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Orwell rolls over in his grave

Update: Free Press is gathering signatures for a petition against using tax dollars to fund government-sponsored, pseudo news. Please sign on; it only takes a minute.

Today's New York Times features an important investigation on the U.S. government's increasing production and distribution of fake news stories to TV news networks across the country. Any doubt that the current administration yearns for a bigger, better Pravda can be put to rest with some of the mind-boggling hypocrisies chronicled here. Remember last month how the Government Accounting Office (GAO) 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"? Well, on Friday, the Justice Department and the Office of Management and Budget told all executive brand agencies to ignore the GAO findings because they failed to distinguish between propaganda and "purely informational" news segments.

"Purely informational"?!? Have you seen any of these things?

The Times has posted one of the "news" stories (known in the trade as "video news releases") online, the entire point of which is to spread the "news" that "new, better" airport security is now in place, including a "top-notch workforce" made of thousands of people "leaving impressive careers and good jobs to take up the war on terrorism."  You can actually see a couple of the people the "reporter" interviews moving their eyes from left to right as they read their lines!

Kelly Ryan figures prominently in the story since some of her psuedo-reporting was the first to draw controversy. Her role is worth mentioning because it reflects the mentality of everyone involved in this elaborate conspiracy. On one hand, Ryan insists that video news releases and journalism are "almost the same thing":  "I just don't feel I did anything wrong," she said. "I just did what everyone else in the industry was doing." But when asked if Ryan would have used one of her fake news stories if she were a local news director, she replied, "Absolutely not."

If any readers of this blog have access to more government video news releases, please let me know and we'll see that they get online. These videos are in the public domain, yet hard to find.