The Bush administration must be extremely worried about their image if they actually pay someone to write articles in outdoors magazines plugging how their policies enhance wildlife habitat. (How could they possibly fix their image on environmental issues?)

An Agriculture Department agency paid a freelance writer at least $7,500 to write articles touting federal conservation programs and place them in outdoors magazines, according to agency records and interviews.

The Natural Resources Conservation Service hired freelancer Dave Smith in September 2003 to "research and write articles for hunting and fishing magazines describing the benefits of NRCS Farm Bill programs to wildlife habitat and the environment," according to agency procurement documents obtained by The Washington Post through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Source: Washington Post

No wonder Bush always says that he doesn't look at polls. Bush, instead, publishes the news, a potential conflict with the first amendment. Polls usually reflect public opinion of news that is published by news-media outlets (WaPo, NYT, CNN, etc.), and by controlling, or attempting to control, the news-media output by illegally propagandizing administration policies in surreptitiously-written articles and news reports, the Bush administration has made public opinion polls obsolete. The polls are meaningless since the public has been, in essence, an audience to shill news reports paid for by the Bush administration, and thence-derived public opinions have been influenced.

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