Bush 'planted fake news stories on American TV'
The Bush administration has gone to previously un-scaled heights to get their message across to the American public by simply manufacturing their own news and having American stations play it without informing the public that the government is actually the manufacturer of the "news" they are watching.
The report, by the non-profit group Centre for Media and Democracy, found that over a 10-month period at least 77 television stations were making use of the faux news broadcasts, known as Video News Releases (VNRs). Not one told viewers who had produced the items.
"We know we only had partial access to these VNRs and yet we found 77 stations using them," said Diana Farsetta, one of the group's researchers. "I would say it's pretty extraordinary. The picture we found was much worse than we expected going into the investigation in terms of just how widely these get played and how frequently these pre-packaged segments are put on the air."
The use of such propaganda against an unsuspecting populace inevitably reminds one of the old Soviet regime rather than the brave new world. It's really not an exaggeration to say that Goebbels would be applauding the Bush regime as faithful followers of his finest work.
Of course the danger to US citizens is far more acute than it was to, say, the Soviets or the Germans. If you live under a dictatorship you learn to be sceptical about what the government claims. The beauty, for Bush, under the American system, is that people believe they have a free press. It would be inconceivable to many Americans that they could be being manipulated in this way.
The range of VNR is wide. Among items provided by the Bush administration to news stations was one in which an Iraqi-American in Kansas City was seen saying "Thank you Bush. Thank you USA" in response to the 2003 fall of Baghdad. The footage was actually produced by the State Department, one of 20 federal agencies that have produced and distributed such items.There is also proof that many large corporations are manufacturing "news" items which are, in reality, no more than sophisticated adverts for their products.
The FCC was urged to act by a lobbying campaign organised by Free Press, another non-profit group that focuses on media policy. Spokesman Craig Aaron said more than 25,000 people had written to the FCC about the VNRs. "Essentially it's corporate advertising or propaganda masquerading as news," he said. "The public obviously expects their news reports are going to be based on real reporting and real information. If they are watching an advertisement for a company or a government policy, they need to be told."So now we have propaganda the Nazis would have applauded, detention camps that remind one of Soviet Gulags, and widespread wiretapping of US citizens that even Orwell would have regarded as far fetched.
Add to that heady mix a President who claims that the law is what he says it is; and we have to conclude that, under Bush, the American dream is withering.
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