A Heckuva Press Conference
I'm not a reporter, I just play one at FEMA press conferences.
Talk about being in the loop...FEMA stages a phony press conference about the wildfires in Southern California, using FEMA staffers as fake reporters tossing up softball questions for their boss.
Yep, FEMA held a press conference with itself...deciding to take this Administration’s fondness for manipulating the press and making up news to a new level.
Be sure to send this story to your conservative friends and relatives as an example of the “liberal press” at work.
The Bush administration just can't help itself, can it? Looks like the people in this administration can't tell the truth even when they have nothing to hide.
Now, I realize FEMA is desperate for some positive PR, but this is beyond pathetic. They should have just stuck with how much better they responded to these fires compared with how they responded to Katrina. But that would be completely ignoring that California wildfires are a semi regular event and there is an existing infrastructure to deal with them...which was not the case with Katrina, where no infrastructure existed to handle anything close to that level of disaster.
"FEMA Meets the Press, Which Happens to Be . . . FEMA
From The Washington Post, October 26, 2007:
"FEMA has truly learned the lessons of Katrina. Even its handling of the media has improved dramatically. For example, as the California wildfires raged Tuesday, Vice Adm. Harvey E. Johnson, the deputy administrator, had a 1 p.m. news briefing.
"FEMA has truly learned the lessons of Katrina. Even its handling of the media has improved dramatically. For example, as the California wildfires raged Tuesday, Vice Adm. Harvey E. Johnson, the deputy administrator, had a 1 p.m. news briefing.
Reporters were given only 15 minutes' notice of the briefing, making it unlikely many could show up at FEMA's Southwest D.C. offices.
........Very smooth, very professional. But something didn't seem right. The reporters were lobbing too many softballs. No one asked about trailers with formaldehyde for those made homeless by the fires. And the media seemed to be giving Johnson all day to wax on and on about FEMA's greatness.
Of course, that could be because the questions were asked by FEMA staffers playing reporters.....[..]"
Maybe it begs the question: What was FEMA hiding this time around while California was burning down ...and what were they afraid the real press would ask?
“…this was thrown together at the last minute.”
I don't buy this. The national broadcast media was there (at the last minute) but the Washington news media were not?
"White House Press Secretary Dana Perino assured reporters today that the staged news conference organized on Tuesday by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) would not happen again, and said the White House would never employ such tactics at its own press briefings.
'It is not a practice that we would employ here at the White House or that we -- we certainly don't condone it,' said Perino."
Riiiiiiiight.
Maybe nobody told her how a couple of years ago the Bush administration literally paid money to have fake news stories planted in Iraqi newspapers ...or how six years ago the Pentagon started up the supposedly disbanded OSI (Office of Strategic Influence), whose sole job it also was to fabricate news to be passed off as the real thing.
I'm convinced that the manipulation of our media is a major reason why we’re in the Iraq war today.
I particularly liked the part where FEMA's Admiral Johnson praised the leadership of California and blasted the leadership of Louisiana during Katrina...hinting that it was the primary reason FEMA has acted so “flawlessly” during the California wildfire disaster.
You may remember that in the early days after Katrina, hundreds of firefighters sat in Atlanta awaiting deployment to the hurricane zone...and when one group of firefighters was finally sent, it was to serve as a TV backdrop for the President's press conference.
How can you tell the difference between ‘real’ reporters and shills anymore? Can you say Jeff Gannon? (A White House reporter planted specifically to ask softball questions ...AND a male prostitute to boot, showing himself naked on his website.)
This incident only stresses the importance of a REAL “Press” staying constantly on the heels of the government ... challenging “Big Brother” every step of the way. Something bloggers do very well.
FEMA's latest trick is hilarious when you think about it. Here all those wacky 9/11 conspiracy theorists think our government could, plot, plan and execute a very complicated attack on 3000 Americans, a conspiracy involving hundreds, maybe thousands of people -- and have it go off without a hitch -- while our government can't even stage a fake press conference without getting caught.
And don't forget ... your tax dollars paid for this fake news conference.
