Manufacturing the news -- again

Earlier this week, the Los Angeles Times reported that the military was bribing Iraqi journalists to print stories favorable to the U.S. It would not be a stretch to imagine the Hannity crowd screaming that anyone who questions this policy is an unpatriotic liberal. Yet, the irony of tampering with the press while trying to help Iraqis build a democracy should not be hard for anyone to see. The military now admits the story is true, but says the matter is under investigation. The whole matter may be blamed on a contractor, (the Lincoln Group) but this is not the first time the Bush administration has been found to be manufacturing news. Consider:

• PR executive Karen Ryan posed as a "reporter" for the administration in 2004.
• Early last year, it was discovered that Jeff Gannon, a Republican operative (and gay escort), was posing as a reporter in the White House Press briefings.
• Earlier this year TV commentator Armstrong Williams was among those found to have been paid by the White House to praise President Bush's policies. Williams made $240,000 saying nice things about Bush's education policies.
• Under the direction of Karl Rove, former chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Ken Tomlinson worked to politicize public broadcasting. According to a report by the CPB's inspector general, Tomlinson violated federal law by secretly paying a consultant to monitor PBS and NPR, then trying to influence its programming. Tomlinson resigned, but not before installing another Republican Party hack in his place.
• In 2001, President Bush issued an executive order to withhold 68,0000 pages of President Reagan's papers that, by law, were due to be released. The papers, which archivists at the Reagan Presidential Library had already confirmed did not threaten national security or violate personal privacy, included the period in which the Iran-Contra affair took place and Bush's father was vice president.

These incidents take place in an atmosphere in which the administration has shown its hostility to the news media. According to Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz: "Not since the Nixon administration, with its wiretapping and enemies lists, has a president tried to marginalize the press in such aggressive fashion."