___
1984
the Bushkevik-Schneerson Sofiet
RED ad-men-struation
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/031305Z.shtml
Under Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged Television
News
By David Barstow and Robin Stein
The New York Times
Sunday 13 March 2005
It is the kind of TV news coverage every president
covets.
"Thank you, Bush. Thank you, U.S.A.," a
jubilant Iraqi-American told a camera crew in Kansas City for a segment about
reaction to the fall of Baghdad. A second report told of "another
success" in the Bush administration's "drive to strengthen aviation
security"; the reporter called it "one of the most remarkable
campaigns in aviation history." A third segment, broadcast in January,
described the administration's determination to open markets for American
farmers.
To a viewer, each report looked
like any other 90-second segment on the local news. In fact, the federal
government produced all three. The report from Kansas City was made by
the State Department. The "reporter" covering airport safety was
actually a public relations professional working under a
false name for the Transportation Security Administration. The farming
segment was done by the Agriculture Department's office of communications.
Ministry of Truth
Under the Bush administration, the federal government
has aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations: the
prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major corporations have long
distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto
insurance. In all, at least 20 federal agencies, including the Defense
Department and the Census Bureau, have made and distributed hundreds of
television news segments in the past four years, records and interviews show.
Many were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without
any acknowledgement of the government's role in their production.
Government Propaganda Brainwashing
Techniques
This winter, Washington has
been roiled by revelations that a handful of columnists wrote in support of
administration policies without disclosing they had accepted payments from the
government. But the administration's efforts to generate positive news
coverage have been considerably more pervasive than previously known. At
the same time, records and interviews suggest widespread complicity or
negligence by television stations, given industry ethics standards that
discourage the broadcast of prepackaged news segments from any outside group
without revealing the source.
Federal agencies are forthright with broadcasters
about the origin of the news segments they distribute. The reports themselves,
though, are designed to fit seamlessly into the typical local news broadcast. In
most cases, the "reporters" are careful not to state in the segment
that they work for the government. Their reports generally avoid overt
ideological appeals. Instead, the government's news-making apparatus has
produced a quiet drumbeat of broadcasts describing a vigilant and compassionate
administration.
Sofiet Talmudic Communitarian state
media
Some reports were produced to
support the administration's most cherished policy objectives, like regime
change in Iraq or Medicare reform.
or the "chosen" Noahide
Demonicrazy message
Others focused on less prominent matters, like the administration's efforts
to offer free after-school tutoring,
Education Day USA
its campaign to curb childhood obesity, its initiatives to preserve forests
and wetlands, its plans to fight computer viruses, even its attempts to fight
holiday drunken driving. They often feature "interviews" with senior
administration officials in which questions are scripted and answers rehearsed.
Critics, though, are excluded, as are any hints of mismanagement, waste or
controversy.
Some of the segments were broadcast in some of
nation's largest television markets, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago,
Dallas and Atlanta.
An examination of government-produced news reports
offers a look inside a world where the traditional lines between public
relations and journalism have become tangled, where local anchors introduce
prepackaged segments with "suggested" lead-ins written by public
relations experts. It is a world where government-produced reports disappear
into a maze of satellite transmissions, Web portals, syndicated news programs
and network feeds, only to emerge cleansed on the other side as
"independent" journalism.
It is also a world where all participants benefit.
Local affiliates are spared the expense of digging up
original material. Public relations firms secure government contracts worth
millions of dollars. The major networks, which help distribute the releases,
collect fees from the government agencies that produce segments and the
affiliates that show them. The administration, meanwhile, gets out an unfiltered
message, delivered in the guise of traditional reporting.
The practice, which also occurred in the Clinton
administration, is continuing despite President Bush's recent call for a clearer
demarcation between journalism and government publicity efforts. "There
needs to be a nice independent relationship between the White House and the
press," Mr. Bush told reporters in January, explaining why his
administration would no longer pay pundits to support his policies.
By oath of Kol Nidre
In interviews, though, press officers for several
federal agencies said the president's prohibition did not apply to
government-made television news segments, also known as video news releases.
