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War on Iraq

Pentagon Releases Propaganda Documents -- Will the Media Pay Attention?

By John Stauber, PR Watch. Posted May 7, 2008.


With 8,000 pages of documents online for the world to see, will the networks continue their media blackout?

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.

News of the Pentagon's online posting of the documents came from Joe Trento of the National Security News Service, who notes that NSNS provided the New York Times "limited information about a military office early in the reporting process."

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:

http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/milanalysts/

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."

The Pew Excellence in Journalism project has a chart showing that " there was virtually no mainstream media follow up to The Times' expose" with the only national TV coverage being the introduction segment and live debate featuring CMD's John Stauber on the PBS NewsHour.

Congresswoman Rosa L. DeLauro and three dozen colleagues have sent a letter to the Department of Defense Inspector General calling for an investigation of this "propaganda campaign aimed at deliberately misleading the American public."

Digg!

See more stories tagged with: tv networks, new york times, iraq war, propaganda, penatagon

John Stauber is the Executive Director of the Center for Media and Democracy.

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View:
"Crude jolt for US as Iran scraps oil trade in dollar" - The Economic Times
Posted by: BlueBerry PickN on May 9, 2008 12:32 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
.
.
.
...thoughts on "Crude jolt for US as Iran scraps oil trade in dollar"...

~~~
Spread Love...

BlueBerry Pick'n
can be found @
ThisCanadian com
~~~
"We, two, form a Multitude" ~ Ovid.
~~~
"Silent Freedom is Freedom Silenced"
"do no harm"

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Media Pay Attention ? Yes, But Not the Way You Think.
Posted by: hadashito on May 9, 2008 5:55 PM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Have the corporate media paid any attention to the Pentagon fraud presenting compensated retired military offices posing as independent commentators about the war in Iraq ? Of course they have ! Surely, you don't think they were all just routine, happenstance "news" items that presented themselves to viewers all by themselves, do you ? The MSM and the Pentagon worked together to stage the repeated broadcasts and planned them all, together, in detail.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

git a grep, why doncha?
Posted by: dicktater on May 9, 2008 6:09 PM   
Current rating: 1    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
"...although in a format that makes it impossible to easily search them and therefore difficult to read and dissect."

uh, git a grep, why doncha?

duh. try using a 'puter.

convert pdf to text:

batch pdf convert

grep, wah?

Grep

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Is the left-wing media covering this story?
Posted by: thoughtcriminal on May 10, 2008 6:21 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
No. There is no real coverage - a piece like this goes to Alternet, and gets put on the sidebar, and in any case it is only a few paragraphs, not a longer expose.

What about the bogus claims about weapons of mass destruction? Those were never investigated, and no long-term series of stories was ever published by the left-wing press, or any other American press outlet.

What about the stolen 2000 election? What about the fraudulent and rigged electronic voting systems? Why has that all been forgotten by the lefty press?

What about domestic spying and the illegal use of government agents to track and infiltrate anti-war and anti-globalization groups, even extending to the use of government agent provocateurs dressed as protestors?

What about the bogus 911 Truth Movement, that got sooo much coverage here at Alternet and Democracy Now? - and yet Alternet never ran a single story pointing to the fact that 911 Truth is mostly made up of government agent provocateur and PR types, who use the typical "I'm a nut, and so are all my acquaintances" approach to smearing antiwar activists.

I don't see a daily list of the impeachable crimes of GW Bush here at Alternet.

There's not even any footage of the Iraq war.

This site, my friends, along with much of the rest of the left-wing and right-wing activist press, is in my opinion a fraud. In the late 1990s (and even before) there was an effort made by private foundations to set up a large number of internet web and radio "alternative news sites" that would appear to be liberal, but whose real purpose was to help shape public opinion and keep the public under control.

This is really apparent when you look at the stories that the alternative press refuses to cover - the fall 2001 anthrax attacks, the rise of the public-private government-industry combines linked to nuclear and biological warfare activities (Democracy Now has never even mentioned Battelle Memorial Institute), the larger foreign trade agenda of the United States - oh, it gets covered, but the coverage is similar to that of the New York Times or the Washiington Post - a story gets buried on the back page.

In reality, a story is "covered" when a reporter or team of reporters writes a long series of stories that come out every month for a year or more, and which can then be repackaged in book form.

That's what traditional journalism was really all about - and the problem today is not that people don't care enough to read such exposes, but that the corporate press - left, center, and right - doesn't want to do such investigative work.

Now, wake up and rub those cobwebs out of your eyes. . .

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How many times is 'thoughtcriminal' going to post this rant?
Posted by: photon's feather on May 10, 2008 6:44 AM   
Current rating: 1    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
?

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