Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
I hate press secretaries, especially White House press secretaries. Their job is to look into the camera, or speak to the reporter, and with an absolutely straight face repeat something they know is a lie -- and that they know you know is a lie. Press secretaries are disgusting people.
But Dana Perino, the last of several people to hold that position in the Bush administration, seems to want to separate herself even from that vile pack and distinguish herself as a particularly ridiculous specimen by continuing to tell ridiculous lies even when she's not getting paid to do it anymore. Here's what she said on Fox News this weekend:
PERINO: But there was an incident today where the President signed the Travel Promotion Act -- not a huge bill by any stretch of the imagination. But usually, that is something that the White House press corps would get to cover. They didn't today. And then later on in the day, the White House decided through its own media -- they have a robust new media shop and they're creating their own news and they're posting it, and all the networks said that they're not going to show it. But creating your own news is something that happens in repressive regimes. And a democracy is -- it is critical to have a good, strong free press in a democracy.
Okay, let me get this straight....if the White House actually makes a video promoting a policy they're undertaking, that's "something that happens in repressive regimes" and it undermines a free press -- even if it's not intended to be on the news at all but is merely posted to a White House website. If Obama does it, that is. As the New York Times reported in 2005:
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.
Not to mention that the Bush administration was repeatedly caught paying journalists to write articles to support their policies and print those articles in the media.
Politics
Comments
The fact that she was saying this on Fox News should be enough. I bet she still remembers delivering talking points and footage personally to Fox News' door step.
Posted by: MarkusR | March 10, 2010 12:39 PM
And a few weeks ago she reminded us that, “We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush’s term.” A real piece of work, that one.
-TTm
Posted by: Ticktockman | March 10, 2010 12:46 PM
I always appreciated Scott McClellan, just a little bit, for looking so obviously uncomfortable about his job. I always thought there was a voice in the back of his head saying, "My momma didn't raise me to do this."
Posted by: Scott Hanley | March 10, 2010 12:59 PM
Actually if I were a consultant to the President I would argue that in this fractured and incompetent media environment, he and his respective Cabinets need to significantly increase the scope of their public relations efforts. For example, their ability to explain the health care industry, its strengths and weaknesses, and how his initiatives would impact America clearly deserves an F (while the GOP should get their assed sued until they're bankrupt for lying about it). Daily briefings by a Press Secretary and a neat-o White House web-site are in no way sufficient. In fact I'd argue he needs spokespeople who are functional experts on specific topics flooding the media and subject-specific websites with a lot of traffic.
Ex-Rumsfeld employee and Bush speechwriter Matt Latimer's Speech-less: Tales of a White House Survivor has a very interesting chapter on how dysfunctional the Defense Dept.'s PR organization was during Donald Rumsfeld's reign; SECDEF Rumsfeld ignored them and also failed to delegate authority to fix them either.
PR groups can also be useful in crafting policy since it adds the discipline of honing the message, which provides feedback on the validity of the policy. Currently totally incompetent no-nothing speechwriters get this task, Exhibit A being Marc Theissen. The days of merely needing a David Gergen as your "fixer" are long gone.
Posted by: Michael Heath | March 10, 2010 1:07 PM
"Not to mention that the Bush administration was repeatedly caught paying journalists to write articles to support their policies and print those articles in the media. "
Could we have some reminder links to a few examples of this? I constantly suffer from remembering that this-that-or-t'other happened, but none of the specifics... Even better would be some study looking at such events over time.
Posted by: Geoff | March 10, 2010 1:33 PM
Nice catch, Ed.
And to Geoff, who asked above for an example of the Bush administration paying journalists to write articles, see Armstrong Williams. Also, the Bush Pentagon paid Iraq newspapers to publish stories by American military PR that reflected positively on the war effort.
Posted by: News Corpse | March 10, 2010 1:54 PM
"disguesting"? Is that what happens around January 4th, when you kick the visiting relatives out of the house?
Posted by: Modusoperandi | March 10, 2010 2:31 PM
Posted by: llewelly | March 10, 2010 3:14 PM
Are we really surprised? Remember, this is the same twit who admitted she didn't know anything about the Cuban Missile Crisis ("It had to do with Cuba and missiles, I'm pretty sure."). It never ceases to amaze me just how jaw-droppingly stupid she is.
Posted by: MissyAnne Thrope | March 10, 2010 3:48 PM
Besides Armstrong Williams, Maggie Gallagher and Michael McManus are two other examples of journalists who were paid to shill for the Bush Administration.
Posted by: J | March 10, 2010 3:48 PM
There are days when I actually kind of miss Ari Fleischer. A lying dirtbag and a bullshit artist, yes, but truly a masterful one. Subsequent press secretaries have been amateurs in comparison.
Posted by: Moopheus | March 10, 2010 7:41 PM
It's foxnews, it's only worth mentioning if they don't say something amazingly hypocritical.
Posted by: Mxh | March 10, 2010 11:20 PM
But creating your own news is something that happens in repressive regimes
But is it actually lying? The Bush regime did this to a great extent. The Bush regime was a repressive regime. Sounds like some truthiness to me.
Posted by: Canadian Curmudgeon | March 11, 2010 8:53 AM
Perhaps if they had said "...creating your own news is something that happens in repressive regimes. Like we did for years under president Bush..."
But that isn't what they're doing, they're pretending that what the Obama administration is doing is somehow unheard of and disturbing all the while ignoring that they did the same thing *AND* ignoring the fact that the ulterior motives they are foisting on the Obama administration actually were the motives under the Bush administration.
Posted by: dogmeatib | March 11, 2010 9:39 AM
And don't forget, if the Obama administration hadn't put out the information, they'd be accused of hiding stuff from the public. Damned if they do, damned if they don't.
Posted by: Deen | March 11, 2010 5:45 PM