All The World’s A Stage

Every day brings a new reason to feel depressed about the state of the nation. For example, let me share with you yesterday’s misery: I read this story in the Scene and was struck by this item:

Perhaps not surprisingly, one Nashville-based lobbyist says paid "grassroots" movements are becoming a part of every major civic project. Indeed, Copeland himself has worked on at least five such high-profile projects in Middle Tennessee in the past five years. Until the fairgrounds, he had done so the usual way in this line of work — covertly.

Here’s a little tip: if you’re paying people, it’s not “grassroots.”

I’m not at all surprised or shocked, at this point I’m basically just numb to the serial manipulations of public opinion which occur on a daily basis.

Our entire system is just so corrupted. Let me run down a few examples:

• It’s been revealed that many of the “real people” who phone in to talk radio programs are actually paid actors reading from scripts.

• Candidates for office have hired temp workers from staffing agencies to hold campaign signs and look like supporters.

• Corporate sockpuppets working for D.C. lobbyists are given phony titles at made-up front groups, then write op-eds, letters, and even make personal appearances to promote their clients' viewpoint.

• Political campaigns pay thousands of dollars to promote certain candidates and positions via paid professional blog commenters.

• Campaigns routinely hire ghost writers to pen Letters To The Editor as “real citizens.”

And this isn’t even including the usual rat-fucking activities by political activists: those doctored and edited James O’Keefe videos, the “serial victims” like Phil Parlock, the fake assassination plots, even the Sarah Palin sock-puppetry. And none of this is new, either. It’s been going on forever.

Yesterday I heard this item in regards to the Nixon tapes:

Everyone knows, for example, that the Watergate scandal came to light with the burglary of the Democratic Party's headquarters by Republican operatives. But there's a tape, says Naftali, where Nixon then plans a break-in of Republican headquarters.

"They would then blame the Democrats for having broken in to the Republican National Committee," Naftali says. "The president discusses how much money it would cost, and how much damage there should be done, and what they should take."

That scheme, and many others hatched by Nixon, never happened, says Naftali, because people in the government said no, "people who received orders that they would not, could not implement.

Of course, that was the Nixon age. Things have gotten far, far worse these days. And I just have to wonder: what is the point of all this message manipulation? To influence “public opinion”? Really?

If every piece of the discourse is suspect, if every “grassroots” movement is assumed to be astroturf, if every “man on the street” is just as likely to be a paid actor as a “real person,” doesn’t that cheapen the entire idea of public opinion? Doesn’t that make public opinion completely worthless as a concept?

So why are y'all wasting your time? And money? What's the damn point?

And who, really, are these machinations directed at? Certainly not us plebes. I have a sneaking suspicion that we've reached a point where y’all are basically just talking over us and at each other. And if that’s the case, can you just get a room already and leave us out of it?

---------------------
[UPDATE]::

Here's a Toronto Craigslist ad seeking right-wing commenters to newspaper forums, blogs and Facebook posts. They pay by the hour and "volume of online activity." And then there's this:

Bonuses for controversial postings that heat up a topic or forum thread.

And:

Your writing must be strong, right-wing and use supplied talking points without bogging down in too much detail. You are creating an online persona with a consistent tone. Ideally you can find or make up facts and statistics to stir controversy.

This has me wondering if the ad is for real, or if the ad was placed by a left-winger trying to discredit the right-wing. I'm mean at this point, I can't trust anything.

My commenter who observed that the point is not to move public opinion but make it irrelevant is on to something. But really, when has public opinion ever mattered? It was always a farce. It's not like the powerful class haven't done whatever the hell they wanted anyway.

Nobody Could Have Anticipated That James O’Keefe Is A Lying Sack Of Shit With A Partisan Political Agenda

Yeah maybe you should have had your independent experts analyze the “largely unedited” tape (“largely” means exactly what, I wonder?) before issuing pink slips:

One "big warning flag" Tompkins saw in the shorter tape was the way it made it appear that Schiller had laughed and commented "really, that's what they said?" after being told that the fake Muslim group advocates for sharia law. In fact, the longer tape shows that Schiller made that comment during an "innocuous exchange" that had nothing to do with the supposed group's position on sharia law, David reports.

No! Really?!

