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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Great work as always, Glen.
One angle I wonder about is whether some of the $300 million allocated to three military contractors in 2005 for foreign propaganda generation (one of which, SAIC, was headed by Gen. Dowling until 7/05) found its way into major media accounts for the generation of domestic propaganda.
The USA Today's Matt Kelley published two stories on 12/13 and 12/14/05 (a week before Risen published his telco stories, btw) about the awarding of these contracts. The first was "3 groups have contracts for pro-U.S. propaganda" [ http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-12-13-propaganda-inside-usat_x.htm ], and the follow-up was "Pentagon rolls out stealth PR" [ http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-12-14-pentagon-pr_x.htm ].
The sidebar of the second story provides a primer on the contracts --
•Cost: Up to $100 million per contractor, $300 million total
•Contractors: SYColeman of Washington; Lincoln Group of Washington; Science Applications International Corp. of San Diego
•Awarded: June 7
•Length: Five years
•Purpose: "For media approach planning, prototype product development, commercial quality product development, product distribution and dissemination, and media effects analysis."
Source: Department of Defense
(I posted a longer conjecture in Greg Mitchell's diary this morning on your piece at DailyKos. IANAL, but if any of this money landed in major media bank accounts, they could be in legal jeopardy, no? Keep up the good work...).
I take exception with only one point:
It is not the people in power that the media is responsive to. It is the right wing.
We've seen it in the framing of issues (and non-issues) since the Dukakis tank incident.
Any framing favorable to the right is adopted at the expense of reality.
Speaking of the military's attempts to control the media, I remember that rather bizarre incident a few months back where Glenn was being harangued by General Petraeus' hot-headed and very disrespectful press secretary, Colonel Boylan. I was shocked at the time that anyone serving in such a highly public role in the active military would engage in such blatantly partisan attacks against a civilian journalist (and I mean "journalist" in the old-fashioned sense of it being an honorable occupation).
It's pretty clear how far the military is willing to carry this concept of "media ops" or whatever they call it. It's completely consistent with the pattern shown with Petraeus and Boylan to grant favorable access only to bloggers and reporters who are willing to "carry water" for them. How much farther would they have to go to be interfering directly in civilian politics?
A few commenters here so far are trying to say that these "analysts" are motivated by duty, idealism, or some sort of loyalty to a Commander in Chief. That would be honorable, wouldn't it?
Note that the quote you pasted was from the 'supply side', not a statement by the Brass Hacks (Paul Dirks ... was that you?) themselves. (But note also the schemers were uniformed officers in the Press Operations div doing the civilians bidding)
I think that positing (questionably) honorable motives is a healthy exercise. We sometimes do the good-guys-bad-guys thing to excess, when it's either a red herring or isn't necessary in order to show what happened or to understand how things can go catastrophically wrong. I keep thinking of Arendt's 'Eichmann' article, reading all this (though we are not at the point yet where any of the generals can use the excuses Eichmann might have proferred). Not to say there *aren't* bad guys here, just that the frame is, IMHO, misleading.
It's the mechanisms that matter, not the motivations. Probably, some of them thought they were doing the right thing, or didn't give it much thought at all. Maybe they thought they were following a 'higher law'. or maybe they thought there was nothing to it. Others were more interested in making a buck. The latter will all claim the former. We'll never actually know. It doesn't much matter why they did what they did, or what we think about their motivations. Actions and outcomes, the capture and cooptation of our institutions, and damage thereof.
Please forgive my cynicism, and please quit calling it a "war". You military folks should know better.
It's not a war? Why not? What would you call it (serious questions, not flames)?
if the media reports the truth about what they are seeing in war, and the truth is ugly (as it always is in war), then they are disloyal, indiscrete and incompetent?
You're adding your assumption there, Pedinska- that the military tendency to view the press as I described- "disloyal, indiscreet, and incompetent"- is solely due to their own discomfiture over having "the truth" of their actions exposed by journalists.
