Tully: Mike Pence’s horrible idea: (Thank you Matt Tully for sharing this!!!) One can only imagine how the state-run, taxpayer-funded Mike Pence News Service would have covered some recent news stories. Take the governors mind-boggling decision in October to turn his back on an all-but guaranteed $80 million federal grant that could have funded preschool programs for thousands of low-income Indiana children. The likely Pence Propaganda Service headline: Governor generously steers $80 million federal grant to the children of Iowa. Or how about the ongoing battles between the governor and Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz? Well, I dont know what the headline would be. But my guess is the reader comments section would prohibit all of those reminders that Ritz got 57,000 more votes than Pence did in the 2012 elections. Think thats far-fetched? Yeah, right. After all, this is the same administration that got caught awhile back deleting pesky negative comments from its state-run Facebook page. Hey, every administration has its own rosy view of how its doing. I get that. But the Pence team apparently wants to sell that view as hard news. When creating our government, our founders put freedom of the press into the constitution. Right there in the First Amendment. Now Pence is acting as if he thinks the press should be our government. A state-run news agency? What in the name of Vladimir Putin is the Pence administration thinking? His administration is calling it Just IN. But, Im sorry, thats the last time youll ever hear me call it that. This is a propaganda outlet, plain and simple. This is a politician, one who already has an army of press secretaries, trying to seize more control of what you read about the things he says and does. That aint America, folks. As my colleague Tom Lo Bianco reported Monday afternoon, the Pence administration is creating the news service to break news and push out feature stories, including personality profiles. (Im envisioning a flattering one on the Koch brothers.) According to documents LoBianco uncovered, the propaganda service is intended to serve as a news outlet in its own right and will function as a voice of the State of Indianas executive branch. It will seek to get its work published, apparently in smaller papers statewide in addition to its website. In recent months the administration has hired staff, including a former journalist. They have written test stories and quietly worked toward a launch date. So if youre wondering why the Pence administration has no real legislative agenda to speak of this year, why its State of the State address was as light as a football in New England, its apparently because the administration has been spending its time not on making news but rather manufacturing it. Im sure many people have been asking the same question that a Star reader named Becky Martin Kevoian asked on Facebook Monday: How is this even remotely a function of our state government? The answer: Its not. Hopefully Planet Pence will figure this out and kill this idea before it further embarrasses him. And it has. The story spread fast Monday afternoon. When I Googled state-run news agencies while writing this column Monday night, the first page of links included two reports about Putin, three more about North Korea, and six about Mike Pence. Honestly, this is one of those stories that seems phony when you first hear it: The states conservative governor is creating his own news agency, one that will seek to compete with the traditional media and be funded by taxpayers. You cant make this stuff up. Unless you work at The Onion, I guess. But this isnt parody. And this isnt a joke. Nope. Its a story from your Indiana Statehouse. And from your Indiana governor. It looks like nothing less than a lazy attempt to fool the public with fluffy stories and feel-good headlines that politicians historically have had to earn with smart policies and legislation. Hey, why work hard to earn those headlines when you can just write them yourself? The Pence administration wasnt saying much Monday so there are many questions without answers: Will it allow counter voices in its so-called news service? Will it offer anything close to honest reporting? Who came up with this idea and how did our conservative governor sign off on its cost (surely more than the $100,000 in salaries that we know about). There are many questions. But as I wrote this column Monday night I struggled with one question more than any other: Was I more offended as a journalist, as an American or as a taxpaying Hoosier. The answer was all of the above. You can reach me at matthew.tully@indystar or at Twitter/matthewltully.
Posted on: Tue, 27 Jan 2015 03:44:29 +0000
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