The investigations just keep on coming. Since our last update on members of Congress under investigation, a mere week ago, four new members have been added to Congresspedia’s page of (potential) shame. With these additions, fifteen current and three former members of Congress are currently the subject of a federal, state or local probe (nearly 3% of the Congress)!
As part of our efforts to cut to the facts of issues in Congress, Congresspedia has gone back through the major votes on the Iraq War and summarized what was at stake in each. In this election season, we were reminded of the brouhaha over the 2004 remark by Sen.
As our regular readers undoubtedly know, the House Ethics Committee is in the process of investigating the response of the Republican House leadership to early warning signs in the Mark Foley page scandal.
We need some of the citizens out there who are reading Congresspedia everyday to help out with a new article we're putting together on the congressional votes related to the Iraq War. We've already identified many of the votes and put up links to various articles and resources that explain them, but we need citizens to help us out with summarizing what was in the amendments and bills that were considered and explaining what was at stake.
When writing about members of Congress that are under investigation you always run the risk of being quickly out of date, at least with this Congress. Case in point: on Monday we told you about the nine current and three former members of Congress that are under investigation. Today we learned that the total now runs at eleven current members under investigation.
Recently a new lobby group, the [[National Association of Broadcast Communicators]] (NABC), was launched to try to convince federal regulators, media policy wonks and the general public that they shouldn't worry about television stations airing undisclosed [[video news releases]] (VNRs). The NABC and their allies at the [[Public Relations Society of America]] and the [[Radio-Television News Directors Association]] went even further, wrapping the covert broadcast of corporate- and government-funded [[fake news]] segments in the U.S. flag.
Ever the optimist, I'm looking forward to the day when these groups have considered the issue more closely and carefully, and have come to appreciate the important role that news -- especially that broadcast over the public airwaves to a mass audience -- plays in a democracy. The following is the statement that NABC might well issue, on that sunny day. (Satire alert!)
VNR Producers Apologize for News Audiences Being Misled
We are sorry. Very sorry. For many years we have been very well paid to produce thousands of video news releases (VNRs) that have been circulated among and promoted to television stations far and wide -- many within the United States, others around the world. Some of these VNRs featured our PR staff posing on screen as "reporters." For every VNR, we assumed the role of reporters, with a twist -- only "reporting" what complemented our clients' marketing, PR or policy agendas.
We knew all along that television stations aired many of these VNRs in their entirety, without disclosing to viewers that the segment actually came from a PR firm. Sometimes TV stations' local reporters re-voiced the script we provided. Sometimes stations spliced and diced our video, but they largely followed the sponsored storyline that they had been fed. However, there were times when our plans backfired and stations used our VNRs to criticize our clients. (You really don't want to know how we explained that away!)
And you, the television viewers, were none the wiser that you were watching fake news.
Decades ago, when a few companies first started producing VNRs, there was little discussion about the ethical implications of their use. We saw VNRs as just one of many PR tricks to help our clients. However, in the last few years there has been significant public debate over the ethics of what has become a substantial sector of the PR industry. There have been petitions, reports, numerous scathing news stories, legislative amendments, and now an investigation by the U.S. [[Federal Communications Commission]].
Under such conditions, the normal response of industry is to hunker down and try and defend the indefensible. We have decided to be smarter and better than that.
We decided that this crisis provides an opportunity for us to reflect on what we have done and where we go from here. We now realize that the wholesale deception of TV news viewers by undisclosed VNRs was wrong and constituted a grievous breach of ethical standards, not to mention TV stations' license agreements. We would like to take this opportunity to offer our heartfelt thanks to the Center for Media and Democracy and Free Press, for raising the issue publicly and helping us realize the error of our ways.
We recognize that this apology is just the first small step in rectifying the damage we have done to the quality and credibility of television news programming. We have also decided to spell out our mistakes, in the hopes that our current and future colleagues will learn from them.
Fully 50 percent of Americans think that most members of Congress are corrupt and 36 percent think their own member of Congress is corrupt, according to a poll released Thursday by CNN. A quick stroll over to my personal favorite part of the Congresspedia wiki, the Members of Congress under investigation page, shows why: at least a dozen current and former members of Congress are under investigation for everything from covering up the Mark Foley page scandal to laundering campaign contributions to bribery. And don't take comfort in the fact that three of those dozen are no longer in Congress: each was forced to resign in just the last year in the wake of investigations or guilty pleas related to actions they took while they were still in Congress.
Each of these current and former members of Congress has detailed explanations of the allegations against them on their Congresspedia profile pages, but the mind-boggling litany of allegations begs for a quick rundown:
Wonkette, for those of you who don't read it, is a proudly low-brow and juvenile blog that focuses on the more salacious escapades of our representatives in Washington. For those of us who have to deal with the over-starched, self-important Washington crowd (Congresspedia headquarters is just off the K street lobbying corridor), it often provides a dose of needed levity.
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