Pentagon Manipulating TV Analysts

gollum123 notes an extensive article from the NYTimes on the evidence that the military, since the time of the buildup to the Iraq war, has been manipulating the military analysts that are ubiquitous on TV and radio news programs, in a protracted campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration's war efforts. "Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity of military analysts on the major networks, is a Pentagon information apparatus... The effort... has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air. Several dozen of the military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members, or consultants. Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks. ...[M]embers of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated. Some analysts acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their access."

Where The Fault Lies

As much as the Pentagon and the analysts are scummy liars, the real blame lies with the media outfits. Surely there are enough retired officers and enough military historians to use as a counterpoint. I mean, the news agencies had guys on the ground that, even with the limited access the Army gives them, knew from the beginning the problems with the Pentagon's story.

Perhaps one cure to this is to report any particular ties that any given "analyst" has to the Pentagon or the Administration; ie. "Retired General Glubby P. Chummy is employed by Kill Them Bastards Inc., a firm with several contracts with the Pentagon".

Re:Where The Fault Lies

As much as the Pentagon and the analysts are scummy liars, the real blame lies with the media outfits. Surely there are enough retired officers and enough military historians to use as a counterpoint. I mean, the news agencies had guys on the ground that, even with the limited access the Army gives them, knew from the beginning the problems with the Pentagon's story.

But only the Pentagon's hand-picked people got to see anything. Retired military officers don't get to tour military bases or get briefings from top generals and the Secretary of Defense. Media outlets had to choose between sources who were biased and sources who didn't know anything.

Re:Where The Fault Lies

I don't think one needs to have detailed information of this sort of a military initiative to be able to determine the larger picture. Certainly there were people leading up to the war and afterward who were making negative analyses. From the very beginning, there were a number of analysts saying outright that the US had brought an insufficient number of forces into Iraq to secure the country after Hussein's fall. They didn't need the details, they knew because they were either experienced commanders or strategic and tactical experts. These sorts of people are trained to make just such analyses based on incomplete information.

Free media is a myth

To quote The Clash: "You have the right to free speech, so long as you're not dumb enough to actually try it."

News media are very careful to keep onside with the Whitehouse, Pentagon etc. If they don't then they get poor treatment from the media relations people. Instead of having their reporters embedded with frontline troops sending home eye (and advertising) catching footage, they get embedded in the transport depot and they get to film grunts washing trucks.

Instead of getting confirmation for some scoop, the staffers return their call an hour too late, making them miss a deadline.

For that reason, the news companies keep their reporters in check and fire those that do any true investigation. Look what happened to Peter Arnett: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Arnett [wikipedia.org].

Re:Free media is a myth

For that reason, the news companies keep their reporters in check and fire those that do any true investigation. Look what happened to Peter Arnett.

I went to that Wikipedia link expecting to be reminded that Arnett had been fired for criticizing the current Iraq War, and yup, no big surprise, he said something mildly critical on Iraq TV and he got fired for it.

Then I read on, to the section where his daughter "Elsa married conservative law professor John Yoo."

Holy crap. Getting fired for criticizing Bush's War, that's one thing... but having Mr. Torture Memos marry your daughter? The Godfather was a freaking amateur; as punishments/threats go, this blows "severed horse's head in your bed" out of the water!

It's not so simple

News media are very careful to keep onside with the Whitehouse, Pentagon etc.

I used to think that was the case. But watching over the last twenty years or so I've come to realize that it isn't quite that simple.

For example, during the Monica Lewinsky hoopla, it seemed you couldn't look at a newspaper or turn on a TV without hearing more than you wanted to know about the story. They certainly weren't trying to stay on Clinton's good side, even though he was very popular at the time.

Fast forward a decade, and if you keep your eyes peeled you can catch stories like this:

• The United States has suspended Habis Corpus for "enemy combatants" [msn.com]..
• The Bush administration claims the authority to brand anyone (even US citizens) an "enemy combatant" based only on their say-so, with no recourse and no appeal.
• The Bush administration claims the ability to "render" these "enemy combatants", taking them to undisclosed secret prisons without trial or any public record of what happened to them.
• John Yoo thinks it would be legal to crush an enemy combatant's child's testicles [nd.edu] in front of them to get them to talk, the the President were to authorize it.
• Vice president Dick Cheney, Attorney General John Ashcroft, Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice were briefed on Yoo's opinions and used them to craft "enhanced interrogations." [yahoo.com]
• President Bush was aware of these meeting and approved of them [go.com].

So it's not quite as simple as you make it sound.

If a popular president has an extramarital affair, the press shows no fear and shouts it from the rooftops night and day.