Tompkins also says that O'Keefe's edited tape ignores the fact that Schiller said "six times ... over and over and over again" that donors cannot buy the kind of coverage they want on NPR.

Yes but we said that Ron Schiller was not involved in NPR’s news division in any way. So we already knew the entire pretext of the tape (“NPR people have opinions! Those opinions mean their news coverage is biased!”) was bullshit.

More from Morning Edition’s report:

Take the political remarks. Ron Schiller speaks of growing up as a Republican and admiring the party's fiscal conservatism. He says Republican politicians and evangelicals are becoming "fanatically" involved in people's lives.

But in the shorter tape, Schiller is also presented as saying the GOP has been "hijacked" by Tea Partiers and xenophobes.

In the longer tape, it's evident Schiller is not giving his own views but instead quoting two influential Republicans — one an ambassador, another a senior Republican donor. Schiller notably does not take issue with their conclusions — but they are not his own.

You don’t say! And finally:

In recent days, several influential journalists have written that they regret giving O'Keefe's NPR videos wider circulation without scrutinizing them for themselves, given his past record and some of the objections that the Blaze first raised. They include Ben Smith of Politico, James Poniewozik of Time magazine and Dave Weigel of Slate.

"The speed at which the media operates when a video comes out is a problem," Weigel said Sunday. "I mean, the rush to be the first to report on a video — and, let's be brutally honest, the rush is to get traffic and to get people booked on [cable TV] shows to talk about it — and that nature leads you to not do the rigor and fact-checking that you would do in other situations."

Ah well, mistakes were made! Just like with the war in Iraq, the media blames its “rush to be first” for its shoddy work and failure to be accurate. Deadlines, dammit they are such pesky little things! Bygones!

And they wonder why people don’t trust the media. Amazing! Nobody, certainly not Dave Weigel or Ben Smith or James Poniewozik, could have had any idea that James O’Keefe is a lying sack of shit with a partisan political agenda and a well-documented history of lies and distortions. Hoocoodanode?!

Furthermore, this incident proves what I said last month is still correct:

When the right wants to embarrass the left they must resort to severely edited videos doctored with the intention of misleading viewers, and which completely misrepresent actual events. When the left wants to embarrass the right they just need to capture the right speaking honestly.

Still holds true.

This Day In War

Twenty years ago today:

On August 2, 1990, Iraqi troops led by dictator Saddam Hussein invaded the oil-producing nation of Kuwait. Like Noriega in Panama, Hussein had been a US ally for nearly a decade. From 1980 to 1988, he had killed about 150,000 Iranians, in addition to at least 13,000 of his own citizens. Despite complaints from international human rights group, however, the Reagan and Bush administrations had treated Hussein as a valuable ally in the US confrontation with Iran. As late as July 25 - a week before the invasion of Kuwait - US Ambassador April Glaspie commiserated with Hussein over a "cheap and unjust" profile by ABC's Diane Sawyer, and wished for an "appearance in the media, even for five minutes," by Hussein that "would help explain Iraq to the American people."

Ah yes, good times:

Hey whatever happened to Rumsfeld, anyway?

Not long after, America was at war with Iraq -- our first great, glorious war against Saddam Hussein. Let’s rewind the tape and recall how Saddam was repositioned from BFF to Evildoer in the mind of the American public in just a few short months:

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."

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."

At the Human Rights Caucus, however, Hill & Knowlton and Congressman Lantos had failed to reveal that Nayirah was a member of the Kuwaiti Royal Family. Her father, in fact, was Saud Nasir al-Sabah, Kuwait's Ambassador to the US, who sat listening in the hearing room during her testimony. The Caucus also failed to reveal that H&K vice-president Lauri Fitz-Pegado had coached Nayirah in what even the Kuwaitis' own investigators later confirmed was false testimony.

Hill & Knowlton is one of America’s oldest PR firms, responsible for countering scientific claims about tobacco’s adverse health effects and other corporate propaganda. In 1990 they represented the government of Kuwait (for more, see the "Citizens for a Free Kuwait” hoax.
)

That's pretty incredible client service for a PR firm: getting America to go to war for your client! I mean, how awesome is that?

And for arranging false testimony before Congress the PR firm of Hill & Knowlton received ... sanctions? A fine? A slap on the wrist? How about some government PR contracts? Ding ding ding! Thank you for playing!

