By David Barstow and Robin Stein
The New York Times
Sunday 13 March 2005
It is the kind of TV news coverage every president covets.
"Thank you, Bush. Thank you, U.S.A.," a jubilant Iraqi-American told a camera crew
in Kansas City for a segment about reaction to the fall of Baghdad. A second report
told of "another success" in the Bush administration's "drive to strengthen aviation
security"; the reporter called it "one of the most remarkable campaigns in aviation
history." A third segment, broadcast in January, described the administration's
determination to open markets for American farmers.
To a viewer, each report looked like any other 90-second segment on the local
news. In fact, the federal government produced all three. The report from Kansas
City was made by the State Department. The "reporter" covering airport safety was
actually a public relations professional working under a false name for the
Transportation Security Administration. The farming segment was done by the
Agriculture Department's office of communications.
Under the Bush administration, the federal government has aggressively used a
well-established tool of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news
report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch
everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. In all, at least 20 federal
agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, have made
and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years,
records and interviews show. Many were subsequently broadcast on local stations
across the country without any acknowledgement of the government's role in their
production.
This winter, Washington has been roiled by revelations that a handful of columnists
wrote in support of administration policies without disclosing they had accepted
payments from the government. But the administration's efforts to generate
positive news coverage have been considerably more pervasive than previously
known. At the same time, records and interviews suggest widespread complicity or
negligence by television stations, given industry ethics standards that discourage
the broadcast of prepackaged news segments from any outside group without
revealing the source.
Federal agencies are forthright with broadcasters about the origin of the news
segments they distribute. The reports themselves, though, are designed to fit
seamlessly into the typical local news broadcast. In most cases, the "reporters" are
careful not to state in the segment that they work for the government. Their
reports generally avoid overt ideological appeals. Instead, the government's
news-making apparatus has produced a quiet drumbeat of broadcasts describing a
vigilant and compassionate administration.
Some reports were produced to support the administration's most cherished policy
objectives, like regime change in Iraq or Medicare reform. Others focused on less
prominent matters, like the administration's efforts to offer free after-school
tutoring, its campaign to curb childhood obesity, its initiatives to preserve forests
and wetlands, its plans to fight computer viruses, even its attempts to fight holiday
drunken driving. They often feature "interviews" with senior administration officials
in which questions are scripted and answers rehearsed. Critics, though, are
excluded, as are any hints of mismanagement, waste or controversy.
Some of the segments were broadcast in some of nation's largest television
markets, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and Atlanta.
An examination of government-produced news reports offers a look inside a world
where the traditional lines between public relations and journalism have become
tangled, where local anchors introduce prepackaged segments with "suggested"
lead-ins written by public relations experts. It is a world where
government-produced reports disappear into a maze of satellite transmissions,
Web portals, syndicated news programs and network feeds, only to emerge
cleansed on the other side as "independent" journalism.
It is also a world where all participants benefit.
Local affiliates are spared the expense of digging up original material. Public
relations firms secure government contracts worth millions of dollars. The major
networks, which help distribute the releases, collect fees from the government
agencies that produce segments and the affiliates that show them. The
administration, meanwhile, gets out an unfiltered message, delivered in the guise of
traditional reporting.
The practice, which also occurred in the Clinton administration, is continuing despite
President Bush's recent call for a clearer demarcation between journalism and
government publicity efforts. "There needs to be a nice independent relationship
between the White House and the press," Mr. Bush told reporters in January,
explaining why his administration would no longer pay pundits to support his
policies.
In interviews, though, press officers for several federal agencies said the
president's prohibition did not apply to government-made television news
segments, also known as video news releases. They described the segments as
factual, politically neutral and useful to viewers. They insisted that there was no
similarity to the case of Armstrong Williams, a conservative columnist who
promoted the administration's chief education initiative, the No Child Left Behind
Act, without disclosing $240,000 in payments from the Education Department.
What is more, these officials argued, it is the responsibility of television news
directors to inform viewers that a segment about the government was in fact
written by the government. "Talk to the television stations that ran it without
attribution," said William A. Pierce, spokesman for the Department of Health and
Human Services. "This is not our problem. We can't be held responsible for their
actions."
Yet in three separate opinions in the past year, the Government Accountability
Office, an investigative arm of Congress that studies the federal government and
its expenditures, has held that government-made news segments may constitute
improper "covert propaganda" even if their origin is made clear to the television
stations. The point, the office said, is whether viewers know the origin. Last month,
in its most recent finding, the G.A.O. said federal agencies may not produce
prepackaged news reports "that conceal or do not clearly identify for the television
viewing audience that the agency was the source of those materials."
