been hired by the Pentagon's now-defunct Office of Strategic Influence, to plant news stories – including false ones – in the media. We have yet to uncover which American "journalists" worked with the OSI while it existed, and how much they were paid.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon Channel will soon become available to Americans via every satellite and cable operator. This is just one piece in the array of Pentagon propaganda designed to infiltrate the U.S. news system. Since 2001, the Army and Air Force Hometown News Service has fielded 40 reporters, producers and public affairs specialists to create good military news to be beamed to home audiences via local news stations. According to a March 13 report in The New York Times, the service's "good news" segments have reached 41 million Americans via local newscasts, in most cases, without the station acknowledging their source.

In 2002, State Department public affairs contractors produced a segment on how America is helping liberate Afghani women. The fake news segment, created on behalf of a White House effort to build support for the war on terror, ran almost in its entirety on a Fox affiliate station in Memphis. The local reporter later told reporters that she was unaware the segment came via the White House.

The Bush administration and its Pentagon wield maximum media manipulation with minimal opposition. On the sidelines stands a mute White House press corps. The word "propaganda" has been mentioned only once in the more than 30 White House briefings that have occurred this year. Across the aisle, Democrats have mustered together a series of letters demanding hearings and investigations. Though, according to Times' columnist Maureen Dowd, their letters likely ended up in the Oval Office trash can.

1. Introduction: Ghosts in the Media Machine
2. A Propaganda Slush Fund Courtesy of U.S. Taxpayers
3. Jeff Gannon's White House Maneuver
4. Armstrong Williams and the White House Payola Trail
5. The Demise of FOIA and the Special Prosecutor

The Demise of Disclosure

Soon after the Armstrong Williams scandal broke, Melanie Sloan of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) fired off Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to 22 federal agencies. Sloan is seeking official evidence of similar arrangements between the executive branch, PR firms and pundits. She faces an uphill challenge, though, as the Bush administration has thrown up a bureaucratic maze to prevent citizens from navigating this path to government transparency.

The Freedom of Information Act, signed into law by President Johnson in 1966, enshrined the public's right of access to federal government records. It has since become the victiom of a government that would rather cloak its operations behind a veil of secrecy.

In their 2004 annual report, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP) provide a rundown of actions taken by public officials to turn basic government information into state secrets. RCFP executive director Lucy Dalglish says that many Bush administration actions were designed to undermine the Act. Since September 11, 2001, rollbacks to access have included striking the release of names of terrorism-suspect detainees to library information on bodies of water. The change in attitude can be traced straight to the top, as seen in the policy statement released by Attorney General John Ashcroft in October 2001 that has come to be known as "The Ashcroft Memorandum."

Dalglish writes: "A month and a day after the events of September 11, [Ashcroft] revoked what had been a seemingly permissive Clinton-era Freedom of Information Act instruction to federal agencies. He issued his own: a hard-nosed missive that promised agencies that if there were any 'sound legal basis' for withholding information from FOIA requesters, the Justice Department would support the withholding."

"The memorandum emboldened federal agencies in using exemptions more often and to use other tactics to prevent FOIA requests from being fulfilled," Says James Benton, Legislative Representative for public advocacy group Common Cause. Now some FOIA requests can take up to ten years to be fulfilled Benton says.

Dalglish and her journalist members hoped that the government's post-September 11 move toward non-disclosure would be viewed as temporary or emergency measures: "Unfortunately, that has not been the case. Led by secrecy-loving officials in the executive branch, secrecy in the United States government is now the norm."

Document classification has nearly doubled in Bush's first term, Information Security Oversight Office Director William Leonard told the Progressive Review. "Based upon information furnished our office, the total number of classification decisions increased from 9 million in FY 2001 to 11 million in FY 2002, 14 million in FY 2003 and 16 million in FY 2004."

Recently, there have been some encouraging signs that FOIA might get back some teeth. On Feb. 16, Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) introduced the OPEN Government Act to force agencies to pay legal costs in more cases when faced with a lawsuit over improperly withheld records. The bill would also put in place other measures to hold agencies more accountable for fulfilling public FOIA requests.

"[The Act] is one way to undo some of the damage caused by the 'Ashcroft Memorandum'" Benton says. More public support of Cornyn and Leahy's legislation could push it through.