Meanwhile, Lauri Fitz-Pegado served as one of the Obama campaign's foreign policy experts, though thankfully not for the Middle East. She is now a lobbyist for the Livingston Group. Her latest coup--pardon the pun:

In 2008, Fitz-Pegado was part of Livingston's team for the non-profit Council for a Democratic Iran, which paid the firm $300,000 in the third quarter of 2008 alone.

If America goes to war with Iran I think we all know who we have to thank.

I think it’s important to remember that this shit has been going on for decades. Who’s pulling your strings, America? Why do you keep letting them?

How BP Is Like The TN Legislature

Both want to stop news from being reported.

CBS News journalists were threatened with arrest for attempting to film oil washing ashore. Watch the video here:




Yes, if nobody sees the oil washing ashore, then it surely doesn’t exist! Hey, it works for Britt Hume, right?

Meanwhile, Rep. Joe Towns, D-Memphis, tried to permanently ban AP reporter Erik Schelzig from the House chamber after Schelzig photographed a collapsed House Speaker Kent Williams last week (Williams was suffering from low blood sugar and recovered). In other words, Schelzig was doing his job.

Look, I’m glad Schelzig hasn’t been banned from the chamber, but the resolution misses the point. I want to make sure neither he nor any other reporter is ever again ejected from the chamber by the sergeant at arms and a state trooper for, I repeat, doing his job. Because seeing your colleague ushered out under threat of arrest sends a pretty powerful message--one that transcends House resolutions. If the rules of conduct need to be clarified then so be it, but let’s make one thing absolutely clear: when a legislator collapses it is a newsworthy event, and if there’s a photographer on the scene he or she damn well better be allowed to cover it. And shame on any politician, Democrat or Republican, for sending any other message.

Dear TNDP: Better Democrats, please.

Why Is This Man On My TV?

Why is Ben Venzke, CEO of Intelcenter, on my TV again? Oh that’s easy: I’m watching CBS’ “coverage” of the new (alleged) Osama bin Laden tape.

I’m trying to figure out why, whenever OBL supposedly rears his head, CBS News runs to Venzke for comment. Here’s Venzke’s latest CBS moment, which was sent around the U.S. to local CBS affiliates in a news package. Although the piece came from CBS News’ London correspondent Mark Phillips last week, I caught it on NewsChannel5 (WTVF) this morning:

Bin Laden's audio message, one of more than 30 since al Qaeda's 9/11 attacks, comes at a time of heightened security in the U.S. and the United Kingdom. What is particularly troubling for analysts is bin Laden's use of language that preceded other attacks.

"Peace be upon those who follow the light of guidance," bin Laden said in the tape.

"This phrase, which appears at the beginning and end of the message, only appears in bin Laden's statements typically in messages that come in advance of an attack," said Ben Venzke CEO of Intelcenter, a private contractor that works with counter-terrorism agencies. "This could be in the coming weeks or as far out as 12 or 14 weeks from now."

Oh, well thanks for that insight (or should I say, incite?) At least CBS sorta identified Venzke’s company properly this time--I’ve seen reports going back a few years in which they refer to Intelsource as “an agency.”

They are not an “agency.” They are a military contractor. Like Halliburton, KBR, Xe (Blackwater), Boeing, Raytheon or any other military contractor. They have a contract with the Pentagon and they profit from our war on terror. They have a financial stake in scaring the crap out of people. So I’d say anything Venzke or Intelcenter has to say about Osama Bin Laden needs to be taken with that in mind and the news media should not use them as a source.

Unfortunately, it gets even worse for CBS News when you realize what the Pentagon contracts Intelsource to do. In fact, the Pentagon hires Intelsource to search for videos and other communications from terrorist groups--videos like this latest one of Osama bin Laden. Isn’t that interesting? So in other words, the Pentagon hires Intelsource to find videos of Osama bin Laden. Then when they find one, the CEO of the company which was hired to find the video in the first place goes onto the news to verify its authenticity.

Well isn’t that cozy. So, do we know that Venzke and Intelsource have ginned up phony terror videos which they then verified in their media appearances? Actually, it has been alleged by a few conspiracy-oriented blogs. I won’t link them, as I can’t vouch for these blogs. But there was one instance where an expert accused Intelsource of doctoring an OBL video it found and released (Venzke of course denied doing any such thing).

