You Are Paying
Yes you are. You are paying for the Bush Administration’s rancid propaganda running on TV stations across the country. Depending on your POV, I guess that might be a good thing. Dan has a good take on this heinous practice.
Classic Quote…
From this morning’s Good Morning Silicon Valley…
"Most of you are familiar with the book ‘Understanding Media’ by Marshall McLuhan. It sometimes comes as a shock to be reminded that in operational and practical terms, the medium is the message. He was right. … People always say that content is king, but there’s a lot of content out there and it can’t all be king. So if content is king, you don’t just want king. You want King Kong content."
— Sean "P. Diddy" Combs gives mad props to the original Eminem at the CTIA Convention
Transparency Gets Murky…
Washington Post reports that the issue of transparency and news dissemination is getting a little murky in DC:
The Bush administration, rejecting an opinion from the Government Accountability Office, said last week that it is legal for federal agencies to feed TV stations prepackaged news stories that do not disclose the government’s role in producing them.
That message, in memos sent Friday to federal agency heads and general counsels, contradicts a Feb. 17 memo from Comptroller General David M. Walker. Walker wrote that such stories — designed to resemble independently reported broadcast news stories so that TV stations can run them without editing — violate provisions in annual appropriations laws that ban covert propaganda.
We appear to have a right to do propaganda, but what about covert propaganda?
The legal counsel’s office "does not agree with GAO that the covert propaganda prohibition applies simply because an agency’s role in producing and disseminating information is undisclosed or ‘covert,’ regardless of whether the content of the message is ‘propaganda,’ " Bradbury wrote. "Our view is that the prohibition does not apply where 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."
GIVE ME A BREAK! They really believe these VNRs – with PR people pretending to work as baggage screeners – and packed full of propaganda – represent pure reporting – by that I mean, the don’t advocate a particular viewpoint. Well, in that case, lets get rid of the media all together.
I need to go cool-down somewhere… the parting quote from the story says it all…
"Whether in the form of a payment to an actual journalist, or through the creation of a fake one, it is wrong to deceive the public with the creation of phony news stories," the lawmakers wrote
Dems Rebranding…
BusinessWeek reports that the Dems are thinking about rebranding. About time.
Although they might want to think about a new brand all together. Do you always need to rebrand – which implies fixing the past (at least to me) – vs. launching a new brand all together…
"Two articles I have read in the last 24 hours–one in The New Yorker about Joe Biden and Nicholas Kristof’s op-ed piece
in the New York Times today–specifically talk about the Democrats
"re-branding" themselves. I have an idea: Dems could stake out being
the party for "The Truth" between now and 2008.. David Kiley, BW
Sun In Blog Heaven…
MIT Tech review reports on Sun’s blogging efforts.
Suns Simon Phipps, whose job title is chief technology evangelist, says that researchers and developers can swap more ideas, build better software, and meet customers needs faster if they are active in online communities, where blogs play the dual role of soap- and suggestion-box. "In a world where you must speak with an authentic voice," says Phipps, "the obvious way is to let the people you most trustyour employeesspeak directly to the -people you most want to appeal toyour customers." According to Phipps and Schwartz, not only do Suns blogs show customers that the company is paying attention to their concerns, but they have also become a major channel for communicating with programmers outside the company who write crucial third-party applications that run on Suns hardware and operating systems.
