If you’ve had your ear to the ground, and have found yourself on the philosophically progressive end of the poliitcal spectrum over the last few years, your research indicated what few would believe– Bush, and the American Republican Party, repeatedly lied to the American public. Cheney’s big bad lie to Judy Miller got us into Iraq. But since then, most media critics will tell you, the news has had a particularly  fantastic quality about it. Meaning: there’s a hell of a lot of inconsistency and bullshit spewing out of the mainstream press.

Finally, there is something you can point to. Super shout out to the Center for Media and Democracy for this fantastic study. Check out the Independent article on falsified news stories here.  

I’m shocked this article never made a huger splash here in the US. But then again, american’s have the political attention span of a turrets kid on coke. Here’s the lede and nut of the article

“

Bush ‘planted fake news stories on American TV’

By Andrew Buncombe in Washington

Published: 29 May 2006

Federal authorities are actively investigating dozens of American television stations for broadcasting items produced by the Bush administration and major corporations, and passing them off as normal news. Some of the fake news segments talked up success in the war in Iraq, or promoted the companies’ products.

Investigators from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are seeking information about stations across the country after a report produced by a campaign group detailed the extraordinary extent of the use of such items.

The report, by the non-profit group Centre for Media and Democracy, found that over a 10-month period at least 77 television stations were making use of the faux news broadcasts, known as Video News Releases (VNRs). Not one told viewers who had produced the items.

“We know we only had partial access to these VNRs and yet we found 77 stations using them,” said Diana Farsetta, one of the group’s researchers. “I would say it’s pretty extraordinary. The picture we found was much worse than we expected going into the investigation in terms of just how widely these get played and how frequently these pre-packaged segments are put on the air.”

There you go America. Your government lies to you so that it can slaughter people just like me and you in countries we can barely identify on a map. But America, we all know this is no biggie for you. I mean this article itself is at least a year and change old. Let’s just change the official language to German already.

Buck Fush

No More Lies,

–Reverend Manny and the Twilight Empire