Propaganda Schmopaganda

Huh. Looks like the Agriculture Department, following in the footsteps of the Education Department and the Department of Health and Human Services, wanted to get in on the pay for play action that seems to be the only way to ensure favorable promotion of Bush’s miserable policies:

Documents released by the Agriculture Department show it paid a freelance writer $9,375 in 2003 to "research and write articles for hunting and fishing magazines describing the benefits of NRCS (Natural Resources Conservation Service) programs."

Three articles by the writer, Dave Smith, appeared late last year in two magazines aimed at hunting and fishing enthusiasts: Outdoor Oklahoma, published by that state's Department of Wildlife Conservation, and Washington-Oregon Game & Fish, published by Primedia.

Neither identified Smith as having been paid by the government. The stories focused on how money from a 2002 agricultural subsidy bill had been used to help preserve wetlands that hunting and fishing enthusiasts enjoy in Oklahoma and the Northwest.

Smith, a biologist by profession who now works for the NRCS in Montana, said Tuesday that the magazines knew he'd been paid by the Agriculture Department. "I clearly spelled out to them," in writing, "that I'd been hired to do this," he said. He said the magazines did not pay him for the articles. "I knew I couldn't be paid by them" since he'd already been compensated, Smith said.

Kind of an interesting tactic, asserting a sense of decency that prevents him from double-dipping, to keep his own ass out of the fire. Nevermind that his journalistic ethics were sold down the river for $9,375. Pfft.