Can someone explain to me what has gotten into the skulls of politicos — the most recent offenders Republican politicos — who pass off official messages as news reports?
Isn’t it patently offensive to voters of ALL PARTIES to read about a government doing something as sleazy as this:
SACRAMENTO — Using taxpayer money, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration has sent television stations statewide a mock news story extolling a proposal that would benefit political boosters in the business community by ending mandatory lunch breaks for many hourly workers.
The tape looks like a news report and is narrated by a former television reporter who now works for the state. But unlike an actual news report, it does not provide views critical of the proposed changes. Democrats have denounced it as propaganda. Snippets aired on as many as 18 stations earlier this month, the administration said.
The tape opens with text suggesting introductory comments to be read by a news anchor: “If approved, the changes would clear up uncertainty in the business community and create a better working environment throughout the state.”
The video shows construction workers, waitresses, nurses, farmworkers and a forklift operator at their jobs, and includes interviews with a farmer and a restaurant manager. The narrator says the proposal would permit workers to “eat when they are hungry, and not when the government tells them.”
The tape makes no mention that organized labor opposes the changes, or that workers would have a harder time suing employers over missed meal breaks.
The video “is clearly propaganda,” said Assembly Labor Committee Chairman Paul Koretz (D-West Hollywood). The tape is “completely one-sided.”
And, of course, there are questions raised about whether this violates state law, etc. etc.
What’s troubling is that here in California Schwarzenegger has generally been able to bank on the good will of many voters who are not Republicans. Many Independents and Democrats voted for him because he was supposed to be a different kind of leader who didn’t do politics as usual.
However, in this case he seems to have borrowed a page from the administration in Washington. And not an unsoiled one, at that.
If Armstrong Williams stars praising State of California policies — watch out…
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.