GAO Denounces Gov't "Covert Propaganda"

Matt Welch | January 7, 2005

Stories in The Washington Post and GovExec.com. This marks the second time that the Government Accountability Office has chided the Administration for producing fake news tapes that were subsequently broadcast in the guise of independent journalism.

What's neat about this one is that the "news story" in question, which was planted by the Office of National Drug Control Policy, was about "plans for a new White House ad campaign on the dangers of drug abuse." In other words, your tax dollars were spent by anti-drug government P.R. types to make fake journalism about how your tax dollars are being spent by anti-drug government P.R. types ... and then your tax dollars were spent once more to reveal that, indeed, your tax dollars are being misspent.

Comments

|1.7.05 @ 9:01AM|#

Just be thankful you don't get all the government you pay for.

Warren|1.7.05 @ 9:39AM|#

It's nice that the GAO has identified some of the illegal propaganda the Feds churn out. Of course this is only the most egregious violations. Hopefully, we'll see more attention paid to the way the Fed strong-arm network sit-coms into waving their flag.

Mike H.|1.7.05 @ 10:46AM|#

I hate the goddamned government.

|1.7.05 @ 11:35AM|#

I think TWBA hits the nail on the head!

Every ad that they make means they can't hire quite as many agents to search for cancer patients with illicit plants.

gaius marius|1.7.05 @ 11:44AM|#

this is why they study the last-generation fascists so closely, apparently. would any of you be surprised if we found that wolfowitz could quote from gustave le bon?

|1.7.05 @ 12:08PM|#

"and then your tax dollars were spent once more to reveal that, indeed, your tax dollars are being misspent."

That part I'm all for.

|1.7.05 @ 12:30PM|#

God help me when I'm agreeing with Henry Waxman. He tore into this "covert propoganda" as a violation against "open government". Very well said.

I wonder if he would be this rabid if it was propoganda against tobacco?

|1.7.05 @ 2:19PM|#

You know, this sort of shit can backfire on a government. In Communist nations, take Poland for example, where the government never produced any reliable information, people became skeptical of anything the government claimed, and this undermined their opinion of the government even more.