WASHINGTON, Oct. 28, 2007
At FEMA Your IQ Must Be Below This Line
Schieffer: Just Fire The People Responsible For The Disaster Agency's Fake News Conference
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Schieffer: Fed Up With FEMA
Bob Schieffer says that FEMA should try to build good publicity by actually helping people, not by staging phony press conferences with planted employees asking the questions.
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Vice Adm. Harvey E. Johnson, FEMA's deputy director, answers questions from FEMA staffers. (CBS)
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The last time I was at Disney World, they had sticks of a certain height stuck in the ground with signs that said something like: "You must be this tall to ride this ride."
FEMA, the disaster relief agency, must use a variation of that to hire its public relations staff.
Somewhere on their employment application form there must be a clause that says "Your IQ must be below a certain level to work here."
How else to explain FEMA's action last week when it staged a phony news conference where its employees posed as reporters and threw softball questions to agency leaders so they could tell us what a good job they were doing at the California fires?
Mind you, this is the same FEMA once headed by Michael Brown - he of "Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job" fame - that fell on its face during Katrina. While New Orleans drowned, Brownie's PR people busied themselves by E-mailing Brownie to roll up his sleeves before TV interviews so it would look like he was working hard.
Department of Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff said he found the phony news conference offensive, and, since it is an emergency relief outfit, I have some emergency suggestions for him.
Fire these people and the people who hired them and then explain to the new people that the best way for a disaster relief agency to get good publicity is to do a good job helping disaster victims.
As part of a massive new PR campaign you might even consider taking the PR staff from behind their desks and sending them to deliver food and water to the fire victims.
Now that would make a great story.
By Bob Schieffer
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See all 52 CommentsAnother black eye on the presidency of the US.
But where was the outrage for the fake news conference that lead us to war? On March 6, 2003, thirteen days before the war, President Bush staged an dramatic event with the White House Press Corps (including CBS''s Mark Knoller). To viewers of the televised event, it appeared to be an authentic press conference, with reporters striving to be called on by the President, and the President fielding unrehearsed questions regarding the upcoming war with Iraq. Of course, all the questions were fully scripted ahead of time. The reporters knew who would be called next, and were merely acting when they were pretending to try to get called on by the President.
This may be only the most egregious example of a long history of cooperation between the mainstream media and the Bush Administration to produce fake news.
FEMA might think that it is the media with an IQ below a certain line, since historically the press has been completely willing to buy this type of spin. After all, both FOX News and MSNBC both carried this latest FEMA fake press conference live. There was no indication from those first news reports that this event was not genuine.
No exceptions!
News conferences in Washington are phony anyway. Stupid or lazy reporters ask softball questions; glib politicians give canned answers; there''s no meaningful follow up; everyone knows the "script" and no one in the mainstream media has the guts to call a lie a lie. (George Bush''s exaggerations about SCHIP for example).
By Schiffer''s standards, everyone in the mainstream media deserves to be fired, which, come to think of it, may not be such a bad idea....
mscroggins3
So some smart guys came up with the idea of weakening the governement by getting inside and creating the conditions for public failures, so that people would begin to lose respect and question taxes more. So they cut funding (never entirely, just enough to cause problems). They put inexperienced and incompetent people in charge (easy when you have limited funds to compete with corporations for talent and experience).
Not just FEMA... look at cell phone companies and their burdensome contracts (and how they drop you if you try to talk to them about service or billing too much)... look at credit card companies and banks with outrageous fees and contracts that force you to waive your right to sue them if you disagree... look at the dangerous drugs that made it to market despite known problems...
The Emperor is, however, somewhat upset that the "trick" was discovered at the FEMA "news" conference and has indicated that he wants greater secrecy at future conferences, as he does not want all the people he promised prompt FEMA aid to in California, to discover that they really won''t be getting one thin dime!
HAIL TO THE TRICKSTER IN THE WHITE HOUSE!!!
HAPPY HALLOWEEN TO ALL THOSE WHO BELIEVE THE GREAT EMPEROR BUSH II !!!
SIG HEIL, BUSH!!!
