Rep. Louise Slaughter has told Raw Story that the GAO is going to investigate the Bush Administration's practice of what we call in private industry "paid publicity," "infomercials," "electronic press kits" and "video news releases" -- many of which also get fobbed off by news stations as real reporting. (You don't really believe that local reporter Bubbles Buckley really sat down and chatted with Tom Cruise on the set of "War of the Worlds," now, did you?)

RawStory has excerpts from GAO correspendence:

In our review of federal department contracts with media entities (i.e., public relations firms, advertising agencies, media organizations, and individual members of the media) we will address the following research questions:

1. How many contracts have selected departments entered into with media entities, what were the methods of award, and what were the obligations incurred for each contract?
2. What was the purpose of each contract entered into with each media entity and what type of work was to be performed?

How are they going to do this? Government style!

To address the first research question, we will ask departments and their components to identify each prime contract signed with a media entity during fiscal years 2003-2005, and to identify the type of entity to which the contract was awarded. To ensure consistency among responses, we will provide departments with standard industry definitions for the types of media entities. In gathering information on the method used to award the contract, we will ask departments and components to identify whether the contract award was competed, not competed, not available for competition, or was a follow-on to a competed action. Additionally, for each contract, we will collect information on the obligations (not expenditures) incurred for each fiscal year in our review. We will then sum the number of contracts and associated obligations by department, year, and type of media entity.

In other words, they're going to ask the suspects if they're guilty. Now the Government Accountability Office deserves high praise for its non-partisan history and character, but I really wonder if they are cut out to do real investigation, at least on this. Imagine if this were how Watergate were investigated.

GAO investigator: Mister Libby, did you do anything illegal?

G. Gordon Libby: No.

GAO investigator: Thank you.

Now I'm not saying that the GAO folks are quite that dense, but on the other hand it's pretty sad that we can't seem to count on any modern-day Woodwards and Bernsteins to do any investigating on this -- not only do the news media behave more like show dogs than watchdogs these days, but it's quite unlikely that anyone's going to try to earn their Pulitzer investigating corruption within their own ranks.

Call it the pencil-thin line. --or the Thin Blue Pencil Line.

Can we reasonably expect reporters to behave any differently or better than police when it comes to investigating themselves? The mafia notion of omerta seems to run pretty deep in American culture. And the denials up and down the line that the major news outlets have been pretty much news release publishers for the Bush Administration ring especially false these days, what with the Downing Street Memo non-coverage and all the cheerleading for the run-up to war that even now the Washington Post and New York Times only begrudgingly admit, and only with qualifications.

So for all the inherent faults in their proposed methodology, I think I have greater expectations that the Government Accountability Office will come up with something on government agencies feeding government-produced government propaganda to news media organizations than I do regarding the news media's ability or willingness to investigate itself. --Especially when the Bush Administration's main fault in all this is doing what other administrations have done, only much more of it. Bipartisan corruption findings help maintain the GAO's non-partisan (or bipartisan) reputation.

Soiled even more in all this will be the news media themselves. Ironically their ability to come clean in all this is completely within their power. And they will never do it.

Meanwhile, they have this new report on a new drug that does all these wonderful things! Film at 11.

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