The Bush administration signalled on Sunday that it was stepping up its efforts to win hearts and minds in the Arab world, launching an international PR campaign to keep pace with an unprecedented attempt to influence domestic opinion.
After several years in which the Bush White House has surpassed all previous administrations in its efforts to build domestic support for its policies, the focus yesterday appeared to shift to the international stage, and an ambitious new program of public diplomacy.
The New York Times reported that at least 20 federal agencies, from the defense department to the census bureau, had adopted the technique of distributing prepackaged reports and scripted interviews with Bush administration officials to television stations.
Many of the segments were broadcast as news without any acknowledgement from the broadcaster that they were government releases, and put on air in some of the US' largest cities.
Congressional Democrats estimate that the government spent US$254 million on public relations contracts during its four-year term -- nearly double the spending of the Clinton administration.
Karen Hughes, 48, an adviser to President George W. Bush from his days as governor of Texas, played a crucial role over several years in crafting his domestic message. She gave up her White House job to return to Texas in 2002, citing family concerns, but was active in Bush's re-election campaign.
In her latest reincarnation, she will be in charge of repairing the US' tattered image in the Middle East, easing anger about the invasion of Iraq and dampening new fears raised by Washington's rhetoric against Syria and Iran.
The state department spent US$685 million on public diplomacy last year, but critics say the department has failed to effectively counter the appeal of Islamist radicals in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.
On Sunday US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice appeared to subscribe to that view, telling ABC television that she envisaged a far more ambitious program.
"It is no secret that the US needs to revamp its public diplomacy role," she said, going on to speak approvingly of the propaganda efforts of the Cold War, and the part played by broadcasters such as Radio Liberty. "It was not spin. It was getting people the truth," she said.
The administration has already struggled gone to great lengths to get its version of the truth out to the American people.
The New York Times described the production of one such segment by a seasoned former television reporter on the Bush administration's Medicare reforms, saying it was designed to be indistinguishable from regular news broadcasts. The paper quotes the reporter describing how she coached the former health and human services secretary Tommy Thompson to deliver snappier answers.
Another segment on women in Afghanistan, broadcast by a station in Memphis, used footage from television interviews conducted by state department contractors. The reporter who assembled the piece told the newspaper she did not know the interviews had been conducted by government officials.
The practice has come under scrutiny from the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress. Although the US is free to propagate pro-administration views abroad, such broadcasts are illegal on American soil.
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