"Bad News"

The Bush administration undermines the democracy it purports to be building in Iraq when it trashes the principles of a free press. Reports in the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times on how the US government pays Iraqi journalists to write, and newspapers to publish, pro-American pieces without naming the source, expose an ethical breach stunning in its callous disregard for the truth.

Then again, maybe it shouldn't be so stunning, given that the Bush administration has disdained open journalistic inquiry since its earliest days and has used the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the Iraq war to claim national security as an excuse for secrecy and the foisting of propaganda on US citizens.

This year the Government Accountability Office found that the Education Department engaged in illegal ''covert propaganda" when it hired conservative commentator Armstrong Williams, paying him $240,000 to promote the ''No Child Left Behind" law on his radio and TV programs.

The White House also provided media credentials to Jeff Gannon, a conservative blogger with little journalistic training, to ask softball pro-Bush questions at news briefings.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1202-25.htm