US Propaganda Violations of the Smith-Mundt Act

The following extensive extract is from Timothy Karr’s MediaCitizen blog…

Propaganda Track Record

The

question now before Congress and the Department of Justice is whether
this spending merits the enforcement of long standing prohibitions
against "covert propaganda." The Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 forbids the
domestic dissemination of government-authored propaganda or "official news"
deliberately designed to influence public opinion or policy. The law
singles out materials that serve "a solely partisan purpose." The GAO
has already found at least four separate occasions that Bush
administration agencies violated this and other federal restrictions.

A recently inserted provision
into an annual spending bill would require federal agencies to include
a "clear notification" within any prepackaged news story that was paid
for by the government. Though this new legislation still floats
somewhere between a Senate committee and the floor.

Given its track record, it’s more than likely that the White House has set other illegal propaganda efforts loose in the media mainstream. We just don’t know about them yet.

The Public Eye and Prosecutor’s Sword

While
the compounding evidence is damning, the GAO lacks the teeth to enforce
laws against the ongoing abuse. The Justice Department’s Office of
Legal Counsel has final say over executive branch legal matters. And
GAO and Justice Still don’t see eye to eye on covert propaganda,
specifically on the issue of unidentified video news releases.