But if the least popular president on record [usatoday.com] (backed by his administration) maintains that he has the inherent authority to kidnap US citizens at will and make them watch while his goons crush their children's testicles, the "free press" covers his butt so well that if you blink you'll miss the story.

--MarkusQ

Ok, a salacious scandal then...

If a popular president has an extramarital affair, the press shows no fear and shouts it from the rooftops night and day.

But if the least popular president on record (backed by his administration) maintains that he has the inherent authority to kidnap US citizens at will and make them watch while his goons crush their children's testicles, the "free press" covers his butt so well that if you blink you'll miss the story.

I think you're trying to attribute to politics something that has a rather simple alternative explanation. In the eyes of the public (and therefore the press):

Salacious scandal >>> any other type of scandal

Ok, let's pick a salacious scandal then. Surely you remember these stories:

1. The White House was caught sneaking a fake reporter in to ask softball questions at White House press breifings [cbsnews.com]
2. Although he was a fake journalist it turned out he was a real bona fide male prostitute [washingtonpost.com]
3. It then came to light that, according to White House visitor logs, he had visited the White House on dozens of days when there were no press functions, and sometimes did not check out till the next day [rawstory.com]
4. After a protracted period of wrangling during which the administration claimed White House visitor logs were protected by executive privilege a court finally ordered the White House to turn over its visitor logs almost a year ago [alternet.org]
5. The White House is still refusing [google.com] to let anyone see their visitor logs, even though previous presidents considered them open public records.

So where's the media circus? Why haven't we heard about this to the blue dress and blood on the glove level that other similar stories get? Why do they just report it tiny bits and pieces and then let each one fade quietly into the night?

--MarkusQ

Re:Where The Fault Lies

Nah. I place the real blame with the average news consumer who is not at all interested in truth, merely entertainment. Seems many people these days only want an answer for what ails them. A true answer is not needed. Same with the war. The truth was easy to spot before the war, but it was not in demand, so people easily swallowed the lie others offered instead. Can you imagine how the poor average viewer would feel if they saw the true results of their indifference to the realities of htis war before it started. Patriotism indeed!

Just like the current elections. How much of what is being bantered about is truth? "I will","When I am elected" and other such comments are not truths but are promises. The truths are only in the past and many of those are unfulfilled promises. As easily as this country was sold on an Iraq invasion in spite of all of the evidence to the contrary, it does not say much about the average Joe citizen's desire for truth or real factual news..

There are publications out there that produce news. Mostly unbiased news. They cost money. They are not free. They are not cheap. Why? Because only a relatively small part of the population is interested in what they have to say. So, they do not get a mass market to sell ads to. They do not get a large distribution to spread costs over. What they do get are people who want to know what is really happening and are willing to pay for that knowledge.

The media outfits are an entertainment industry. They are paid based upon number of copies sold and ad value based on reader rates. They are not in any way shape or form paid based upon factual news. They are only paid to provide what a large enough market segment wants to make the paper profitable. So, you can blame the media, but you would be asking them to go out of business by providing the cold hard truth to people who do not want it. They Brittany. They want Baseball. They want lots of meaningless stuff.

InnerWeb

not monocausative

a wise history professor of mine taught that no problem is monocausative. it's true. putting blame on one single entity and piling on the shame ignores the other contributing factors to the problem, and allows them to continue unabated.

of course the media outfits share some of the blame, but to say the "real" blame lies with them does not hold the Pentagon, Bush administration, and the American people accountable. They all share the "real" blame, and the ACTUAL people who are lying (aka the generals) get the lion's share of that blame. It's their words first and foremost.

"the media" isn't one entity. The propaganda machine described in the NYTimes article is primarily for TV News. Standards and practices vary wildly between types of newsmedia. I, like many, hate the jerry-springerization of what has in the past been thought of as "tv news". Fox News is #1 on this list by a mile...it just isn't journalism in any traditional sense. But, it gets high ratings.

Notice I didn't say "alot of people watch". Ratings are a survey of a (supposedly) representative sample. Neilsen and others do a horrible job of providing information to advertisers about what people actually watch. This is an ancient problem of perception in TV that pre-dates cable, CNN, etc. Ratings in their current incarnation simply do not accurately reflect what people watch and why, and it skews the business decisions at the top of the news companies and for the advertisers.

Yes, the american people share in this blame. American government was intended to be advanced government. To work well, the electorate has to be on its toes, savvy, and not easily manipulated. Sadly, the opposite is the case (on it's ass, dumb as shit, and very easily manipulated).

