The News Media: Watchdog or Lap Dog?

By Sean Gonsalves, AlterNet. Posted April 28, 2008.

The relationship between the media and the military has always been rife with manipulation and antagonism, though I've always considered the idea of an "adversarial press" to be far more myth than literal truth.

Take the well-worn accusation that an "adversarial press" turned public opinion against the Vietnam War. Never mind the most important lesson of modern guerrilla war history -- namely that, short of genocide, military might doesn't defeat guerrilla insurgencies. It only multiplies the number of insurgents. (Thank you, War Nerd Gary Brecher).

The 20th Century Fund Task Force on the Military and Media notes: "scholarly data casts doubt on this (the-media-lost-the-Vietnam-war) view. Although the scenes of actual carnage may be most vividly remembered, they were but a small fraction of the footage from Vietnam. And television was not the only source of the public's perception of the horror of war."

"Opinion polls have documented that public support for the Vietnam War declined less rapidly than public support for the Korean War, when television coverage was much less significant and military field censorship was in force. The available evidence also suggests that television coverage of Vietnam reflected a critical view of the war only after public opinion had begun to oppose it."

The same might be said about Iraq invasion and occupation coverage -- reflecting "a critical view of the war only after public opinion had begun to oppose it." In some quarters, that is.

Laying aside debate about whether history is repeating itself, one big difference between the "adversarial press" of the Vietnam War era and today's news is that the American public is now being subjected to Pentagon-orchestrated "psyops" (psychological operations) campaigns.

I suppose the New York Times story about how the Pentagon used more than 75 retired military officers with ties to lucrative defense industry contracts, as a way "to generate favorable news coverage of the administration's wartime performance," shouldn't be too surprising. But, I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that we're being psyoped by our own government.

(Note to self: martial arts may help save your life. Intellectual self-defense may help save your country).

It also shouldn't come as a surprise that the largest contingent of these planted "analysts" are affiliated with "fair and balanced" Fox News, followed by NBC and CNN. It also includes "analysts" from CBS and ABC and extended to op-ed pages across the print spectrum -- news magazines, Web sites and newspapers, including nine that appeared in the "liberal" NYT.

The article, written by Times reporter David Barstow, is a breathtaking revelation into the Machiavellian manipulations of the Bush PR machine, with Rumsfeld playing the puppet master; a roadmap to how war propaganda talking points found their way from Rummy and his minions' mouths to military "analysts" hired by news networks and deferred to by the Bill O'Reillys of the world and then sold to the American public as "independent" observers.

See more stories tagged with: journalism, military, investigative reporting, news media

Sean Gonsalves is a syndicated columnist and news editor with the Cape Cod Times.

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