(U-WIRE) -After a New York Times article last month detailed the Bush administration's use of video news releases (VNRs) to promote its policies and agenda, people across the country have been quick to cry foul, throwing around terms like fake news
phony journalism and -the word most frightening to a free society --propaganda.
Bush and his colleagues certainly have a great deal of questions to answer. I don't know about you, but this is the one topping my list: Why are citizens' tax dollars being spent to fund advertisement of government policies that are so unappealing they need advertisement to garner support?
That aside, the Bush administration is not the most culpable party involved in this travesty. The Times reported that many of these VNRs -which are short video clips designed to resemble broadcast news segments --fail to mention they are being funded by government agencies. Even more alarming, the news programs running these releases dress them up as the independent work of the station itself, avoiding any mention of the government agency involved.
Broadcast news programs running government-generated news stories and passing it off as independent reporting --doesn't that violate some kind of code of ethics? In fact, it does. As the Times points out, the code of ethics of the Radio-Television News Directors Association states that broadcasters should clearly disclose the origin of information and label all material provided by outsiders.
Sounds like a lot of broadcasters missed that memo, and many more have been doing the exact opposite --trying to conceal the inherently biased source of the story. In one alarming example, the Times reported that AgDay, an agricultural news program aired on more than 160 stations, ran a VNR from the Agriculture Department in which the government reporter signed off by saying, I'm Pat O'Leary reporting for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The program edited the release to exclude mention of the government agency and -shockingly -introduced the piece as being by AgDay's Pat O'Leary.
This practice of spoon-feeding viewers biased, government-produced messages and spinning it as independent journalism should anger and appall us all. The media are not an open channel through which government messages can flow directly to the American people; they should be acting as a skeptical watchdog, objectively presenting all angles of an issue.
Although I take a big issue with some of the Bush administration's actions in this matter (particularly the $240,000 payment to columnist Armstrong Williams in exchange for his public support of the No Child Left Behind Act), placing the entirety of the blame on the government doesn't solve the bigger problem of media irresponsibility.
Bush is a man with a plan, and the success of his plans are dependent on how much support they receive. He's trying to promote his agendas by throwing money at them and creating these VNRs, which is what every other company and organization with a big enough budget does to promote its products and ideas. The fact that our leaders in Washington are not morally superior to companies peddling gadgets and breakfast cereals should come as a shock to only the most naive. The government is going to try to promote its policies, and although it would be nice if it didn't spend tax dollars doing so, that practice is not going to stop. What needs to stop is media's unquestioning acceptance of government agendas and the irresponsible lack of investigation.
The media are and always have been a powerful tool in our society, but right now, they are in the wrong hands. The media should serve to inform and to alert the people, not to encourage our blind and Orwellian support for the activities of the government. 17
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