March 6, 2005

• BUSH AND THE MEDIA

  I saw this in my local paper and thought it interesting enough to post in its entirety:

  Bush's deceptive media tactics continue to amaze
  By Tom Teepen
  COX NEWSPAPERS

  The Bush administration has handed out government contracts to at least three journalists who speak and write approvingly of administration policies.

  The administration created phony TV newscasts, with actors pretending to be reporters, and shipped the tapes to local TV stations to be broadcast as if they were real reports.

  The administration is straining to imprison journalists who refuse to rat out sources who blew the whistle on administration misdeeds and back-stairs maneuvers but, as near as anyone can tell, has left unbothered the journalist, Robert Novak, who outed a CIA agent in order to embarrass an administration critic.

  The administration has held "town meetings" to showcase President Bush that were actually political rallies with controlled attendance and pre-screened questions.

  And now it turns out the administration infiltrated the White House press corps with a specially credentialed "reporter" who was in fact an operative for a Republican outfit and then used him to ask Bush softball questions that were really diatribes against Democrats.

  This latest flap, over "Jeff Gannon," is only the most recent in an ever-lengthening string of dodges by which the Bush presidency has tried to bamboozle the public in ways whose difference from fraud is only a legal technicality. Gannon, supposedly Washington bureau chief for Talon News, turns out to be one James Dale Gucket, a Republican cadre who was active recently in the campaign that defeated Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle.

  Even under his supposed cover, Gucket was never more than a GOP plant. Talon News is an arm of GOPUSA.com, the political plaything of a group of Texas conservatives. The administration greased his way into the White House press corps with extraordinary daily passes, a rare privilege.

  Every administration tries to get away with spinning matters to its own advantage, but this one is running up something of a record in outright deceitfulness.

  It favored conservative syndicated columnists Maggie Gallagher and Michael McManus with $21,000 and $10,000 contracts respectively, and columnist and ubiquitous TV talking head Armstrong Williams walked off with a cool $240,000 in contracts. In effect, taxpayers were tapped to pay for their own deception. (And what is more, wastefully: The three were Bush boosters in any event.)

  The Government Accountability Office has formally warned federal agencies that the resort to video news releases that pass as real TV news violates laws against using appropriated funds for propaganda. The scam has been used - that we know of - by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and, to tout the Medicare drug policy, by the Health and Human Services Department's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

  The "Karen Ryan" and "Mike Morris" you may have seen holding forth on Bush policies were actors playing journalists, real-world version of the jokey "I may not be a doctor, but I play one on television" routine.

  This White House is at once deeply secretive and aggressively deceptive. If you sometimes feel as though you've been hustled into a mirror maze, that's because you have.

  Tom Teepen is a columnist for Cox Newspapers. He is based in Atlanta. E-mail: teepencolumn@coxnews.com.
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  • 1:56 pm
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