It is not certain, though, whether the office's pronouncements will have much
practical effect. Although a few federal agencies have stopped making television
news segments, others continue. And on Friday, the Justice Department and the
Office of Management and Budget circulated a memorandum instructing all
executive branch agencies to ignore the G.A.O. findings. The memorandum said the
G.A.O. failed to distinguish between covert propaganda and "purely informational"
news segments made by the government. Such informational segments are legal,
the memorandum said, whether or not an agency's role in producing them is
disclosed to viewers.
Even if agencies do disclose their role, those efforts can easily be undone in a
broadcaster's editing room. Some news organizations, for example, simply identify
the government's "reporter" as one of their own and then edit out any phrase
suggesting the segment was not of their making.
So in a recent segment produced by the Agriculture Department, the agency's
narrator ended the report by saying "In Princess Anne, Maryland, I'm Pat O'Leary
reporting for the U.S. Department of Agriculture." Yet AgDay, a syndicated farm
news program that is shown on some 160 stations, simply introduced the segment
as being by "AgDay's Pat O'Leary." The final sentence was then trimmed to "In
Princess Anne, Maryland, I'm Pat O'Leary reporting."
Brian Conrady, executive producer of AgDay, defended the changes. "We can clip
'Department of Agriculture' at our choosing," he said. "The material we get from
the U.S.D.A., if we choose to air it and how we choose to air it is our choice."
Spreading the Word: Government Efforts and One Woman's Role
Karen Ryan cringes at the phrase "covert propaganda." These are words for
dictators and spies, and yet they have attached themselves to her like a pair of
handcuffs.
Not long ago, Ms. Ryan was a much sought-after "reporter" for news segments
produced by the federal government. A journalist at ABC and PBS who became a
public relations consultant, Ms. Ryan worked on about a dozen reports for seven
federal agencies in 2003 and early 2004. Her segments for the Department of
Health and Human Services and the Office of National Drug Control Policy were a
subject of the accountability office's recent inquiries.
The G.A.O. concluded that the two agencies "designed and executed" their
segments "to be indistinguishable from news stories produced by private sector
television news organizations." A significant part of that execution, the office found,
was Ms. Ryan's expert narration, including her typical sign-off - "In Washington,
I'm Karen Ryan reporting" - delivered in a tone and cadence familiar to television
reporters everywhere.
Last March, when The New York Times first described her role in a segment about
new prescription drug benefits for Medicare patients, reaction was harsh. In
Cleveland, The Plain Dealer ran an editorial under the headline "Karen Ryan, You're a
Phony," and she was the object of late-night jokes by Jon Stewart and received
hate mail.
"I'm like the Marlboro man," she said in a recent interview.
In fact, Ms. Ryan was a bit player who made less than $5,000 for her work on
government reports. She was also playing an accepted role in a lucrative art form,
the video news release. "I just don't feel I did anything wrong," she said. "I just did
what everyone else in the industry was doing."
It is a sizable industry. One of its largest players, Medialink Worldwide Inc., has
about 200 employees, with offices in New York and London. It produces and
distributes about 1,000 video news releases a year, most commissioned by major
corporations. The Public Relations Society of America even gives an award, the
Bronze Anvil, for the year's best video news release.
Several major television networks play crucial intermediary roles in the business.
Fox, for example, has an arrangement with Medialink to distribute video news
releases to 130 affiliates through its video feed service, Fox News Edge. CNN
distributes releases to 750 stations in the United States and Canada through a
similar feed service, CNN Newsource. Associated Press Television News does the
same thing worldwide with its Global Video Wire.
"We look at them and determine whether we want them to be on the feed," David
M. Winstrom, director of Fox News Edge, said of video news releases. "If I got one
that said tobacco cures cancer or something like that, I would kill it."
In essence, video news releases seek to exploit a growing vulnerability of television
news: Even as news staffs at the major networks are shrinking, many local stations
are expanding their hours of news coverage without adding reporters.
"No TV news organization has the resources in labor, time or funds to cover every
worthy story," one video news release company, TVA Productions, said in a sales
pitch to potential clients, adding that "90 percent of TV newsrooms now rely on
video news releases."
