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To: US Farm Crisis <usfarmcrisis@lists.iatp.org>
From: dolson@iatp.org
Date: 2005-06-16 11:47:08
Subject: FW: [cafta-talk] Fwd: CAFTA: ChiTrib: USDA plants its own news
-----Original Message-----
From: Timi Gerson [mailto:tgerson@citizen.org]
Sent: Thursday, June 16, 2005 9:42 AM
To: cafta-talk@lists.riseup.net
Subject: [cafta-talk] Fwd: CAFTA: ChiTrib: USDA plants its own news USDA plants its own news
Critics liken radio, TV spots to propaganda; agency defends use By Andrew Martin and Jeff Zeleny
Washington Bureau
Published June 16, 2005
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Department of Agriculture has churned out three
dozen radio and television news segments since the first of the year
that promote a controversial trade agreement with Central America
opposed by labor unions, the sugar industry and many members of
Congress, including some Republicans.
Amid an intense debate over government-funded efforts to influence news
coverage, the prepackaged reports have been widely distributed to
broadcast outlets across the country for easy insertion into newscasts. About a third of the reports deal specifically with the politically
powerful sugar industry, which has emerged as the major obstacle to the
Central American Free Trade Agreement, or CAFTA. In one radio segment, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said that
passing CAFTA should be an easy decision for members of Congress. "I can't imagine how any senator or House member from ag country could
stand up and vote against CAFTA," Johanns said. "It makes no sense to
me. It's voting against our producers." In another radio segment promoting CAFTA, Allen Johnson, a top U.S.
trade official, dismissed the sugar industry's "dire forecasts" about
CAFTA's impact as "a Chicken Little sort of thing that isn't real." The issue of the government's vast public relations apparatus trying to
influence the public is hardly new. The Bush administration has taken
that practice to aggressive levels on issues ranging from the war in
Iraq to education and trade policy. The USDA's CAFTA reports were produced while the administration was
dealing with the fallout over its payments to journalists to tout its
policies. One television commentator, Armstrong Williams, was paid
$240,000 to champion the administration's education plans. Critics contend that such policies blur the line between government
propaganda and legitimate reporting, and the Government Accountability
Office described the prepackaged news reports as "covert propaganda" if
the government agency does not clearly identify its role in the
production of the report. President Bush said he advocated a "nice, independent relationship
between the White House, the administration and the press" when the
Williams payment was made public. But in later remarks, Bush said he
didn't object to government-produced news segments as long as "they're
based upon facts, not advocacy." He also said the burden was on the news
stations to disclose that they obtained the reports from the government. On Tuesday, Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii) and Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.),
whose states produce sugar, sent a letter to Johanns objecting to
pro-CAFTA news reports produced by the government. "These releases, which are produced and distributed with taxpayer
dollars, are provided to 675 rural radio stations and numerous
televisions stations where they are run, without disclosure of their
source, as news reports," the senators wrote. "We are concerned that
many listeners in rural America may believe these releases are objective
news reports, rather than political statements from the USDA which are
intended to advance a specific trade agenda." On Wednesday, USDA spokesman Ed Loyd defended the practice, noting that
the reports are all clearly identified as coming from the USDA. "They are reports about what the secretary of agriculture has said,"
Loyd said. "We clearly state that we are the source. We're not
disguising that we are the source." But the taglines disclosing the USDA's role generally are at the end of
the reports, and some news stations have dropped those taglines,
apparently in an effort to make the reports appear to be their own work. John Nichols, the senior producer of "Market to Market," a weekly show
produced by Iowa Public Television that airs in 21 states, said the USDA
has been providing a raft of information about CAFTA. He said he uses
the reports as a "tip sheet" but has a policy against airing the stories
in their entirety. "I wouldn't say it's a source that's void of bias," Nichols said
Wednesday. "I'm concerned about what their role is. Their job is to
promote, and I'm just not willing to be spoon-fed." But too much of the government-produced information, he said, lands
unedited in local radio and TV broadcasts. "We make a distinct effort to have balance," Nichols said. "But you're
not going to find that in all of traditional farm broadcasting." Attractive to small stations Several radio executives said smaller stations are more likely to air
the reports because they lack the resources to do their own reporting.
Some radio networks with larger staffs have stopped using the
government-produced news reports out of concerns of objectivity. Sonja Hillgren of Farm Journal Media said her company's "AgDay"
television program uses USDA video packages "when they are well-balanced
and very strongly identified as coming from the USDA." "The USDA does some good work," she said, "and we don't want to ignore
that resource." In the sugar-cane producing state of Louisiana, Don Molino, the farm
director for the Louisiana Agri-News Network, said he uses the USDA
radio reports about three days a week. "I use a lot of their stuff verbatim," he said. "Everything I've been
able to use has been pretty well balanced as far as I can tell." On more controversial issues such as CAFTA, Molino said he normally
follows up the USDA report with a comment from a Louisiana member of
Congress who opposes the trade deal. In the year since the Bush administration signed CAFTA, it has struggled
to rally support in the face of opposition from labor unions and the
sugar industry. CAFTA is an agreement among the United States, the
Dominican Republic and five Central American nations: Nicaragua,
Honduras, Costa Rica, Guatemala and El Salvador. Its supporters note that CAFTA eventually would eliminate tariffs for
U.S. exports to Central America and help stabilize democracies in the
region. But its critics worry that American jobs would be lost to
Central America and that the deal eventually would lead to a flood of
cheap imported sugar into the U.S. Broad distribution The CAFTA news reports came from the USDA's Broadcast Media and
Technology Center, which produces about 90 television news reports each
year, often airing on "AgDay" and "U.S. Farm Report," both nationally
syndicated programs with "strong rural viewership," according to the
center's Web site. The center also produces more than 2,000 radio
reports each year that are sent to 675 stations and are available on the
Internet. Since the first of the year, the center has produced 33 radio reports
related to CAFTA, most of them in the last three months as opposition to
the agreement has become more vocal and a vote in Congress neared. There
have been three television reports. Radio is a particularly effective form of communication in rural areas,
a point made clear in the 2004 presidential race by the flood of radio
ads purchased by the Bush campaign. One of the USDA's television reports provides a relatively balanced
account, with Johanns extolling CAFTA and Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) and
Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) criticizing the deal. But the other reports mention the criticism of CAFTA only briefly or not
at all, and instead offer a positive spin. For instance, in a radio
report from April, Johanns said, "If there was ever an agreement that
was good for agriculture, this is it." That same month, Johnson, the trade official, suggested in a USDA news
report that the sugar industry could jeopardize its government price
protections if it continued to oppose CAFTA. "Folks in the rest of the economy and folks in the rest of agriculture
and folks that are interested in building relationships with democracies
here in our neighborhood begin to look at the sugar industry as an
impediment to that progress," he said. "That's not good for them." ---------- ajmartin@tribune.com jzeleny@tribune.com Timi Gerson
Field Director
Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch
215 Pennsylvania Ave, SE, Washington DC, 20003 USA tgerson@citizen.org &
www.tradewatch.org
Ph: + 202-454-5103, Fax: + 202-547 7392
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