The Real Fake News

The fake FEMA press conference simply swapped a laborious, outmoded kind of theater for a quick, efficient one. The fake questions were short and simple and elicited the same limited information the briefer would have given real reporters anyway, without having to go through the extended cat-and-mouse routine. But then they had to go and ruin a promising new art form by trying to pass it off as real. FEMA gave real reporters only 15 minutes' notice about the press conference. As a result, none of them could show up. So the agency gave them a phone number to call so they could listen in to the fake reporters, but not ask real questions themselves. Instead of defrauding the American people, they might have simply rescheduled the press conference for a time when reporters could show up. Of course, that's easy to say now, hindsight being 20-20 and all. Put in the same difficult position, how many of you can honestly say you would have had the presence of mind to think of that? OK, all of you. But still.

At least you can say this about the FEMA thespians: even though they knowingly perpetrated a fraud—in one of the highlights of the event, a fake official warns the fake reporters that there will be time for only two more questions—they did it with integrity. The fake reporters didn't let the briefer know in advance what questions they were going to ask him. That would have been dishonest.

© 2007