Federal agencies have been commissioning video news releases since at least the
first Clinton administration. An increasing number of state agencies are producing
television news reports, too; the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department alone has
produced some 500 video news releases since 1993.
Under the Bush administration, federal agencies appear to be producing more
releases, and on a broader array of topics.
A definitive accounting is nearly impossible. There is no comprehensive archive of
local television news reports, as there is in print journalism, so there is no easy way
to determine what has been broadcast, and when and where.
Still, several large agencies, including the Defense Department, the State
Department and the Department of Health and Human Services, acknowledge
expanded efforts to produce news segments. Many members of Mr. Bush's
first-term cabinet appeared in such segments.
A recent study by Congressional Democrats offers another rough indicator: the
Bush administration spent $254 million in its first term on public relations
contracts, nearly double what the last Clinton administration spent.
Karen Ryan was part of this push - a "paid shill for the Bush administration," as
she self-mockingly puts it. It is, she acknowledges, an uncomfortable title.
Ms. Ryan, 48, describes herself as not especially political, and certainly no Bush
die-hard. She had hoped for a long career in journalism. But over time, she said,
she grew dismayed by what she saw as the decline of television news - too many
cut corners, too many ratings stunts.
In the end, she said, the jump to video news releases from journalism was not as
far as one might expect. "It's almost the same thing," she said.
There are differences, though. When she went to interview Tommy G. Thompson,
then the health and human services secretary, about the new Medicare drug
benefit, it was not the usual reporter-source exchange. First, she said, he already
knew the questions, and she was there mostly to help him give better, snappier
answers. And second, she said, everyone involved is aware of a segment's potential
political benefits.
Her Medicare report, for example, was distributed in January 2004, not long before
Mr. Bush hit the campaign trail and cited the drug benefit as one of his major
accomplishments.
The script suggested that local anchors lead into the report with this line: "In
December, President Bush signed into law the first-ever prescription drug benefit
for people with Medicare." In the segment, Mr. Bush is shown signing the legislation
as Ms. Ryan describes the new benefits and reports that "all people with Medicare
will be able to get coverage that will lower their prescription drug spending."
The segment made no mention of the many critics who decry the law as an
expensive gift to the pharmaceutical industry. The G.A.O. found that the segment
was "not strictly factual," that it contained "notable omissions" and that it
amounted to "a favorable report" about a controversial program.
And yet this news segment, like several others narrated by Ms. Ryan, reached an
audience of millions. According to the accountability office, at least 40 stations ran
some part of the Medicare report. Video news releases distributed by the Office of
National Drug Control Policy, including one narrated by Ms. Ryan, were shown on
300 stations and reached 22 million households. According to Video Monitoring
Services of America, a company that tracks news programs in major cities, Ms.
Ryan's segments on behalf of the government were broadcast a total of at least 64
times in the 40 largest television markets.
Even these measures, though, do not fully capture the reach of her work. Consider
the case of News 10 Now, a cable station in Syracuse owned by Time Warner. In
February 2004, days after the government distributed its Medicare segment, News
10 Now broadcast a virtually identical report, including the suggested anchor
lead-in. The News 10 Now segment, however, was not narrated by Ms. Ryan.
Instead, the station edited out the original narration and had one of its reporters
repeat the script almost word for word.
The station's news director, Sean McNamara, wrote in an e-mail message, "Our
policy on provided video is to clearly identify the source of that video." In the case
of the Medicare report, he said, the station believed it was produced and distributed
by a major network and did not know that it had originally come from the
government.
Ms. Ryan said she was surprised by the number of stations willing to run her
government segments without any editing or acknowledgement of origin. As proud
as she says she is of her work, she did not hesitate, even for a second, when
asked if she would have broadcast one of her government reports if she were a
local news director.
"Absolutely not."
Little Oversight: TV's Code of Ethics, With Uncertain Weight
"Clearly disclose the origin of information and label all material provided by
outsiders."
Those words are from the code of ethics of the Radio-Television News Directors
Association, the main professional society for broadcast news directors in the
United States. Some stations go further, all but forbidding the use of any outside
material, especially entire reports. And spurred by embarrassing publicity last year
about Karen Ryan, the news directors association is close to proposing a stricter
rule, said its executive director, Barbara Cochran.
Whether a stricter ethics code will have much effect is unclear; it is not hard to find
broadcasters who are not adhering to the existing code, and the association has
no enforcement powers.
The Federal Communications Commission does, but it has never disciplined a
station for showing government-made news segments without disclosing their
origin, a spokesman said.
