news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051207/od_nm/bush_spin_dc
Iraq to "Recovery Channel" TV on federal disaster relief, the Bush ad ministration's spin operation is in high gear, aiming its message direct ly at the American public as it critiques the mainstream media.
CIA operative's name and the indictment of White House aide Lewis "Scooter" L ibby. As his job approval rating dipped below 40 percent in a recent Gallup pol l, Bush went on the offensive last week, with speeches on the Iraq war - - unveiling a 35-page National Strategy for Victory in Iraq -- immigrati on and the economy. But these addresses are only part of this administration's strategy to sh ape public opinion. The US military last week acknowledged paying Iraqi newspapers to publi sh pro-American stories written by an "information operations" task forc e Then on Monday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld blamed the mainstre am press for dwelling on "the worst about America and our military." This bad news, Rumsfeld told an academic audience, is "reported and sprea d around the world, often with little context and little scrutiny, let a lone correction or accountability after the fact." A secretive White House Iraq Group, or WHIG for short, set strategy for s elling the Iraq war to the public. The group's work became a focus of th e investigation into who leaked CIA agent Valerie Plame's name to the me dia. UNNFILTERED MESSAGES This is hardly the first US administration bent on getting its unfilter ed message to the world. It is not even the first time there has been a WHIG: President Lyndon Johnson had a White House Information Group in th e 1960s that aimed to sell the US public on the Vietnam war. What may be different is the use of new technologies to sell the presiden t's message, set against this particular administration's generally chil ly attitude toward the media, according to Stephen Hess, who has worked for both Republican and Democratic administrations from the 1950s to the 1970s. "I don't think they're necessarily better than some past administrations in terms of the spin," said Hess, now a professor at George Washington U niversity. As a result, Hess said, "Their side of the story seems more dominant beca use at the same time there's not the usual interplay between government and the press." The Internet makes it easier now to bypass the Washington media.
Federal Emergency Management Agency offers the Recovery Channel, which can be seen on local government access television stations in the United States. Activated periodically for the largest disaster relief operations dating back more than a decade, the Recovery Channel drew some criticism this y ear for an apparent failure to clearly mark the broadcasts as a governme nt product.
Other administration influences in the media have been less clear cut. Th e Bush administration came under fire earlier this year for paying a con servative commentator to praise its "No Child Left Behind" education pol icy and for producing video news releases that some television stations aired without identifying their origin. "There is a fine and sometimes a stark line between public relations and meaningful information and misinformation and disinformation," said Bob Steele, the Nelson Poynter scholar in journalism values at the Florida-b ased Poynter Institute. "If government officials are disingenuous in the way in which they go about providing information to news organizations or to the public, then that is far from ideal."
President Bush shakes hands before addressing employees at the John D eere-Hitachi Construction Machinery Corporation plant in Kernersville, N orth Carolina December 5, 2005. From the Strategy for Victory in Iraq to 'Recovery Channel' TV on federal disaster relief, the Bush administrati on's spin operation is in high gear, aiming its message directly at the American public as it critiques the mainstream media.
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