Activates my gag reflex.

WELL! As FEMA was faking a "press conference", WAS Jeff Gannon(Gannon Guckert, FAKE REPORTER, MALE PROSTITUTE and SERVICER of CHIMPya and other white house bigwigs) THERE AS WELL?

I mean using fake reporters to insure favorable spin? Shameful! Now I see Jeff Gannon in the back has a question...

The phony "reporters" do not surprise me. Most of the media seem to consist of "reporters" who are merely posing as newsmen/women.

How else did George Bush get elected?

Please relate your story, "FEMA's phony reporters," to the press conference style "No Child Left Behind" fake news stories paid for by the US Department of Education. It is important to understand that this is not an isolated incident.

-Brad Steinmetz

Move along, move along; nothing to see here.....We were just trying to re-establish our shredded credibility by getting the word out to the real press what a good job we're doing!

It's Halloween; why can't we dress up and play reporter-asking-questions? Who cares if the "questions" were written by the guy answering them?

We were just trying to get some "good" press to restore our reputation; who cares if the people asking the questions weren't real press? We got out the information we wanted to; that FEMA is doing a great job!

Any more questions?

The continued unethical and sometimes downright illegal and corrupt mentality found from the White House to the Pentagon to Bush's Cabinet to the Justice Department to Larry Craig's restrooms is just absurd! Hey, they are NEVER wrong about ANYTHING they do. Just ask them. We are sick of them. Like cockroaches frantically running for cover everytime the light comes on, Washington, D.C, needs exterminating.

No one has done more singlehandedly to threaten democracy inn America than Bush and his merry band of morally, ethically,and legally corrupt incompetents.

What in Gods name do they have to hide in relation to the fires? The response? The cause of the fires?

What the hell is going on here? This is the type of thing that makes you wonder if the government STARTED the fires for some reason. Providing cover for themselves?

What should we be left to believe? Answer: just about anything.

That's at least twice this administration has been caught doing that, and I can't help thinking there was a third, but I don't remember for sure. Twice can be dismissed as a coincidence, but three times is a deliberate policy, right? When officially asked they officially deny that it's policy - so far.

How long until they re-define it a la torture? "Oh, we don't do fake press conferences, but that wasn't, according to our lawyers, a fake press conference."

and true to form, the milquetoasts who had planted themselves in the white house media room could barely be roused to question yet another big honking spitball in their faces.

ho hum.

the Potemkin villages?

When you're this bad at your job, and this stupid, why not try faking it? It's not like anyone is going to get fired over the illusion of truth. I mean, no one specifically asked during the conference if they were FEMA plants, so in effect, it wasn't a lie, right? WMDs, anyone?

Good point!!

And Dana Perino "wouldn't have condoned"? Like SHE has any judgment of such matters?

Interesting that the real reporters could not distinguish themselves from the FEMA administration shills.

"At the White House, Press Secretary Dana Perino said that the White House didn't know about the phony briefing before it happened and does not approve of the concept."

Really? Two words: Jeff Gannon.

The reporters may have been phony, but they did a heckuva job.

Just asking what the rough outlines of the job description entail

So the Republicans have their own White House, their own covert intelligence, their own army and now their own press. And we think they're actually going to allow an election in 2008 because why?

The term "Orwellian" is bandied about awfully easily these days, and as such has lost some of its scary connotations. But seriously, every time I think this administration has hit a new low, they go and top themselves with something like this. (And Dana Perino provides daily amazement.) Can any word other than Orwellian describe this kind of thing? And coming so close on my reading about John Tanner of the Justice Department, who thinks that Voter ID laws are unfair to whites.

I continue to be surprised at my own surprise.

Still any "news" organization that put this out without identifying it for the propaganda it is would be just as complicit. Your can't be innocent if you are enabling these jokers

Actually, I hear Fox News' "1/2 Hour News Hour" folks are in need of work.

From the FEMA website, under Media Info:

"For the Record--A section that provides FEMA the opportunity to respond to recent inaccuracies and/or misconceptions in the media."

Uh, what?! They have a whole section dedicated to this? At the top of their media info page?

I guess FEMA got tired of "correcting" the media so they just decided to become the media.

http://www.fema.gov/media/index.shtm

they could at least hire the ones from The Daily Show!

There seems to be no depth to which the snakes in this administration will not sink. They're an insult to real snakes everywhere.

Christ.

their saying they were disturbed is a lie. If they were they would have done something about it.

The only thing I'm surprised about (considering this is the Bush administration) is that the FEMA representative didn't stand in front of a fake photographic backdrop depicting beautiful forests and sunny skies and say "Fires? What fires? There are no fires in California!"

So what if FEMA employees can masquerade as reporters and no one really notices? What does that say about the public's attitude about journalists?

Perhaps a more charitable interpretation is that FEMA employees are awesome actors, man. And not that journalists and reporters have become so vapid and stupid that no one even notices when they've been replaced by simulated reporters.....