Who the hell is Karen Ryan?
An interesting Columbia Journalism Review story on March 18, 2004 on the Bush administration's use of a hired PR gun claiming to be a journalist in an effort to convince Americans that the Medicare law really is really,r eally good.
As the New York Times first reported Monday, Ryan appears in a number of video news releases made on behalf of the Health and Human Services Department, which tout the controversial new Medicare law and its supposed benefits. The videos -- which end with the voice of a woman signing off, "In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting." -- ran as news on various local TV stations. (To read the full transcript of one of the "news segments" that ran on WBRZ Baton Rouge, go here.)
HHS spokesman Bill Pierce originally described Ryan to us as a "freelance journalist." Pierce at first wouldn't let us speak to Ryan, saying that she was feeling "used and abused" by media accounts calling her an actress. (Perhaps Pierce was referring to an editorial in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, headed "Karen Ryan, You're a Phony," which called her not just an actress but a "hired propagandist".)