The facts remain that
1) there are such things as journalists who enter into war zones with preconceived ideas about that conflict that lead to prejudgements of what they're going to see and report on, and/or reflexive biases against all military personnel, including those with who they share citizenry. The accusation of "disloyalty" is a risky call, of course- it imputes motive. But for better or worse,, military people tend to have a lot of emotional stake in the ideal of loyalty- and not merely because of their conditioning, which is undeniably intensive in that regard. It's also because in wartime, they and their comrades in arms are undergoing strenuous efforts and sacrifices, including their own disability and death. War isn't some passive neocon board game, for them. They can't afford the ingress of disloyalty under those conditions; so all related matters quickly become viewed through a lens of "us vs. them." Remember, the American military position is that the decision to go to war doesn't rest exclusively on the shoulders of the military leadership- it requires the consent of the American people, through the lawful institutions of civilian government. But once the war is on, they get very touchy about the loyalty question. rightly or wrongly, there it is.
2) Journalists really can be indiscreet- and I'm not referring to reportage on military blunders and atrocities; I'm referring to their relaying of facts that can lead to terrible perils for soldiers in the field. As previously pointed out in this comment thread, journalists with military training are scarce to non-existent. Hence, they often exhibit astounding, and dangerous, indiscretion in what they choose to report.
3) The same utter lack of familiarity with military training, tactics, procedure, and matters of telling detail often leaves them incompetent to provide a reliable and accurate account of what they observe. Even simple points like rank, unit formation, ordnance and weaponry, and its capabilities are known to escape them- and the cumulative effect of these mistakes can show up as serious errors in news stories.
When I say that the prevailing views of most military people toward the press aren't completely ungrounded, that's what I'm referring to.
As for your statement that
the truth is ugly (as it always is in war)
that would read to many experienced observers as an overgeneralization- one that implicitly insists that all of the narratives concerning a war must focus exclusively on its horrors and carnage- leaving out any relief, any positive action, any redemptive experience. Quite apart from any attempt to justify the historic human institution of warfare (an institution which I think deserves speedy obsolescence)- the reality is very often more complicated. Characterizing soldiers as a class simply as bloodthirsty premeditated murderers is unfair.
Remember what underpins the touchiness of many soldiers on questions of military morality, even moreso when hurled as accusations by uninvolved civilians: they've put more on the line than you ever have.
As to your spiel about the duty of the military to "defend the Constitution, against all enemies, foreign, and domestic": yeah, yeah, I know, I know. But in the case of military officers ordered to put the case for military action to the national press at the behest of the commander-in-chief and Secretary of Defense, the Constitution is far from explicit. It isn't all that clear-cut of a call- and military commanders are simply not inclined to gainsay the decisions of their civilian superiors on such questions. What is a clear-cut call is that it's insubordinate. And to career military people, insubordination is borderline mutiny, which is treason. As for the subordinates of the people who framed up the memos that Glenn quotes from- they probably never gave a thought to any Constitutional ramifications. Too far off into the legalese for them to notice.
I hope that you can agree that the use of aggressive public relations tactics by the military is a much more indefinable gray area than the use of torture or summary execution, as far as the Constitutional questions. In terms of government oversight, the responsibility for drawing such lines and ensuring their obedience may well be more appropriately the domain of the civilian Executive branch and the oversight of Congress than of the communications branches of the military, who are principally mimicking similar practices rampant in the civilian lobbying industry, with the collusion of commercial media outlets.
The ultimate point I'm attempting to make has already been well-summarized by _paddy_boy: "The problem is that CNN [ and the US media as a whole. ed.] failed to live up to its responsibility as a provider of objective, fact-based news, and allowed itself to be easily (WAY too easily!) transformed into a conduit of Pentagon propaganda."
Quite correct. The American national news media should have paid a reasonable amount of attention to fulfilling its own function as "defenders of the Constitution"- by taking into account their obvious moves to control the news analysis on the Iraq war effort, and by finding knowledgeable voices to debate them and balance their commentary.
For example- how much coverage did the April 2, 2008 Congressional testimony of Lt. General William Odom (ret.) receive from the American media? Has Odom been invited on any news-pundit panels lately? Any interviews for the television networks, or the major news organizations? Did he make the cover of Time or Newsweek magazine? Did his testimony rate so much as one article, from the major newsweeklies?
General Odom recommended immediate withdrawal of all American forces from Iraq.
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/81626/ [click on my screen name for live link]
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
