NYT: Pentagon directed military talking heads who ‘analyzed’ war for networks

It should come as little shock that the Pentagon’s embedding strategy for the press goes both ways. Sunday’s New York Times contained a mammoth, 7500-word David Barstow article revealing the workings of a Pentagon program devoted to assuring that only the Bush administration’s point of view ever gets represented by all the military analysts and experts who clog the airwaves. Barstow puts the number of retired military officers on the DoD teat at around 75, though many of those are b-listers. The generals make themselves available to show up on television and flog the White House line on the war, whatever it is at the moment. For their trouble, these in-pocket “analysts” are given the kind of access that helps them earn big money by hooking up their defense business clients — and most of them have military contractor clients — with pieces of the action.

Barstow wrote of one particular junket, “[I]f the trip pounded the message of progress, it also represented a business opportunity: direct access to the most senior civilian and military leaders in Iraq and Kuwait, including many with a say in how the president’s $87 billion would be spent. It also was a chance to gather inside information about the most pressing needs confronting the American mission: the acute shortages of ‘up-armored’ Humvees; the billions to be spent building military bases; the urgent need for interpreters; and the ambitious plans to train Iraq’s security forces.” The $500-$1000 they earn from the networks for each appearance is chump change by comparison. 

It’s an impressive and useful piece. Also woefully late. If the media organizations that used these propaganda peddlers could hardly be expected to know the extent of the Pentagon’s involvement in setting a party line, they had ample reason to spot conflicts of interest.

[A]lmost weekly the Pentagon continues to conduct briefings with selected military analysts. Many analysts said network officials were only dimly aware of these interactions. The networks, they said, have little grasp of how often they meet with senior officials, or what is discussed.

“I don’t think NBC was even aware we were participating,” said Rick Francona, a longtime military analyst for the network.

Some networks publish biographies on their Web sites that describe their analysts’ military backgrounds and, in some cases, give at least limited information about their business ties. But many analysts also said the networks asked few questions about their outside business interests, the nature of their work or the potential for that work to create conflicts of interest. “None of that ever happened,” said Mr. Allard, an NBC analyst until 2006.

“The worst conflict of interest was no interest.”

Mr. Allard and other analysts said their network handlers also raised no objections when the Defense Department began paying their commercial airfare for Pentagon-sponsored trips to Iraq – a clear ethical violation for most news organizations.

More: Jeffrey St. Clair of Counterpunch on the Iraq War as one big propaganda offensive. 

“We are totally censored, and the press just follows this. It observes what those in power want it to observe, and turns the other way when things get dark. Then, when it’s too late sometimes, you get some very good reporting. But by then, somebody’s playing taps.” Gore Vidal, March 2005