The Government Is Building Its Own Media Machine. We Need to Talk About What Comes Next.

There is a phrase appearing at the end of advertisements airing across the United States right now that should make every American stop for a second:

“Paid for by the U.S. Government.”

Normally, that sentence wouldn’t be remarkable.

The federal government pays for advertisements all the time. Public health campaigns. Military recruitment. Disaster preparedness. Government programs people need to know about.

But these advertisements are different.

They feature President Donald Trump. They praise his administration. They promote themes that look remarkably similar to the political messaging Republicans are using heading into the midterm elections.

And taxpayers are paying for them.

The Associated Press reported that the Department of Homeland Security is using $20 million in taxpayer money for the advertising campaign. The money came from funding allocated to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

According to advertising tracking firm AdImpact, more than $2.5 million had already been spent airing the ads in roughly a week.

The White House says these are public service announcements.

Critics, including Democrats, government ethics experts and some Republicans, are questioning why federal money is being used for advertisements that prominently feature and praise a sitting president.

And those questions matter.

But I think we need to look beyond the advertisements themselves.

Because something else has been happening at exactly the same time.

The Trump administration has been fighting with major news organizations over who gets access to the White House and the president.

CNN, MS NOW and Politico have been involved in a legal fight over White House access after the administration moved against their reporters. CNN was subsequently left off an Air Force One trip as the White House continued changing the traditional system governing presidential press access.

Put these stories next to each other.

On one side, the government is spending millions of taxpayer dollars producing its own polished message about the president.

On the other, the administration is asserting greater control over which independent journalists are allowed access to the president and the places where presidential decisions are made.

Those are technically separate stories.

But journalism requires us to notice when separate stories begin pointing toward the same larger question:

Who gets to control the information Americans receive about their government?

And that is where this story becomes much larger.