Press Release Blast During Media Dinner

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Washington, DC – Last night at the Washington Hilton in upper Dupont Circle neighborhood of the nation’s capital, the overwhelming majority of media personalities that cover politics and government gathered to celebrate their profession.  For evil corporations, however, this was seen as an opportunity to exploit their favorite yearly loophole.

Every year, preparation for a massive press release blast on the evening of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner begins weeks in advance. Legal and public relations teams and outside experts from consulting firms work nearly around the clock to ensure that their company’s talking points on horrible issues they do not wish to discuss are delivered in a clear, concise, and timely manner.

Next week, in a four-part series we will reveal the results of a four-year study conducted by the Gallup Organization and Georgetown University on the controversial practice of corporations, international groups, and politicians releasing mandatory or just downright licentious information precisely when no one is looking. Here, we preview the report.

Normally the Washington press corps is relatively responsible and hard working. However, on the weekend of the “Nerd Prom” as it is called, they are effectively reduced to a childish, drunk, and self-obsessed audience. And so, for years this regularly timed comatose state of affairs has been ideal to release information that will never see the light of day.

Careful analysis by our own sober, investigative reporters (who generously donated their WHCD seats to the male cast of Gossip Girl) uncovered a number of egregious acts buried in relatively mundane press releases published by Washington-based companies and international organizations on Saturday:

* Advanced Builders of Reston, VA has been awarded a non-competitive $12 billion contract for the Iraqi Space Station & Universe Exploration Programme.

* Global Health Consultants of Washington, DC will immediately cease all efforts to stop the spread of cholera in the Middle East and northern Africa. No explanation was given.

* Residential Reliable of Silver Spring, MD has found that deaths last year due to asbestos in their DC-area buildings increased from 3,906 to 4,021, including 457 children under the age of 13.

* Internal Discovery Studios of McLean, VA (a subsidiary of Executive Media, New York, NY) will as of July 1, 2009 conduct all video production  inside living human bodies offshore, most likely in Sierra Leone, with reduced crew costs and more flexible health regulations.

* Mercenary Enterprises of London, UK will no longer support the ongoing Islamic Insurgency in the Philippines due to the increased cost of importing coffee and other supplies for covert troops, and other logistical concerns.

These stories, and others outlined in the full report due next week went largely unnoticed by the Washington Press Corps and their many fans, who watched live on CSPAN, engaged in discussion on Internet chat rooms.  Ana Marie Cox, the creator of the term “Nerd Prom,” aimlessly Twittered her way through the entire weekend for the benefit of thousands of “followers”, informing them about everything from choosing shoes to meeting celebrities.

Other members of the press, according to staff at the Washington Hilton hotel, were simply drunk off their asses from Friday evening until the late hours of Sunday morning, thrilled with the prospect of partying with the likes of Matthew Modine, Forest Whitaker, Brooke Shields, and many other movie and television stars who had nothing better to do on a beautiful weekend than stand in line at crowded open bars and be accosted by Washington’s army of policy wonks.

Meanwhile, important stories about death, destruction, and human rights went unreported. According to reports from our undercover waiter at the event, the young health reporter for the Washington Post was coyly toying with romantic advances from music star Ludacris while Global Health Consultants released their cholera news.  And the Wall Street Journal’s top foreign affairs writer missed news about Mercenary Enterprises’ new plans while he was doing keg stands with Kevin Bacon and John Hamm.

“This circus happens every year,” said journalism and media critic Jay Rosen, a professor at New York University in Manhattan. “Meanwhile, confidence by the American people in the press has been reduced to nearly nothing.” And his fellow critic Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post, in a flurry of witty, ironic detachment, wrote that the event, “is an orgy of self-congratulation, the ultimate black-tied manifestation of the dangerous coziness between Washington’s journalistic elites and the people they cover.”

A long-time bartender at Off the Record, the popular media and White House watering hole in the Hay-Adams hotel, commented that the WHCD is really just a more grandiose manifestation of the behavior he sees daily among the hacks and flacks he serves. “Bunch of drunks,” he said, “but I’ll keep slinging bourbon as long as they keep tipping.”

While proponents of the event see it as good fun and a chance for journalists to understand their sources in a more personal, casual way, the report, titled “Asleep at the Wheel: Sidestepping America’s Press Corps” makes a convincing case that such parties recklessly endanger exactly those people who rely on them the most.

“It’s just sad,” Rosen added. “The curmudgeon class of journalist, an untrustworthy class of elites, has been acting irresponsibly for far too long.”