Promoting the pro-war view was their principal mission, and there is simply no way to deny that when one goes back and looks at their coverage choices.-- G. Greenwald

Do they really deny it, Glenn? The NYT story lays bare what happened and how and who participated and to what object.

There may be some fussing around the margins of that story, and a whole lot of "Ho-hum," and "So?" from the media giants involved, but the essentials are not in dispute.

They have essentially stipulated, yes, they did this thing, and no, they don't consider what they did (and are doing -- ie: promoting the government line) to be wrong.

They didn't consider it to be wrong then; they don't consider it to be wrong now. (This is different than acknowledging -- as Aaron Brown does -- that the "military analysts" should have been better vetted.)

You're still making the case that they did this thing, but that case was made in 2003 (DN! among others) and in the NYT "now it can be told" piece last Sunday.

If you want to move forward with this matter, you need to make the case that what they did and what they are doing (as opposed to what the generals/Pentagon did) is and was wrong. They are stipulating the facts, and they are disputing your moral judgement regarding those facts.

The moral case, that what they did (promoting the government line, propaganda) was and is wrong, is much harder to make, even though most of us would agree with your moral judgement rather than that of the institutions in question.

It's not merely a matter of institutional policies and procedures. It goes to the fundamental functions of an independent media in a healthy democracy -- something you cover with great energy. The brick wall here is that the big media institutions do not agree at all that promoting and presenting uncountered government propaganda is contrary to their function. They define free media as having the choice to present whatever they want (barring nipples and such), and if what they want to present is uncontested government propaganda, then so be it. You -- or I -- have no say in the matter. There are, after all, alternative media resources. You don't want propaganda? Go somewhere else, then.

That seems to be their unshakable position. Given all the perks they receive for operating as conduits for government propaganda, it's hard to believe they'll ever willingly concede your moral point.

IMO, the Democracy Now video is painful to watch, particularly the FAIR interview of Brown. Those interviewers embody the 'non-serious' stereotype of those that are anti-war; Brown's snark was justified.

Greenwald's interview was not that engaging (to me) because he mostly agreed on the broad issues and on the particulars, he merely defended what he did on his program to the best of his recollection.

I would encourage a follow-up interview (in-person, if possible) to see if Brown would be willing to amplify his criticism of MSM, w/o feeling he needed to defend his own practice.

The guys seems pretty legit to me, and blows away the vacuous MSM personalities we're dealing with today.

Points left not addressed in all this include:

- it doesn't matter if the expert analysts are military v. non-military, or pro-war v. anti-war, but rather pro-admin v. anti-admin. (Glenn touches on this, but FAIR never got it)

- it doesn't matter if they're (only) talking about tactics. It's legitimate to ask whether pro-admin v. anti-admin "expert" analysts will even discuss tactics and strategy differently. The surge discussion, for example, could have happened in 2003! Further, by using anti-admin experts, you also balance the pro meta-messages that Glenn points out aired with regularity, even on Brown's program.

- Brown says it's not surprising and acceptable that the pentagon would brief only pro-admin retired military. Why? This should be challenged.

- I agree with Brown that whether the war is right and should continue, etc., are separate questions and should not be conflated with tactical discussions. But that doesn't mean that the former should never be aired at all!

- I would love to see some sort of follow-up on whether the Pentagon broke anti-propaganda laws

We posted about Stewart at the same time! (Cue Twilight Zone theme here.)

I think USAF's advertising has more to do with service competition. Not that it isn't a problem, just a different kind of problem.

There's been a controversial trend lately with the Air Force taking out advertising aimed at John Q Public to make their case for their own budgetary priorities ... they've been smacked for it in Congress. Gates also recently beat them up for hoarding their Predator drones instead of sending them 'downrange'. (I'm bandwidth challenged at the moment and looking up links will crash me again)

USAF recently launched a Cyber Command, which is a big deal for them. The mission has to do with preventing hack-attacks from overseas; given their current struggles to define their mission and budget justifications (a story going back to 1991), and their lack of involvement in NSA looking in everyone's orifices, I would be inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt and say that that's really what they want to do.

(Naturally, one mission could change into the other, if that was a way to preserve the institution, so it bears watching ...)

Jinx! *punches arm*

Nice interview Glenn, and I haven't read all the comments yet, so it's possible someone has already covered this, but here I go anyway. One thing I noticed Aaron say was that he hadn't vetted the guests on his show. Now, I don't know the structure of the show, maybe he wasn't responsible for something like that.

My question is, who was? Did Aaron know? Did he ever check? Why would he be so unconcerned about that?

I posted the FAIR links before I took a look at the Democracy Now Interview, not surprisingly, Peter Hart, a veteran FAIR journalist was interviewed in the Democracy Now piece, and as he said. I know I'm hawking FAIR here, but they really have had an uninterrupted analysis of this phenomenon since I was a teen-from a historical perspective its invaluable.