They described the segments as factual, politically neutral and useful to
viewers. They insisted that there was no similarity to the case of Armstrong
Williams, a conservative columnist who promoted the administration's chief
education initiative, the No Child Left Behind Act,
without disclosing $240,000 in payments from the Education
Department.
What is more, these officials argued, it is the
responsibility of television news directors to inform viewers that a segment
about the government was in fact written by the government. "Talk to the
television stations that ran it without attribution," said William A.
Pierce, spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services. "This is
not our problem. We can't be held responsible for their actions."
Yet in three separate opinions in the past year, the
Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress that studies
the federal government and its expenditures, has held that government-made news
segments may constitute improper "covert
propaganda" even if their origin is made clear to the television
stations. The point, the office said, is whether viewers know the origin. Last
month, in its most recent finding, the G.A.O. said federal agencies may not
produce prepackaged news reports "that conceal or do
not clearly identify for the television viewing audience that the agency was the
source of those materials."
It is not certain, though, whether the office's
pronouncements will have much practical effect. Although a few federal agencies
have stopped making television news segments, others continue. And on Friday,
the Justice Department and the Office of Management and Budget circulated a
memorandum instructing all executive branch agencies to
ignore the G.A.O. findings. The memorandum said the G.A.O. failed to
distinguish between covert propaganda and "purely informational" news
segments made by the government. Such informational segments are legal, the
memorandum said, whether or not an agency's role in producing them is disclosed
to viewers.
Even if agencies do disclose their role, those
efforts can easily be undone in a broadcaster's editing room. Some news
organizations, for example, simply identify the government's
"reporter" as one of their own and then edit out any phrase suggesting
the segment was not of their making.
So in a recent segment produced by the Agriculture
Department, the agency's narrator ended the report by saying "In Princess
Anne, Maryland, I'm Pat O'Leary reporting for the U.S. Department of
Agriculture." Yet AgDay, a syndicated farm news program that is shown on
some 160 stations, simply introduced the segment as being by "AgDay's Pat
O'Leary." The final sentence was then trimmed to "In Princess Anne,
Maryland, I'm Pat O'Leary reporting."
Brian Conrady, executive producer of AgDay, defended
the changes. "We can clip 'Department of Agriculture' at our
choosing," he said. "The material we get from the U.S.D.A., if we
choose to air it and how we choose to air it is our
choice."
wanna bet scum vipers
Spreading the Word: Government Efforts and One
Woman's Role
Karen Ryan cringes at the phrase "covert
propaganda." These are words for dictators and spies, and yet they
have attached themselves to her like a pair of handcuffs.
Not long ago, Ms. Ryan was a much sought-after
"reporter" for news segments produced by the federal government. A
journalist at ABC and PBS who became a public relations consultant, Ms. Ryan
worked on about a dozen reports for seven federal agencies in 2003 and early
2004. Her segments for the Department of Health and Human Services and the
Office of National Drug Control Policy were a subject of the accountability
office's recent inquiries.
The G.A.O. concluded that the two agencies
"designed and executed" their segments "to be indistinguishable
from news stories produced by private sector television news
organizations." A significant part of that execution, the office found, was
Ms. Ryan's expert narration, including her typical sign-off - "In
Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting" - delivered in a tone and cadence
familiar to television reporters everywhere.
Last March, when The New York Times first described
her role in a segment about new prescription drug benefits for Medicare
patients, reaction was harsh. In Cleveland, The Plain Dealer ran an editorial
under the headline "Karen Ryan, You're a Phony," and she was the
object of late-night jokes by Jon Stewart and received hate mail.
"I'm like the Marlboro man," she said in a
recent interview.
In fact, Ms. Ryan was a bit player who made less than
$5,000 for her work on government reports. She was also playing an accepted role
in a lucrative art form, the video news release. "I just don't feel I did
anything wrong," she said. "I just did what everyone else in the
industry was doing."
Deceiving "Amaraka" on their
own expense and tax dollars
It is a sizable industry. One of its largest players,
Medialink Worldwide Inc., has about 200 employees, with offices in New York and
London. It produces and distributes about 1,000 video news releases a year, most
commissioned by major corporations. The Public Relations Society of America even
gives an award, the Bronze Anvil, for the year's best video news release.
