Indianapolis Star Upset Gov. Pence Is Creating State-Run Media Service Modeled After Obama White House Press Service

It really bothers me how much government at all levels spends hiring people to work as public information officers, who I think are better described as disinformation agents since they spend most of the time trying to make us believe everything except the truth about what the government is really doing to us. In the 1970s, the Church Committee uncovered the fact that the CIA had a large percentage of the national media folks we relied upon to provide factual news reporting on their payroll under its infamous Operation Mockingbird Project so the news disseminated to the public was even more tainted.

The Obama White House has taken disinformation to an entirely new level, producing its own stories, photos and videos of the President and his administration's actions on a daily basis, which it expects the White House Press Corp to rely upon as opposed to regular access to the President and key administration officials for press availabilities. If that's not bad enough, various news reports indicate the Obama White House is reviewing and revising press reports prepared by the supposed independent news organizations before they're published or aired.

So I had to chuckle at the reaction of the folks over at the Indianapolis Star today to their discovery that Gov. Mike Pence is launching his own state-run news service modeled after President Obama's White House Press Office called "JustIn." "Gov. Mike Pence is starting a state-run taxpayer-funded news outlet that will make pre-written news stories available to Indiana media, as well as sometimes break news about his administration, according to documents obtained by The Indianapolis Star," the story by Tom LoBianco opens. The Star's political columnist Matt Tully chimes in, "A state-run news agency?" "What in the name of Vladimir Putin is the Pence administration thinking? His administration is calling it "Just IN." But, I'm sorry, that's the last time you'll ever hear me call it that. This is a propaganda outlet, plain and simple."

Excuse me if the only thing that comes to mind is "Casablanca's" Captain Renault's "I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here." If Matt Tully is worried about propaganda, perhaps he should re-read the columns he's written over the past few years. Some of us have a difficult time discerning any journalistic quality in most of what he writes about. One need only read the talking points laid out in the press releases of the various members of the downtown mafia to know what to expect in his columns. He protests a bit too much.

Instead of complaining about Pence's JustIN project, the Star's reporters for starters should be asking questions about why the Bureau of Motor Vehicles has taken the job of making Indiana license plates away from Indiana prison inmates at the Department of Corrections and outsourced it to a California-based company purportedly to save money--$14.4 million over five years to be precise. Seriously? A company called Intellectual Technology, Inc. can really make license plates cheaper than the prison inmates paid no more than a few dollars a day for their work? Why doesn't the BMV tell us why they really want this private company making our license plates? Doesn't it have something to do with intelligence gathering capabilities embedded in the license plates? Ah, yes. More big brother watching over us. More importantly, the private contractor can make big campaign contributions those lowly prison inmates are incapable of making.