fake news from a fake government

Check this shit out:

News reports have revealed that the Department of Education used $240,000 of our taxes to hire Armstrong Williams, an ultra-conservative black columnist and talk-show host, to promote the controversial No Child Left Behind Act to his readers, viewers and colleagues in the media.[1] Williams did just as the Department asked, praising Bush's signature education initiative in his columns as well as on his and other television shows. Repeatedly, he failed to inform his audiences that his comments were bought and paid for with their own taxes.

This is not an isolated incident or simply bad judgment. The Government Accountability Office found last year that the Department of Health and Human Services violated two federal laws by producing propaganda videos touting Medicare's new drug benefits which were misleadingly packaged to look like news reports from independent journalists. Last week, the GAO announced that the Office of National Drug Control Policy had also potentially broken the law by using taxpayer dollars to produce similar "fake news" video segments.[2] Both agencies distributed the videos to news broadcasters, which in some cases aired them without telling viewers that they were watching government-sponsored propaganda.

Behind its rhetoric about moral values, the Bush administration is undermining ethical standards in government and attempting to hook the public on White House spin with undisclosed pay-offs to journalists.


[1] http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-01-09-williams_x.htm
[2] http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54651-2005Jan6?language=printer