Other posters on this story also say predictable /. stuff like:

1. "The NYTimes reported it but they are just as bad!!1!!1!1" That's just not the case. The NYtimes answers that criticism directly [nytimes.com] and provides links to prove it. Let's see someone step up and give equal or better counter evidence. Be sure to include links to specific NYTimes articles by generals mentioned in the report, and show how they connect directly with Pentagon propaganda campaigns about the war.

2. "How is this news, we all know the Bush administration is corrupt and manipulative beyond measure!!!1!!!1!1" The part that makes this news is that WE CAN PROVE IT. The systematic "psy-ops" manipulation of public opinion by the Pentagon is provable in court. That is news.

TV news has a long way to go. A good first step is to never, ever watch Fox News (unless to mock it), and deride anyone who does. Sure CNN isn't blameless, but Fox News was the main offender.

Re:Where The Fault Lies

I came here to question how "objectivity" and "major networks" get put so close together in a for-real sentence. I mean, seriously. Even if you were to find that they report objectively on what they do report (which they don't), you'll find that they also slant the news by what they choose to report in the first place. I'm trying to figure out where Pentagon manipulation figures into it.

Re:Where The Fault Lies

hahah funny, Pentagon - Bush manipulating the media!!! If thats the case they need to hire a new propaganda minister, as the media rips them for no other reason than to just rip them. Seriously sounds like some stupid far fetched idea that came out of a blog with no reference.

Seriously, you have no recollection of all the horseshit we were fed through the media in the months just before and after the war started?

Re:Where The Fault Lies

I just thought 9/11 was carte blanche for the USA to clean house of all of its enemies in the middle east.

We kinda had the bigger problem of dealing with Al-Qaeda at the time. Bush used that excuse to go off and do something completely different, so now Al-Qaeda is gaining strength again and we're having more trouble hanging on in Afghanistan. We're not getting much help these days either since he fucking blew away all the goodwill we had before the war.

Saddam was enough of a dick that a quick war to take his out would have been well worth it.

Some of us were paying attention when the experts were telling Bush and the Pentagon that we couldn't do the mission with so few troops. If you're gonna go off and do something that people don't think you should do, then you better fucking at least get it done right. He deserves every bit of hate and badmouthing that he's getting now.

I mean, come on, if Bush had pulled it off, knocked off Saddam but kept Iraq from falling apart, and right now Iraq was pumping 5 million barrels a day to keep gas prices at around $1.50 / gallon, who would even care about the whether the war was honest or not?

They've created a hell of a lot more problems for us than we had before the war, for something that had nothing to do with anything. If we want to fix our problems with the Middle East, the first thing we should be doing is devoting as much resources as possible to figuring out how we can quit being dependent on them! This is what the country gets for electing a jackass wannabe cowboy. I hope people remember this the next time they decide they want to "vote for the guy I feel like I could go out and have a beer with". I have plenty of friends I can have a beer with, but I sure wouldn't want them running the country.

They're just emulating the Drive By Media

Soldiers coming back from Iraq are constantly complaining that the war that is being described by the media is not the same one they're experiencing in the field.

How very very sad.

Bill Hicks was an optimist :-(

No News Is Bad News

Have you noticed that none of the corporate mass media outlets that are fundamentally condemned by the research results in that report have talked about it at all, even though the cat is now out of the bag?

That sound of crickets is the strongest proof that the corporate mass media is totally broken, and far worse than useless. It helped lie us into a catastrophic war, it helped distract us first from destroying our real enemies in the Qaeda, other terrorist networks, and their soulmates in office in this country, and now continues to lie and distract as we finally get another chance to pick a new government to lead us out of this valley of death.

But who cares, if someone, somewhere, isn't wearing a (made in China) lapel pin?

At least there's some coverage of this epochal story, on the Web. I wish the corporate mass media would hurry up and die already. It's blocking the view of the wreckage it's wrought.

Basic Ideas

1. The enemy of every state are it's own people, since they carry the power (dictatorship or not) to remove them from their position of privilege.

2. In poorly regulated capitalist countries with huge war (now called "defense") industries, there are always increasing needs to fight wars to fund the industry.

3. Once the media is profit based, it's in their interest to keep access and sell fear by helping to advance government/corporate goals.

Notice the drastic difference in public discourse in Britain where the BBC is taxpayer funded but not owned by the interest of any corporate entity, and America where the truth comes second to the dollar. In my opinion, as long as state-owned industries are open and easily reformed by the populace, they are far superior to the closed door dealings of private corporations.

