by TChris

"I'm not a reporter, but I play one on TV." That disclosure is missing from videos prepared by the Bush administration that tout the new Medicare law -- videos that are designed to look like, and to substitute for, objective journalism.

The administration provides the videos to local news stations, and helpfully provides a script for the local anchor to read as a lead-in to the video. One script reminds viewers that "President Bush signed into law the first-ever prescription drug benefit for people with Medicare." The script goes on to say "there have been a lot of questions about how the law will help older Americans and people with disabilities. Reporter Karen Ryan helps sort through the details." The video ends with a voice-over that says "In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting."

Except that Karen Ryan isn't a reporter. She's an actor hired by the company that produced the videos for the administration.

Why would the Bush administration want to disguise its "educational" materials about the new Medicare law as the product of objective journalism? Could it be that the videos are transparent efforts to assist the President's reelection campaign?

Several of the videos include pictures of President Bush receiving a standing ovation from a crowd cheering as he signed the Medicare drug-benefit law on Dec. 8.

It's bad enough that the government's number one financial analyst for Medicare was ordered to withhold information about the true cost of the Medicare package to assure its passage by Congress. Now the administration wants seniors to think that unbiased reporters agree that the new law works to their advantage.

But when seniors get their information from sources other than the Bush administration, they come to a different conclusion.

A recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey indicated that only a fraction of the U.S. seniors understood the law, and the more they learned about it, the less they liked it.

Hence the need to mislead seniors into believing that their local news stations have investigated the Medicare changes and have concluded that the President gave seniors a great benefit by pushing for the new law.