Pentagon Deceit on Media Manipulation Confirmed

[JohnyCanuck]

Big Brass Bull: Pentagon Deceit on Media Manipulation Confirmed

A few days ago, we noted the revelations by Stars and Stripes that the Pentagon was using a shadowy PR firm to identify the political leanings of journalists trying to cover the "Good War" in Afghanistan (as well as the "Forgotten War" in Iraq). The idea, clearly, was to encourage and reward "pro-war" reporters while planting a big red flag on the backs of any writers considered less than gung-ho about the imperial bloodshed in Muslim lands.

Naturally, the Pentagon denied that the vetting program operated by the Rendon Group – which was hired by the Bush gang to help instigate the mass murder in Iraq – was in any way a sinister, slimy attempt to manipulate the news in order to make the endless slaughter of the Terror War more palatable for the folks back home. Perish the thought! declared the brass. Why, goodness mercy me, the only aim of the program is to help reporters tell the truth, and let the chips fall where they may. As Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman put it after S&S first broke the story: "It’s a good article if it’s accurate. It’s a bad article if it’s inaccurate. That’s the only measurement that we use here at the Defense Department." Makes you want to puddle up, don't it?

Well, Stars and Stripes has done something almost unheard-of in modern journalism – followed up on a story with a skeptical stance toward the bland assurances of authority – and guess what they found? Go ahead, try – you'll never guess. They found that the Pentagon was lying! From S&S:

Contrary to the insistence of Pentagon officials this week that they are not rating the work of reporters covering U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Stars and Stripes has obtained documents that prove that reporters’ coverage is being graded as “positive,” “neutral” or “negative.”

Moreover, the documents — recent confidential profiles of the work of individual reporters prepared by a Pentagon contractor — indicate that the ratings are intended to help Pentagon image-makers manipulate the types of stories that reporters produce while they are embedded with U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

SNIP

By week's end, the Pentagon was in full retreat on the story (in public, at least), pulling out the old stand-by used to cover a multitude of sins, from torture to corruption to atrocity to systematic deceit: a "review" of the program. Whitman, who days before had been loudly trumpeting the program's decency and goodness, was now declaring -- what else? -- that he didn't know the first thing about it, but he was sure enough gosh-dang-diddley-darn going to find out:


http://chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/1826-big-brass-bull-pentagon-deceit-on-media-manipulation-confirmed.html

[pleah]

1. K&R

[HillbillyBob]

2. Applause for Stars and Stripes and the reporters with the brass ones

to stand up against the Pentagon. Seems like the pentagon, and the cia need to be cleaned out of all selfservative kkkreestians, then theres still the lot at the justice dept , judges that that bastard w installed....
Death to all the rpigs, at least figuratively. They have been doing it to us since the 60s.

[JohnyCanuck]

9. It must have come as something of a shock to the Pentagon brass

when reporters from a newspaper geared to serving a readership comprised mainly of US military personnel, Stars and Stripes, didn't act as compliant puppy dogs and roll over and play dead for them.

[skorpo]

3. K&R

[redqueen]

4. And for the Gulf War they used Hill & Knowlton.

They've been marketing wars for a while now.

[JohnyCanuck]

10. Yeah the H&K lie about Iraqi soldiers ripping babies

out of incubators and leaving them to die on the floor and a compliant whore media to spread the lie was all it took to get red-blooded Americans hepped up and eager to go off to war to kill some more heathen, brown people.

How PR Sold the War in the Persian Gulf

Excerpted from Toxic Sludge Is Good For You, Chapter 10

Hill & Knowlton, then the world's largest PR firm, served as mastermind for the Kuwaiti campaign. Its activities alone would have constituted the largest foreign-funded campaign ever aimed at manipulating American public opinion. By law, the Foreign Agents Registration Act should have exposed this propaganda campaign to the American people, but the Justice Department chose not to enforce it. Nine days after Saddam's army marched into Kuwait, the Emir's government agreed to fund a contract under which Hill & Knowlton would represent "Citizens for a Free Kuwait," a classic PR front group designed to hide the real role of the Kuwaiti government and its collusion with the Bush administration. Over the next six months, the Kuwaiti government channeled $11.9 million dollars to Citizens for a Free Kuwait, whose only other funding totalled $17,861 from 78 individuals. Virtually all of CFK's budget - $10.8 million - went to Hill & Knowlton in the form of fees.74

SNIP

In addition to Republican notables like Gray and Fuller, Hill & Knowlton maintained a well-connected stable of in-house Democrats who helped develop the bipartisan support needed to support the war. Lauri Fitz-Pegado, who headed the Kuwait campaign, had previously worked with super-lobbyist Ron Brown representing Haiti's Duvalier dictatorship. Hill & Knowlton senior vice-president Thomas Ross had been Pentagon spokesman during the Carter Administration. To manage the news media, H&K relied on vice-chairman Frank Mankiewicz, whose background included service as press secretary and advisor to Robert F. Kennedy and George McGovern, followed by a stint as president of National Public Radio. Under his direction, Hill & Knowlton arranged hundreds of meetings, briefings, calls and mailings directed toward the editors of daily newspapers and other media outlets.

SNIP

Every big media event needs what journalists and flacks alike refer to as "the hook." An ideal hook becomes the central element of a story that makes it newsworthy, evokes a strong emotional response, and sticks in the memory. In the case of the Gulf War, the "hook" was invented by Hill & Knowlton. In style, substance and mode of delivery, it bore an uncanny resemblance to England's World War I hearings that accused German soldiers of killing babies.

SNIP

In fact, the most emotionally moving testimony on October 10 came from a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, known only by her first name of Nayirah. According to the Caucus, Nayirah's full name was being kept confidential to prevent Iraqi reprisals against her family in occupied Kuwait. Sobbing, she described what she had seen with her own eyes in a hospital in Kuwait City. Her written testimony was passed out in a media kit prepared by Citizens for a Free Kuwait. "I volunteered at the al-Addan hospital," Nayirah said. "While I was there, I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns, and go into the room where . . . babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die."83

Three months passed between Nayirah's testimony and the start of the war. During those months, the story of babies torn from their incubators was repeated over and over again. President Bush told the story. It was recited as fact in Congressional testimony, on TV and radio talk shows, and at the UN Security Council. "Of all the accusations made against the dictator," MacArthur observed, "none had more impact on American public opinion than the one about Iraqi soldiers removing 312 babies from their incubators and leaving them to die on the cold hospital floors of Kuwait City."84

http://www.prwatch.org/books/tsigfy10.html

See also the link in my sig line for another example of how the Pentagon, again with the help of a compliant media, pulled another fast one on the public to get support for launching a major military intervention in Vietnam.

[redqueen]

11. IIRC even the Bosnian War had a PR firm attached to it.

But yes, H&K was the source for that 'incubators' lie.

[Ghost Dog]

5. Abolish the Pentagon. n/t.

[troubledamerican]

6. There are no covert manipulations. That's crazy CT talk.

If you don't believe in conspiracy, then you don't believe in history.

[JohnyCanuck]

7. kick n/t

[Octafish]

8. Robert Gates should be fired, immediately.

There's no reason the War Party should be calling the shots and then keeping We the People ignorant on what they are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The BFEE stooge should be out of a job, EOB TODAY.

You too, Poindexter.