USDA plants its own news

Chicago Tribune reports The U.S. Department of Agriculture has churned out three dozen radio and television news segments since the first of the year that promote a controversial trade agreement with Central America opposed by labor unions, the sugar industry and many members of Congress, including some Republicans. Amid an intense debate over government-funded efforts to influence news coverage, the prepackaged reports have been widely distributed to broadcast outlets across the country for easy insertion into newscasts. About a third of the reports deal specifically with the politically powerful sugar industry, which has emerged as the major obstacle to the Central American Free Trade Agreement, or CAFTA.

The USDA website indicates that one of it's primary jobs is USDA helps ensure open markets for U.S. agricultural products and provides food aid to needy people overseas. If the media feels that the radio and television news segments it turns out are improper, why do they run them? Or is the Chicago Tribune complaining that they just turn out radio and television news segments, and that they should turn out items for news papers to run, so that they don't have to actually hire reporters to go out and find news and write about it.

Brendan Nyhan blogged CJR Daily, which has played a key role in watchdogging the Bush administration's use of deceptive "video news releases," has picked up a Chicago Tribune report about more than 30 new VNRs from the Dept. of Agriculture promoting CAFTA. Even after Karen Ryan and Armstrong Williams, this issue will not go away. When will the government get out of the fake news business?