Military Analysts, Main-Stream Media, and the White House

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

NYTimes says retired military experts used by media as "analysts" were used by the Administration to push propoganda

To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.

The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants. The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration’s war on terror. It is a furious competition, one in which inside information and easy access to senior officials are highly prized.

Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks.

Analysts have been wooed in hundreds of private briefings with senior military leaders, including officials with significant influence over contracting and budget matters, records show. They have been taken on tours of Iraq and given access to classified intelligence. They have been briefed by officials from the White House, State Department and Justice Department, including Mr. Cheney, Alberto R. Gonzales and Stephen J. Hadley.

In turn, members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated. Some analysts acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their access.

So... what, if anything, was inappropriate in these relationships? Who was the "bad guy" in this situation - the media for not vetting their analysts or enforcing ethical reporting standards, the White House for using the analysts in a sort of play-for-pay deal, or the analysts for taking advantage of their contacts to do well for themselves, financially or otherwise?

[brian_igo]

MJ, I think your question is a pretty good example of just how screwed up network news has become.

What's inappropriate? All of it. The ethically compromised analysts/defense contractor consultants behave like reporters (or is it that reporters behave like them?), the networks turn away from even the most crass examples of conflict when hiring analysts (also see, CNN refusing for months to note that "Democratic analyst" James Carville was openly endorsing Hillary Clinton), and the government for using this as a cover for what is, by any definition, propaganda.

Working reporters who don't get on TV fifty times a day are risking their careers if they put a candidate's sign in their lawn. They're not allowed to volunteer for political campaigns and a lot of papers and networks prohibit reporters and editors/producers from making campaign donations. But these same papers and networks spend huge money to give these same people prime space on the op-ed page or an analyst title, and willfully throw their ethics manuals out the window.

Do news consumers see the difference between a reporter and an op-ed columnist or TV analyst? Hell, no. And its not their job to sort through who has to work under ethical standards of the paper or network and who gets a pass.

The internet isn't going to destroy the news business. They are going to do themselves by losing the trust of their readers and viewers with crap like this.

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

brian_igo said

MJ, I think your question is a pretty good example of just how screwed up network news has become.

What's inappropriate? All of it.

Good bait, wasn't it?

[rmthunter]

I can't add much to what Brian said, except to note that this is an inevitable result of the corporatization of news organizations. What's become important is the bottom line, and too much of that these days depends on access to power. Does anyone remember the White House trying to disinvite Helen Thomas from presidential press conferences? It had nothing to do with her history of asking hard questions, no sirree.

One other thing: the separation between opinion and reporting is a thing of the past. At least the blogosphere is (usually) honest about its biases, because bloggers' profits (which, if they exist at all, are minimal) depend on that honesty. The MSM doesn't seem to get it. We've always had to know the particularly ideological bent of our local papers, but could usually count on honest reporting. No more.

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

So is it entirely the MSM's fault? The two of you seem to be putting the greater responsiblity on the news organizations for this situation. Is it entirely the media's responsiblity to prevent things like this from happening?

[realtraveller]

The dirty little secret of the news business is that many of the feature stories on TV and in the newspapers are prompted, vetted, promoted with research provided by the public relations firms of special interest organizations. The entire job of the PR firms is to bombard news organizations with 'stories' that promote their point of view. That's why certain stories and issues become the 'flavor of the month'. It's a coordinated PR campaign and the so-called journalists are happy to become and arm of public relations.

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

Hmm. I don't know if it's that "secret" of a secret for many of the stories, especially the soft news stories or stories touting the invention of a new drug or other product. But should the federal government use the same tactics as an electronics or pharmacutical company?

[brian_igo]

mjfrombuffalo said

So is it entirely the MSM's fault? The two of you seem to be putting the greater responsiblity on the news organizations for this situation. Is it entirely the media's responsiblity to prevent things like this from happening?

Yes, the press has the primary responsibility to prevent this. They are the only one's who have an ethical obligation to vet their sources and be transparent with their readers/viewers about any conflicts of interest. Besides, they control the access to their pages and their airwaves.

I would like that our government and retired military leaders put honor and honesty first, but you can't expect government or the military to choose to act against their self-interests because they're on a cable news show. If they're saying things that don't square with the reports on the ground - as happened almost constantly from 2005-mid 2007, it should be on the newspaper or network to find out why they are being used to spread false claims and stop it.

There's a related angle to this that Glenn Greenwald has been chasing. He notes that not only did the cable news networks hire many pro-war military analysts with rotten track records for prognostication and financial ties to war contractors, there was a concerted effort from the start of this in 2003 to not have any anti-war analysts on their air until the failures in Iraq became impossible to hide in late 2005. Then, as soon as the surge showed any sign of quelling the violence last fall, they disappeared.

There has been thoughtful opposition to the war in Iraq from the beginning among people who have at least as much military experience as any of the analysts hired by cable news in the last five years. But the news networks chose instead to frame opposition to the war in the protest antics of groups like Code Pink. The ultimate act of bias is to present one side as being unworthy of serious thought, and that is exactly how the mainstream press gave us the anti-war movement for the first three years of this war.

[rmthunter]

The perfect case in point, ironically enough, is the New York Times: uber-hawk William Kristol, who has not been right about anything concerning Iraq since the beginning, but was gung ho to bomb somebody (and I'm not sure it mattered who), has been rewarded for his complete incompetence as a commentator by a slot on the NYT opinion pages.

Do you get the picture?