Who needs the Fairness Doctrine?

Propaganda (prä-p&-'gan-d&): material disseminated by the advocates or opponents of a doctrine or cause. It is pretty clear, at least to me, that, hypothetically speaking of course, if the Bush administration were to write, film, and produce “news” stories about the very policies they advocate, disseminate these stories to local news stations, and then have these stories aired as if they were normal broadcasts, without disclosing their governmental origin, this would be propaganda. Not surprisingly, this is exactly what is happening, on a major scale. Despite Mr. Bush’s claim that, "There needs to be a nice independent relationship between the White House and the press" it is his very administration which has allowed a gay prostitute under a conspicuous alias to receive a press pass and adulate Bush, and it is his very administration which spent more than $254 million in its first term on producing and disseminating these pro-bush, prepackaged news stories discussed above.

This prepackaged, government sponsored propaganda flagrantly breaches the media’s adversarial obligation of regulating the government, once again compromising the battle weary ideals of journalism everywhere . These “news” stories, created by federal agencies including the Defense Department, Census Bureau, and Agricultural Department, are seamlessly woven into local broadcasts which do not disclose the forbidding origin of the production. News stations save the time and cost of creating unique broadcasts while the administration propagandizes their message loud and clear. Praise is nonchalantly narrated by actors during fake interviews where both the answers and questions are scripted well ahead of time: "one of the most remarkable campaigns in aviation history"; "Thank you, Bush. Thank you, U.S.A.”; “American and allied aid is putting needy [Iraqi] women back in business”; “[Bush’s Medicare] is going to be the same Medicare system only with new benefits, more choices, more opportunities for enhanced benefits”; etc, etc, etc ad nausea.

Not surprisingly number two: The FCC does not regulate this hypodermic injection of bias, despite the congressional prohibition of any sort of propaganda or lobbying for government programs funded by the government, and despite a 2000 FCC precedent stating, "Listeners and viewers are entitled to know by whom they are being persuaded." Is it coincidence that the FCC is within Colin Powell’s direct lineage (his son Micheal is chairman)? Nope. Interestingly, the FCC refuses to strictly regulate the seamless injection of propaganda into local news even after the Department of Education was caught red-handed paying a whopping 240,000 thousand dollars to the syndicated pundit Armstrong Williams to shamelessly promoted the "No Child Left Behind" initiative to millions of viewers. Look, the Powers That Be can call it what they want, but we all know that “pre-packaged media” is propaganda, and it is unethical, unprincipled, and un-American. And, if this were any other administration, between Jeff Gannon, Armstrong Williams, and prepackaged news, it would be unacceptable.