Ending Propaganda at Taxpayers expense

With the exposure of several conservative commentators (Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher taking tax payer money to promote certain causes of the Bush administration), two U.S. Senate Democrats Frank Lautenburg of New Jersey along with the ever famous Edward “Ted” Kennedy have proposed a bill that would put an end to such practices.

The bill is called “The Stop Government Propaganda Act.” The intent of this bill states that; “Funds appropriated to an Executive branch agency may not be used for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States unless authorized by law."

Lautenburg says that congress must shut down the Bush administration’s “propaganda mill,” and that such mill has no place in government. His spokesperson Alex Formuzis says; "This is not a Republican or Democratic issue. This is an issue about an independent press, and I think that's something that will cross party lines."

Sounds great, however I would ask the Dems to start cleaning up their own backyard as well. They can start with cutting off funding for public television and radio, and its ever famous outlets PBS and NPR. Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy In Media (a conservative media watchdog group) says what Williams and Gallagher took was peanuts compared to what the ever famous Corporation for Public Broadcasting take in every years. Combined, Williams and Gallagher got $281,000. According to the AIR website the CPB get $400 Million a year.

PBS and NPR have been giving a liberal spin on the issues for many years, in spite of a law that demands that they give both sides to an issue. While they had token conservatives like William F. Buckley, George Will, and Louis Rukeyser over the years, these outlets are still in favor of left-wing spin. No different if not worse regarding the journalists that dark the hall of CBS, ABC, and NBC, New York Times, Washington Post, etc.

Bill Moyers, an icon on PBS for many years as shown his true colors from the very beginning. He was the man who created the “girl picking flowers/end of the world” television ad for Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidential campaign against Barry Goldwater back in the 1960’s. In fact, he also worked in LBJ’s administration, and plans to write a book about LBJ.

Before he retired from PBS he took a swing at the “right-wing” media. Attacking everyone from Rush Limbaugh to Sean Hannity, Clear Channel Communications to Sinclair Broadcasting. Anyone involved in the “right-wing conspiracy was fair game. Moyers did not say anything about Walter “Crankenhouse” Cronkite, Dan Rather, Katie “Cookie-Cutter” Couric, or any other big time news readers in the media…no surprise.

Jim Lehrer of the News Hour program on PBS came under fire regarding the questions he asked in the 1st presidential debate last year. Certain people were complaining that the questions were in John Kerry’s favor. In fact Clinton stooge George Stephanopoulos admitted that Lehrer was the moderator in the pocket of the Bill Clinton’s administration.

NPR’s darling Nina Totenberg was the woman that tried to take out Clarence Thomas by putting Anita Hill in a positive light, and more recently wished death on the children of Jesse Helms because he does not support increased funding for AIDS. Just one of many things she has done to attack the right.

The expose of WGBH-TV Boston and 53 other PBS affiliates back in late 1990’s should have been end of government subsidized broadcasting. It was found out that these stations were sharing donor names with Democratic National Committee. After all it was the Democrats that give us the CPB that funds public broadcasting. In fact it was Moyers’s boss LBJ that made it all possible.

The list goes on and on, but if the Democrats were really sincere they would clean up their own stuff while trying to clean someone else’s yard. By the way does that ant-propaganda bill say anything regarding individual Democrats using their money to help commercial liberal talk radio get off the ground (Air America Radio, Ed Schultz, Stephanie Miller)? I guess not.

Comments about my comments??? E-Mail me at
donmccullen@prodigy.net