Could it? Several lawyers experienced with F.C.C. rules say yes. They point to a
2000 decision by the agency, which stated, "Listeners and viewers are entitled to
know by whom they are being persuaded."
In interviews, more than a dozen station news directors endorsed this view without
hesitation. Several expressed disdain for the prepackaged segments they received
daily from government agencies, corporations and special interest groups who
wanted to use their airtime and credibility to sell or influence.
But when told that their stations showed government-made reports without
attribution, most reacted with indignation. Their stations, they insisted, would
never allow their news programs to be co-opted by segments fed from any outside
party, let alone the government.
"They're inherently one-sided, and they don't offer the possibility for follow-up
questions - or any questions at all," said Kathy Lehmann Francis, until recently the
news director at WDRB, the Fox affiliate in Louisville, Ky.
Yet records from Video Monitoring Services of America indicate that WDRB has
broadcast at least seven Karen Ryan segments, including one for the government,
without disclosing their origin to viewers.
Mike Stutz, news director at KGTV, the ABC affiliate in San Diego, was equally
opposed to putting government news segments on the air.
"It amounts to propaganda, doesn't it?" he said.
Again, though, records from Video Monitoring Services of America show that from
2001 to 2004 KGTV ran at least one government-made segment featuring Ms.
Ryan, 5 others featuring her work on behalf of corporations, and 19 produced by
corporations and other outside organizations. It does not appear that KGTV
viewers were told the origin of these 25 segments.
"I thought we were pretty solid," Mr. Stutz said, adding that they intend to take
more precautions.
Confronted with such evidence, most news directors were at a loss to explain how
the segments made it on the air. Some said they were unable to find archive tapes
that would help answer the question. Others promised to look into it, then stopped
returning telephone messages. A few removed the segments from their Web sites,
promised greater vigilance in the future or pleaded ignorance.
Afghanistan to Memphis: An Agency's Report Ends Up on the Air
On Sept. 11, 2002, WHBQ, the Fox affiliate in Memphis, marked the anniversary of
the 9/11 attacks with an uplifting report on how assistance from the United States
was helping to liberate the women of Afghanistan.
Tish Clark, a reporter for WHBQ, described how Afghan women, once barred from
schools and jobs, were at last emerging from their burkas, taking up jobs as
seamstresses and bakers, sending daughters off to new schools, receiving decent
medical care for the first time and even participating in a fledgling democracy. Her
segment included an interview with an Afghan teacher who recounted how the
Taliban only allowed boys to attend school. An Afghan doctor described how the
Taliban refused to let male physicians treat women.
In short, Ms. Clark's report seemed to corroborate, however modestly, a central
argument of the Bush foreign policy, that forceful American intervention abroad
was spreading freedom, improving lives and winning friends.
What the people of Memphis were not told, though, was that the interviews used
by WHBQ were actually conducted by State Department contractors. The
contractors also selected the quotes used from those interviews and shot the video
that went with the narration. They also wrote the narration, much of which Ms.
Clark repeated with only minor changes.
As it happens, the viewers of WHBQ were not the only ones in the dark.
Ms. Clark, now Tish Clark Dunning, said in an interview that she, too, had no idea
the report originated at the State Department. "If that's true, I'm very shocked
that anyone would false report on anything like that," she said.
How a television reporter in Memphis unwittingly came to narrate a segment by the
State Department reveals much about the extent to which government-produced
news accounts have seeped into the broader new media landscape.
The explanation begins inside the White House, where the president's
communications advisers devised a strategy after Sept. 11, 2001, to encourage
supportive news coverage of the fight against terrorism. The idea, they explained
to reporters at the time, was to counter charges of American imperialism by
generating accounts that emphasized American efforts to liberate and rebuild
Afghanistan and Iraq.
An important instrument of this strategy was the Office of Broadcasting Services, a
State Department unit of 30 or so editors and technicians whose typical duties
include distributing video from news conferences. But in early 2002, with close
editorial direction from the White House, the unit began producing narrated feature
reports, many of them promoting American achievements in Afghanistan and Iraq
and reinforcing the administration's rationales for the invasions. These reports were
then widely distributed in the United States and around the world for use by local
television stations. In all, the State Department has produced 59 such segments.