But all of that is beside the point. The issue is not whether Intelsource has behaved unethically, since we don’t know. The issue is that CBS News has provided a military contractor with the opportunity to do so. They should never have put their news division on such ethically shaky ground.

Could it get worse? Why yes, it can: I e-mailed my concerns to a NewsChannel5 anchor with whom I’m on friendly terms. I knew they did not generate the report but since that’s where I saw it, I asked them to pass my concerns along up the news division chain. My friend responded first with thanks that I’d call it to their attention, noting they were unaware of Venzke’s role as a military contractor.

But they then said there is nothing they can do about it because

quite frankly, it's something that comes to us and we don't have the resources all the time to catch that kind of thing.

Our broken news media: is feature, not bug.

I wonder if this is what Viacom intended of its news division. The Pentagon contracts with a company to find videos of terrorists and when that company finds them, the CEO gets to flaunt their authenticity on the news. No one is the wiser but we all stay very, very scared.

Mission accomplished.

Memo To The Mainstream Media

Dear Mainstream Media:

Now seems like a good time to remind you all that disgruntled departing Clinton-Gore staffers did not, in fact, vandalize the White House and loot Air Force One:

An official government investigation, however, reveals one major problem with these stories: They apparently never happened. According to statements from the General Services Administration that were reported on May 17, little if anything out of the ordinary occurred during the transition, and "the condition of the real property was consistent with what we would expect to encounter when tenants vacate office space after an extended occupancy."

Ironically, the investigation came in response to a request from Rep. Bob Barr (R.-Ga.), and many conservatives who had assumed that the wild rumors would be confirmed by an official inquiry. That wasn't the case. (The "looting" of Air Force One had also been denied months ago by officials at Andrews Air Force base -- Kansas City Star, 2/9/01).

By the way, that official government investigation came at a cost of $200,000 to identify less than $1,000 worth of “prank” damages.

I feel the need to remind you in the media of this, since most of you gleefully reported these allegations as fact in the days after President Bush’s first inauguration. Yet few of you bothered to correct the record when the GAO’s report was released.

Now, having just watched MSNBC’s story on the transition to an Obama Administration, I have a feeling we’re going to be hearing a lot about missing “W” keys from keyboards and the like.

So please get the story straight this time.

kaithxbai.

Damned If You Do Department

Via Atrios comes word that the McCain campaign had two sets of anti-Obama ads ready to go: one if he didn’t visit with wounded troops and one if he did:

What the McCain campaign doesn’t want people to know, according to one GOP strategist I spoke with over the weekend, is that they had an ad script ready to go if Obama had visited the wounded troops saying that Obama was...wait for it...using wounded troops as campaign props. So, no matter which way Obama turned, McCain had an Obama bashing ad ready to launch. I guess that’s political hardball. But another word for it is the one word that most politicians are loathe to use about their opponents—a lie.

I can’t say I’m surprised by this. Politics is what it is, and John McCain has shown he is ready, willing, and able to play as dirty and negative as he needs to.

But like Atrios, I am curious as to why the media continues to play along. Especially since this ad was clearly made for the media to report on, not to run as a campaign ad:

WASHINGTON — The number of times Senator John McCain’s new advertisement attacking Senator Barack Obama for canceling a visit with wounded troops in Germany last week has been shown fully or partly on local, national and cable newscasts: well into the hundreds.

The number of times that spot actually, truly ran as a paid commercial: roughly a dozen.

Result for Mr. McCain: a public relations coup that allowed him to show his toughest campaign advertisement of the year — one widely panned as misleading — to millions of people, largely free, through television news media hungry for political news with arresting visual imagery.

Welcome to Swift Boat 2008! This is a perfect example of why liberals say the media is biased. Either our mainstream media are willing participants in this election year kabuki theater, or they are the biggest suckers on the planet because they keep getting played over and over and over again.

Either way, it’s wrong.

Humiliation

[1 Update below]

In wading through one of the transcripts in the Pentagon’s document dump referenced here, I came across an intriguing passage. It’s from an April 18, 2006 briefing with then-Secretary Rumsfeld and General Casey.

