Doug’s World

Journalistic Integrity - NOT

Here’s a great look at how the Bush administration promotes its agenda. When you read the “editorial” piece in your local paper, you probably think that you’re reading somebody’s independent thoughts, right? I mean, even if you disagree, you’re at least assuming that you’re reading the actual opinion of somebody who is actually affiliated with the paper you’re reading, right?

Fool! (Me, too — I always assumed those things.)

Check out this story, which I found on Memeorandum.com, which I was checking out because Robert Scoble mentioned it in an interview with ActiveWin this week.

It appears that various newspapers around the country have run a piece prepared by the Bush administration that explains why it’s important to cut wages for hurricane reconstruction workers. And they’ve run it as an op-ed piece, with no named writer; some of the papers have even labeled it as “our view.”

How many times has this happened before? I’m reminded of the one-year anniversary of 9/11, when I was sitting in the Rex Hotel in Saigon (I refuse to call it Ho Chi Minh City, sorry) with my Mom and we were listening to Walter Cronkite decry the restrictions that the U.S. press had accepted in the name of fighting the war on terror and he said something like “I have a hard time picturing the journalists I used to work with accepting these kinds of limitations on free speech.” It’s getting worse, Walter: journalism and sales have merged, and it ain’t pretty.

The above-mentioned propaganda piece starts with “One of the smartest things President Bush did …”, so I’m thinking right there most people should smell a rat. As my brother Greg told me in 2000, “you don’t have to be smart to do that job (U.S. President).” (We’re an all-American family: four brothers, two love Bush, two hate him.)

Anyway, I’m so impressed with Memeorandum’s approach to organizing blog data that I’ve added a real-time summary of their latest articles to the home page of Mahugh.com.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 21st, 2005 at 2:22 pm. You can subscribe to comments on this post through its RSS feed.