If you are unfamiliar with HARO, it is a service that reverses the usual dynamic between reporters and PR people. Traditionally, PR pros pitch stories to journalists who, more often than not, spare no amount of energy and effort to avoid them like the plague. With HARO, however, it is the reporters who reach out to the PR community for information, stories, and sources. PR people sign up to receive three e-mails per day containing queries from reporters. Typical examples include:

Summary: Looking for food trucks that have gone brick-and-mortar Name: [deleted] (The Associated Press)

Category: General Email: [deleted] Media Outlet: The Associated Press Deadline: 12:00 PM EST - 21 July Query: Trying to track down food trucks that are so popular they've been able to open real restaurants.

If you are a PR pro trying to get earned media coverage for your client, contacts through HARO can be a real boon.

It can be a boon as well for partisan political hacks looking for yet another avenue to work a preferred narrative into the news cycle. For example, if you are a communication staffer at the RNC, the CATO Institute or the Heritage Foundation, you might just jump up on your desk and dance a little jig when you see a reporter from ABC News actively soliciting stories about "government waste" at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. You might have to do no more than pull up the bullet points from your latest e-mail blast on that very topic.

It is interesting that ABC, in developing a story about "government waste" is targeting HUD. HUD’s mission is "to create strong, sustainable, inclusive communities and quality affordable homes for all." Why, that sounds like socialism! Just ask Michael Steele or any teabagger, they’ll tell you.

Interesting also is the fact that this exposé of "government waste" is taking place against the backdrop of a move to further dismantle the social safety net in order to protect tax breaks for the rich. Very serious people tell us that reducing Social Security benefits, for example, is absolutely necessary if we are going to reduce the budget deficit.

No "serious" pundits or reporters, however, are discussing any reductions in the bloated U.S. defense budget, which exceeds the military budgets for every other nation on earth combined. If one were interested, one could no doubt find endless stories about massive government waste in the vast sums doled out to defense contractors for weapons that America doesn’t even need.

But instead of looking at defense, along comes ABC News to blow the lid off of government waste at HUD, an agency that does things like:

ABC will almost certainly find plenty of ammo for this hit piece on an agency that exists to assist average Americans in times of hardship. After all, that is what they’re looking for. The network has already decided that there is "waste spending in HUD." This is the story that the reporters and producers on this hit piece have been assigned to deliver. They will deliver it. The outcome is a foregone conclusion.

And when the narrative of waste and abuse and socialism at HUD becomes the next right-wing freakout du jour, remember, you read it here first.