United States law contains provisions intended to prevent the domestic
dissemination of government propaganda. The 1948 Smith-Mundt Act, for
example, allows Voice of America to broadcast pro-government news to foreign
audiences, but not at home. Yet State Department officials said that law does not
apply to the Office of Broadcasting Services. In any event, said Richard A. Boucher,
a State Department spokesman: "Our goal is to put out facts and the truth. We're
not a propaganda agency."
Even so, as a senior department official, Patricia Harrison, told Congress last year,
the Bush administration has come to regard such "good news" segments as
"powerful strategic tools" for influencing public opinion. And a review of the
department's segments reveals a body of work in sync with the political objectives
set forth by the White House communications team after 9/11.
In June 2003, for example, the unit produced a segment that depicted American
efforts to distribute food and water to the people of southern Iraq. "After living for
decades in fear, they are now receiving assistance - and building trust - with their
coalition liberators," the unidentified narrator concluded.
Several segments focused on the liberation of Afghan women, which a White House
memo from January 2003 singled out as a "prime example" of how "White
House-led efforts could facilitate strategic, proactive communications in the war on
terror."
Tracking precisely how a "good news" report on Afghanistan could have migrated to
Memphis from the State Department is far from easy. The State Department
typically distributes its segments via satellite to international news organizations like
Reuters and Associated Press Television News, which in turn distribute them to the
major United States networks, which then transmit them to local affiliates.
"Once these products leave our hands, we have no control," Robert A. Tappan, the
State Department's deputy assistant secretary for public affairs, said in an
interview. The department, he said, never intended its segments to be shown
unedited and without attribution by local news programs. "We do our utmost to
identify them as State Department-produced products."
Representatives for the networks insist that government-produced reports are
clearly labeled when they are distributed to affiliates. Yet with segments bouncing
from satellite to satellite, passing from one news organization to another, it is easy
to see the potential for confusion. Indeed, in response to questions from The
Times, Associated Press Television News acknowledged that they might have
distributed at least one segment about Afghanistan to the major United States
networks without identifying it as the product of the State Department. A
spokesman said it could have "slipped through our net because of a sourcing error."
Kenneth W. Jobe, vice president for news at WHBQ in Memphis, said he could not
explain how his station came to broadcast the State Department's segment on
Afghan women. "It's the same piece, there's no mistaking it," he said in an
interview, insisting that it would not happen again.
Mr. Jobe, who was not with WHBQ in 2002, said the station's script for the
segment has no notes explaining its origin. But Tish Clark Dunning said it was her
impression at the time that the Afghan segment was her station's version of one
done first by network correspondents at either Fox News or CNN. It is not unusual,
she said, for a local station to take network reports and then give them a
hometown look.
"I didn't actually go to Afghanistan," she said. "I took that story and reworked it. I
had to do some research on my own. I remember looking on the Internet and
finding out how it all started as far as women covering their faces and everything."
At the State Department, Mr. Tappan said the broadcasting office is moving away
from producing narrated feature segments. Instead, the department is increasingly
supplying only the ingredients for reports - sound bites and raw video. Since the
shift, he said, even more State Department material is making its way into news
broadcasts.
Meeting a Need: Rising Budget Pressures, Ready-to-Run Segments
WCIA is a small station with a big job in central Illinois.
Each weekday, WCIA's news department produces a three-hour morning program,
a noon broadcast and three evening programs. There are plans to add a 9 p.m.
broadcast. The staff, though, has been cut to 37 from 39. "We are doing more
with the same," said Jim P. Gee, the news director.
Farming is crucial in Mr. Gee's market, yet with so many demands, he said, "it is
hard for us to justify having a reporter just focusing on agriculture."
To fill the gap, WCIA turned to the Agriculture Department, which has assembled
one of the most effective public relations operations inside the federal government.
The department has a Broadcast Media and Technology Center with an annual
budget of $3.2 million that each year produces some 90 "mission messages" for
local stations - mostly feature segments about the good works of the Agriculture
Department.
"I don't want to use the word 'filler,' per se, but they meet a need we have," Mr.
Gee said.
The Agriculture Department's two full-time reporters, Bob Ellison and Pat O'Leary,
travel the country filing reports, which are vetted by the department's office of
communications before they are distributed via satellite and mail. Alisa Harrison,
who oversees the communications office, said Mr. Ellison and Mr. O'Leary provide
unbiased, balanced and accurate coverage.
"They cover the secretary just like any other reporter," she said.
Invariably, though, their segments offer critic-free accounts of the department's
policies and programs. In one report, Mr. Ellison told of the agency's efforts to help
Florida clean up after several hurricanes. "They've done a fantastic job," a grateful
local official said in the segment.
