Last February the Government Accountability Office criticized the Bush Administration for its use of “prepackaged news stories.” (See this Washington Post report.). Yesterday’s Washington Post had an interesting story on how the Environmental Protection Agency has been paying The Weather Channel to produce prepackaged news stories on environmental issues. The Washington Post reported,

“The Environmental Protection Agency paid the Weather Channel $40,000 to produce and broadcast several videos about ozone depletion, urban heat problems and the dangers of ultraviolet radiation as part of the Bush administration’s efforts to inform the public about climate change, agency records show.”

This is interesting for several reasons. First, it certainly plays against stereotype to hear that the Bush Administration is engaged in covert propaganda on climate change. In addition, a university professor and NRDC official who looked at the news stories found them to be scientifically accurate. It makes me wonder, only partially tongue-in-cheek, how the UCS folks will handle this situation; I can see the headline in their next report, “Bush Administration Guilty of Covertly Promoting Accurate Science on Climate Change.” More realistically, I would expect that this situation involving EPA and TWC will be completely ignored by those involved in the debate over the “integrity of science” even though this situation involves a breach of law by agencies under the Bush Administration. Why? It doesn’t fit the larger framing! of the issue of the misuse of science by opponents of the Bush Administration. This situation makes things more complicated and thus will be easier to ignore.


More broadly, this situation illustrates the importance of distinguishing process from content. The Washington Post article and the experts they interviewed emphasized the quality of the content of the prepackaged news releases. Here is one example from the story, _Daniel Lashof, science director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Climate Center, said: “I think they are actually a very good use of EPA resources to reach the public on these issues. The science, I think, is presented accurately in all of them.”_ But this misses the point of GAO_s objections, and is also representative of the more general conflation of criteria of content and process. We see this conflation frequently when the focus of attention is exclusively on scientific content rather than the processes that are used to produce, disseminate or use that science. Too often judgments on the fidelity of democratic processes are made based on whether or not one agrees with the content of the discuss! ion and not criteria of what constitutes a healthy process (examples include, Iraq war debate, Lomborg debate, scientific appointments, hockey stick, etc.). In this case involving EPA, it is not good enough in the eyes of GAO that prepackaged news stories are accurate.

Here is what the GAO concluded in its February Circular distributed to federal agencies,

_Prepackaged news stories are complete, audio-video presentations that may be included in video news releases, or VNRs. They are intended to be indistinguishable from news segments broadcast to the public by independent television news organizations. To help accomplish this goal, these stories include actors or others hired to portray “reporters” and may be accompanied by suggested scripts that television news anchors can use to introduce the story during the broadcast. These practices allow prepackaged news stories to be broadcast, without alteration, as television news While agencies generally have the right to disseminate information about their policies and activities, agencies may not use appropriated funds to produce or distribute prepackaged news stories intended to be viewed by television audiences that conceal or do not clearly identify for the television viewing audience that the agency was the source of those materials. It is not enough that the contents of an ag! ency’s communication may be unobjectionable. Neither is it enough for an agency to identify itself to the broadcasting organization as the source of the prepackaged news story._

And in May Congressional testimony the GAO explained its reasoning as follows,

“The publicity or propaganda prohibition states, “No part of any appropriation contained in this or any other Act shall be used for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States not heretofore authorized by the Congress.” GAO has long interpreted this provision to prohibit agencies from, among other things, producing materials that are covert as to origin. Our opinions have emphasized that the critical element of covert propaganda is concealment of the government’s role in producing the materials. Agencies have violated this law when they used appropriated funds to produce articles and op-ed pieces that were the ostensible position of persons not associated with the government.”

GAO concluded that the use of prepackaged news is wrong independent of the merit of the content of the stories. This is a good lesson for those involved in political debates involving science. Sometimes process trumps content.