Several major television networks play crucial
intermediary roles in the business. Fox, for example, has an arrangement with
Medialink to distribute video news releases to 130 affiliates through its video
feed service, Fox News Edge. CNN distributes releases to 750 stations in the
United States and Canada through a similar feed service, CNN Newsource.
Associated Press Television News does the same thing worldwide with its Global
Video Wire.
"We look at them and determine whether we want
them to be on the feed," David M. Winstrom, director of Fox News Edge, said
of video news releases. "If I got one that said tobacco cures cancer or
something like that, I would kill it."
In essence, video news releases seek to exploit a
growing vulnerability of television news: Even as news staffs at the major
networks are shrinking, many local stations are expanding their hours of news
coverage without adding reporters.
"No TV news organization has the resources in
labor, time or funds to cover every worthy story," one video news release
company, TVA Productions, said in a sales pitch to potential clients, adding
that "90 percent of TV newsrooms now rely on
video news releases."
Federal agencies have been commissioning video news
releases since at least the first Clinton administration. An increasing number
of state agencies are producing television news reports, too; the Texas Parks
and Wildlife Department alone has produced some 500 video news releases since
1993.
Under the Bush administration,
federal agencies appear to be producing more releases, and on a broader array of
topics.
A definitive accounting is nearly impossible. There
is no comprehensive archive of local television news reports, as there is in
print journalism, so there is no easy way to determine what has been broadcast,
and when and where.
Still, several large agencies, including the Defense
Department, the State Department and the Department of Health and Human
Services, acknowledge expanded efforts to produce news segments. Many
members of Mr. Bush's first-term cabinet appeared in such segments.
A recent study by Congressional Democrats offers
another rough indicator: the Bush administration spent $254 million in its first
term on public relations contracts, nearly double what the last Clinton
administration spent.
Karen Ryan was part of this push - a
"paid shill for the Bush administration," as she self-mockingly
puts it. It is, she acknowledges, an uncomfortable title.
Ms. Ryan, 48, describes herself as not especially
political, and certainly no Bush die-hard. She had hoped for a long career in
journalism. But over time, she said, she grew dismayed by what she saw as the
decline of television news - too many cut corners, too many ratings stunts.
In the end, she said, the jump to video news releases
from journalism was not as far as one might expect. "It's almost the same
thing," she said.
There are differences, though. When she went to
interview Tommy G. Thompson, then the health and human services secretary, about
the new Medicare drug benefit, it was not the usual reporter-source exchange.
First, she said, he already knew the questions, and she was there mostly to help
him give better, snappier answers. And second, she said, everyone involved is
aware of a segment's potential political benefits.
Her Medicare report, for example, was distributed in
January 2004, not long before Mr. Bush hit the campaign trail and cited the drug
benefit as one of his major accomplishments.
The script suggested that local anchors lead into the
report with this line: "In December, President Bush signed into law the
first-ever prescription drug benefit for people with Medicare." In the
segment, Mr. Bush is shown signing the legislation as Ms. Ryan describes the new
benefits and reports that "all people with Medicare will be able to get
coverage that will lower their prescription drug spending."
The segment made no mention of the many critics who
decry the law as an expensive gift to the pharmaceutical industry. The
G.A.O. found that the segment was "not strictly factual," that it
contained "notable omissions" and that it amounted to "a
favorable report" about a controversial program.
And yet this news segment, like several others
narrated by Ms. Ryan, reached an audience of millions. According to the
accountability office, at least 40 stations ran some part of the Medicare
report. Video news releases distributed by the Office of National Drug Control
Policy, including one narrated by Ms. Ryan, were shown on 300 stations and
reached 22 million households. According to Video Monitoring Services of
America, a company that tracks news programs in major cities, Ms. Ryan's
segments on behalf of the government were broadcast a total of at least 64 times
in the 40 largest television markets.
