On the front page of this morning's Chicago Tribune, there was a story detailing how the Department of Agriculture has been engaging in the now-familiar practice of writing stories which are reported as news by local media.
The story centers around administration efforts to push the CAFTA trade pact. Quotations below
Link to the story:
Chicago Tribune. This was front-page, above the fold (above even the Schiavvo autopsy story).
USDA plants its own news
Critics liken radio, TV spots to propaganda; agency defends use
Headline. Yes, the front page of the Trib accuses the administration of planting news and using propaganda.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has churned out three dozen radio and television news segments since the first of the year that promote a controversial trade agreement with Central America opposed by labor unions, the sugar industry and many members of Congress, including some Republicans.
Amid an intense debate over government-funded efforts to influence news coverage, the prepackaged reports have been widely distributed to broadcast outlets across the country for easy insertion into newscasts.
About a third of the reports deal specifically with the politically powerful sugar industry, which has emerged as the major obstacle to the Central American Free Trade Agreement, or CAFTA.
This is exactly the same pattern that we've seen with earlier "Video News Releases". They look like news, but are intended to push the administration's view.
Critics contend that such policies blur the line between government propaganda and legitimate reporting, and the Government Accountability Office described the prepackaged news reports as "covert propaganda" if the government agency does not clearly identify its role in the production of the report.
Covert propaganda is a pretty good term for it. I think by this time, we've estabilished what a prosecuter would call a "pattern of behavior". The article mentions (though I didn't quote it) the Armstrong Williams payoff, which really opened people's eyes about this practice. It's still going on; even after getting caught, the leopard hasn't changed its spots.
On Wednesday, USDA spokesman Ed Loyd defended the practice, noting that the reports are all clearly identified as coming from the USDA.
"They are reports about what the secretary of agriculture has said," Loyd said. "We clearly state that we are the source. We're not disguising that we are the source."
But the taglines disclosing the USDA's role generally are at the end of the reports, and some news stations have dropped those taglines, apparently in an effort to make the reports appear to be their own work.
The CIA would call that "plausible deniability". "Look, it's not
our fault if those silly local stations clip out the two seconds identifying us as the source". That aside, the denial is irrelevant. Even
with a warning label/disclaimer/nametag/whatever, the USDA (or any other government agency) shouldn't be producing news reports. Period.
Several radio executives said smaller stations are more likely to air the reports because they lack the resources to do their own reporting. Some radio networks with larger staffs have stopped using the government-produced news reports out of concerns of objectivity.
It's hard to blame the radio stations here. They, particularly the small stations, are under severe budget limitations. These programs must seem very attractive, given that they are essentially free. Again, blame the administration.
The CAFTA news reports came from the USDA's Broadcast Media and Technology Center, which produces about 90 television news reports each year, often airing on "AgDay" and "U.S. Farm Report," both nationally syndicated programs with "strong rural viewership," according to the center's Web site. The center also produces more than 2,000 radio reports each year that are sent to 675 stations and are available on the Internet.
90 reports a year; that's 2 every week. If they air on several hundred stations nationwide, that's a lot of coverage. Remember, our tax dollars pay for this. Here's an idea: let's stop subsidizing Video News Releases, and give the money to PBS instead...
That same month, Johnson, the trade official, suggested in a USDA news report that the sugar industry could jeopardize its government price protections if it continued to oppose CAFTA.
"Folks in the rest of the economy and folks in the rest of agriculture and folks that are interested in building relationships with democracies here in our neighborhood begin to look at the sugar industry as an impediment to that progress," he said. "That's not good for them."
The irony is that I happen to agree with this particular administration position; the protectionism of the US sugar industry is outrageous. If nothing else, it has contributed to the implosion of the US candy industry, which is decamping for other countries where the price of sugar is significantly lower. But the merits of the case are not the issue here; it's the way the administration is making the case. What they should be doing, if they want to push CAFTA, is to have a representative do interviews with
actual reporters and get their point of view out that way. An alien concept, I know.
Anyway, kudoes to the Trib for pulling this together.
-dms