Staged Events, Fake Photo Ops, and the Fabricated News Product.

President Bush held a teleconference with troops serving in Tikrit, Iraq on Friday. It was suppose to be a simple standard presidential photo op. Photo ops have been going on in presidential administrations since the invention of the idiot box (television). Just like most television photo ops and similar events there were some advanced preparations that took place to make sure everything ran smoothly. Such things like familiarizing the soldiers with the camera, going over breathing techniques, and rehearsing the teleconference so that everyone is comfortable and a little more relaxed with what is going on when they go live.

The mainstream media witnessed all of this advanced preparation and had another mediagasm spinning the story out of control. These soldiers were coached, it was all staged! AP and every major media outlet in the country ran with the headline “Bush Teleconference With Soldiers Staged.”

Of course this was followed by the television network news media outlets covering the story.

Brian Williams of NBC: The satellite picture from Iraq was being beamed back to television newsrooms here in the US. It showed a full-blown rehearsal of the president's questions along with the soldiers' answers and coaching from the administration. Today's encounter was billed as spontaneous.

NBC News Correspondent Andrea Mitchell: The troops were coached on how to answer the commander-in-chief!

ABC News Correspondent Terry Moran: The fact that this was so carefully choreographed, shows just how urgently the White House, wants a PR success at home for this embattled president.

Katie Couric of NBC’s Today Show: Is the Bush administration using staged events to sell the war in Iraq?

Bob Schieffer of CBS: After satellite cameras caught administration aides rehearsing the soldiers beforehand...

Diane Sawyer of ABC’s Good Morning America: The new embarrassment: the White House scrambling after a photo-opportunity with troops in Iraq didn't go quite as planned.

CBS News Correspondent Lara Logan: His message was overshadowed by questions about how much staging went into the event.

ABC’s Good Morning America correspondent Claire Shipman: A lot of other problems are giving the White House a major case of the nerves, including yesterday's slip-up: staging a photo-op with US troops and letting our cameras see it all!

But the only advice or “coaching” that officials were shown as giving in this “full blown rehearsal” that allowed the medias cameras “to see it all” was a suggestion to one solider to "take a little breath" before speaking to the president so he would actually be speaking to him. It was also stated that some of the soldiers practiced their comments so as to appear as articulate as possible. But there was never any indication, or even allegation, that the soldiers were coached as to the substance of their comments or in any way were they instructed in what to say.

If you ever needed proof to make your case that the media is overwhelmingly liberal and Democrat this is it. This is by far dishonest reporting and outright political bias. It is nothing more than a fabricated news product.

Perhaps the media should have taken a long hard look at what they have done and currently do before casting the first stone.

Shortly before airing the “Bush Teleconference With Soldiers Staged” story the Today Show aired a report with Michelle Kosinski from a flooded New Jersey Street. It was so bad that she was reporting from a canoe on a flooded street. But just as the segment began to air 2 men waded in front of the canoe in ankle deep water! It was a staged event and a fabricated news product

Let’s not forget about the time a soldier actually was coached at a press conference in Iraq. Specialist Thomas Wilson was hand picked, coached by a member of the media on how to present a question to Donald Rumsfield about the lack of armored humvees. The question was written by Edward Lee Pitts of the Chattanooga Times Free Press. Pitts also made sure that Specialist Wilson was picked to ask the question. Then the media takes a one line sound bite from Rumsfields full answer and runs with it. It was a staged event and a fabricated news product.

Since we are on the topic of staged events and staged photo ops let’s go back in time to the Clinton years.

In June of 1994, President Bill Clinton was attending the 50th anniversary of D-day. President Clinton is walking on the Normandy Beach when he comes across some stones. With the media cameras rolling he makes a cross out of the stones on the beach and looks like he is about to cry. But where did the stones come from? There are no stones

anywhere on this beach, it is all sand. Where they placed there in advanced? Of course they were it was a staged event and fabricated news product.

In the summer of 1999, while on the campaign trail, Al Gore went on a canoe trip on the Connecticut River. The media was placed in a prime location and Al Gore was coached on what to do. There was a drought in the New England area that summer that was so bad that New Hampshire residents were forbidden from watering their lawns or washing their cars. Of course that didn’t stop Al Gore from having more than half a billion gallons of water released from a dam in order to accommodate his environmental photo-op.

John Kassel of the Vermont Division of National Resources was quoted as saying, “They won’t release the water for the fish when we ask them to, but somehow they find themselves able to release it for a politician,” Kassel groused. “The only reason they did this was to make sure the vice president’s canoe didn’t get stuck.”

Kassel went on to explain: The drought that had been plaguing New England all summer had slowed the Connecticut River to a trickle. Gore’s advance team and the local environmentalists who organized the photo-op had fretted that there wouldn’t be enough water to float the vice presidential canoe. So Pacific Gas & Electric was instructed to open the floodgates of its dam upriver at dawn that morning. By the time Gore got into his canoe, the river was plenty deep enough for the trip downstream. You guessed it, another staged event and fabricated news product.

Here is another one. In February of 2004 John Kerry was coached by a CBS News producer. He was asked an economical question which he gave a 3 minute response that left the media with no sound bite that they could use. So, they asked him to try it again. The media ran with take 2.

Then there was Dan Rather who insists to this day that those forged documents were real.

This is nothing new. The news media has been doing this for years. They fabricated Vietnam to make it look like we were loosing the war when we were actually winning. It is the same thing today.

The whole anti-war rally was nothing but a fabricated event. If you look closely at what went down. We are supposed to compare New Orleans to Iraq. Both are portrayed as Bush failures and people dieing for no reason. New Orleans and Iraq have even been reported the same way.

We have found WMDs in Iraq the media ignores it. Instead they fuel the Bush lied rhetoric. We get nothing but bad news from Iraq. New Orleans the same way. We now find that just like the Gitmo prisoner abuse story the conditions in New Orleans were not as bad as reported. They were both fabricated news with the goal to fuel anti-war and anti-bush feelings.

Then they fabricate the whole anti-war movement by not telling the American people who is actually behind it. A group called ANSWER International who works with the Worker's World Party who are communists.

The best way to look at the news is not to look at it as news but rather look at it as a product that represents the viewpoints of the seller. The seller has people who put the product together. They have people who market it to you in hopes of success. They measure their success by seeing how many people they can convince into believing their point of view.

So the next time you turn on a news channel or pick up a newspaper remember that you're watching or reading a product. It is up to you to research the facts and figure out what is true or false.