The Origins of the Office of Communications

The Origins of the federal agency of Communications

With the advent of television system in the early 1950s, the media had been increasing its impact on American life, and politics, for two decades. Richard Nixon lost the now-famous 1960 chairmanial debate with John F. Kennedy more often than not repayable to his unkempt appearance and unfortunate choice of a grey suit that blended into the grey background. It was one of the source tangible examples that, in the television era, style is paramount and nubble important only if it is presented stylishly. The influence of the media had only grown in the intervening decade, so much so that upon bowing tabu of the 1968 presidential campaign, Lyndon Johnson in part blamed the media for his defeat. He state that he was not by any means a great communicator, but, in ascribing part of his problems to his portrayal by the media, added:

You defy the power to clarify and you have the power to confuse. Men in public life cannot remotely rival your opportunity day after day, night after night, mo after hour you shape the Nation's dialogue (Maltese 15).

When Richard Nixon was elected President in 1968, it was in large part due to an approach which shielded him from the account cores. He used staged television events to take his cognitive content directly to the people, making frequent use of televised question and event sessions which the media was exclu

The second major media scandalisation that has shaken the administration's handling of the press involved the revelation that several(prenominal) Executive Agencies had paid journalists to promote government policies in their columns, effectively blurring the lines between the media and public relations. This was a radical departure from the policies of precedent administrations, which attempted to influence the types of stories run by the media through the impertinent use of leaks and letters to the editor. In the most famous example of this constitution, the Department of Education paid radio and television commentator Armstrong Williams $241,000 to help promote President chaparral's No Child leftfield Behind law on the air (Kurtz).

The last media function scandal involving the Bush administration came when the Government Accountability Office (GAO) cautioned executive agencies against releasing videos promoting government programs without explicitly revealing that they were produced by the government. In that past two years, two separate federal agencies were discovered distributing prepackaged television programs using paid spokesmen playacting as newscasters in order to promote government policies. In neither instance did the agencies reveal that the programs had been produced by the government; in many markets the videos were aired as journalism rather than advertisements due to this ambiguity. The GAO concluded that this practice constituted a form of " cloak-and-dagger propaganda" (Kornblut).

Which brings us to our last point the White House must effectively sell their agenda directly to the public. Although the President has been barnstorming the landed estate promoting his plan to privatize Social Security, the Office of Communications has been insulating the president from the public by hand-picking the people who can attend. While this policy may have wnrked during the campaign for the Presidency to insulate Bush from tough questions and negative media coverage, it has not worked insofar as he
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