[NYTr] FEMA "Not Only" Agency with Fake Press Conferences - Shocking!

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[Not exactly news, since this crap has been going on for years,
including Bush's porn-king fake reporter who lobbed softballs to him
at press conferences. And all those fake "news" stories prepared by a
Guvamint and replayed by networks as if they were for real.-NY Transfer]


AP via Yahoo - Nov 26, 2007
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071126/ap_on_go_ca_st_pefema_fake_news_conference

FEMA not the only agency to misrepresent

By EILEEN SULLIVAN
Associated Press Writer

The fake October news conference held by the Federal Emergency
Management Agency was not the first time a Homeland Security public
affairs official has acted like a reporter by asking questions during a
briefing.

On Feb. 3, 2006, an official with Immigration and Customs Enforcement
asked a question during a news conference in San Antonio, Texas,
according to an investigation by the Homeland Security Department — the
parent agency of both FEMA and ICE.

The ICE public affairs official was standing with about 12 reporters
but did not identify herself when she posed the question, Homeland
Security's head of public affairs, J. Edward Fox, wrote in a Nov. 19
letter to the chairman of the House Homeland Security committee. After
the news conference, the government employee was verbally reprimanded
for asking the question, Fox told Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss.

Unlike the recent FEMA incident, Fox said the ICE public affairs
official was advised against asking the question, but asked anyway and
did not identify herself as staff. San Antonio reporters knew she was a
public affairs official at the time.

On Oct. 23, reporters were given 15 minutes' notice for what turned
into a staged question-and-answer briefing with FEMA's deputy
administrator about the California fires. No genuine journalists
attended, although they were given a conference call number they could
use to listen in but not ask questions. A half-dozen questions were
asked at the event by FEMA staff members posing as reporters. The White
House and department officials criticized the fake briefing. Two top
FEMA public affairs officials resigned after the incident. Fox told
Thompson that reforms to FEMA's external affairs are already under way.

Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.