The questioner is one of the military analysts connected with a broadcast network, though it’s difficult to tell exactly who it is. Since he’s later referred to as “Tom,” this leads me to believe it’s Retired Gen. Thomas G. McInerney, senior military analyst for Fox News. I am not sure of this but regardless, the quote is priceless:

QUESTION: So the fact is, I don’t think the American people, because the administration hasn’t explained it as well, understand why we’re forward, why we want to be there.

The other day I’m driving in and Chris Coor’s got a vote on do we need to bring the troops back to protect the border, or do we need them over there? I was amazed. People are talking about bringing them back. Two entirely different issues.

Islamic extremism is coming here like they did on 9/11 if we don’t have a forward strategy. It’s been very successful. Almost five years we’ve kept them away.

So I say you’ve got a brilliant strategy but I’m not sure we’ve articulated it in a way that every day it comes up.

Their strategy over there of Islamist extremism, and every day, as you know, it’s open source. Number one, it’s a crusade.

Number two, they want our oil. Number three, they want to humiliate us. If you stay with this we’ll bring victory and we will not let them humiliate us. Every day on the internet, every day in Al Arabiyah and every day on Al Jazeera they’re seeing that.

OK, pick your jaws up off the floor.

The notion that we are engaged in a “crusade” is inflammatory enough. But “our” oil? How did “our” oil get under “their” land to begin with? Who says it's “our” oil, anyway? And if you read the transcript, no one disputes this viewpoint, not even Gen. Casey.

But the kicker is that whole “humiliation” thing. The idea that we’ve got soldiers dying in Iraq and we’re spending billions of dollars a month just so we won’t be humiliated is nauseating. Again, no one corrects this military analyst for his twisted view of why we are in Iraq. Not Secretary Rumsfeld, or General Casey or any of the other retired generals in that briefing. It's as if they all agree with him.

Look, General Questioner, whomever you may be: we’re already humiliated. We were humiliated the moment the Pentagon hired you Kool-Aid gulping mouthpieces to drag this country into a war of choice. We were humiliated when your colleagues dreamed up modern-day torture chambers like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, and the CIA’s extraordinary rendition flights.

Is that really what people are dying for? A bunch of military guys' fragile egos? I'll make you a deal: pop a few Viagra and see if that helps your humiliation problem. Feel better? Now can we bring the troops home?

[By the way, does anyone know who “Chris Coor” or “Chris Coors” is?]

[Update 1]:

Jim in comments writes: "The way I am reading his comments makes the bold remarks in reference to the Islamists' view of the war. I think his point was that we were not effectively countering that view."

This might be the case, at least in part. Remember, the context of this discussion is, how do we sell the war to the American public, not how do we get the Iraqis behind our presence in their country. General Questioner is not saying, how do we counter that view, but how do we do something similar here. The excerpt starts with this: "I don’t think the American people, because the administration hasn’t explained it as well, understand why we’re forward, why we want to be there."

That's what he's explaining. Feel free to read the transcript and share your thoughts with me, though. Forward strategy stuff is on Page 11.

How Dirty Is Our Media

Since the New York Times revealed the Pentagon’s propaganda campaign and use of “surrogates and message-force multipliers” to sprinkle fairy dust on our failed Iraq misadventure, we’ve been learning a lot about the astonishing breadth and depth of this misinformation campaign.

Most interesting is the Pentagon’s massive document dump, which through the miracle of the internet allows ordinary dweebs like you and me to read transcripts and e-mails between the Pentagon and these propaganda mouthpieces. Folks like ThinkProgress and Talking Points Memo are combing through these files and have posted some interesting things. For example, one military analyst who is also a radio host promised a “softball” interview of Gen. Casey on a right-wing radio show, prompting a Pentagon flack to warn:

Just fyi, probably wouldn't put "softball" interview in writing. If that got out it would compromise jed and general casey.

What’s astonishing to me is, despite the tremendous effort and energy put into this propaganda program, it’s been an utter failure. The Pentagon went all out to seed the news media with Iraq War boosters and friendly faces who promised to be “on message,” yet the majority of Americans still think the Iraq War was a mistake and the occupation has been mishandled. Truth wins out, people, every single time.

