| September 26, 2008 | -
Chinese
astronauts conducted the country's first-ever spacewalk. “After the Olympics, it's the most exciting thing that enhances our national pride and dignity this year,” said He Haihong, a Beijing sales manager.
| Source:
Boston Globe
|
| February 4, 2008 | - A video released by hip-hop musician will.i.am showed Herbie Hancock, John Legend, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Kate Walsh, and Scarlett Johansson chanting and singing, “Yes, we can,” in support of Barack Obama, and a representative for John Cougar Mellencamp, a John Edwards supporter, asked John McCain to stop playing Mellencamp's “Our Country” and “Pink Houses” at his campaign rallies.
| Source 1:
Washington Post
Source 2:
Rolling Stone
|
| March 28, 2006 | -
Iraq's ruling parties accused the United States of killing 37 unarmed civilians at a mosque. "There's been huge misinformation," said U.S. Lieutenant General Peter Chiarelli.
| Source:
News.com.au
|
| February 17, 2006 | - Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld called for the United States to increase its propaganda efforts in the Middle East.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| February 1, 2006 | - During the State of the Union address activist Cindy Sheehan was handcuffed and thrown out of the House chamber for wearing a T-shirt that read "2245 Dead: How Many More?" and Beverly Young, the wife of Representative Bill Young (R., Fla.), was told to leave because she was wearing a T-shirt that read "Support the Troops: Defending Our Freedom." Young later held up his wife's shirt on the House floor and said, "shame, shame."
| Source:
ABC News
|
| November 30, 2005 | - At the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, President George W. Bush gave a speech on the Iraq war. “As Iraqi forces grow more capable,” he said, “they're increasingly taking the lead in the fight against the terrorists.”
| Source:
CNN.com
|
| November 30, 2005 | - It was revealed that the U.S. Army was writing positive news stories about the Iraq war, and was then paying to have the articles translated into Arabic and published in Iraqi newspapers. Abdul Zahra Zaki, editor of the newspaper Al Mada, said that if he had known the stories—with titles like “Iraqis Insist on Living Despite Terrorism” and “More Money Goes to Iraq's Development”—were written by the Army he would have “charged much, much more.”
| Source:
LA Times
|
| July 22, 2005 | - The U.S. House of Representatives passed an amendment to start broadcasting radio and television programs into Venezuela that will counter the “anti-Americanism” of Telesur, a new Latin American TV station. Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez called the plan “a preposterous imperialist idea.”
| Source:
Common Dreams
|
| May 24, 2005 | - In Greece, New York, Bush discussed his plan for Social Security. “You got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in,” he explained, “to kind of catapult the propaganda.”
| Source:
WhiteHouse.gov
|
| March 13, 2005 | - Twenty U.S. federal agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, were found to have prepared hundreds of video news releases favorable to the government, many of which were inserted into local television news broadcasts without attribution.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 29, 2005 | - Two days later, another columnist admitted he'd been paid $10,000 for the same purpose.
| Source: The Globe and Mail
|
| January 27, 2005 | -
President Bush ordered his cabinet to stop paying off journalists after syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher admitted she had a $21,500 contract with the Health and Human Services Department to endorse the agency's marriage initiative.
| Source: The Washington Post
|
| May 21, 2004 | - The General Accounting Office concluded in a report that the Bush Administration violated federal law when it produced simulated news spots for local news stations on the new Medicare law; the GAO said that the spots were "covert propaganda."
| Source: Scotsman
|
| April 15, 2004 | - President George W. Bush held a prime-time press conference and refused several times to apologize or accept responsibility for his government's failure to prevent the September 11 attacks.
| Source: New York Times
|
| March 21, 2004 | - The president and vice president of Taiwan were both shot and wounded the day before elections; the opposition called for a recount and accused the president of staging his own shooting to win sympathy votes.
| Source: New York Times
|
| March 15, 2004 | -
Congress was investigating videos produced by the White House for local television news programs in which paid actors impersonate reporters and give flattering accounts of the new Medicare law.
| Source: San Francisco Chronicle
|
| March 7, 2004 | -
President Bush was criticized for exploiting
September 11 in his new campaign advertisements.
| Source: Los Angeles Times, Newsweek
|
| February 23, 2004 | -
President Bush's Council of Economic Advisors decided to move the official start date of the last recession from the generally accepted March 2001 to the fourth quarter of 2000, when Bill Clinton was still president.
