Congress redeemed itself

Today, the senate voted against propaganda. Various agencies have released video feeds disguised as news reports attempting to paint the policies and aims in a favorable light. The GAO released a report criticizing the White House for violating appropriations rules against spending federal money on "publicity and propaganda." The White House OMB responded by saying that the GAO "fails to recognize the distinction between covert propaganda and purely informational video news reports." As an aside, the OMB memo provides an interesting little lesson in constitutional separation of powers inasmuch as the Director of the OMB asserts that executive agencies are not bound by GAO "advice."

Basically, the OMB disagrees that the video news feeds constitute "covert propaganda" because the content, although admittedly from an undisclosed origin, is not propaganda.

Ultimately, however, the video news feed practice will probably stop. The Senate unanimously passed a bill that requires the agencies to identify themselves as the source of the media. Given that people are generally skeptical of the government, or at least should be, the video feeds will probably not have the same positive effect as they would had they been "covert" and would no longer be a "cost effective means to distribute information" (see OMB memo).