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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."
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.
I don't respond to AC's.
The silence is deafening.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
The Economist is not a bad starting point.
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.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
This headline assumes that the pro-war faction brought onto the corporate so-called "news" were analysts to begin with and didn't just gain the "analyst" label by the fact that they were featured on the corporate news. They were not impartial experts. They were merely pundits, sent to lie to drum up popular support for an illegal and immoral war. As Peter Hart from Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting explained on today's Democracy Now! (transcript, video, high-quality audio, smaller size audio):
What the Pentagon did is conspire with the media and over seventy-five retired military officers to spread lies about the invasion and occupation of Iraq; propaganda which continues to this day. The pundits weren't being manipulated, the public was. The pundits participated with their consent. Since one expects the Pentagon to get their story out (I don't excuse it, I merely expect it), one might wonder why the media didn't do their job and challenge those in power to justify their case for war? It would be far better to headline this story a failure of media to do their job as reporters. Again, Hart explains:
The New York Times didn't cover the media aspect of this problem probably because the Times was a willing participant in the lying. Apparently it still is.
Digital Citizen
Don't fall into the logic trap of thinking that, because some people on blogs and in the media say things and echo each other, those things must be true because, why else would they say those things, eh? "Where there's smoke there's fire" etc. This is sometimes called an echo chamber.
It's simply not true that merely saying something makes it a fact, even if lots of people are saying it.
Regarding the Times, try reading up on Judith Miller and Jayson Blair. Also, you might like to regularly read non-American news sources for other points of view (and I don't mean British sources).The sad thing about the above quote is the "lot of Iraqis" was a single man that now appears to be in the pay of Iran.
Sometimes it is enlightening to consider other viewpoints.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
It does indeed appear that the Bush Admin and the Pentagon assembled a group of retired military types, got them all "on-message" then pimped them out to the television networks as "analysts".
I understand the importance of propaganda in times of war, but #1, usually the propaganda is used against the enemy, not us, and #2, this is not a time of war except in the twisted minds of neocon warmongers.
I think if you put the "veracity" of the Bush Administration up against that of the New York Times, you'd find that the President does not fair very well. Not very well at all.
You are welcome on my lawn.
If Fox was doing its duty, they'd hire reporters that are independent from the pentagon.
Fixed that for you.
For the record, both CNN and NBC use their own reporters who are independent from the Pentagon. Both Jamie McIntyre (CNN) and Jim Miklashevski (NBC) report on Pentagon news both from what the PR department says, as well as from their own sources who either corroborate or dispute the official line.
I can't speak for ABC or CBS but I'm reasonably sure they use independent reporters as well.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
For those uninclined to read the article hereby linked, it's two quotes. One's from Max Boot, arguing that "everybody does it, so why should the Times complain about this one? Oh yeah, because the Bush administration is bravely trying to break the party line of those Evil Liberal Media Conspirators!" and John Podhoretz saying "Nothing to see here, move along." (A further link points to an article talking about how wrong the Times was to have broken the story about the illegal domestic wiretap program).
What neither one acknowledges is that, even if it is "no secret that [the whole government] tries to influence their coverage by carefully doling out access," it remains DETRIMENTAL TO DEMOCRACY to do so! A Cheneyesque "So?" from neocon commentators fails to excuse the MSM's faults in not aggressively seeking out the actual truth. It is always relevant that a supposedly "neutral" or "objective" commentator has a financial interest in the events he is interpreting.
This is a prime example of what Manufacturing Consent was talking about.
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.