Another public avenue to disclosure, the "special prosecutor," no longer exists. Once a potent tool to police White House abuse, the special prosecutor law appointed an independent counsel to investigate allegations of wrongdoings by the executive branch. Unfortunately in 1999, Congress let this law expire.

The special prosecutor was created in 1978, when Congress passed the "independent-counsel statute" as a response to Richard Nixon's October 1973 firing of Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox and the consequent fear that the executive branch would be able to stymie investigations of high-level officials. The purpose of the law was to guarantee that judges would be given authority to appoint prosecutors who would then be unencumbered in investigating serious allegations of executive-branch wrongdoing.

This process seemed judicious enough until the prosecutor's mantle landed in the hands of conservative barrister Kenneth Starr. In 1994, Starr accepted the appointment as special prosecutor in 1994 despite having publicly disparaged the law that enshrined his autonomy. Undaunted, Starr took up his prosecutorial authority with disproportionate zeal -- so much so that his controversial actions as special prosecutor did much to ensure the law's ultimate demise. He was appointed to investigate a questionable Arkansas land deal (Whitewater) involving the Bill and Hillary Clinton. He expanded his investigation to include conspiracies surrounding the death of White House lawyer Vincent Foster, the White House travel office and the FBI files affair. Starr then issued a subpoena to an as yet unknown White House intern. Upon the arrival of Monica Lewinsky, an investigation, which until then captured little public interest, went global.

Starr's grand overreach as special prosecutor helped ensure the ruin of the independent-counsel statute itself. In 1999, following Starr's excessive investigation and the Clinton impeachment, Congress decided not to renew the statute. Authority over the appointment of an independent counsel was returned to the confines of the Executive Branch. Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the independent prosecutor tasked with investigating White House leaks of Valerie Plame's CIA identity, was appointed by the Justice Department. It's newly appointed chief, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, reports directly to President Bush. Any "independent" investigation of the White House's use of propaganda would be subject to this same chain of command.

1. Introduction: Ghosts in the Media Machine
2. A Propaganda Slush Fund Courtesy of U.S. Taxpayers
3. Jeff Gannon's White House Maneuver
4. Armstrong Williams and the White House Payola Trail
5. Propagandists on the Pentagon Payroll

A House vote earlier this week got

A House vote earlier this week, got almost no play in the media, though it concerned a pretender to their Estate: Jeff Gannon aka James D. Guckert.

The House Judiciary Committee rejected a resolution put forth by John Conyers' that would have required the Department of Homeland Security and Justice Department to reveal documents regarding "security investigations and background checks relating to granting access to the White House of James D. Guckert."

Conyers went to his colleagues on the Hill because the Bush administration had ignored previous requests via letter. His earlier White House missive is one among many letters from Dems that, according to Times' columnist Maureen Dowd, likely ended up in the Oval Office trash bin.

Having failed on Pennsylvania Avenue, Conyers went to Congress, telling his Judiciary Committee colleagues that "It simply defies credibility that a phony reporter, operating under an alias, who couldn't get privileges in the House or Senate press gallery, could receive scores of consecutive White House day passes without the intervention of someone very high up at the White House." The majority Republican Committee voted along party lines, striking down Conyers request while citing a Secret Service finding that the same Secret Service had done "nothing inappropriate" granting this partisan shill access to the press room.

Tim Grieve at Salon.com writes that Gannon himself declared the vote against the bill a victory for journalists of every stripe. In a statement posted on his website, Gannon said: "It appears to me that a strong majority on the committee has decided that investigating the background of journalists beyond the standards already in place is unnecessary and perhaps poses a threat to a free and independent press."

It's amusing to see Gannon now defend an institution that he had devoted much of his "career" to tearing down.

Gannon's feeble star refuses to go to black. Emboldened by the heavy traffic on his website, He's taken to whoring of a different sort. Like so many others awash in the media, Gannon's attempting to cash in his sad 15 minutes for a lifetime of high-paid punditry. In an interview to appear this Sunday, he tells the New York Times' Deborah Solomon that he’d like to get back into journalism: "I’m hoping someone will offer me a job as a commentator or one of those political analysts that you see on the news shows all the time.”

Ummmm . . . I doubt even Fox News Channel would touch that one.

Who's "divorced themselves from reality" now?