Even these measures, though, do not fully capture the
reach of her work. Consider the case of News 10 Now, a cable station in Syracuse
owned by Time Warner. In February 2004, days after the government distributed
its Medicare segment, News 10 Now broadcast a virtually identical report,
including the suggested anchor lead-in. The News 10 Now segment, however, was
not narrated by Ms. Ryan. Instead, the station edited out
the original narration and had one of its reporters repeat the script almost
word for word.
Fabricated news....Goy TV and Noahide
News
The station's news director, Sean McNamara, wrote in
an e-mail message, "Our policy on provided video is to clearly identify the
source of that video." In the case of the Medicare report, he said, the
station believed it was produced and distributed by a major network
and did not know that it had originally come from the government.
Ms. Ryan said she was surprised by the number of
stations willing to run her government segments without any editing or
acknowledgement of origin. As proud as she says she is of her work, she did not
hesitate, even for a second, when asked if she would have broadcast one of her
government reports if she were a local news director.
"Absolutely not."
Little Oversight: TV's Code of Ethics, With Uncertain
Weight
"Clearly disclose the origin of information and
label all material provided by outsiders."
Those words are from the code of ethics of the
Radio-Television News Directors Association, the main professional society for
broadcast news directors in the United States. Some stations go further, all but
forbidding the use of any outside material, especially entire reports. And
spurred by embarrassing publicity last year about Karen Ryan, the news directors
association is close to proposing a stricter rule, said its executive director,
Barbara Cochran.
Whether a stricter ethics code will have much effect
is unclear; it is not hard to find broadcasters who are not adhering to the
existing code, and the association has no enforcement powers.
The Federal Communications Commission does, but it
has never disciplined a station for showing government-made news segments
without disclosing their origin, a spokesman said.
Could it? Several lawyers experienced with F.C.C.
rules say yes. They point to a 2000 decision by the agency, which stated,
"Listeners and viewers are entitled to know by whom
they are being persuaded."
In interviews, more than a dozen station news
directors endorsed this view without hesitation. Several expressed disdain for
the prepackaged segments they received daily from
government agencies, corporations and special
interest groups who wanted to use their airtime and credibility to sell or
influence.
But when told that their stations showed
government-made reports without attribution, most reacted with indignation.
Their stations, they insisted, would never allow their news programs to be
co-opted by segments fed from any outside party, let alone the government.
"They're inherently one-sided, and they don't
offer the possibility for follow-up questions - or any questions at all,"
said Kathy Lehmann Francis, until recently the news
director at WDRB, the Fox affiliate in Louisville, Ky.
Yet records from Video Monitoring Services of America
indicate that WDRB has broadcast at least seven Karen Ryan segments, including
one for the government, without disclosing their origin to viewers.
Mike Stutz, news director at KGTV, the ABC affiliate
in San Diego, was equally opposed to putting government news segments on the
air.
"It amounts to propaganda,
doesn't it?" he said.
Again, though, records from Video Monitoring Services
of America show that from 2001 to 2004 KGTV ran at least one government-made
segment featuring Ms. Ryan, 5 others featuring her work on behalf of
corporations, and 19 produced by corporations and other outside organizations.
It does not appear that KGTV viewers were told the origin of these 25 segments.
"I thought we were pretty solid," Mr. Stutz
said, adding that they intend to take more precautions.
Confronted with such evidence, most news directors
were at a loss to explain how the segments made it on the air. Some said they
were unable to find archive tapes that would help answer the question. Others
promised to look into it, then stopped returning telephone messages. A
few removed the segments from their Web sites, promised greater vigilance in the
future or pleaded ignorance.
Afghanistan to Memphis: An Agency's Report Ends Up on
the Air
On Sept. 11, 2002, WHBQ, the Fox affiliate in
Memphis, marked the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks with an uplifting report on
how assistance from the United States was helping to liberate the women of
Afghanistan.
Tish Clark, a reporter for WHBQ, described how Afghan
women, once barred from schools and jobs, were at last emerging from their
burkas, taking up jobs as seamstresses and bakers, sending daughters off to new
schools, receiving decent medical care for the first time and even participating
in a fledgling democracy. Her segment included an
interview with an Afghan teacher who recounted how the Taliban only allowed boys
to attend school. An Afghan doctor described how the Taliban refused to let male
physicians treat women.
