KAREN RYAN: PEONS HAVE NO RIGHT TO QUESTION MY GOVERNMENT PROPAGANDA

Karen Ryan, the producer and on-air "reporter" of Medicare propaganda stories sent to TV news organizations by the Bush administration, is furious that The New York Times gave us peasants the opportunity to assess her work. In Television Week, she writes:

If the lessons of the Medicare VNRs [video news releases] are to have substance, it should be for debate in journalism classes and not on the front pages of national newspapers.

Well, excuse me. I helped pay for this propaganda, and I'm the son and son-in-law of Medicare recipients, but I guess I shouldn't be allowed to learn what techniques my government is using to try to influence my opinion on changes to the Medicare program -- apparently this is a fit subject only for the elect.

Ryan makes one valid point in her article: She's being called names now only because the stories she produced were political and it's an election year. In fact, she should have been called names a long time ago -- she's been a high-class sleazemonger for years, as is everyone who does what she does. In an ideal world, people who produce advertising disguised as news would be social pariahs, like snake-oil peddlers and spam generators.