The Unstopable Machine

Jay Rosen chimes in on the propaganda machine. He also plugs MediaCitizen for having exposed Gannon's White House maneuvers. Salient points:

Rosen:

"There's a difference between going around the press in an effort to avoid troublesome questions, and trying to de-unseat the idea that these people who call themselves 'journalists' have a legitimate role to play in politics. Ashcroft was out to unseat that idea about the traditional press. He wanted it out of the picture."

Froomkin:

"Even more of a charade these days are the daily briefings held by White House press secretary Scott McClellan, whose robotic adherence to repeating the predetermined messages of the day -- no matter what questions come his way -- as driven some correspondents to despair."

Hertzberg:

"What all the memorable scandals of the past thirty years—real and fake alike, from Watergate to the Clinton impeachment—have had in common is that the opposition party controlled at least one house of Congress, which gave it the power to hold hearings and issue subpoenas. If Bush ends up having an easier time of it in his second term than any of his two-term predecessors since F.D.R., it won’t be because the scandals aren’t there. It’ll be because the tools to excavate them are under lock and key."

Suskind:

"There is a varied, national, forceful, coordinated campaign to . . . to try to create doubt about the long-held and long-respected work of the mainstream media. Absolutely. So that Americans believe that what we do and say, what the mainstream media offer, is not of value, is not honest, is not factually accurate. And [that we are] not in any way connected to strong traditions of American public dialogue, that we've been co-opted, that we're not objective, and that essentially we are carrying forward an agenda."

Rosen:

"An illegitimate press demands not only national scorn but practical replacement. It is in this sense that 'Jeff Gannon' deserved his press pass, Armstrong Williams deserved his $240,000, and Ketchum public relations deserved $97 million of taxpayer money to help the Bush Administration communicate the message. (My sense is that the big uncovered facts in this scandal are to be found there, in the $97 million pot of post-press money that went to Ketchum, a PR firm willing to bend the rules, and help create a replacement for real journalism."

Boehlert:

The White House and its media allies, echoing a deep-rooted conservative antagonism toward the so-called liberal media, say they are simply countering its bias. But critics charge that the White House, along with partners like Fox News and Sinclair Broadcasting, organizations whose allegiance to the Republican Party outweighs their commitment to journalism, is actually trying to permanently weaken the press. Its motivation, they say, is twofold. Weakening the press weakens an institution that’s structurally an adversary of the White House. And if the press loses its credibility, that eliminates agreed-upon facts — the commonly accepted information that is central to public debate.

These comments combined tell a tale of a Fourth Estate in decline as the Bush administration acts with impunity to manipulate the mainstream media while effectively discrediting and even punishing dissenters.

Brent Gloats, Lawmakers Cower, Democracy Suffers

In his latest column for the right-wing press, First Amendment nemesis Brent Bozell III gives a titillating rundown of television's flirtation with lesbians. From tongue-locked beach beauties on "The O.C." to a gay doctor coming out to her mother on "E.R.," lesbian issues have taken over the airwaves in February. It’s broadcasters' blatant bid to spice up primetime and draw more viewers during sweeps month, Bozell complains. And he’s right about that. But so what?

As always Brent and his trenchant neo-nannies at the Parents Television Council are good for a laugh as they attempt to pour disinfectant over our airwaves. What gets me is the apparent and perverse glee they take in recounting “unseemly” acts for their lily members. A visit to the Parents Television Council website can be more fun than surfing porn.

But the humor goes flat when one sees how effective Bozell and his army of prigs have been. They've chalked up victory after victory as they strong-arm our nation’s regulators and lawmakers to abide by their obscene disregard for our Constitution.

The passage last week of the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act of 2005 is due in large to Bozell’s uncanny ability to leverage the latest prime time “wardrobe malfunction” to mobilize hundreds of thousands of letter writers. The resulting onslaught of email has Congresspeople and FCC bureaucrats running for cover, shamefully incapable of defending that document upon which our nation was built. Certainly none in the majority were willing to stick their neck out on behalf of our First Amendment and risk the wrath of the PTC, the American Family Association and other blinkered zealots who rein over the chill political climate that now pervades inside the Beltway.

Incoming Education Secretary Margaret Spellings did much to ice the deal earlier this month when she threatened to take back federal grant money if PBS didn't deep-six an installment of the children's show "Postcards from Buster" that featured a cartoon character’s visit to two lesbian families in Vermont.

