GAO Chief Holds Firm on Fake News Criticism February 28, 2005
News Summary
Dismissing objections from some federal bureaucrats, the head of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) is strongly backing a report that the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) and other agencies used taxpayer money to create illegal government propaganda, the Washington Post reported Feb. 20.GAO Comptroller General David M. Walker wrote to the heads of federal agencies on Feb. 17, saying that prepackaged news reports that do not clearly identify their source as the government violate a federal ban on covert propaganda.
"It is not enough that the contents of an agency's communication may be unobjectionable," Walker wrote. "Neither is it enough for an agency to identify itself to the broadcasting organization as the source of the prepackaged news story ... television-viewing audiences did not know that stories they watched on television news programs about the government were, in fact, prepared by the government. We concluded that those prepackaged news stories violated the publicity or propaganda prohibition."
Walker said that government agencies may distribute prepackaged stories -- which are designed to look like bona-fide news reports -- but only with clear disclosure of their source to the viewing audience. "Agency officials should scrutinize any proposed prepackaged news stories to ensure appropriate disclosures," he wrote.
In the wake of the initial reports about the fake news stories, agencies like ONDCP and some supporters in Congress denied that they had done anything wrong, although ONDCP also said it has stopped producing the reports. Walker refused a request from a pair of powerful House GOP leaders to overturn the earlier GAO ruling.
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