Mr. Bush certainly does seem determined to achieve some kind of victory in Iraq. Of course, for there to be victory in Iraq, the Iraqis would have to acknowledge that things were going well, and so Bush has made this his primary mission. In the past 2 weeks, it was revealed that Iraqi newspapers were being payed under a U.S. military program to run stories casting the reconstruction in an unrealistically positive light. These stories ran with no disclaimer as to their origins. While the president and secretary of defense have stated their shock and concern over the issue, I find it unlikely that it comes as a great shock to senior officials in the tightest PR administration in modern times. From the Chicago Tribune, Dec. 4th:

President Bush is disturbed by the U.S. military's practice of paying Iraqi papers to run articles emphasizing positive developments in the country and will end the program if it violates the principles of a free media, a senior aide said Sunday.

Apparently, the mere existence of this program does not constitute such a violation of principles.

This is not the first example of Bush's cavalier attitude toward a free press. In 2004, the administration payed commentator Armstrong Williams $241,000 to promote Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, which he dutifully did on cable television and in his newspaper column. Additionally, the administration has engaged in the practice of staging fake news reports with fake reporters, and sending them along anonymously to local news stations, which often air the stories unedited and without comment. From the Washington Post, March 15th:

The Bush administration, rejecting an opinion from the Government Accountability Office, said last week that it is legal for federal agencies to feed TV stations prepackaged news stories that do not disclose the government's role in producing them.

Legal, unlikely; ethical, not a chance. Not that the administration even considers such behavior to be a question of ethics. To quote Bush from a discussion of Medicare reform: "In my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."

Now, while Bush's personal intelligence (or at the very least his grasp of his first language) may be questionable, I believe he knows the difference in meaning between the words "truth" and "propaganda". No doubt it has been explained to him by his advisors. I believe he simply doesn't care. He sees no reason for messages transmitted by his government to adhere to the literal truth, or even to reveal their origins. To Mr. Bush, propaganda effectively becomes the operative truth - a distinction that only becomes consequential when the administrations operatives are caught.

I certainly don't mean to imply that these violations of the independence of the fourth estate constitute the extent of the dishonesty of this administration. On the contrary, political historians will likely spend decades filling volumes on the subject of things this administration said which were total bunk. Entire books will probably be devoted to the study of Dick Cheney's pathological inability to be honest.

However, the breaking down of journalistic independence is by far the most dangerous trend in the information war. With the loss of legitimacy of voices in professional journalism, we lose the ability to view government messages critically.

Certainly, one cannot replace those voices by investing a great deal of legitimacy in the blogosphere - for as much as a multitude of voices is vital to a functioning democracy, the problem is not one of supression, but one of delegitimization. Blogs share hearsay, they largely lack the journalistic credentials of, say, the New York Times or the Chicago Tribune. And when the big newsmedia have failed in their role as government bullshit detector, the little guys are unlikely to be any more successful.

The genius of Bush's program of journalistic subterfuge (for when it comes to PR, the administration is certainly filled with geniuses) is twofold then: first, those messages that do get through without raising a flag represent that much more misinformation slipped under the rader of understandably credulous audiences. Second, with each public revelation of propaganda having snuck through, the legitimacy of the mass media, and thus its power to challenge the truthfulness of government messages, is lowered.

Whether the hectic schedule of 24-hour news coverage, the downfall of the print newspaper, or just a relaxation of journalistic standards is to blame, the situation is growing worse. A powerful ideology sits in the Oval Office, and it is determined to influence how you think. It is up to the media, if they are at all concerned for their future as an independent voice, to redouble their efforts at keeping propaganda out, and it is up to the public to follow multiple sources of information, to keep a skeptical mind about what they hear, and to determine for themselves what messages are trustworthy, and which carry an ulterior motive.