| Source: Business Week
|
| February 22, 2004 | -
Health and Human Services officials admitted that a report on racial and ethnic disparities in health care was altered to make it seem more upbeat. "There was a mistake made," said Secretary Tommy Thompson.
| Source: New York Times
|
| February 21, 2004 | - The president's chief economic advisor suggested that fast-food jobs might need to be reclassified. "When a fast-food restaurant sells a hamburger, for example, is it providing a 'service' or is it combining inputs to 'manufacture' a product?"
| Source: Newsday
|
| February 19, 2004 | - More than 60 prominent scientists, including 20 Nobel prize winners and 19 winners of the National Medal of Science, denounced the Bush Administration for its systematic distortion of scientific facts for political gain; John H. Marburger III, the administration's head of science and technology policy, dismissed the report and said that it was politically motivated.
| Source: Chemical and Environmental News
|
| February 19, 2004 | -
President Bush appeared on Al Hurra ("the Free One"), his new Middle East Television Network, and said that he is "the first American president to have articulated a Palestinian state."
| Source: New York Times
|
| February 18, 2004 | - The Bush Administration began to back away from its predictions that the national economy, which has lost 2.5 million jobs since Bush took office, would add 2.6 million jobs this year.
| Source: New York Times
|
| February 2, 2004 | -
President Bush decided to order an investigation into American prewar intelligence failures.
| Source: Associated Press
|
| February 2, 2004 | - British Prime Minister Tony Blair authorized an investigation into prewar intelligence failures.
| Source: Financial Times
|
| January 28, 2004 | - President George W. Bush said it was important to "compare the facts to what was thought
| Source: New York Times
|
| November 15, 2003 | - The Pentagon was planning to launch a 24-hour satellite television channel based in Baghdad to make it easier to circumvent the news media "filter" that Bush Administration officials believe is misleading the public by emphasizing bad news about the occupation of Iraq.
| Source: Washington Post
|
| November 6, 2003 | - The White House communications director said that the American people want "the commander in chief to have proper perspective, and keep his eye on the big picture and the ball."
| Source: New York Times
|
| November 5, 2003 | -
President Bush, who has refused to comment directly on the daily casualties in Iraq and has not attended a single funeral for a soldier killed there, traveled to California to inspect the damage from the recent wildfires and was photographed hugging a woman who lost her home.
| Source: New York Times
|
| October 29, 2003 | -
President Bush denied that his political operatives had been responsible for the erection of the "Mission Accomplished" banner that flew behind him on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln on May 1, when he dressed up like a fighter pilot and declared victory in Iraq. He said that his advance men "weren't that ingenious" and that the banner was put up by crew members, "saying that their mission was accomplished." Scott McClellan, the president's press secretary, later admitted that the banner was in fact created by the White House.
| Source: New York Times
|
| October 25, 2003 | - Iraqi guerrillas using a homemade launching pad fired eight to ten rockets at the Al Rasheed hotel in Baghdad, where American officials have been staying since April. Some of the Americans were seen fleeing the luxury hotel in their pajamas and shorts; one of the missiles struck a floor just below Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, but he escaped unhurt. The following day, a suicide bomber driving an ambulance struck the offices of the International Red Cross in Baghdad; the bomb left a six-foot-deep crater and broke windows a mile away. Within 45 minutes, bombers struck four police stations in other neighborhoods; at least 34 died and more than 200 were injured in the attacks. "The more successful we are on the ground," said President Bush, "the more these killers will react."
| Source: Associated Press
|
| October 24, 2003 | - and in a published interview he called for a new government bureaucracy to fight the "war of ideas" against international terrorism.
| Source: Washington Times
|
| October 23, 2003 | - An Israeli helicopter fired a rocket at a car in the Gaza Strip; after a crowd gathered, another rocket was fired, killing at least eight people and injuring 70. Israeli officials initially disputed the claim that bystanders were injured in the second strike and released a videotape as evidence; upon closer examination, however, the tape confirmed the Palestinian version of the events.
