It’s interesting the kinds of spins we customarily put on words. Even the popular Fox TV talk show host Bill O’Reilly cautions viewers that they’re “about to enter the no-spin zone.”
    It’s a case of unmitigated irony, as Bill O’Really’s program is pure spin: bash the Democrats.


    In the heat of the latest polls that show President Bush with an approval rating of about 33 percent, members of his party and administration are trying to shore up the last vestiges of respectability and support. Not since Nixon was in office has a president sunk so low in the polls.
    Out of the rubble, the word “propaganda,” usually reserved for politicians, has been thrown around. Leading Democrats accuse the Bush administration of using propaganda to further their agenda. Their Republican counterparts use the same word to describe criticism of the status of the war in Iraq.
    But the more recognized definitions of “propaganda” give it a neutral complexion. Most dictionaries define it something like “The systematic propagation of a doctrine or cause or of information reflecting the views and interests of those people advocating such a doctrine or cause.”
    It’s not till you go deeper into the dictionary that you discover “selected truths,” “exaggerations” and “lies” as part of the definitions. In short, propaganda is what the other guy does and says, but we always give our best version of the truth.
    “Propaganda” was destined to be resurrected only last week when a Los Angeles Times reporter came across information that the U.S. Pentagon had been paying Iraq newspapers and other media outlets to run stories that give only a positive spin to the current efforts in Iraq. Some of the smaller newspapers, run on a shoestring, benefitted greatly by the journalistic windfall. Though newspapers don’t get paid for printing the news, a slew of them in Iraq were happy to make an exception.
    A syndicated columnist, Cal Thomas, wrote a piece Wednesday in which he defended the practice in order that we be allowed to place positive stories to counter the enemies’ propaganda. He wrote, “I have no problem with planted stories in the Iraqi press if they are truthful.”
    Remember, propaganda is what the other guy does.
    The LA Times reports that for most of 2005, a U.S. information task force has used an organization called the Lincoln Group to plant stories in the Iraqi media that trumpet U.S. successes. To be sure, members of the Iraqi media are earning tidy sums for their willingness to be bought off.
    Iraq and other countries may not have the equivalent of our First Amendment and therefore may not find abhorrent the practice of getting paid to print the party line. LA Times executives report that what has been printed — so far — at the expense of American taxpayers, has been accurate. Obviously, the planted items take on the appearance of “puff piece” press releases, devoid of even a hint of “the other side of the story,” which could reflect poorly on current policy. What is disturbing is the willingness of the Iraqi media to prostitute itself and the notion that it’s fine for the U.S. to pay to have its image burnished by articles written by paid professional writers and then translated into Arabic.
    It wasn’t far into the U.S. invasion of Iraq that the Bush administration ‘fessed up to using paid, trained journalists and broadcasters to air positive footage on the war. Even dreaded infomercials, making up much of air time today, run disclaimers that what the audience is watching is paid programming. And in newspapers, advertisements that look too much like straight news often get a border placed around them.
    Last year, just before the election, Vice President Dick Cheney’s staff required a signed loyalty oath of anyone hoping to attend his speech in Albuquerque. And this year, most of Bush’s speeches have been in front of uniformed military personnel, rather than at open rallies.
    Transparency fails to flourish when officials forbid photographing caskets containing the bodies of fallen troops. It fails when the Pentagon secretly buys its way into foreign media. Repeated attempts to provide a positive spin have surfaced, and with each discovery of managed news and a subverted media, the American public understandably becomes more mistrustful.
    Right now America could use a dose of truth — with neither spin nor a price tag attached.

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