[Previous entry: "Two more held over Iraq 'abuse' video"] [Next entry: "Terror threat: The great deception"]

02/15/2006:

"The propaganda we pass off as news around the world"

A British government-funded fake TV news service allows mild criticism of the US - all the better to support it.

A succession of scandals in the US has revealed widespread government funding of PR agencies to produce "fake news". Actors take the place of journalists and the "news" is broadcast as if it were genuine. The same practice has been adopted in Iraq, where newspapers have been paid to insert copy. These stories have raised the usual eyebrows in the UK about the pitiful quality of US democracy. Things are better here, we imply. We have a prime minister who claimed in 2004 that "the values that drive our actions abroad are the same values of progress and justice that drive us at home". Yet in 2002 the government launched a littleknown television propaganda service that seems to mimic the US government's deceptive approach to fake news.
guardian.co.uk