| Source: New York Times
|
| September 28, 2003 | - At the request of the CIA, the Justice Department began investigating charges that the White House leaked the name of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame to the press in retaliation for remarks by her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, challenging President Bush's
claim that Iraq tried to buy yellowcake uranium in Africa. An unnamed administration official told the Washington Post that two White House officials had revealed the agent's identity to at least six journalists. "Clearly," the official said, "it was meant purely and simply for revenge." The White House denied that Karl Rove was responsible for the leak, which was a violation of the Intelligence Protection Act and carries penalties of up to 10 years in prison and $50,000 in fines.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| September 28, 2003 | - Ranking members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence criticized the Bush Administration for basing its case for the invasion of Iraq on piecemeal, out of date, deficient intelligence.
| Source: Washington Post
|
| September 18, 2003 | - Hans Blix, the former U.N. weapons inspector, denounced the British government's controversial dossier on Iraq's weaponry, which he said was the result of a "culture of spin, of hyping." "Advertisers will advertise a refrigerator in terms they do not quite believe in but you expect governments to be more serious and have more credibility."
| Source: BBC
|
| September 11, 2003 | - A British parliamentary report concluded that the Blair government did not intentionally lie in its controversial dossier on Iraq's military threat; the report did criticize the government, however, and said that its false claim that Iraq was capable of launching weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes was "unhelpful," and that the dossier should have made clear that Iraq was not, in the opinion of the intelligence services, an imminent threat to Great Britain.
| Source: BBC
|
| September 10, 2003 | - Attorney General John Ashcroft gave a speech at Federal Hall in lower Manhattan and said that critics of the USA Patriot Act "have forgotten how we felt" on 9/11.
| Source: New York Times
|
| August 22, 2003 | - Congressional Democrats warned that the speeches were in violation of rules banning the use of Justice Department funds for political or propaganda purposes.
| Source: New York Times
|
| June 16, 2003 | - CBS News sent an interview request to Pfc. Jessica Lynch, the American P.O.W. whose dramatic rescue in Iraq turned out to be largely simulated, that included "ideas" from CBS Entertainment, MTV, and Simon & Schuster; some news critics found the combination of news and entertainment offers "troubling."
| Source: New York Times
|
| June 11, 2003 | - Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster, said that it doesn't matter whether WMD are found, "because the rationale for the war changed. Americans like a good picture. And one photograph of an Iraqi
child kissing a U.S. soldier is more powerful than two months of debate on the floor of Congress."
| Source: Washington Post
|
| May 5, 2003 | - "I think when you analyze the statements, you'll find them to be historic," Bush told reporters later.
"Amazing things were said."
| Source: Los Angeles Times
|
| January 14, 2003 | -
Sharon called a press conference, which was televised, and attacked the Labor party, whereupon the broadcast was cancelled by a supreme court justice who determined that Sharon was violating a law banning election propaganda on television in the month before an election.
| |
| December 24, 2002 | -
White House officials downplayed reports that the Pentagon is planning a propaganda assault on allied countries and emphasized that the president would never condone anything that involved lying.
| |
| December 17, 2002 | -
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was thinking about launching a propaganda campaign aimed at friendly countries.
| |
| December 10, 2002 | -
Prominent American writers such as Richard Ford, Michael Chabon, and Billy Collins contributed to a State Department anthology on what it means to be an American writer.
The collection is banned in the United States under the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which prohibits the domestic dissemination of American propaganda meant for foreign audiences.
| |
| October 1, 2002 | -
Germany, Belgium, and Russia all said that the dossier failed to justify an attack on Iraq; Russian foreign minister Igor Ivanov dismissed Blair's presentation as a “propaganda furor” and called for a return of weapons inspectors.
| |
| August 20, 2002 | -
“He claims for himself the Creator's right to interfere in the mystery of human life.” The pope blamed “the noisy propaganda of liberalism, of freedom without truth or responsibility,” for these great sins.
| |
| February 26, 2002 | -
The Pentagon said it was planning a new propaganda office called the Office of Strategic Information, which will seek to feed news items to the foreign media in an effort to manipulate public opinion.
| |
| October 30, 2001 | - Secretary of State Colin Powell appointed Charlotte Beers, an advertising executive best known for the Head and Shoulders campaign, to be undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs; Beers said her job would be the rebranding of America: “It's the battle for the 11-year-old mind.” Bush Administration officials met with television executives to discuss effective propaganda strategy.
| |
| January 23, 2001 | - President Bill Clinton, on his last day in office, made a deal with independent counsel Robert Ray to avoid indictment for lying under oath, which concluded the $60 million Whitewater investigation and gave Bill Clinton banner headlines on the day of George W. Bush's inauguration.
| |