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White
House propaganda reaches new low
The
boundaries surrounding authentic journalism
have been blurred by the Bush administration.
In
2004, the White House had fake reporters
appear at the end of fake news briefs to
convince America that their slanted information
was coming from a credible news source.
In
reality, the ads were produced by the Department
of Health and Human Services (DHHS), and
ended with a broadcast journalism tagline.
Many television stations aired this without
telling the public who really created the
news brief. And this isn't all.
As
reported in The Guardian on Feb. 11, the
White House allowed a right-wing Republican
activist to pose as a journalist at White
House briefings. Talon News blogger Jeff
Gannon regularly asked guided questions
to President George W. Bush. The White House
spokesman at the time, Scott McLellan, claims
that Gannon is unrelated to the White House
and that allegations of a link are only
theory. Gannon is currently being questioned
about leaking the name of a CIA agent to
the public.
It
only gets worse — columnists are being
paid by the White House to promote certain
ideas. The Washington Post reported that
Maggie Gallagher was paid by the United
States government to promote marriage as
an institution between a man and woman only.
DHHS also hired Michael McManus to promote
the marriage initiative. Armstrong Williams,
another media payee, accepted payments to
promote Bush's policy through fake "news
reports."
Events
like this blur the lines of reality and
violate the public's faith. There are many
reporters all with different political ideologies.
If this betrayal continues, the public will
not know who to trust. There will be no
way to tell which reporters are simply right-wing
in their politics or which are being paid
by the government to support the Bush administration.
Any information that comes from a "reporter"
such as these should be immediately disregarded.
And if someone is being paid by the government
and continues to work in media, the public
should know exactly who is paying them to
share certain information. They then should
be fired.
Journalists
are often looked down on as scandal-mongers,
but those who find it their calling know
it is a world full of difficult ethical
and moral choices. Real journalists strive
to tell an unbiased truth, showing different
sides of each story. Even in an editorial,
where writers can express their own opinions,
writers must stick to sharing their own
thoughts. It is wrong in every conceivable
manner for someone with the title of journalist
to accept a bribe, or to change their ideas
for the sake of money.
The
fact that the Bush administration is doing
the bribing should make people sensitive
to the idea that White House propaganda
may be all around us. It is fine for the
government to create its own ads for television
or have writers who support the ideas of
the president, but the public must know
exactly where that information is coming
from. This should not be disguised as a
legitimate news source.
For
all we know, these are not the only three
"journalists" getting mad pay;
the others are hopefully sweating in their
news dungeon as they type ideas they are
being paid to believe. It is not acceptable
for the government to distort the truth
this way.
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