In the briefing, parts of which were televised live by cable news channels, Johnson stood behind a lectern, called on questioners who did not disclose that they were FEMA employees, and gave replies emphasizing that his agency’s response to this week’s California wildfires was far better than its response to Hurricane Katrina in August 2005.
FEMA sorry for fake news briefing — chicagotribune.com
Where has the character in our government officials gone? I realize this can be considered an ‘isolated incident’, and I’m sure there are many good, honest and hard-working people working in our federal government. But really – faking a news conference? This is just sickening. What other conferences have been faked? Is this really the only one?
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Tags: government
Hell no it’s not the first time the feds have manipulated the media. The media’s complicity with the Federal Government in building support for the invasion of Iraq amounted to a seris of “staged” press conferences as far as I (and many others) are concerned.
Here’s but one example:
(from http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1983)
“Earlier this year, another Los Angeles Times scoop (6/3/04) revealed that one of the most enduring images of the war– the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein in a Baghdad square on April 9, 2003– was a U.S. Army psychological warfare operation staged to look like a spontaneous Iraqi action:
“As the Iraqi regime was collapsing on April 9, 2003, Marines converged on Firdos Square in central Baghdad, site of an enormous statue of Saddam Hussein. It was a Marine colonel– not joyous Iraqi civilians, as was widely assumed from the TV images — who decided to topple the statue, the Army report said. And it was a quick-thinking Army psychological operations team that made it appear to be a spontaneous Iraqi undertaking.”
CNN ‘s history of voluntary cooperation with PSYOPS troops is also worth considering. In March 2000, FAIR and international news organizations revealed that CNN had allowed military propaganda specialists from an Army PSYOPS unit to work as interns in the news division of its Atlanta headquarters.”
Your post reminded me to subscribe to the Counterspin.org podcast – one of the best media watchdog reports out there. Thanks!
In some measure I think we almost expect a degree of manipulation when it comes to propaganda regarding international events. There’s an ‘us vs them’ mentality at play which we can all rally ’round. I’m not saying it’s *right*, but easier to understand. But to pull this sort of crap with wholly internal matters feels like it’s sinking to a new low. Unfortunately, my guess is that this is just one of the few things that gets leaked/learned about, and that there’s much more we will never know about.