Is it news or is it propaganda?

The Daily Astorian | March 17 2005

During the height of World War II, Winston Churchill warned the Western world of Nazi tyranny, which he said was made all the worse by modern science. Churchill was referring to the rocket technology that Germany had mastered. The British prime minister also might have been hinting at the race for an atomic bomb, the medical experiments on humans or the kind of electronic snooping that the Soviet Union would one day perfect.

For the 21st century world leader, communications technology can be just as important as weapons technology. Dictators have no trouble dominating the thought waves, because there is only one mass media outlet, and the government owns it. But in a free market democracy, the task of dominating a national consciousness is a bit trickier.

The New York Times last Sunday revealed the Bush administration’s success at infiltrating television news shows with its own produced “news” segments. The White House’s mastery of communications technology was essential to this task. Just as important were two other factors: the president’s apparent eagerness to fool the public, and the television stations’ willingness to play the lazy dupe.

The Times noted that the Clinton administration began the practice of having federal agencies transmit so-called video press releases to television stations. The Bush White House has enlarged the practice geometrically.

The General Accounting Office has called these phony news reports “covert propaganda.” Last Friday, the Bush Justice Department and Office of Management and Budget told federal agencies to disregard the GAO ruling.

A congressional Democratic study estimates the Bush administration spent $254 million on public relations contracts during its first term, “nearly double what the last Clinton administration spent.”

The decline of local television news is widely recognized. But our knowledge of this deterioration deepens with the revelation that local stations aired scads of stories that were propaganda “reported” by phony reporters using phony names.

Television is a cultural force in America, but its impact is mainly as entertainment, and it mainly sells to the lowest common denominator. The early vision of television as a medium that would transform and enlarge the sweep of journalism has not been realized. Television journalism has mainly devolved into entertainment.

Devalued television news rooms are the perfect receptacle for make-believe stories prepared by Big Brother. Our democracy is cheapened and begins to imitate the old Soviet Union when our president uses the vast federal government apparatus to run an extensive domestic propaganda machine.