I'm up waaaay past my bedtime (7:30pm) watching the University of Vermont impossibly stay within 10 points of UConn 2nd half...what you're talking about was in the NY times and also Wired news yesterday - here 'tis -

Manufacturing Consent?

02:00 AM Mar. 17, 2004 PT So much for freedom of the press. The feds are investigating the Bush administration for manufacturing television news segments for which actors were hired to pose as journalists, according to The New York Times. The "video news releases" lauded the benefits of the new Medicare law, which the White House says will help elderly Americans obtain prescription medications. The videos were sent to local stations to be run as part of regular news programs and were aired in several states. Several included footage of the president receiving a standing ovation as he signed the Medicare law. "Those to me are just the next thing to fraud," said the chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists. "It's running a paid advertisement in the heart of a news program."