PS Great comments from everybody :)
In the private sector, companies that do not succeed in meeting the demands of consumers will fail. How ironic it is that government gets rewarded for failure?
No exceptions!
Posted by rayuk at 02:55 PM : Oct 28, 2007
+ rep
Agreed. Anyone voting for Republican''s after all the failure we''ve seen from them doesn''t deserve better.
I have never voted democrat in my life, and this time, as long as Hillary Clinton is NOT on the ballot, I just might find myself voting a straight democrat ticket.
Bush Jr. set the bar for intelligence in public agencies to historically low levels when he took the oath of office.
In the private sector, companies that do not succeed in meeting the demands of consumers will fail. How ironic it is that government gets rewarded for failure?
Posted by JT_Lancer at 06:42 PM : Oct 28, 2007
You can''t be more wrong. When private sector companies do not succeed in meeting demands of consumers, the companies get bailed out and the CEO''s get multi million dollar golden parachutes. (see Chrysler, NWA, Big Oil, Ford, the list goes on...)
Mr. Schieffer,
Do you really believe that Chertoff and Cheney were unaware of this effort?
Good job Ricey!
comparing business and private companies is not very useful. government is an extension of the people and is funded by us to serve our needs. business is an extension of the owners/shareholders and exists to make money for them.
Sometimes serving needs is expensive, and it is a knee-jerk reaction to assume that money would not improve these agency services. Money buys things and hires good people to manage things. If you are short on supplies and talent, money can often fix that. It is the same in the "private sector"-- a project that fails often leads to more investors, hiring consultants, more advertising, incentive bonus programs.
The lesson is not that more funding is always a bad idea, the lesson is that the proper funding is a good idea.
CHERTOFF NO. CHENEY, WELL YES, HE WAS PROBABLY NAPING AT THE BREIFING.
SERIOUSLY FOLKS, NO, YOU CAN''T BE SERIOUS WITH THIS KIND OF DUMBER THAN DUMB EFFORTS TO OUTRIGHT LIE TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. JUST MORE OR THE SAME FROM THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION, THAT HAS BEEN LYING TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE FOR NEARLY SEVEN YEARS.
TAKE A HINT FROM CHENEY HIMSELF;
"WAKE UP AMERICA"............
STAYYYYYYYYYY THE COURSE.......
Posted by fairandbal at 10:27 PM : Oct 28, 2007
Bush has demonstrated time after time that he has no real prowess in selecting competent staff.
Remember when Cheney was asked to find a running mate for Dubya. Cheney''s choice was himself, and Dubya said "OK".
He then went on to Rove, Rumsfeld, Michael Brown, Gonzales, etc., etc., etc.
The only solid choice, Powell, was prostituted before the U.N like a $2 *** and bailed.
From an adminstration that holds its new conferences on military bases and gives the troops questions to to ask this suprises us why?
So, congratulations to Bob Schieffer for revealing the truth about FEMA''s phony news conference.
If you can out a CIA agent without paying any price, staging a phony presser is small potatoes.
I''m in the private sector. We don''t have these perks.
I''m in the private sector. We don''t have these perks.
I''m in the private sector. We don''t have these perks.
...and impeach The Chimp and Dr Evil.
Yes there are some very good people in public service and governement jobs. I have worked with many. But sadly the numbers are dwindling. It used to be that an ambitious and talented person could do public service and gain experience in government jobs and having worked for an agency was a plus even though the pay might be a little lower. Unfortunately now government agencies have a bad rep, so for example a few years as a manager for FEMA doesn''t help your career now like it used to. And that attitude is hurting FEMA and agencies when they try to hire people: it is a vicious cycle.
There is no real outrage, though, so they really got away with it. One of these days FEMA will grow up and become a real emergency services organization.... I hope.
The group has degenerated from a civilian service organization to a Pentagon wing of the military. They only serve the president''s wishes.
Recently, they awarded Halliburton''s KBR nearly $400 million to build detention camps here in the USA - WHY?
Forget the organization, reconstruct America instead.
You definitely need to get out of your cave for a just a little while each day.
Schieffer is one of the most rational comentators in the media.
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