In short, Ms. Clark's report seemed to corroborate,
however modestly, a central argument of the Bush foreign policy, that forceful
American intervention abroad was spreading freedom, improving lives and winning
friends.
What the people of
Memphis were not told, though, was that the interviews used by WHBQ were
actually conducted by State Department contractors. The contractors also
selected the quotes used from those interviews and shot the video that went with
the narration. They also wrote the narration, much of which Ms. Clark repeated
with only minor changes.
As it happens, the viewers of WHBQ were not the only
ones in the dark.
Ms. Clark, now Tish Clark Dunning, said in an
interview that she, too, had no idea the report originated at the State
Department. "If that's true, I'm very shocked that anyone would false
report on anything like that," she said.
hahahahaheeeeeeeeeewhooooooey
How a television reporter in Memphis unwittingly came
to narrate a segment by the State Department reveals much about the extent to
which government-produced news accounts have seeped into the broader new media
landscape.
The explanation begins inside the White House, where
the president's communications advisers devised a strategy after Sept. 11, 2001,
to encourage supportive news coverage of the fight against terrorism. The idea,
they explained to reporters at the time, was to counter charges of American
imperialism by generating accounts that emphasized American efforts to liberate
and rebuild Afghanistan and Iraq.
An important instrument of this strategy was the
Office of Broadcasting Services, a State Department unit of 30 or so editors and
technicians whose typical duties include distributing video from news
conferences. But in early 2002, with close editorial
direction from the White House, the unit began producing narrated feature
reports, many of them promoting American achievements in Afghanistan and Iraq
and reinforcing the administration's rationales for the
invasions. These reports were then widely distributed in the United
States and around the world for use by local television stations. In all, the
State Department has produced 59 such segments.
Hoodlum haha of Jack booted Thugs of
Butterfly and roses Noahide News to the stupid gullible Judeao Churchinsanity
cashite Mammonites
United States law contains
provisions intended to prevent the domestic dissemination of government
propaganda.
But Bushkevik and Bunch are above the
Laws
The 1948 Smith-Mundt Act, for example, allows Voice of America to broadcast
pro-government news to foreign audiences, but not at home. Yet State Department
officials said that law does not apply to the Office of Broadcasting Services.
In any event, said Richard A. Boucher, a State Department spokesman: "Our
goal is to put out facts and the truth. We're not a propaganda agency."
hahahahha from a shemite of Kol Nidre
saith
Even so, as a senior department official, Patricia
Harrison, told Congress last year, the Bush administration has come to regard
such "good news" segments as
"powerful strategic tools" for influencing
public opinion. And a review of the department's segments reveals a body
of work in sync with the political objectives set forth by
the White House communications team after 9/11.
In June 2003, for example, the unit produced a
segment that depicted American efforts to distribute food and water to the
people of southern Iraq. "After living for decades in fear, they are now
receiving assistance - and building trust - with their coalition
liberators," the unidentified narrator concluded.
Several segments focused on the liberation of Afghan
women, which a White House memo from January 2003 singled out as a "prime
example" of how "White House-led efforts could facilitate strategic,
proactive communications in the war on terror."
Tracking precisely how a "good news" report
on Afghanistan could have migrated to Memphis from the State Department is far
from easy. The State Department typically distributes its segments via satellite
to international news organizations like Reuters and
Associated Press (Talmudic Jewish news agencies)
Television News, which in turn distribute them to the major United States
networks, which then transmit them to local affiliates.
"Once these products leave our hands, we have no
control," Robert A. Tappan, the State Department's deputy assistant
secretary for public affairs, said in an interview. The department, he said,
never intended its segments to be shown unedited and without attribution by
local news programs. "We do our utmost to identify them as State
Department-produced products."
hahahahhahahhahahhehehhehehhehheeeeeeeeeee
Representatives for the networks insist that
government-produced reports are clearly labeled when they are distributed to
affiliates. Yet with segments bouncing from satellite to satellite, passing from
one news organization to another, it is easy to see the potential for confusion.
