Al Kamen over at the Washington Post broke a story that, embarrassingly, I haven’t seen reported anywhere else. Apparently, FEMA held a news conference for the benefit of the public, to let them know what a bang-up job they are doing in California (as opposed to, say, New Orleans). And geez, it sure was a softball session. Too much so, apparently, because all of the people asking questions were actually FEMA staffers, pretending to be reporters.

Apparently, FEMA couldn’t trust real reporters (we still have those?) to ask the right questions, so they got down there on the floor and asked them themselves. It’s the equivalent of giving yourself a job interview or grading your own IQ test. Segments of this press conference were aired on both Fox News and on actual news networks, like MSNBC. It’s shady enough calling repeatedly on administration-friendly news outlets during press conferences. But putting your own staff on the floor to ask you the questions that make you look good isn’t a press conference at all. Since, you know, there’s no fucking press present.

All of the information given during this event could simply have been delivered during a straight forward speech, which would have been just as informative but wouldn’t have given the illusion of FEMA being in charge and capable in the same way that the staged press conference would. This stunt was entirely about perception. The illusion of information being dispensed. And most Americans will just assume it’s real, because they saw it on T.V. And who would be duplicitous or arrogant enough to arrange a fake press conference on national television?

Update: The guy who was actually in charge of the fake news update left his position at FEMA as head of public relations. . . wait for it. . . to be the head of public relations at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Yes. Seriously.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 26th, 2007 at 10:41 am and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.