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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."
Did Winston Smith get these articles?
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".
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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.
Bill Hicks was an optimist :-(
Barbara Felden claims prior art on the flip phone, sues Motorola, Nokia.
Well, I don't think it's likely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators. I've talked with a lot of Iraqis in the last several months myself, had them to the White House....The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but what they want to get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that.
Is that the NYTimes did this analysis and published it. They had been as much a cheerleader for the war as anybody else.
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.
--
make install -not war
These people (the analysts, that is) aren't idiotic sheep. They are mostly retired generals and such. It's not that the Pentagon/Bush/whoever is controlling them: they spread this information because it either
1) benefits them (financially, they are usually contractors)
and/or
2) they really believe in the message
(truth is probably a bit of both)
However, in the media's defense, who else will they go to for subject matter experts? It's good to hear all sides of the issue, just keep in mind that no one is TRULY objective...
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.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
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.
She loves me: 09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0 She loves me not: 09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688BF
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.
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%?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
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
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
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Where your pseudo-outrage is coming from, I have no idea. Is this some snide hipster pose that makes you feel part of the ironic elite? Or are you really opposed to the media trying to understand the largest media fuck-up of the decade?
Personally, I'd love to see more of this, so that next time we commit to spending tens of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars, we have some vague idea of what's really going on.
"...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.
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.
Put another way, the price of oil in Euros isn't up nearly as much.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Just say "No" to mainstream media cartel.
Gods, how I love freedom of speech.
My blog
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.
/. stuff like:
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
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 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.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Ummm, no. If we lose morale and pull out of Iraq, that is a GOOD thing. It was wrong to go there, and it's still wrong to be there now. No amount of sugar coating of the situation is going to make it more reasonable or successful. If you're counting on US media coverage to win this war, then it's already lost. To further spread misinformation, for any amount of time, is reprehensible. Having an open media means that an unjust or unpopular war will be criticized. If we can't bear the criticism, then that's a clear sign that we shouldn't be in the war in question. You can't just push a democratic country into a poorly-justified war, and expect a free pass.
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
Do you think it might have bucked up our fighting spirit, just a tad, to think that our enemy was near surrender?
Depends. How many times have we heard that the insurgency in Iraq was "in its last throes", or that we have reached a "defining moment"?
In terms of Vietnam, it may have, but it would have done nothing to change the fact that the government we were backing in Saigon was loathed by the people in the South. Nixon assured everyone that we could see the light at the end of the tunnel. No one believed him.
What lost Vietnam was not a lack of fighting spirit in our soldiers, or news coverage at home, or too much civilian control of the military, or any of those right-wing talking points about Vietnam. We lost Vietnam because we backed a thoroughly corrupt, inept and brutal regime in Saigon.
If the U.S. had spent more time trying to foster a real alternative to what Hanoi was offering instead of more of the same old corrupt rule by kleptocrats, Vietnam could have ended differently. As it was, what we wanted Vietnam to accept was the same old colonial situation, minus the foreigners.
We "lost" Vietnam because we backed the wrong people in Saigon, and no amount of fighting spirit or rah-rah news coverage at home was going to change that.
The system has failed you, don't fail yourself. --Billy Bragg
Freedom is not free. One of the prices of freedom is a less efficient military. Just like another price of freedom is a less efficient police.
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:
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 (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
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
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
Agreed, they are cutting him as much unjustified slack as the press is, and are arguably even more responsible for the state we're in.
Sometimes, when I've got my paranoid cranked up past 7 or so, I wonder if the conjunction of the above mentioned claims of power to torture anyone they want combined with the proven ability to eavesdrop on anyone they want without a warrant (a power which we now know they've used on reporters and politicians) work to reduce the collective spine of those that should be standing up and saying "Hey, wait just a cotten picking minute!"
Perhaps it isn't dereliction of duty so much as rational fear of a powerful and amoral opponent.
-- MarkusQ
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.
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
Ostensibly, we're trying to promote freedom and democracy in Iraq. We cannot do that while being unwilling practice our freedoms and exercise our democratic power back home.
You cannot simultaneously save and destroy the village.
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
Very true. I knew that we were in trouble in the Iraq war when I saw a ship unload cars of equipment in PA. Rail car after rail car was loaded with battered and broken down HMMVs and other vehicles... everything looked used and beat up...
This is my sig.
Sure, but look at it from the network's perspective. If they are going to hire an analyst, they are going to hire an insider, someone with contacts, someone who is successful and in the business. Any John Q. Historian could come to a conclusion, but who is the viewer going to believe, him or a buddy of Gen. Petraeus?
They would hire these guys called REPORTERS. What these reporters would do, is go and sneak around and get information for themselves, liquor up a few buddies from high school or college that were connected, plug into the good old boys network and get the real story. Now, the network puts on a talking head because, really, they are semi-popular figures with a bit of domain expertise but really are just sorta entertaining. Like, nobody watches Ollie North or Wesley Clarke because they are somehow "plugged in". They watch these guys because they are entertaining.
So really, when it boils down to it, the talking heads might as well just shoot from the hip rather than grovel or let themselves be manipulated for access to information, because the people already think they are making it up anyway and it is just so much more entertainment.
This is my sig.
Ok, let's pick a salacious scandal then. Surely you remember these stories:
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
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.
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.