Friday, October 26, 2007

And now, the fake news

Apparently FEMA decided to fake a press conference, got called on it, and tried to cover their asses:

We pulled questions from those we had been getting from reporters earlier in the day." Despite the very short notice, "we were expecting the press to come," he said, but they didn't. So the staff played reporters for what on TV looked just like the real thing.

Bullshit.

If you hold a press conference and people don't show up, you don't have your confederates pretend to be reporters and give you easy propaganda questions. You make a statement that's totally above-board, 100% from your organization. This isn't a matter of "oh, nobody showed up so we had to throw the party ourselves"; this is a case of deliberate misrepresentation. Sadly, all I expect to happen is that there'll be a brief moment of outrage before everyone with the power to do anything about it ignores the story and returns to business as usual.

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