To cover their grubby tracks, lawmakers cite FCC broadcast license agreements, which loosely obligate television broadcasters to serve the "public interest, convenience and necessity" in exchange for access to a slice of our airwaves. This gives us a legal basis for action, they claim. But many in Washington plan to take their crackdown beyond broadcasters to fine cable producers whose content strays into forbidden territory. Stay tuned for more . . . or less as the case may be.

Now, Bozell is gloating over another victory won on the backs of “shocked” lawmakers in the House. The legislation moves next into the Senate, thanks to Kansas Republican Sam Brownback and Connecticut Democrat Joe Lieberman, where it faces scant opposition. These great defenders of our rights are legislators we Americans voted into office -- who upon serving took an oath to "defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic." [emphasis added]

While we still have the right, it's time Americans mobilized to vote them out.

The Hoisting of PBS' Head

Welcome to the Bush II era of media intimidation. This new political front is turning "the chill that has already descended over our nation’s media into a deep freeze." But some media are suffering the cold worse than others, which raises questions about selective targeting by "conservo-drones" out to score political points against their nemeses in the "liberal media," while awarding others with a pass.

First, the Public Broadcasting Service caves to our new Secretary of Education and slashes an episode of "Postcards from Buster," which has the asthmatic bunny visiting lesbians in Vermont. Now, PBS is bleeping American soldiers who dare curse while on patrol in Iraq. The cowering bureaucrats at PBS have decided to censor next Tuesday's "Frontline" documentary about the war in Iraq, removing 13 expletives uttered by soldiers.

The producers of the "Frontline" program in question wrote a memo to executives at PBS calling on them to stand firm and broadcast "A Company of Soldiers” intact, as it was intended:

We believe what is at issue is not the particulars of this case, but the principle of editorial independence. Because overreaching by the FCC is at its heart a First Amendment issue, all programs are at risk, whether art, science, history, culture, or public affairs.

Rather than fight the good fight for our First Amendment, PBS President and CEO Pat Mitchell has decided to decamp from the network at the end of her term. But before ducking out, Mitchell has announced that public television will conduct a “strategic assessment” of their children's lineup “We will create new and even better standards for programming" for children, Mitchell told a congressional subcommittee on Thursday.

Translation: "strategic assessment" = more scrubbing of PBS content.

Meanwhile, Fox plans to go ahead with the airing of a Simpson’s episode "There's Something About Marrying," in which Springfield legalizes same-sex marriage and Homer cashes in playing minister. One would expect swift condemnation from the Washington conservatives who slammed Buster and, earlier, SpongeBob SquarePants. Don’t count on it, these prigs won't waste their powder during sweeps, especially with a program broadcast on Fox News Channel's sister network. They're out to spill PBS' blood.

Which tells you some about the real motivation lying behind the new McCarthyism. It's not about making our airwaves safe for lily Christians, but about punishing media that the right believes slants in the opposite direction.

Kay McFadden writes: "Better for Mitchell to quit before American public television comes to resemble Al-Jazeera or state-run TV in Russia by reflecting the government's ideology instead of the taxpayers' diversity."

End Note: I initially had some trepidation about drawing comparison between the campaign against PBS ("Buster") and the pass given Fox ("Simpsons"). After all, it was Fox that received the highest FCC fine in 2004 for an episode of "Married By America" that included people licking whipped cream off strippers' bodies. But given this administration's taste for propaganda and message control, it's not a stretch to assert that they also favor a double standard when it comes to punishing the media.

Where's The Public Outrage?

Leonard Pitts, Jr. wonders why the American public isn't more outraged by Jeff Gannon's ability to gain access to the White House:

Bush spokesman Scott McClellan has pleaded ignorance, saying that, "In this day and age, when you have a changing media, it's not an easy issue to decide, to try to pick and choose who is a journalist.'' Which is patently ridiculous. Contrary to the press secretary's Hamlet-like agonizing, it's not all that hard to know who is and is not a reporter.

If an individual reports for a recognized media outlet that observes customary standards of journalistic integrity -- even if it tends to view the world through a conservative or liberal editorial prism -- that person is a reporter.

But if the person works for an outlet that simply promotes, or advocates for, one political party or another, then the line between reporter and shill has been well and truly crossed.