Indeed, in response to questions from The Times, Associated Press Television
News acknowledged that they might have distributed at least one segment about
Afghanistan to the major United States networks without identifying it as the
product of the State Department. A spokesman said it could have "slipped
through our net because of a sourcing error."
Kenneth W. Jobe, vice
president for news at WHBQ in Memphis, said he could not explain how his station
came to broadcast the State Department's segment on Afghan women. "It's the
same piece, there's no mistaking it," he said in an interview, insisting
that it would not happen again.
Mr. Jobe, who was not with WHBQ in 2002, said the
station's script for the segment has no notes explaining its origin. But Tish
Clark Dunning said it was her impression at the time that the Afghan segment was
her station's version of one done first by network correspondents at either Fox
News or CNN. It is not unusual, she said, for a local
station to take network reports and then give them a hometown look.
"I didn't actually go to Afghanistan," she
said. "I took that story and reworked it. I had to do some research on my
own. I remember looking on the Internet and finding out how it all started as
far as women covering their faces and everything."
At the State Department, Mr. Tappan said the
broadcasting office is moving away from producing narrated feature segments.
Instead, the department is increasingly supplying only the ingredients for
reports - sound bites and raw video. Since the shift, he said, even
more State Department material is making its way into news broadcasts.
Meeting a Need: Rising Budget Pressures, Ready-to-Run
Segments
WCIA is a small station with a big job in central
Illinois.
Each weekday, WCIA's news department produces a
three-hour morning program, a noon broadcast and three evening programs. There
are plans to add a 9 p.m. broadcast. The staff, though, has been cut to 37 from
39. "We are doing more with the same," said Jim P. Gee, the news
director.
Farming is crucial in Mr. Gee's market, yet with so
many demands, he said, "it is hard for us to justify having a reporter just
focusing on agriculture."
To fill the gap, WCIA turned to the Agriculture
Department, which has assembled one of the most effective public relations
operations inside the federal government. The department
has a Broadcast Media and Technology Center with an annual budget of $3.2
million that each year produces some 90 "mission messages" for
local stations - mostly feature segments about the good
works of the Agriculture Department.
Sofiet Union anyone?
"I don't want to use the word 'filler,' per se,
but they meet a need we have," Mr. Gee said.
The Agriculture Department's two full-time reporters,
Bob Ellison and Pat O'Leary, travel the country filing reports, which are vetted
by the department's office of communications before they are distributed via
satellite and mail. Alisa Harrison, who oversees the communications office, said
Mr. Ellison and Mr. O'Leary provide unbiased, balanced and accurate coverage.
"They cover the secretary just like any other
reporter," she said.
Invariably, though, their segments offer critic-free
accounts of the department's policies and programs. In one report, Mr. Ellison
told of the agency's efforts to help Florida clean up after several hurricanes.
"They've done a fantastic job," a grateful local official said in the
segment.
Hey come to Alabama and see the good
works of that corrupt FEMA
More recently, Mr. Ellison reported that Mike Johanns,
the new agriculture secretary, and the White House were determined to reopen
Japan to American beef products. Of his new boss, Mr. Ellison reported, "He
called Bush the best envoy in the world."
Heil Bushkevik
WCIA, based in Champaign, has run 26 segments made by
the Agriculture Department over the past three months alone. Or put another way,
WCIA has run 26 reports that did not cost it anything to produce.
Mr. Gee, the news director, readily acknowledges that
these accounts are not exactly independent, tough-minded journalism. But, he
added: "We don't think they're propaganda. They meet our journalistic
standards. They're informative. They're balanced."
hahahhahahaheheheheheh oh man wake up
apostate Amaraka
More than a year ago, WCIA asked the Agriculture
Department to record a special sign-off that implies the segments are the work
of WCIA reporters. So, for example, instead of closing his report with "I'm
Bob Ellison, reporting for the U.S.D.A.," Mr. Ellison says, "With the
U.S.D.A., I'm Bob Ellison, reporting for 'The Morning Show.' "
For the Talmudic Sofiet Reds, I am Katy
Couric reporting for Heil Bushkevik on butterflies and roses and Holly-Wood and
queers.
