To what extent does out government control what we think?

David Barstow and Robin Stein report on this question and find unsettling answers. They report that major TV networks collect fees from government agencies that produce prepackaged news segments. The disturbing part is that most news networks do not expose this fact to viewers so we end up believing that government propaganda is actually the work of independent journalists. The government is virtually feeding us our own opinions in this news segments without us even knowing.

It is one thing for news stations to be biased. People can usually realize if a news station is right winged or left winged. But for our own government to basically lie to us, and not tell us that the government created these segments, is not fair. It’s not fair for them to use propaganda right under our noses, and it should be stopped.

The problem with stopping it, is that no one is taking responsibility for it. No one is willing to change what they are doing in order to inform our audience. William A. Pierce, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human services says of a story produced by the government and aired on the news without any recognition of this fact “Talk to the television stations that ran it without attribution. This is not out problem. We can’t be held responsible for their actions”. But when news stations were told that they showed government made reports without giving credit to the government, they were resentful. They insisted that they would never let this happen.

Something that stood out to me was the fact that the administrations news reports often feature interviews with senior administration officials in which answers are scripted and even rehearsed. But critics, as Barstow and Stein point out, “are excluded as are any hints of mismanagement, waste or controversy”. This way, there are no surprises and positive news coverage is seen by viewers throughout the country. I can’t help but compare this strategy of hiding certain aspects of a story, to conditioning. The comparison may be extreme, but by reassuring the audience that everything is positive when in fact behind the scenes, people may have opinions that are not so positive, our government is constantly suggesting what people think about political issues.

That being said, this phenomenon of pre-packaged news makes me wonder about how the Watergate scandal would have turned out without independent reporting. One of the main reasons why Nixon was caught was because of the role of the independent press. The press was able to independently find out the facts first hand and not depend on the governments reports. If the relationship between administration and public relations was what it is today, then who knows when or if ever we would have found out what was actually going on.