It's not brain surgery. So you'll have to forgive me for not extending the benefit of the doubt to McClellan. My problem is that he speaks for an administration with a long record of manipulating truth and propagandizing the public.

These are the folks who pay pundits to say nice things about them. The ones who pressure scientists to change science that conflicts with political goals. The ones who ignore their own experts when confronted with information they'd rather not
believe. And this is a president whose press conferences occur with only slightly more frequency than ice storms do in Key West, who ducks hard questions posed by actual reporters, preferring to bat slow pitches tossed by citizens prescreened for their support.

So planting a party stooge among the real reporters hardly seems out of character. The thing is, a government that is not scrutinized by an energetic and adversarial press is a government that is not accountable for its actions.

A government that is allowed to create its own reality is a government that can get away with anything.

Sinclair Goes Digital and Multiplies

Read my analysis of Sinclair's plans to leap forward into the digital TV world, now up on AlterNet. Also check out Paul Schmelzer's investigative piece on conflict of interest within Sinclair's newsrooms.

New York Times Swings Late, and Misses

The biggest news from the digital frontier may be the advent of Community Internet – low-cost, high-speed broadband services provided by municipal governments and community groups via local networks.

Hundreds of cities and towns – from Philadelphia and San Francisco to Granbury, Texas, and Scottsburg, Ind. – recognize broadband Internet access as a public necessity, no different from water, gas or electricity. Especially in rural and underserved urban areas, Community Internet promises to narrow the digital divide.

Telecom and cable companies are pushing laws across the country that would restrict local competition and cut off consumer choice. This newsworthy battle finally graced the front-page of the New York Times on Feb. 17, with a story pegged to Philadelphia’s ambitious plans to turn the city into “one gigantic wireless hot spot.”

The real problem with James Dao’s piece wasn’t its tardiness – other papers covered similar ground months ago – but the way the Times failed to question the true motivations of its sources.

The first quote in the story goes to Adam Thierer, identified as “director of telecommunications studies at the libertarian Cato Institute and the author of a soon-to-be-released study criticizing the Philadelphia plan.” He tells the Times: “The last thing I’d want to see is broadband turned into a lazy public utility.”

Dao fails to note that the Cato Institute is funded by Verizon, SBC Communications, Time Warner, Comcast and Freedom Communications — all companies seeking to put a stake through the heart of homegrown broadband systems. Thierer is little more than an industry sock puppet.

Dao then goes on to interview David L. Cohen, executive vice president of Comcast, who asks: “Is it fair that the industry pay tax dollars to the city that are then used to launch a network that would compete with our own?”

Fair enough. But again, Dao fails to alert readers to Cohen’s web of interests that might impugn his integrity. In a previous incarnation, Cohen served as chief of staff to then Philadelphia Mayor Edward G. Rendell. Rendell has since moved into the governor’s mansion, while Cohen jumped to the private sector.

But Cohen still has Rendell’s ear, which might explain why the governor ignored widespread public opposition and signed a bill into law last December that prevents other Pennsylvania communities from offering competitive broadband services. Though the Philadelphia plan secured a last-minute reprieve, the rest of the state got shafted.

And Comcast – so concerned about the spending of its tax dollars – is more than happy to take public handouts. To finance the Comcast Center, which will be Philadelphia’s tallest skyscraper when it’s completed in 2007, Rendell put together a state aid package worth $42.75 million. The state Department of Community and Economic Development kicked in another $12.75 million in grants and tax credits. Dao doesn’t mention it.

But Dao does give Verizon spokesman Eric Rabe the chance to remind readers that “government doesn’t do service well.” Tell that to the 40 percent of Philadelphians without access to broadband service.

Dao later wrote in an email to MediaCitizen that he was aware of Cato's funding and David Cohen's background. "But unlike bloggers who have unlimited space, I had to make editorial choices," he wrote. "This story was being relentless cut, and my choice was between retaining details about Philadelphia's program and adding asides about Cato or David Cohen's background. I went with the program details."

Dao is free to prioritize those aspects of the story he finds most important. But it's hard to understand why he would choose to downplay this unseemly tale of collusion between corporations, state government and coin-operated think tanks like Cato and the dubious New Millennium Research Council, which are at the center of a well-funded campaign to paint municipal broadband as an affront to American innovation and free enterprise.

