The NYT and the Washington Post hold forth on the Bush administration's distribution of pre-made news for a sundry assortment of television stations.

An excerpt from the NYT:

 ... Too many television stations run government videos anyway, without any hint of where they came from. And while some claim they somehow stumbled accidentally into this trap, it seems obvious that in most cases, television stations that are short on reporters, long on air time to fill and unwilling to spend the money needed for real news gathering are abdicating their editorial responsibilities to the government's publicity teams. Bush administration officials now insist that they carefully label any domestic releases as government handouts.

However disingenuous those assurances may be, in at least some cases the stations are the main culprits in the deception - as at the Fox affiliate in Memphis, where a station reporter narrated a State Department video, using the text that came with it. The Times also reported on a small central Illinois station that was so eager to snap up this low-cost filler that it asked the Agriculture Department to have its "reporter" refer to its morning show in his closing lines. The Times tracked station malpractice into bigger markets, like San Diego (the ABC affiliate) and Louisville, Ky. (the Fox affiliate).

If using pretend news is one of the ways these stations have chosen to save money, it's a false economy. If it represents a political decision to support President Bush, it will eventually backfire. This kind of practice cheapens the real commodity that television stations have to sell during their news hours: their credibility.

And from the WashPost:

It's humiliating that local news stations, however short-staffed and desperate for footage, would allow themselves to be used this way. Indeed, as the New York Times reported Sunday, some have even lopped off government attribution when it was included or pretended the government reporter was one of their own. Even so, it's disingenuous for administration officials to blame the stations, given that many releases are crafted precisely to disguise their government origin.

This technique is both illegal and unwise. As a legal matter, the prepackaged news releases run afoul of the prohibition on the use of government funds for domestic "propaganda." The administration's interpretation -- it's okay to hide the source as long as the spot is "purely informational" -- is untenable: Highlighting some "facts" and leaving out others can be even more persuasive than outright advocacy, which is why the administration chose this device. More important, this kind of propaganda masquerading as news is a deceitful way for a democratic government to do business; fake journalists paid by the government to deliver its version of news are as disturbing as real commentators paid by the government to tout its views. White House press secretary Scott McClellan defended the video news releases on Monday as "an informational tool to provide factual information to the American people." Nice sentiment, but why, exactly, wouldn't the administration want to let the people in on one of the most salient facts: who, really, is doing the talking?

Unfortunately, I think the Bushies can brush this criticism off.

Back during the fall presidential election, I posted about the New Yorker's editorial vivisecting the Bush administration's record and endorsing Kerry. I rhetorically asked Bush supporters to read it an explain why their guy deserved to be president.

But then again, how many people read the New Yorker in rural Nebraska or Wyoming, for example? And if they did, they were probably Democrats to begin with, and so no minds would be changed.

To see what I mean, read this excerpt from an Oct. 17 NYT Magazine article by Ron Suskind.

And to see further why it might not matter, read this study from the Program on International Policy Attitudes on the "Differing realities of Kerry and Bush supporters," published in late October 2004.