More recently, Mr. Ellison reported that Mike Johanns, the new agriculture secretary,
and the White House were determined to reopen Japan to American beef products.
Of his new boss, Mr. Ellison reported, "He called Bush the best envoy in the world."
WCIA, based in Champaign, has run 26 segments made by the Agriculture
Department over the past three months alone. Or put another way, WCIA has run
26 reports that did not cost it anything to produce.
Mr. Gee, the news director, readily acknowledges that these accounts are not
exactly independent, tough-minded journalism. But, he added: "We don't think
they're propaganda. They meet our journalistic standards. They're informative.
They're balanced."
More than a year ago, WCIA asked the Agriculture Department to record a special
sign-off that implies the segments are the work of WCIA reporters. So, for
example, instead of closing his report with "I'm Bob Ellison, reporting for the
U.S.D.A.," Mr. Ellison says, "With the U.S.D.A., I'm Bob Ellison, reporting for 'The
Morning Show.' "
Mr. Gee said the customized sign-off helped raise "awareness of the name of our
station." Could it give viewers the idea that Mr. Ellison is reporting on location with
the U.S.D.A. for WCIA? "We think viewers can make up their own minds," Mr. Gee
said.
Ms. Harrison, the Agriculture Department press secretary, said the WCIA sign-off
was an exception. The general policy, she said, is to make clear in each segment
that the reporter works for the department. In any event, she added, she did not
think there was much potential for viewer confusion. "It's pretty clear to me," she
said.
The 'Good News' People: A Menu of Reports From Military Hot Spots
The Defense Department is working hard to produce and distribute its own news
segments for television audiences in the United States.
The Pentagon Channel, available only inside the Defense Department last year, is
now being offered to every cable and satellite operator in the United States. Army
public affairs specialists, equipped with portable satellite transmitters, are roaming
war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq, beaming news reports, raw video and interviews
to TV stations in the United States. All a local news director has to do is log on to a
military-financed Web site, www.dvidshub.net, browse a menu of segments and
request a free satellite feed.
Then there is the Army and Air Force Hometown News Service, a unit of 40
reporters and producers set up to send local stations news segments highlighting
the accomplishments of military members.
"We're the 'good news' people," said Larry W. Gilliam, the unit's deputy director.
Each year, the unit films thousands of soldiers sending holiday greetings to their
hometowns. Increasingly, the unit also produces news reports that reach large
audiences. The 50 stories it filed last year were broadcast 236 times in all, reaching
41 million households in the United States.
The news service makes it easy for local stations to run its segments unedited.
Reporters, for example, are never identified by their military titles. "We know if we
put a rank on there they're not going to put it on their air," Mr. Gilliam said.
Each account is also specially tailored for local broadcast. A segment sent to a
station in Topeka, Kan., would include an interview with a service member from
there. If the same report is sent to Oklahoma City, the soldier is switched out for
one from Oklahoma City. "We try to make the individual soldier a star in their
hometown," Mr. Gilliam said, adding that segments were distributed only to towns
and cities selected by the service members interviewed.
Few stations acknowledge the military's role in the segments. "Just tune in and
you'll see a minute-and-a-half news piece and it looks just like they went out and
did the story," Mr. Gilliam said. The unit, though, makes no attempt to advance any
particular political or policy agenda, he said.
"We don't editorialize at all," he said.
Yet sometimes the "good news" approach carries political meaning, intended or not.
Such was the case after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal surfaced last spring.
Although White House officials depicted the abuse of Iraqi detainees as the work of
a few rogue soldiers, the case raised serious questions about the training of
military police officers.
A short while later, Mr. Gilliam's unit distributed a news segment, sent to 34
stations, that examined the training of prison guards at Fort Leonard Wood in
Missouri, where some of the military police officers implicated at Abu Ghraib had
been trained.
"One of the most important lessons they learn is to treat prisoners strictly but
fairly," the reporter said in the segment, which depicted a regimen emphasizing
respect for detainees. A trainer told the reporter that military police officers were
taught to "treat others as they would want to be treated." The account made no
mention of Abu Ghraib or how the scandal had prompted changes in training at
Fort Leonard Wood.
According to Mr. Gilliam, the report was unrelated to any effort by the Defense
Department to rebut suggestions of a broad command failure.
"Are you saying that the Pentagon called down and said, 'We need some good
publicity?' " he asked. "No, not at all."
