To a viewer, each report looked like any other 90-second segment on the local news. In fact, the federal government produced all three. The report from Kansas City was made by the State Department. The "reporter" covering airport safety was actually a public relations professional working under a false name for the Transportation Security Administration. The farming segment was done by the Agriculture Department's office of communications.

Under the Bush administration, the federal government has aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. In all, at least 20 federal agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years, records and interviews show. Many were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the government's role in their production.

Federal agencies, including McClellan's, have sometimes sent video news releases, in which actors portray newscasters reporting on government activities, to television stations for public broadcast. Their use has increased over the last decade as TV news budgets shrank and stations scrambled to make more money from their local news shows.

The material is supposed to alert viewers that it's a government communication, but that can be edited out and TV stations and government policy promotion offices know it. Press reports have charged that the Bush administration, and to a lesser extent the Clinton administration, made it easy to edit out the government's role.

In those instances, video news releases constitute covert propaganda and violate federal laws that prohibit the use of public money for such purposes, according to the GAO

Opponents have limited options here. The administration won't budge, Republicans in Congress won't hold hearings, and Alberto Gonzales' Justice Department hardly seems poised to leap into action to investigate. There's been some talk about the FCC getting involved, but the agency hasn't expressed any interest yet.

Any chance significant public outrage will generate a change? Nah, I didn't think so either.