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Pentagon Reveals News Correction Unit
Jonas Wisser writes "BBC is reporting that a newly created Pentagon unit has a mandate to fight 'inaccurate' news stories. From the article: 'The Pentagon has set up a new unit to focus on promoting its message across 24-hour rolling news outlets, and particularly on the internet. [...] A Pentagon memo seen by the Associated Press news agency said the new unit will "develop messages" for the 24-hour news cycle and aim to "correct the record". A spokesman said the unit would monitor media such as weblogs and would also employ "surrogates", or top politicians or lobbyists who could be interviewed on TV and radio shows.'"
1984 called... It wants it's news story back.
My UID is prime and so is this number: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0.
Well, obviously this is a blatant attempt to . Anyone can see that!
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
Clearly, the US military now officially has its spending priorities correct. Who gives a damn about winning the bloody war, or setting Iraq's forces straight so that they don't get knocked up like cheap hookers every time they set foot outside their barracks?
No-- this is more important by far. The Pentagon really does need to be fighting a press war with hairy-assed, unemployed bloggers operating out of their mothers' basements. They also need more lobbyists and politicians on their payroll, because if they don't win the war for the US, nothing else can.
Astonishing. Just astonishing.
so what's to be done? We always knew this would happen. What can we do about it?
President Bush has said recently that terror groups were trying to influence public opinion in the US, describing their efforts as the "war of ideas"
What, are we afraid of ideas? Is a war of guns and bombs better? If the people of the world are trying to influence our thinking, should we ignore them or should we listen? Who knows better about the problems of their part of the world than them? Do the Generals in the Pentagon know whats better for people across the world than their own leaders?
I, for one, have been plagued by crimethink. Historically I have been unable to bellyfeel the blackwhite of this administration. No longer! May this glorious new program free us *all* from the perils of oldthink!
Correct the misunderstanding that Iraq did not have WMD
Correct the misunderstanding that the Iraq war did not actually end when GB said it did
Correct the misunderstanding that Iraq is not a nice place to be now
Correct the misunderstanding that several US interrogation techniques are actually torture
Corrent the misunderstanding that there are not hordes of rabid terrorists queueing up to kill each and every last one of us
And we used to laugh at the attempts of TAS to 'enlighten us'
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
This rapid walk away from democracy in the name of democracy is frightning .
Has there been any instance in our nation's military history where we've won a war without a successful propaganda effort? From the Revolutionary War to the Civil War to WWII and Vietnam, we have won wars where propaganda was relatively successful and lost when it was not.
People who think that the military doing propaganda is wrong/evil/unprecedented have never taken an honest look at history.
Get over it people, this is not 1984, this is trying to do a much scaled back version of what we have always done in the past.
FTFA:
``The Bush administration does not believe the true picture of events in Iraq has been made public, the BBC's Justin Webb in Washington says.''
Well, I don't believe so, either. If the true picture had been made public right from the beginning, popular support for the war would probably have been so low that the government wouldn't have dared to go to war in the first place.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
This has been a great eight years! I always wanted to know what it was like to live in China, and now we keep getting closer every day! :)
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
Is that what it'll take for people to wake up?
It's getting pretty insanely ridiculous. Our government runs military detention camps in other totalitarian regimes, simply to skirt the law requiring trials in America. Congress has allowed our spy agencies to watch American citizens without probable cause. The Executive branch has condoned and practiced torture of untried suspects -- torture to any person with senses intact, which the perpetrators would never submit to themselves -- and half of the American public has gladly cheered them on.
Now we've suspended the Writ of Habeas Corpus and given the President the power to deploy troops domestically. Is it really any surprise there are agencies paid with our tax money to spread pro-government propaganda?
The only thing surprising is that so many Americans are still looking up with worshipful puppy eyes -- at the leaders who pretend to protect them while stealing their wealth, liberty, and lives.
Sounds suspiciously like a rehash of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Strategic_I nfluence
In fact, there would be a problem if the Defense Department (or any other government bureaucracy that disseminates news to the public) did not do something like this.
In the old days, respectable news outlets could be counted on to check their sources and accurately report the news coming out of the defense department. The number of organizations deliving news to the populace was few, so if inaccurate information was given to the public, all it took was a phone call from the defense department press liason to a news outlet to straighten out the facts so that the news outlet had the opportunity to report the defense department's official version of events.
Now with the internet and bloggers on all sides of the political spectrum from Matt Drudge to Arianna Huffington, the loudest and most obnoxious rumors based strictly on hearsay from "unnamed sources" often become "facts" in the minds of the populace at large, due to the fact that a lie told often enough, often becomes truth in the minds of the public.
And with respect to governments and other international organizations that are hostile to the interests of the United States, including terrorist organizations like Al-Qaeda or Hezbollah, they have no moral or ethical qualms about feeding their politicized version of events to unprofessional amateur journalists that are desperate for attention and website hits, also known as "Bloggers".
