The Record Skips Again

Once again, I find myself in the situation of having to illuminate a Times Herald-Record article, though at least this time the subject was at least a wayward opinion article instead of biased hard news.

Without any further adieu, let's look at yesterday's Record editorial, "Faking the News."

Sen. Daniel Inouye, a Democrat from Hawaii, has asked the Federal Communications Commission to do what some TV stations are apparently unable or unwilling to do for themselves. That is, be upfront with viewers about the source of government-produced videos masquerading as "news."

Nice use of scare quotes. The Record fails to disclose that this practice was perfected while Bill Clinton was president, and is not a new development. I guess that tiny detail didn't qualify as "news" to the Record, or rather, it got in the way.

The more disturbing element of this equation is not the attempt by the Bush administration to plant "stories" with positive spins in local TV news reports.

Actually, that would be a story… if it were true. But as the Justice Department holds that as there is "no advocacy of a particular viewpoint, and therefore it does not apply to the legitimate provision of information concerning the programs administered by an agency." In other words, as long as these federal agencies are producing video containing nonpartisan facts, there is no violation. Could it be that non-partisan factual reporting from federal agencies threatens existing media bias?

The truth is that this administration has been shameless in its efforts to convince Americans that black is white, or vice versa.

You know, that explains some laundry problems I've been having lately. Nice ad hominem.

This ranges from its varying stories about why war with Iraq was necessary and, later, why it was going so well to the hiring of syndicated columnists to write pro-administration opinions.

I must admit I am unfamiliar with government attempts to provide justifications for why the war is necessary. I must have missed it under the deluge of Record articles explaining why the war liberating 25 million Iraqis was wrong, and why we don't care about our soldiers anymore.

So when the White House instructed various government departments to ignore a report from the Government Accountability Office that declares some of these reports to be "covert propaganda," it was just doing its thing.

Just as the Record editorial ignored memos from Joshua B. Bolton, director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Steven G. Bradbury, principal deputy assistant attorney general at the Justice Department, saying that the GAO was not only wrong, but that it was overstepping its bounds in issuing their opinion.

It is frustrating and annoying and the practice may be illegal, but Americans by now have come to expect this kind of disregard for their intelligence by Bush and Co. Lowered expectations.

Actually, thanks to the CBS News fake documents scandal, the thwarted NY Times "October Surprise," the near-treason of CNN's Eason Jordan, the lies of Guiliana Sgrena and the developing fake talking points memo scandal, along with some reality-challenged episodes at the Record itself, I'd suggest that most Americans have come to expect lowered expectations from an increasingly exposed news media.

What especially troubles us with this phony news caper is that some TV stations have actually gone along with it. They have simply taken the government-produced reports, which cost taxpayers millions but TV stations nothing, and aired them as news items. This, even though the reports use government employees or actors to portray reporters and sometimes contain political messages inside the straight "news" report.

What troubles them is that some television stations, which became used to broadcasting these apparently factual reports during the Clinton years, still have the audacity to continue to do so while Bush is in office, even when some of these facts threaten to prove that some of President Bush's policy ideas were correct. The charge that the Record makes here that some of these reports contain political messages is not supported by facts from the Record's editorial board, perhaps because the lack of facts proving their contention didn't qualify as "news." I can use scare quotes, too.

There is no identification of the source of the reports and, to be sure, no hint of critical analysis, contrary opinion or questioning of the information presented, as with legitimate news stories.

Identification of the source, of course, does not apply to "anonymous government officials" or simply "congressional staffers" or other non-visible sources that the media uses to support its opinion under the guise of reporting. As we are increasingly aware, "legitimate" news stories, very often are not.

That's the rub here. If viewers know that the report they are watching was produced by the Agriculture Department or the State Department or the Pentagon, they can at least insert their own questions where a legitimate reporter might. But without such critical reporting, these items unfailingly come across as positive for the government, which is, of course, the administration's goal in producing and distributing them.

There isno barrier in place that prevents viewers from asking questions, and indeed, these government broadcasts would appear to be great leads, or springboards to deeper investigation of a topic by intrepid truth-seeking reporters. Perhaps the real problem here is that the factual presentation of information that these broadcasts provide acutely conflicts with the "critical reporting" of the existing news media.

That's propagandizing, and for TV stations to be part of it, either for political reasons (to support President Bush) or because they do not have the resources to fill out a daily news report, is plain wrong.

However, to do it for political reasons (to undermine President Bush) is apparently acceptable.

In fact, the Radio-Television News Directors Association's code of ethics urges members to "clearly disclose the origin of information and label all material provided by outsiders." This allows viewers some perspective.

This is sound advice. A broken clock...

But there is no requirement that TV stations follow this basic code of conduct, and some have unfortunately chosen not to do so, some for less than noble reasons.

Nor apparently is there any requirement that for the dead-tree media, or I am certain that the Record would use it to show its unblemished impartiality.

That's why Inouye wants the FCC to find a remedy. The obvious one would be to require radio and TV news directors to abide by their own code of ethics. That means telling viewers the source of the story.

Don't look for this idea to find too much traction among Congressional Democrats, the three broadcast networks, or CNN. Accountability would certainly shut down their steady flow of anonymous sources. Fox News, however, would probably prove an unlikely ally for a lonely Inouye in this effort.

As for the White House, with the president's credibility already in question with millions of Americans and his job rating falling, it might consider the (for it) unusual step of leveling with Americans.

This would of course be the same president who the rest of the world, including a begrudging European press, is being forced to admit, may have been correct all along. It would be interesting for the American media, however, to admit that they were wrong, but I won't wait for that to occur.

If it won't, members of Congress who don't appreciate Americans being fed propaganda paid for by their own taxes should insist that the government properly label all its news releases.

I would assume that this also would apply to rambling missives from those same members of Congress (Boxer, Kennedy, and our own beloved Hinchey, Shumer, and Clinton) that always seem to garner so much acclaim without much scrutiny.

And it should insist the FCC discipline any radio or TV stations that intentionally participate in these sham news reports.

Funny how quickly the Record editors dropped their earlier objection to the use of syndicated columnists from the second paragraph of this editorial. One would almost think they want print journalist to exist under their own special set of rules.

But that couldn't be true... could it?