In fact, the opposite is true. Community Internet creates free-market competition, allows consumer choice, and encourages entrepreneurs through public-private partnerships. Municipal networks are proving a win-win for local politicians: They're relatively cheap to build and city officials gain points from bringing technology – and resulting economic opportunity – to neighborhoods that are often passed over by commercial providers.

As Dianah Neff, Philadelphia’s chief technology officer, asked of Verizon and Comcast in a recent column for ZDNet: “When was the last time they were elected to determine what is best for our communities? If they’re really concerned about what is important to all members of the community, why haven’t they built this type of network that meets community needs or approached a city to use their assets to build a high-speed, low-cost, ubiquitous network?”

All good questions. Perhaps the Times should have explored them further.

(written with Craig Aaron of Free Press)

Gannon, Sartre and Shylock

GOPUSA, the conservative Website linked to the still percolating Jeff Gannon propaganda scandal, was touched by an earlier controversy: In 2003, the Eberle-owned site frequently published a columnist accused by critics of trafficking in anti-Semitism, according to an article by E.J. Kessler (registration required).

Columnist "Sartre" -- working, like "Jeff Gannon" under a pseudonym -- had this to write about financier George Soros:

No other single person represents the symbol and the substance of Globalism more than this Hungarian-born descendant of Shylock. He is the embodiment of the Merchant from Venice.... If Soros is correct when he says a 'supremacist ideology' guides the White House, what would you call the practices of the archfiend of Free Enterprise? The Soros deception would make Shylock proud...."

As is their practice, GOPUSA has crawled further under their rock, scrubbing the site of all of the "Sartre" stories in question. You can sample his bigoted vitriol at other right wing websites, including Ann Coulter's favorite ranting ground, Frontpage.com.

Obscenity On The Hill

At last, The Hill is talking media. Unfortunately, the discourse came in advance of a losing effort to kill a House indecency bill that will increase fines for broadcasters who cross a Republican drawn line for propper content. Representatives tussled in advance of the vote over such key issues as media consolidation, Armstrong Williams, Sinclair, the Department of Education, Rupert Murdoch, campaign coverage, advocacy ads and a lot more, making for a spirited debate on issues that are important to many of us involved in media reform.

The newly passed Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act of 2005 will increase fines broadcaster fines for unseemly content from $32,500 per violation to $500,000. The new rules will also do away with warnings handed out for a performer's first offense. A "three strikes" clause in the legislation would require the FCC to consider license revocation after three violations for indecency. Jonathan Rintels of the Center for Creative Voices in Media writes:

The exponential increase in “indecency” fines for broadcasters, and the application of those fines to performers on their first offense, will turn the chill that has already descended over our nation’s media into a deep freeze. Today’s vote was a tragedy for creative artists. More importantly, it was a tragedy for the American public.

In advance of the vote, several members attempted to add amendments, "including reinstituting the fairness doctrine, rolling back media consolidation, and even delaying erectile dysfunction ads until after 10 pm," according to a report by John Eggerton.

Similar "poison pill" amendments helped kill the same bill last year, the righteous House Telecommunications Subcommittee Chairman Fred Upton effectively blocked these to see this one through.

"Democrats accused Republicans of protecting corporate media giants and their sometimes biased broadcasts by excluding debate on consolidation and other issues," Eggerton writes of the often heated discussion prior to the vote.

Democrats Louise Slaughter and Lynn Woolsey called for a return of the fairness doctrine, saying that declining standards of fairness and truth in broadcasting are a bigger indecency. News people passing off opinion as news, that's indecent, Slaughter told other Representatives, or "paying to advocate opinions on the public airwaves without disclosure, I call that indecent," she said. "One-sided documentaries designed to impact an election without equal time. That's indecent and dangerous."

Barney Frank pointed to the Department of Education's pressure on PBS to drop an episode of "Postcards from Buster" featuring lesbian parents as an incident that has fueled the pervasive climate of self-censorship across the country. Democrat Frank blamed the majority party as firing up the "censorship of free and open debate."

While much of this boiled down to partisan grandstanding over amendments that were doomed from the outset, it's impressive at least to hear talk of a better media system playing a larger part in our national discourse. Sadly, it was as a part of a losing cause.