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Editor & Publisher: Delivering Propaganda, as if It Is Toothpaste (9/13/08) by William E. Jackson, Jr.
In another insidious case of weekend paper indoctrination, Jackson tells of what he found "bundled into my Charlotte Observer on this Saturday morning, and this week into approximately 100 newspapers located overwhelmingly in battleground states across the country":
Under the cloak of an advertising supplement, a one-hour edition of a DVD entitled Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West had been attractively packaged and inserted into some 200,000 copies of the McClatchy-owned newspaper. The same happened at the other major McClatchy paper in North Carolina, the Raleigh News & Observer. Dozens of local newspapers—from Altoona to Las Vegas and selected regional editions of the New York Times—have been paid to distribute a film designed to spread fear about our national security. Anyone can see an electoral vote pattern to the targeted areas, with almost all of the battleground or “swing” states represented.
Jackson puts it bluntly: "These papers have allowed themselves to be caught up in a 'neo-con' propaganda scam in the context of the presidential campaign, and during 9/11 week."
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