The Truth in Broadcasting Act (S 967)
I write my elected representatives all the time and have decided to start posting my letters to them. I urge you to do the same. Feel free to copy my letters in their entirety and send them to your elected representatives. Their contact info can be found here. For Californians, Barbara Boxer is here and Diane Feinstein is here.
Dear Senator Boxer/Feinstein:
A September 30 Government Accountability Office report makes it clear that the Bush administration violated federal law by using taxpayer funds to create “covert propaganda.” This is not the first time that the GAO found the administration in violation of the publicity and propaganda prohibition.
Previous GAO investigations found other instances where the White House broke federal law prohibiting the use of “fake news.” A separate report by members of the House Committee on Government Reform found that the administration has set aside a quarter billion in taxpayer dollars for similar publicity campaigns.
These reports suggest that the executive branch is siphoning taxpayer money to covertly manipulate the Fourth Estate. It’s our money. We have a right to know how it’s being used.
Perhaps more importantly, I ask that you support The Truth in Broadcasting Act (S 967) in its original incarnation. Businesses that produce covert propaganda for our government have managed to get members of the Senate to alter the language in the original bill to favor not disclosing the source of every single “fake news” video news release (VNR) that they produce.
The original bill mandated that companies that produce VNR’s must put clear notification across the entire VNR that the “news” was actually cooked by the government, and that this notification cannot be removed. The VNR industry has managed to change the language of the bill so that only a short notification of being “cooked” would be mandated. Since many cash-strapped newsrooms use only short clips from the VNR’s, the American people are oftentimes not notified that they are being fed covert propaganda. The VNR industry would obviously like it to stay that way.
This cannot be allowed to happen. The American People should unequivocally know whether or not the “news” that they are watching is real or is being fed to them by the government. How can we have a Free Press when the government is doing its own reporting on itself?
Please support the original spirit of the bill and use your influence to urge other Senators to do so as well.
Sincerely,
Nick Hodulik
This all has to do with these obnoxious PR companies that produce propaganda for our government and send out the “video news releases” to television stations. The stations often show the VNR’s unedited and with no indication that the release is government propaganda. More info can be found here on PRWatch.
Without being glib, this is precisely what Hitler did during WWII, except that by that point the government owned all of the media outlets, as well. Germany didn’t have a so-called “Free Press” and thus no expectation of truth from their news. Even in the era of Fox/Faux News I still expect to know when our government is using our own tax dollars to lie to us through the media. The Truth in Broadcasting Act requires it.
Please write your elected reps today.
