Repeat: There is No Fourth Estate

NYT: Prepackaged News

Karen Ryan cringes at the phrase "covert propaganda." These are words for dictators and spies, and yet they have attached themselves to her like a pair of handcuffs.


"I'm like the Marlboro man," she said in a recent interview.

In fact, Ms. Ryan was a bit player who made less than $5,000 for her work on government reports. She was also playing an accepted role in a lucrative art form, the video news release. "I just don't feel I did anything wrong," she said. "I just did what everyone else in the industry was doing."

As if a mere profit of "less than" five grand couldn't possibly impune her integrity. All it shows is that she's not only a whore, but a cheap whore.

Ms. Ryan is right about two things, though: (1.) She is like the Marlboro man - both spread malignant propaganda, and; (2.) Everybody's doing it! Is there any doubt her "consulting" business has really taken off since the light of publicity illuminated her cockroach enterprise?

What's striking about the NYT article is that by publishing an article which is marginally critical of so-called "pre-packaged news" the nation's "stenographer of record" gets to provide the illusion that what they do each and every day is somehow different from the innumerable PR firms littering the United States. It's not, and they are just as fake as the Karen Ryan, "Jeff Gannon" and, yes, Brian Williams & the rest of Talking Heads, Inc..