In this powerful propaganda operation is made by the State Department and Pentagon videosegmenty news intended for submission to the U.S. war in Iraq to the American people. Various agencies have created television programs that attempt to present dubious programs provided by the Bush administration, in the best possible light.

Department of Defense opened its own "Pentagon Channel, issuing false news releases, interviews and video clips for American television stations. The State Department uses a dramatically expanded network of translation services with the same purpose.

Head of the Main Control and financial management David Walker issued a Feb. 17 directive that defines this practice as a violation of the Appropriation Act, which prohibits the use of government funds to pay for covert propaganda aimed at the American people.

In response, the Legal Counsel Division of the Ministry of Justice on Friday issued its own ruling. It argues that the administration "does not agree with GAO, that the ban on covert propaganda is applicable only because the role of the public body in the production and dissemination of information is unclear or" hidden ", regardless of whether the" propaganda "content of the message.

Deputy Attorney General Steven Bradbury wrote in support of the government: "Our view is that the prohibition does not apply where there is no protection of a specific point of view, and therefore does not apply to the legitimate provision of information concerning agency programs."

At a press conference on Monday, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher echoed this official line, defending their own videos of the Ministry. "First, it is elementary facts and materials about what is happening in Afghanistan and Iraq, or often in the U.S. relating to important issues," he said. "And it is not - I can not call it propaganda. This, as you know, video clips, which are assembled together and that people can use for reporting on events. "

At a press conference Wednesday, President Bush mocked a reporter's question about why the government does not include clear information on the sources of their "gotovlennye-to-use reports." Mimicking the last line of his campaign ads, Bush replied: "You mean the recognition, I George W. Bush and I ... [authorized this message]. "

The report, "The Times" refers to a mutually beneficial relationship the government and the media underlying the use of these videovypuskov news, pointing at the same time, the causes of media complicity in the main economy of public relations and television news.

The report states: "Local affiliates are spared from the cost of digging up original material. PR firms are provided with government contracts worth millions of dollars. Major networks to help distribute the releases, are paid from government agencies, producing stories, and its affiliates, their broadcasting. The administration, meanwhile, gets his message presented in the guise of conventional reportage.

In an editorial published on Wednesday, the Washington Post condemned the government's practice as "illegal and unreasonable", lamenting at the same time: "It is humiliating that local news stations, no matter how limited their staff, and as if they are not needed material, allow themselves to be used that way. "

What is strangely missing in these definitions, it is an analysis of political and ideological tendencies within the media, which did covert government propaganda broadcast not only acceptable but also practically indistinguishable from the material prepared by the television networks.

In the long process that reached a qualitatively new level with the advent of the current Bush administration and the denouement illegal war in Iraq, the media actually took on the task of promoting government and corporate interests. Now the government along with private corporations to systematically develop their own covert propaganda, imitating the form of television. The result is something like a room with laughter, where the images presented to the American people, are a gross distortion of reality.

Disputes over distribution of government propaganda disguised as news, began after a series of scandals that are noteworthy and the fact that exposes how the Bush administration manipulates the media, and the relative indifference of the media itself.

Earlier this year, it was disclosed that the Ministry of Education has paid 240 thousand dollars right commentator Armstrong Williams as part of a "connection with minorities" (Williams-black-red.) In favor of the Bush administration's "No child is not forgotten." Williams used his newspaper column and his performances on radio and television to publicize the program, without specifying that he has paid the government.

Similar, although less expensive contracts with right-wing commentators for commercial sexual abstinence and marriage promotion program administration, were revealed later.

Then there was another strange incident with James Gakertom - also known as Jeff Gannon - right-wing political operative, who was allowed two years of pretending a member of the press staff of the White House (at a daily pass for its invented name). There are sufficient reasons to believe that Gakert /Gannon was podsazhen in the press room for tossing nonaggressive questions designed to reflect a more serious attempt to call the White House correspondents.

He was last seen after a press conference on Jan. 26, when he proposed to ask Bush - something almost always prepared in advance. He asked the ideological "nevopros", asked the president how he could work with Democrats in the Senate, "which seems to be completely detached from reality."

Investigations authors blogging and web sites have discovered that Gannon was actually Gakertom and that he was both owner and a prostitute on several Internet sites that disseminate male prostitution with military gay theme - http://hotmilitarystud. com , http://militaryescort.com and others. The so-called news site, which he represented, was a well-known property of the Texas Republican and Bush confidant, Bobby Eberle.

It was also revealed that Gakertu /Gannon seems to have provided access to an internal memo to the CIA, representing the wife of Ambassador Joe Wilson as an undercover CIA agent. Authority to provide information leaked in retaliation for exposing Wilson claims that Saddam Hussein tried to buy uranium from Niger for its defunct nuclear program. Gakert /Gannon admitted that he was interrogated in this case FBI agents.

We can only guess what would be a roar went up, if it was proved that the Clinton administration provided the same location - and possibly the state secrets - the individual was moonlighting as a prostitute - regardless of his or her sex or sexual orientation.

While the case Gannon - a revelation about the administration of covert dissemination of propaganda and bribery commentators - was considered by corporate media as a minor mistake. None of the revelations of egregious government manipulated the press did not receive and share the attention that honored two years ago, Jason Blair's journalistic sins, a young reporter for The New York Times, the person for the fabrication of quotations and plagiarism in articles on minor details.

This reaction is equivalent to the criminal silence. These incidents are not exceptions but rather are symptoms of corporate control over the media, which regularly serve as a vehicle for government propaganda, and late stages of decomposition, which swept through the democratic processes in the United States.

Defiant stubbornness in defense of his administration "rights" propaganda fed to either of the unsuspecting public is comparable with the consent of the media to disseminate articles and broadcast the video, intended to deceive rather than inform or expose. This secret cooperation has been excellent expression of two years ago in the preparation of the aggression against Iraq based on lies, which repeated the media.

Giant corporations control all the television networks, while a few large conglomerates systematically centralized power have almost all the newspapers of the country. Corporate interests dominate from top to bottom, and the media give rise to multi-caste, "personalities" whose wealth is directly related to their relationships with the leading figures in government and big business.

This is the same environment that promotes the application of the Bush administration's methods of "covert propaganda" against the American people, which in an earlier era had been procured for use by the CIA to destabilize foreign governments.

The Bush administration has always had devoted huge resources to manipulate visual display of political slogans and propaganda designed to promote and disguise their predatory policies. However, the increase in cases of egregious practices of false news releases, paid commentators and columnists, acting as journalists, is characteristic of the regime at the stage of crisis, when he was desperately afraid that if he becomes aware of the extent of his crimes, he will face uncontrollable political upheavals.

Submitted by http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/ma...prop-m17.shtml

Translated Sergei Mashnenko http://left.ru/2005/7/auken124.phtml