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Iraq
US military defends planting news in Iraqi media
2005-12-02
BAGHDAD - The US military on Thursday defended its policy of feeding articles to the Iraqi press as part of a campaign to counter what it said were lies spread by Al Qaeda militants.

On Wednesday, the Los Angeles Times a newspaper on the other side in this fight revealed that the US military has been paying the fledgling Iraqi press to run articles which US troops have written that focus on the positive aspects of the occupation and reconstruction. “We don’t lie, we don’t need to lie, we do empower our operational commanders with the ability to inform the Iraqi public,” said US military spokesman Major General Rick Lynch. “What Zarqawi is doing continuously is lying to the Iraqi people, lying to the international community,” he said at a press briefing.
Gawd forbid we'd tell the truth. Gawd forbid we'd try to set the record straight in-country.
What the general and his assistants would not comment on, however, was whether they paid these newspapers to run the material, saying they would not comment on the specific mechanics of the process.

Knight-Ridder newspapers on Thursday reported that the military also was paying Iraqi reporters up to 200 dollars a month to write favorable stories. It said the payments were made to members of the Baghdad Press Club, an organization set up by US army officers more than a year ago.
If they can get the Sunnis to quit the insurgency, I'd give them 400 dollars a month.
In Washington, Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman who had said the disclosures were “troubling” if true, would not comment on whether the military was paying for stories. “I don’t have all the facts. I don’t have a lot of facts at all. I have very few facts,” he said.
"And the facts I have, I'm not sharing with you!"
Posted by:Steve White

#8  If we killed all the reporters, we'd be getting dispatches from Hell before breakfast? That's a keeper!
Posted by: 2b   2005-12-02 21:59  

#7  What was it Sherman said? If we killed all the reporters, we'd be getting dispatches from Hell before breakfast?
Posted by: Bobby   2005-12-02 12:26  

#6  And this take shows that a hundred years makes no difference -

Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman was a good hater, and he hated few things more than newspapermen. His encounter with the correspondent Floras B. Plympton of the Cincinnati Commercial in September 1861, five months into the Civil War, was typical. Plympton approached the general on a railroad platform in Kentucky and asked him for an interview. He handed over letters of introduction, including one from Sherman’s brother-in-law. Sherman’s response was a fierce glare and the demand that Plympton take the next train back to Louisville and out of the war zone. “Be sure you take it; don’t let me see you around here after it’s gone!”

“But, General!” Plympton protested. “The people are anxious. I’m only after the truth.”

“We don’t want the truth told about things here—that’s what we don’t want! Truth, eh? No, sir! We don’t want the enemy any better informed than he is. Make no mistake about that train!”

As the war progressed, Sherman warmed to his theme that the press was a “set of dirty newspaper scribblers who have the impudence of Satan”—defamers of the army and publishers of military secrets for which they deserved punishment as spies...
Posted by: Thrumble Grereng2202   2005-12-02 09:59  

#5  Pity the US military doesn't have a small fraction the press access Saddam's Mukhabarat still has with the press corps. The same Mukhabarat agents who were the western press's minders, gofers, news sources, photographers, drivers, security are still at their jobs, only now the western press pays them and eagerly publishes their propaganda (e.g. yesterday's "massive offensive" in Ramadi).

The best solution is acknowledge the reality that the press are participants in this war and shoot the unfriendlies on sight.
Posted by: ed   2005-12-02 08:45  

#4  N.B. Its ok if it is to help white Europeans as with Radio Free Europe or Voice of America, but to practice propaganda during wartime to help the little brown man is insufferable for the left and MSM.

MSM would rather pay a murderous dictator to carry his good news propaganda than to even give their own government support by actually reporting good news. Heck, they paid bribes to be the lackey scribes of Saddam.
Posted by: Whease Glaitch2820   2005-12-02 08:31  

#3  On November 28th, the LA Times ran a story that uncritically accepted the white phosphorous == chemical weapons bullshit. They even repeated the lie that the US itself referred to WP as a "chemical weapon" -- the source of that quote was actually a transcript of a phone call between two Kurds.

Yesterday the AP -- and many radio and TV stations -- treated us to a planted story about Ramadi being taken over by the jihadis. The story was crap; apparently none of the supposedly professional reporters bothered to ask anyone who would know for sure before they ran with the story.

The LA Times and other press agencies routinely run false propaganda from our enemies. They expect us to be outraged over true propaganda from our government?
Posted by: Robert Crawford   2005-12-02 08:03  

#2  The Lefties are going gaga today over this issue as they see yet one more thing in liberal/ libertarian = Socialist, anti-Marxist Marxist anti-Commie Commie Clintonian Americana than sorely and grievously lacks any = insufficient US Federal-level, and only US Federal-level, oversight and secular Govt-centric regulatory control.
Posted by: JosephMendiola   2005-12-02 00:31  

#1   "And the facts I have, I'm not sharing with you!"

"And if I tell you I have to kill you."
Posted by: Creart Thart5123   2005-12-02 00:17  

00:00