December 11, 2007
by Zen Garcia
The Federal Emergency Management Association held a press conference on October 23rd, 2007 about efforts made during the California Wildfires in which at least 1,500 homes were destroyed , over 500,000 acres of land burned, 9 people died, 85 others injured, including at least 61 fire fighters. FEMA had given reporters only about 15 minutes prior notice to attend the impending press conference. FEMA then set up a telephone conference line so that reporters could listen in to the conference but not ask direct questions.
Why FEMA would expect journalists to be able to show up at a news conference in which they were only allotted 15 minutes to make and attend doesn't make sense unless their intent was not to have reporters cover the event, but listen in to 'reporters' substituted by FEMA employees readily prepared to stage the press event. In this way, FEMA could control the scope and focus of questioning asked and answers delivered.
FEMA thought they were doing nothing wrong because this is how the government handles newscast, journalists, and the Free Press. Both the questions and the answers are controlled so that the subject matter and delivery of that subject matter are controlled for specific result. I doubt that this 'fake conference' was an accident because government routinely prepares, distributes, and manages fake news events similar to the one put on by FEMA that Tuesday.
When the mainstream news outlets found out that FEMA had staged the event and had their own staff question the leadership about their own performance during the California wildfires, FEMA's fakery and intention to mislead became the highlight story of evening news on every major broadcast across the country. The fact that they held a news briefing with edited script and fake reporters was quickly chastised by every major player in the mainstream press from ABC to Fox News. FEMA external affairs director John Philbin, who was about to start a new role as media chief for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence was denied position because of his central role in the FEMA fake news fiasco.
"I should have cancelled it quickly. I did not have good situational awareness of what was happening," Philbin told CBS in a telephone interview. On October 27th, 2007, FEMA apologized for leading the staged news conference in which FEMA staff posed as journalists while real reporters listened in on a telephone conference line though barred from asking questions.
Vice Admiral Harvey Johnson released a statement on October 26th, 2007 stating:
FEMA's goal is to get information out as soon as possible, and in trying to do so we made an error in judgment. Our intent was to provide useful information and be responsive to the many questions we have received. We are reviewing our press procedures and will make the changes necessary to ensure that all of our communications are straight forward and transparent. At FEMA, our focus is disaster operations and, in this case, it means working closely with the State of California to support their response to the devastating fires.
We're committed to being there for the State and being good partners. In working to do so we did not put enough focus on how we communicate to the public. The real story -- how well the response and recovery elements are working in this disaster -- should not be lost because of how we tried to meet the needs of the media in distributing facts. We can and must do better, and apologize for this error in judgment.
When questioned about the staged event, White House press Secretary Dana Perino said, "It is not a practice that we would employ here at the White House or that we -- we certainly don't condone it. We didn't know about it beforehand. FEMA has issued an apology, saying that they had an error judgment when they were attempting to get out a lot of information to reporters, who were asking for answers to a variety of questions in regard to the wildfires in California. It's not something I would have condoned. And they, I'm sure, will not do it again."
When asked who was responsible? Perino said, "Well, FEMA is responsible. And they have accepted that responsibility, and they issued an apology today. They have admitted that they had an error in judgment. I would agree with that. They've issued an apology. And, you know, you'll have to ask them about why they decided to do that." Whereas the role of the White House press secretary had once been to educate the press and public on information concerning government policies, those that assume that role now realize that they are part of the controlled arm of public persuasion and government delivery of propaganda.
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They are asked to cover for the administration and to do damage control when it comes to evading the onslaught of investigative questions that actually uphold the integrity and objective of a free press as envisioned by our forefathers. The Free Press is the only institution protected by the Bill of Rights. Our forefathers knew how important that institution was for maintaining balance between the powers of government and the will of the governed. Little did they know that our free press would become an extension of big brother, big government.