Mr. Gee said the customized sign-off helped raise
"awareness of the name of our station." Could it give viewers the idea
that Mr. Ellison is reporting on location with the U.S.D.A. for WCIA? "We
think viewers can make up their own minds," Mr. Gee said.
hahahhahahhahhhehehhehhhehhehheeeeeewhooooooey
Ms. Harrison, the Agriculture Department press
secretary, said the WCIA sign-off was an exception. The general policy, she
said, is to make clear in each segment that the reporter works for the
department. In any event, she added, she did not think there was much potential
for viewer confusion. "It's pretty clear to me," she said.
The 'Good News' People: A Menu of Reports From
Military Hot Spots
The Defense Department is
working hard to produce and distribute its own news segments for television
audiences in the United States.
spare us Lord
The Pentagon Channel, available only inside the
Defense Department last year, is now being offered to every cable and satellite
operator in the United States. Army public affairs specialists, equipped with
portable satellite transmitters, are roaming war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq,
beaming news reports, raw video and interviews to TV stations in the United
States. All a local news director has to do is log on to a military-financed Web
site, www.dvidshub.net, browse a menu of segments and request a free satellite
feed.
Then there is the Army and Air Force Hometown News
Service, a unit of 40 reporters and producers set up to send local stations news
segments highlighting the accomplishments of military members.
"We're the 'good
news' people," said Larry W. Gilliam, the unit's deputy director.
Each year, the unit films thousands of soldiers
sending holiday greetings to their hometowns. Increasingly, the unit also
produces news reports that reach large audiences. The 50 stories it filed last
year were broadcast 236 times in all, reaching 41 million households in the
United States.
The news service makes it easy for local stations to
run its segments unedited. Reporters, for example, are never identified by their
military titles. "We know if we put a rank on there
they're not going to put it on their air," Mr. Gilliam said.
Each account is also specially tailored for local
broadcast. A segment sent to a station in Topeka, Kan., would include an
interview with a service member from there. If the same report is sent to
Oklahoma City, the soldier is switched out for one from Oklahoma City. "We
try to make the individual soldier a star in their hometown," Mr. Gilliam
said, adding that segments were distributed only to towns and cities selected by
the service members interviewed.
Few stations acknowledge the military's role in the
segments. "Just tune in and you'll see a minute-and-a-half news piece and
it looks just like they went out and did the story," Mr. Gilliam said. The
unit, though, makes no attempt to advance any particular political or policy
agenda, he said.
"We don't editorialize at all," he said.
Yet sometimes the "good
news" approach carries political meaning, intended or not. Such was
the case after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal surfaced last spring. Although
White House officials depicted the abuse of Iraqi detainees as the work of a few
rogue soldiers, the case raised serious questions about the training of military
police officers.
A short while later, Mr. Gilliam's unit distributed a
news segment, sent to 34 stations, that examined the training of prison guards
at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri, where some of the military police officers
implicated at Abu Ghraib had been trained.
"One of the most important lessons they learn is
to treat prisoners strictly but fairly," the reporter said in the segment,
which depicted a regimen emphasizing respect for detainees. A trainer told the
reporter that military police officers were taught to "treat others as they
would want to be treated." The account made no mention of Abu Ghraib or how
the scandal had prompted changes in training at Fort Leonard Wood.
According to Mr. Gilliam, the report was unrelated to
any effort by the Defense Department to rebut suggestions of a broad command
failure.
"Are you saying that the Pentagon called down
and said, 'We need some good publicity?' " he asked. "No, not at
all."
___
- How Television Controls
And Programs Minds
Turn Off Your Television
- By L. Wolfe
3-14-5
-
-
The
program took a giant step in 1913 when Luciferian London-based bankers
gained control over America's finances through the passage of the Federal
Reserve Act.(Rothschilds) This gave them
means and incentive to step up their covert war
against humanity. The two World Wars were the
immediate result.
