My daily routine surfing the net to cover my need for newscoverage in danish includes the Politiken website, Danmarks Radio, Ekstra Bladet, and various random hits. Monday and Tuesday was spent surfing to see if could find news about the counterfeit newsproduction that made headline in the US this week. I couldn`t, so in an attempt to keep the flottenheimer-mantra of “keeping the bad guy honest…” I`ll try to throw you a bone of the hideous tricks and turns of the current US administration.

El Presidente© has come under a lot of criticism for its attemps to air government propoganda as genuine news reports. The New York Times documented this week in a article by David Barstow and Robin Stein, that more than 20 federal agencies, including the State department and the Defense Department have been creating fake news clips, and that the administration in an overall estimate have spent 254 million dollars in its first four years on contracts to public relations firms – more than double the amount spent during the Clinton-years.
Most of the tapes and news clips have been done skillfully and talented with “reporters” in the field who look like the real thing and only more trained viewers have been able too recognize these clips as actually commercial announcements for the White House and the administration. Numerous clips clearly cross the line into the proscribed territory of up front propoganda.
These clips have been distributed and aired by many stations without any hint where they came from. So the responsibility goes two ways: 1) The persistent, convincing and dubious attempt from the US administration to bend truth and moral in the public sphere – their, so to speak, attempt to own it (The Republican Noisemachine) and 2) The lack of research with smaller networks, who in an attempt to lower cost trying to survive and produce cheap news-broadcast, without questining or making distintions, airs whatever clip that lands in their laps.
However it more than anything else shows a somewhat incredible will to rule! I mean 254 million dollars (!) is….if nothing else a fucking lot money in a country that, for example have the highest number of children living in extreme poverty in the industrialized world.
And it more that proves the point that objective communication in this day and age is no longer an option, the thought of independent news and mass communication is gone haywire. In other words, the principle to uphold news – credibility – is down the drain: where as the the saddening news is, as emphasized yesterday: we are all a bunch of cocksuckers and we swallow on a day to day basic.
BUT: what also pissed me off – again and again – is the righteousness of El Presidente© when he adresses the issue of democracy in the third world, using the States as a rolemodel. Government sponsored messages disguised as independent news are NOTHING less than government PROPOGANDA™ and a quickstep on the pavement to fascism.
And chances are I am the jerk here, for believing that it has ever been different, but at least now: it is more fucking apparent.

So Fuck it and go Blog yourself! That’s where the subjective news are, but at least their frank about it. Frank and Ernest. As song by Shirley Q Liqor: "Tell them who you is".

commoditymorals
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