No one has a "right" to what I would call obscene wealth - making 300 times your average employee for no reason other than the board is stuffed with your friends. And whether this wealth is possible only through human suffering matters very little to the robber barons at the top. It's not their kids losing limbs and lives over there, it's the economic draftees who are given the choice between getting shot at by local criminals or having a gun themselves to shoot back at "terrorists," who, as every other citizen of a civilization has done since time began, do not wish to be bound by foreign chains.

anyone hear of yellow journalism? the uss maine?

people react to this revelation as if there was some sort of mythical time and place where the media was pure as snow and that the arrival of gw bush has somehow corrupted it

folks, this is standard operating procedure, always has been, and ALWAYS WILL BE. here's a story: war hawks trump up a lie about military activities in a country they want to invade. 2003? no, 1898:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism#Spanish-American_War [wikipedia.org]

people need to realize the media has always been corrupt, always has been ideological, always had an aggressive agenda, and always will be, and people need to have a better appreciation for the value of a robust bullshit meter

the proper response to this story about pentagon manipulations is not "how can we clean up the media", because you can't, but "what was wrong with me when i thought the media could ever be pure?"

the ideal world is not a fair and impartial media: this is a ridiculous fairy tale beleived by naive fools. the ideal world is openly ideological media, OF EVERY IDEOLOGICAL STRIPE. then let the viewer pick and choose what he or she thinks is true based on his or her own proclivities

the danger is a country that tries to systematically shut down right-leaning media, or a country that tries to systematically shut down a left-leaning media, or only has a state controlled media. no: give us fox news, and give us cnn, and msnbc, and give us anyone else who wants to play the game, and let all of the ideologies screm all of the manipulations and propaganda they want as loud as they want

and thereby train the general populace to have a muscular bullshit meter

that is the best you can do, and its not the worst case scneario, its the best: you don't get a healthy bullshit meter in an environment of no propaganda. you only get a healthy bullshit meter by being exposed to ever increasing toxic doses of propaganda, until you are immune

think about it: a "pure" media would spawn a general population with weak, flabby minds, blindly trusting whatever the media said. meanwhile, a corrupt, vicious lying media with screaming propaganda and subtle outright manipulation everywhere would breed strong distrustful minds. the caveat being of course, is that both the left and right be allowed to play this game, that there be more than one media outlet

(sidebar: if you believe all media companies are pretty much the same, with the same ideological spin: congratulations, you're a fringe character. you are either so far left or so far right, you can't tell the difference between mildly left or mildly right, it all looks the same to you. in whcih case, being on the fringe, you simply don't matter)

so those of you who grieve at the rise of fox news: celebrate it friend: all diseases need an innoculation. consider fox news a vaccination against propaganda. turn it on, let your mind soak in it. its not poisoning you, you are building resistance to a disease

The problem is the lack of a free speech culture

It's all very well to have free speech written into the constitution, but it's another to have a culture of free speech. Ultimately, it's the culture that is more important. American teenagers grow up thinking that free speech means freedom for individuals to put the word 'fuck' on their T-shirts with no conception that it is one of the ways we keep tyrannies in check and enable the free flow of ideas that leads to the betterment of society. It's easy to get sidelined by trivial free speech issues like nipples at the superbowl and forget that the media should be one of the channels by which we find out if we are heading for tyranny.

Consider Britain during the Thatcher era. Britain lacks strong constitutional free speech protections and so the government imposed a ban on broadcasting the speech of Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams (of whom I am no supporter BTW). But the media had a culture of free speech regardless of the law and found ways to work around it, eg. by dubbing video of Adams. A strong culture will trump laws. Unfortunately, Americans are sitting on their laurels and taking their free speech for granted. It's not good enough to be written into law if Americans don't work at it.

piece of the action?

It's not the military's job to shape our hearts and minds.
Their job is to fight and win wars. (hopefully wars that are just) and nothing else.

Re:So?

"...traditional anti-war bias found in the mainstream media?"

WTF are you smoking and where can I get some? The US media has always been (and always will be) a cheerleader for every war the US government engages in.

The real issue here is not that the Pentagon sought to entrench their own paid mouthpieces in every corporate media outlet--but that the mainstream corporate media was willingly complicit in this propaganda campaign and utterly failed to provide any alternate viewpoints against the war.

All of the information the US government put out to argue their case for war has been proven false. Plenty of information and sources refuting these official lies were available *before* the war began. Yet the media failed to provide anti-war voices the same platform and megaphone that they all-too-willingly gave to stooges working for the Pentagon and corporations that stood to benefit from the war.

Of course, this is the history of the media under capitalism in a nutshell. Truth (or facts, if you prefer) and the public interest are always trumped by the profit motive and corporations' inherent interest in supporting whichever government they depend upon for largess.

