Wednesday, October 12, 2005

The Emperor Doesn't Disclose: Why the Fight Against Fake News Continues --

Submitted by Diane Farsetta on Tue, 10/11/2005 from PR Watch a site that is worth watching.
This is about our goverment's propaganda specifically the NCLB propaganda that Sen. Kennedy and others are asking the GAO about right now.


Like much news that's damaging to the Bush administration, the report came out on a Friday.

Reporter Remixed Propaganda

Since then, it's gotten little media attention -- just 41 mentions in U.S. newspapers and wire stories, according to a news database search on October 11. That's remarkably sparse coverage for a story showing that the U.S. government has been engaged in illegal propaganda aimed at its own citizens...

...The failure of an agency to identify itself as the source of a prepackaged news story misleads the viewing public by encouraging the viewing audience to believe that the broadcasting news organization developed the information. The prepackaged news stories are purposefully designed to be indistinguishable from news segments broadcast to the public. When the television viewing public does not know that the stories they watched on television news programs about the government were in fact prepared by the government, the stories are, in this sense, no longer purely factual -- the essential fact of attribution is missing...

...As French screenwriter Jean Anouilh wrote, "Propaganda is a soft weapon; hold it in your hands too long, and it will move about like a snake, and strike the other way." With your help, the snake will not just be deflected, but defanged.

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