Reason #39: The Government-Media Matrix

Our corporate media buries and censors stories like GE’s polluting or Monsanto’s milk hormone all the time. But an even more distressing aspect of today’s news media might just be what makes it on air. Often, it’s nothing more than propaganda.

In 2005, headlines and anchor people around the country trumpeted a new study by an organization called the National Sleep Foundation. The study found that half the adult population of the United States had trouble falling asleep. But what the reports failed to mention was that the study was funded by pharmaceutical companies that manufacture, you guessed it, sleeping pills. Shilling for knockout pills may not seem like a serious matter, but believe me, the sleep study sham is only a minor example of how corrupt and compromised our national news organizations have become.

Remember our discussion of the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit? The bill that crooked congressman Billy Tauzin worked so hard to get through congress - at a cost of trillions of our tax dollars - so that he could land a cushy job working for the pharmaceutical industry? After the bill became law, the Department of Health and Human Services paid taxpayer money to produce slick “reports” about the features of the benefit program. These reports looked just like standard television news spots, complete with “reporters.” They were so realistic they wound up on over 40 news broadcasts around the country. Of course, unbeknownst to the viewers at home, they weren’t news at all. They were nothing but government propaganda.

Unfortunately, this kind of government-friendly fake news is not uncommon nowadays. In Florida, Governor Jeb Bush’s office paid over $100,000 in taxpayer dollars to a Tallahassee firm run by reporter Mike Vasilinda. For four years, Vasilinda and his company produced video programs that favored Jeb’s policies and those of other Florida agencies. Meanwhile, Vasilinda continued to cover Florida politics, including many of those same agencies, for wire service reports. Some of those reports wound up on CNN and NBC affiliates.

On the federal level, the Department of Education paid out $1 million to the PR firm Ketchum Inc. to promote its “No Child Left Behind” initiative. As with Jeb Bush’s payola scam with “journalist” Mike Vasilinda, the funds came exclusively from taxpayer dollars. Ketchum paid $240,000 of those funds to commentator Armstrong Williams to shill for No Child in his syndicated columns and television broadcasts. There was only one problem: Williams never disclosed his agreement with Ketchum and the Dept. of Education. He presented his support for No Child as if it were his own, unbiased opinion while, in reality, he was being paid for his work. That’s called fraud.

NEXT: Reason #40: Hired Guns