Medicare administrator Mark McClellan on Tuesday wouldn't rule out using government-produced video news releases in the future to inform seniors about the new Medicare prescription drug benefit.
A congressional agency, the Government Accountability Office, has concluded that the made-for-TV releases, which mimic actual news segments, may violate a ban on government propaganda. But a Justice Department opinion found that they don't as long as the information is truthful.
In testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, McClellan said Medicare would "fully comply with the law" regarding government-made video news releases. But he wouldn't pledge to ban their use, which Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., and Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., pressed him to do.
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.
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