Thanks for the (False) Memories: the 2004 Falsies Awards

Center for Media and Democracy has started the first annual awards for fake news and bad publicity campaigns. Number One is the Bush PR campaign paid for by taxpayer dollars using video news releases and scripts that local stations pass off as their own. Karan Ryan got to report on the so-called "good news" about Medicare Reform and the No Child Left Behind Program. Many stations carried these propaganda segments as straight news by a reporter when they were million dollar publicity campaigns. Number two is anothe taxpayer funded campaign conducted by our favorite convicted fraud artist Ahmed Chalabi who sold the Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction myth to the New York Times and others.

"The former Iraqi exile group that gave the Bush administration exaggerated and fabricated intelligence on Iraq also fed much of the same information to newspapers, news agencies and magazines in the United States, Britain and Australia," Knight Ridder reported in March 2004. "A June 26, 2002, letter from the Iraqi National Congress to the Senate Appropriations Committee listed 108 articles based on information provided by the Iraqi National Congress's Information Collection Program, a U.S.-funded effort to collect intelligence in Iraq. The Information Collection Program was financed out of the at least $18 million that the U.S. Congress approved for the Iraqi National Congress, led by Ahmed Chalabi from 1999 to 2003."

Chalabi is now working with Iran to become the new leader of Iraq.