How prevalent are fake news and fake news conferences to the government control of public opinion? Remember, we were lied into supporting an illegal and immoral war against an innocent sovereign nation, duped largely in part by the media support for the push for war against Iraq. A recent study by Congressional Democrats found that the Bush administration spent $254 million in its first term on public relations contracts to hire public relations personnel to create 'fake news' casts around certain issues of government concern, nearly doubling what the last Clinton administration spent on 'fake news.'
"Under the Bush administration, the federal government has aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. In all, at least 20 federal agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years, records and interviews show. Many were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the government's role in their production.
This winter, Washington has been roiled by revelations that a handful of columnists wrote in support of administration policies without disclosing they had accepted payments from the government. But the administration's efforts to generate positive news coverage have been considerably more pervasive than previously known. At the same time, records and interviews suggest widespread complicity or negligence by television stations, given industry ethics standards that discourage the broadcast of prepackaged news segments from any outside group without revealing the source."
How are fake news casts generated for public consumption? "They often feature 'interviews' with senior administration officials in which questions are scripted and answers rehearsed. Critics, though, are excluded, as are any hints of mismanagement, waste or controversy. Segments have been broadcast in some of nation's largest television markets, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and Atlanta.
An examination of government-produced news reports offers a look inside a world where the traditional lines between public relations and journalism have become tangled, where local anchors introduce prepackaged segments with 'suggested' lead-ins written by public relations experts. It is a world where government-produced reports disappear into a maze of satellite transmissions, Web portals, syndicated news programs and network feeds, only to emerge cleansed on the other side as 'independent' journalism."
Though every mainstream news station was quick to condemn FEMA for producing and putting on a fake news press conference, what they won't tell you is that they routinely and daily broadcast government produced 'video news reports' for content in their newscasts. Many times clips are purposely edited to represent true journalism when in fact they are scripted within intent to purposely persuade thoughts or opinions with certain bias, or specifically designed to inform viewers about a topic with purposeful objective on swaying opinion about subject or issue being described.
Now that media has been consolidated staffs are being purged and large media conglomerates are more and more dependent upon government produced video news releases to spare the expense of actually hiring journalists and reporters to gather news.
In three separate opinions, an investigative arm of Congress that studies the federal government expenditures, the Government Accountability Office has held that government-made news segments constitute "improper covert propaganda even if their origin is made clear to newscasters." Often newscasters are not passing on to their viewing audience the fact that these 'video news reports' are fake and created by government public relations campaigns and not through investigative journalism. "
The point, the office said, is whether viewers know the origin of newscast content. Last month, in its most recent finding, the G.A.O. said federal agencies may not produce prepackaged news reports "that conceal or do not clearly identify for the television viewing audience that the agency was the source of those materials."
A code of ethics developed for the Radio-Television News Directors Association, the main professional society for broadcast news directors in the United States clearly states, "Clearly disclose the origin of information and label all material provided by outsiders." Many stations prohibit the use of any outside material but especially entire reports done by public relations personnel and not investigative journalists. Welcome to the real world of Orwell's doublespeak, newspeak, repeat, repeat until it becomes real.
"What does today's media system mean for the notion of an informed public cherished by democratic theory? Quite literally, it means that virtually everything the average person sees or hears, outside of her own personal communications, is determined by the interests of private, unaccountable executives and investors whose primary goal is increasing profits and raising the share prices. More insidiously, this small group of elites determines what ordinary people do not see or hear. In-depth coverage of anything, let alone the problems real people face day-to-day, is as scarce as sex, violence and voyeurism are pervasive."
- Bill Moyers, Media Matters
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Zen Garcia [send him email] is Executive Director for Endeavor Freedom Inc., Executive Producer for EndeavorFreedom.TV, and Chairman of the board for Multiple Choices -an Athens, GA area Center for Independent Living. He is the author of three books; Look Somewhere Different, When the Evening Dies, and A Different Way of Being. A one time columnist with Disabled Dealer Magazine, Zen is now a regular contributor to the Populist Party of America.
