First the Obama Administration changed the White House website’s biographies of former Presidents to tout President Obama’s achievements. Apparently they are now doing it with State Department documents. Amy Payne writing for The Heritage Foundation’s blog The Foundry reports:
The State Department has recently ended its long-running series of Background Notes, which were analytical, objective histories of other countries. In their place, new “Fact Sheets” now tout Obama’s policies and actions toward each nation. No more historical context, no recounting of complex and long-standing issues in the country. Just cut to the chase—that is, the time when the current Administration came to power.
Heritage’s Jim Roberts, one of the editors of Heritage’s Index of Economic Freedom, was struck by the disproportionate change in emphasis while doing some research recently. Roberts, who worked at the State Department from 1982 to 2007 and used to write these country profiles, said he had never seen edits like these under either previous Republican or Democratic Administrations.
Roberts noted that “They seem to be not ‘fact sheets’ but brag sheets,” adding that the edits appear to treat countries more favorably when the Obama Administration agrees with their leaders.
She points out that this is a trend going back to 2009:
This follows an Administration trend that goes back to 2009. In March of that year, the Administration was caught editing President George W. Bush’s biography to soften his listed accomplishments, and it quickly reversed course. Just a few months ago, it was discovered that White House staff had edited the biographies of many past presidents on whitehouse.gov to include a bullet point or two inserting President Obama into each historical narrative. These remain on the site, including a fabrication they inserted about President Ronald Reagan’s tax policy to make it seem similar to Obama’s.
Just another example of the Obama administration campaigning on the taxpayer’s dime. Here is Jim Roberts original post on his findings.