Media Manipulation

You have read about Pentagon's effort to still manipulate the media in the US by supplying retired "experts" and generals to put out the Administration's spin. [The Pakistani media does something similar - but more on it shortly.] We have reproduced the main ones below.

The mainstream media here in N A, obviously does not like being exposed as the "sleeping" partner of the Bush Administration. But such is their involvement and conceit - "collusion" is the word that surfaces - that they have managed thus far to keep the focus away from this story.

Only NPR discussed it to some degree, but even they have fallen silent.

The way dissenting voices are marginalised in the US is a science. They are free to write, lecture, speak, tour and are not muzzled otherwise. Only a certain unwritten and unspoken agreement , as it were, sees to it that their views are not widely circulated. They are not part of a discussion group or studio panel, no in depth interviews with them on major channels, stations or papers, no calls for comments or quotes on major stories.

So while Noam Chomskies live, Stephen Bikos are snuffled out.

In the third world, the artist, reporter, intellectual dissenter is silenced "permanently" if unlucky or "bought" off if lucky.

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Today we will share this interview by Jayne Lyn Stahl with author Greg Mitchell.

So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits -- and the President -- Failed on Iraq, by Greg Mitchell, a collection of essays that date back from the lead-up to the Iraq war, in 2003, through this fall, is a compelling antidote to the cult of misinformation written by the editor of Editor & Publisher, a journal of the newspaper industry, and one of the oldest magazines in the country. The book features a preface by Bruce Springsteen, and foreword by Joseph L. Galloway.

As one who has been on the cutting edge of exposing the Bush administration's pre-emptive war on the media, Mitchell, the author of nine other nonfiction works, is among the first to broach, and critically analyze, the issue of "non-hostile combat deaths," as well as suggest the long term costs of this war not merely to our veterans, but to our national ethos.

We're treated to a first rate account not merely of a media complicit in the debacle that is Iraq, but one equally responsible for our continued presence in the region.

AlterNet recently caught up with Greg Mitchell to talk about his latest book...Our Media Have Been So Wrong for So Long

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Baithak World has been writing about the Pentagon Scam. Here are some of the recent links:

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More than two weeks after the New York Times reported on the Penatgon's military analyst program to sell controversial policies such as the invasion of Iraq, the broadcast television news outlets implicated in the program are hoping to tough out the scandal by refusing to report it. Recently Media Matters of America (MMA) reported that, according to a search of the Nexis database, "the three major broadcast networks -- ABC, CBS, and NBC -- have still not mentioned the report at all."

Eight thousand pages of documents related to the Pentagon's illegal propaganda campaign, known as the Pentagon military analyst program, are now online for the world to see, although in a format that makes it impossible to easily search them and therefore difficult to read and dissect. This trove includes the documents pried out of the Pentagon by David Barstow and used as the basis for his stunning investigation that appeared in the New York Times on April 20, 2008.

The Pentagon program, which clearly violated U.S. law against covert government propaganda, embedded more than 75 retired military officers -- most of them with financial ties to war contractors -- into the TV networks as "message surrogates" for the Bush Administration. To date, every major commercial TV network has failed to report this story, covering up their complicity and keeping the existence of this scandal from their audiences.

Here is the official Pentagon website with the 8,000 pages of documents, the most interesting and revealing of them previously secret and only available to the Pentagon and the New York Times:

Pentagon Releases Propaganda Documents -- Will the Media Pay Attention? By John Stauber, PR Watch.

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

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Two weeks after a New York Times story (4/20/08) revealed a Pentagon propaganda campaign that had been feeding talking points to TV military analysts, many of whom also had ties to military contractors, the cable and broadcast networks that employed these analysts have almost entirely failed to report this crucial news story. Fox has even continued to feature commentary by two Pentagon-affiliated ex-generals without disclosing their conflicts of interest. Only in USA

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

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The last ten days have been among the most shameful in the history of American journalism. On April 20th, the New York Times published its expose of the Bush administration's use of Pentagon-approved, prepped, and financially-enriched "military analysts" to appear on TV to help sell the invasion of Iraq, and then put a positive spin on the occupation -- even as conditions on the ground deteriorated. It was a powerful illustration of the Bush administration's commitment to propaganda and disinformation. But it was also a damning indictment of the mainstream media's complicity in the wholesale deception of the American public on the single most important decision a country can make -- the decision to go to war. How big a story was it? John Stauber of the Center for Media and Democracy called it the Pentagon Papers of the Iraq war. So it only stands to reason that a story this explosive would quickly become the subject of extensive follow-ups by TV and print journalists, and endless debate on the political talk shows, right? Shameful Days: Why Won't The Media Pursue the Pentagon Propaganda Scandal?

Thursday, May 01, 2008

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In a superb example of print journalism, the New York Times reported last Sunday the sordid story of how television network military analysts with undisclosed financial ties to Pentagon contractors had been used by the White House and Pentagon to sell the Iraq War to the American people. In a sophisticated propaganda effort that would make Joseph Goebbels and Edward Benways green with envy, the Pentagon had turned some fifty former officers, posing as independent experts, into hand puppets mouthing pro-war talking points on Fox News, ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC. "It was them saying, 'We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you,'" Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and former Fox News analyst described the process. [there are more stories when you open the link -t ]Unearthed: News of the Week the Mainstream Media Forgot to Report by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Brendan DeMelle

Monday, April 28, 2008

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In the summer of 2005, the Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over Guantánamo Bay. The detention center had just been branded “the gulag of our times” by Amnesty International, there were new allegations of abuse from United Nations human rights experts and calls were mounting for its closure.

How the Pentagon Spread Its Message

Audio, video and documents that show how the military’s talking points were disseminated.

• Excerpts From Selected Documents

Dining with Donald H. Rumsfeld, second from left, during his final week as secretary of defense were the retired officers Donald W. Shepperd, left, Thomas G. McInerney and Steven J. Greer, right.

The administration’s communications experts responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantánamo. To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world. Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found. The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, 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. Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand

Saturday, April 19, 2008