Now, does that mean that the defense department does not actively put out propaganda of its own which is of dubious nature when it comes to its "truthiness"? Of course not, and how much "truth" you believe comes out of the defense department mostly comes down to how much you trust the defense department in the first place. If you are a hardcore liberal, then you probably are more likely to believe Osama Bin Laden's propaganda than anything Donald Rumseld says, and if you are of the neo-con flavor, then anything Donald Rumsfeld or George Bush or any of the generals say is gospel to you.
Nevertheless, it is ridiculous to get all worked up about whether or not the defense department is working to counter the propaganda of political interests both domestically and abroad who are willing to lie incessantly about the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan because they feel that the worse America does in Iraq, the more political brownie points their favored party gets in the long run.
The sad thing is that the people on both ends of the political spectrum will pass second hand "facts" from dubious sources around so much between each other that eventually they begin to believe their own bullshit and then when the real facts and truth come to the surface, they are unwilling to accept them (sort of like how the 9/11 World Trade Center conspiracy theories have been debunked so many times, yet many people continue to believe they were controlled demolitions by the Israeli Mossad).
Get your news from multiple and diverse news outlets and any reasonably intelligent person can sort out the bullshit from the facts and get a general idea of what the real truth happens to be. Of course, that requires more effort than listening to just one news outlet or another that tends to report the news in a way that just reaffirms your existing world view, but at least you will be more likely to spot propaganda when you see it.
For me the red line has been crossed in 2003 when I read two report of the same news, one from France, saying "Kofi Anna has qualified the attack on Iraq as illegal" and the second, from MSNBC, saying "Kofi Anna has (wrongly) qualified the attack on Iraq as illegal"
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
"In the old days, respectable news outlets could be counted on to check their sources and accurately report the news coming out of the defense department."
Alas I think you're a misguided romantic. Can I ask what experience you have of 'news outlets' in 'the old days'?
I am afraid I am deeply suspicious of anybody who tries to tell me they have solid facts after they start with "in the old days".
In the UK this is a bit close to Tory MPs telling us about warm beer and cricket on sunny Sunday afternoons while coppers cycled past and clipped kids round the ear for scrumping apples from Farmer Giles' orchard. I guess in the USA these 'old days' were when kids ate blueberry pie and fished in the hollow and were called Huckleberry Finn or something.
Define "in the old days" please. 1980? 1950? 1785? (last being first publication date of the Times)
You have food. Enough food. Cheap food. From burgers and fries to "TV-Dinners", from Pizza Hut to Taco Bell.
You have entertainment. From TV to movies, malls and Sunday Night Football.
It worked 2000 years ago. Why do you think anything changed? That's what most people are simply content with. They want to be fed and they want to be entertained. They don't want to deal with complicated problems. The leaders don't want to deal with the problems at hand but distract the population by war and spectacles.
The similarities between the US of today and the Rome at the change from republic to empire are stunning.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Parent post refs uncountry. Poster unbellyfeels war crimethinkwise. Doubleplusungood. Rectify.
Lemon curry???
Well, you don't need to make up "the Marines bombed your house and killed your sister, father, and daughter. Join us in fighting them!" People aren't swarming to fight the US so much because of made-up stuff, but because there are about 150,000 armed-to-the-teeth foreign military, and a few tens of thousands of foreign paramilitary, killing their fellow Iraqis every day, with complete immunity from Iraqi law. It's true that if all Iraqis laid down their arms and did exactly what the foreign occupiers told them to, without hesitation or complaint, with averted eyes and a cowed demeanor, no one would be shot, but there's that pesky "pride" thing that, though a virtue in Americans, is a character flaw in everyone else on the planet.
Well, to be fair, the West has financed and armed many of the corrupt dictators that kept their economies in a state of, well, shit. It's not as if they were free nations that decided to hate us because we were free. Saddam was put in charge by Britain. Other examples abound. No, I'm not saying "the west is evil," only that part of their list of grievances against us is that we have supported dictators in their countries, and actually impeded democracy. See Iran as an example. We overthrew their democracy and installed a dictator--somehow, though they hate us, I don't think it's because of our freedom. No, I don't think their nations would blossom into post-Enlightenment bliss if we pulled our money and influence out, but we have been a very prominent part of the problem for about a century. Even if the problem would have existed without us (as it probably would have), that doesn't negate the fact that we have dirt up to the elbow.
You're quite right - taken of itself this isn't a huge deal outside of a third world dictatorship.
But coming in after the Patriot Acts One and Two, after suspension of right to trial, waltzing in after allowing for the extradition of people (including American citizens) to 'detention camps' in countries that happen to have lax laws when its comes to torture, coming in after Bush and his whole fucking government lied through their teeth about the reasons for the illegal invasion and continued occupation of Iraq, bouncing along after stolen elections, skipping along to the the tune of "warrentless wiretapping" and getting down to the beat of "corporate kickbacks for Bush's buddies" - ya just gotta sit back and wonder if maybe its symptomatic of a government gone horribly wrong.