Fraudulent Equivocating Malarkey Artifice

[Matthew Gallant]

FEMA employees posed as reporters while real reporters listened on a telephone conference line and were barred from asking questions. (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-102507-femabriefing,1,272790.story?ctrack=1&cset=true)

Coming soon: the Vice Admiral's book, "It Takes A Potemkin Village".

[Raife]

Bleh, registration required.

[Matthew Gallant]

Sorry, it didn't require any registration for me. Here's the important part:
FEMA announced the news conference at its headquarters here about 15 minutes before it was to begin Tuesday afternoon, making it unlikely that reporters could attend. Instead, FEMA set up a telephone conference line so reporters could listen.

In the briefing, parts of which were televised live by cable news channels, Johnson stood behind a lectern, called on questioners who did not disclose that they were FEMA employees, and gave replies emphasizing that his agency's response to this week's California wildfires was far better than its response to Hurricane Katrina in August 2005.

[arctangent]

Here's a link to a WaPo article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/25/AR2007102502488.html?loc=interstitialskip

[Raife]

You have to wonder who thought this would go over well, and why they still have jobs.

[Ed Solomon]

You have to wonder who thought this would go over well, and why they still have jobs.
But at least we don't have to wonder who appointed them.

[Raife]

But at least we don't have to wonder who appointed them.

That's only Paulison, though.

[Edit]: Ok, it looks like Deputy Admistrators like Johnson are also Presidential appointments.

[jfletch]

This administration is awesome at propaganda and PR, incompetent at everything else. So this is really not a surprise.

If this happened 4 years ago, though, I doubt WaPo would've even reported it.

[Aeon221]

NPR made fun of this by having the reporter covering it interview himself. I laughed so hard I nearly crashed.

[JeffL]

This is so out of line and literally fraudulent that people absolutely should be fired. No way this can be excused as accidental or a slight error of judgment, etc.

[Dunc]

NPR made fun of this by having the reporter covering it interview himself. I laughed so hard I nearly crashed.

Here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15673519