Re:Ugh

instead the mantra, is we lost, go home. we will be left alone if we just let them be. yeah right. anyone here have a bully in middle school?

Yeah.

how well did ignoring him/her work out for you?

Remember the mantra is 'go home'. They never bothered me at home.

and yes, i am saying we arent the bully here. if someone hadnt knocked the books out of our hands we wouldnt have done anything violent.

When exactly did Iraq knock the books out of our hands?

Re:Duh

If you want to understand why righties think it is treasonous to protest an ongoing war

      Dr. Goebbels would be so proud of you.

      This "war" is a misuse of an army to "police" a civilian population. They've even finally given up on calling them "terrorists" and "insurgents" and are now calling the resistance "criminals". Only with the possibility of facing summary execution if they act suspiciously or carry something that looks like a weapon.

      Soldiers are not policemen, and they never will be. Soldiers mixed with civilian populations for any great period of time THROUGHOUT HISTORY have only brought disastrous results - usually at the expense of the civilians.

      But you are saying that people should passively accept this COMPLETE misunderstanding of what an Army is supposed to do. We should continue to pay for the continued deployment of troops that are the CAUSE of the resistance in the first place? Remember that we're paying this two ways - first, the government is (again) borrowing money to fund the war. Money that could have been saved, or could have been spent on infrastructure HERE. AND you are also paying directly with $118/barrel oil.

      And you think we should just be quiet, otherwise the "terrorists win"? My friend, the terrorists have ALREADY won. America has changed its way of life, spent a shitload of money, lost a lot of troops and equipment (not to mention the injured), and polarized the entire arab world against it more than ever. Mission Accomplished.

      One thing is treason, another thing is "Intelligence". Is it treason when a government acts against the wishes of 70% of its people? Should we hang the 70%?

The single cause fallacy

AND you are also paying directly with $118/barrel oil.

There are just a few other contributors to that, you know -- including some major fields currently down due to the effects of weather, but mostly because China is on a major petroleum buying binge. Total demand for the stuff in the last five years is up a lot, while the dollar is down.

Put another way, the price of oil in Euros isn't up nearly as much.

Re:And...

Right now in Iraq, the bad guys can turn on CNN and see that America is teetering on the decision to give up and leave. That fact alone keeps them going -- they know that they just have to hold on a little bit longer and then they'll have it... while our soldiers are still in danger, and while the bad guys are still watching our media to see if they are wearing us down, will you please shut the hell up and cheer for our side?!

What you're saying might be true for a traditional, (a)symmetrical war. The problem with Iraq War is that as a direct result of improper post-invasion planning, the situation has gotten out of control; anyone's control. Foreign fighters are only a minor fraction of those committing the violence in Iraq. Most of the violence is from an ongoing civil war that the U.S. media and Bush administration has failed to acknowledge.

Not acknowledging that Iraq is in a civil war is that it leads to all kinds of incorrect conclusions. First of all, given our current troop strength and moral stance, we can't realistically kill our way to victory. Our success is ultimately limited by the Iraqi people's capacity to forgive and forget hundreds of years of animosities and grievances, and for whatever reason, they aren't willing or able to do it. Now, we could technically take the Iraqis out of the equation, by either casting our lot in with a particular faction and committing ethnic genocide ourselves or locking down the country so hard that an insurgency isn't possible. The first would be immoral and geopolitically problematic. The latter would likely require a tripling or quadrupling of our troop presence (> 500,000 combat troops, according to prewar estimates, which might not even apply now) which would require a draft, unprecedented amount of international support, and a huge increases in spending.

Simply acknowledging the fact that Iraq is in a state of civil war also greatly informs our endgame view. The people fighting in Iraq aren't going to cheer, declare a victory, and just stop if--when--we leave. Oh, no, it's going to be a mess and nobody is going to be a be able to claim a victory. This includes Al Qaeda, a Sunni organization whose kinsmen will likely be marginalized and ethnically cleansed. Furthermore, we can't wait this out. Whether we stay in Iraq for 16 months or 100 years, unless we do something to dramatically alter the underlying conflict, there will be violence and instability when we leave. A better way to look at this is through a cost-benefit analysis. Does a prolonged U.S. presence in Iraq realistically offer a better outcome and does this justify the cost in money and U.S. serviceman lives over such a longer period? I hate to say it, but the math doesn't add up.

-Grym

Re:Umm...and this is NEWS???

Yes, yes it is. Military is supposed to be defending the freedoms of the people. If the media is against them, then tough shit. The solution to that is not propaganda.