I spent a little time wading through the document dump today and really came face to face with evidence of our massively corrupted right wing media. Of course, we always knew the Fox folks were cheerleaders for the Bush Administration, but looking through these documents, we see Fox News and right-wing radio in deep collusion with the Pentagon propaganda machine. They were active, willing, knowing participants.

A favorite is this April 18, 2006 briefing with then-Secretary Rumsfeld and General Casey. At one point an analyst marvels to Rumsfeld:

“You go on O’Reilly and you’ve got him eating out of your hand.”

On page 14 of the transcript, Rumsfeld gloats about Gen. Russell Honore calling journalists stupid:

Question: Right. One of the things that impressed me about how the initiatives (inaudible) after the hurricane in New Orleans was when Honore chastised the press about getting stuck on stupid. [Laughter].

Secretary Rumsfeld: It was wonderful. Can you imagine? I’d like to think I was a genius and I had him located there to -- [Laughter] - just in case there was a Katrina. But it was just an accident. The guy is fabulous.

Actually, Honore was discussing Hurricane Rita, and chastising the media for having the temerity to ask what lessons from Katrina would be applied to the Rita evacuation effort (you can watch a YouTube clip of Honore here.) Right wing media pundits like Michelle Malkin ate it up. They love it when someone gets tough with CNN reporters because they see themselvs as perpetual victims in a world where their extreme views have them inreasingly marginalized.

This certainly doesn’t let the rest of the mainstream media off the hook, it does seem that the folks at CBS, CNN, etc. were at least for the most part sloppy and incurious, but not necessarily knowing participants in a government misinformation campaign. You can't say that for the right wing media, though.

Were You There When They Misquoted Al Gore

Of all the low-down, dirty, rat-dog, cheap shots, this takes the cake:

Right-wing echo chamber promotes doctored and deceptive audio clip of Al Gore.

Earlier this week, the Business & Media Institute (BMI) – a right-wing front group founded by Brent Bozell – spliced and doctored an NPR interview of Al Gore in order to allege that Gore said something which he did not. The organization published a false headline which blared that Gore called the Myanmar cyclone a “consequence” of global warming. Drudge promoted it on his site.

[...]

But in the NPR interview, Gore asserted that melting polar ice caps — not cyclones — were a “consequence” of global warming (which is unequivocally due to global warming). BMI inverted Gore’s comments to make it seem like his remarks about the cyclones followed from his remarks about “the consequences of global warming.” Yesterday, Fox News promoted the doctored clip to make the same false allegations about what Gore actually said.

Indeed, the truth-challenged folks at Faux News offer us this blaring headline:

Al Gore Blames Global Warming for Myanmar Cyclone

Brent Bozell is a smear campaign veteran (for more on Bozell, read here). But Gore has been a target of all sorts of smear campaigns: remember when the Tennessee Center for Policy Research made the shocking allegation that the Gores actually use electricity? Bring the fainting couch!

I really don’t get this antipathy toward Al Gore from the right. Yes, I know his anti-global warming crusade has challenged the power structure and Big Oil. But the right has been gunning for Gore since before the 2000 election. They’ve been acting like he’s some kind of major threat to their plan for world domination since forever.

Maybe he is. All I know is, I'm sick of these kind of smears. If you have something real to slam Gore on, then do it. But don't doctor and edit the soundbite. That just proves you've got nothing. It's evidence that your motivation is the smear. We're all just tired of it.

Pentagon Halts Analyst Propaganda Program--For Now

Interesting. Despite a near-universal media blackout since the New York Times broke the story of the Pentagon’s military propaganda campaign, the government is “temporarily” halting the program pending an investigation:

Pentagon halts feeding of information to retired officers while issue is reviewed

By Jeff Schogol, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Saturday, April 26, 2008 

ARLINGTON, Va. - The Defense Department has temporarily stopped feeding information to retired military officers pending a review of the issue, said Robert Hastings, principal deputy assistant secretary of Defense for public affairs.

The New York Times first reported on Sunday that the Defense Department was giving information to retired officers serving as pundits for various media organizations in order to garner favorable media coverage.

Some of these retired officers saw their access to key decision-makers as possible business opportunities for the defense contractors they represent, according to the newspaper. The story also alleged that the officers who did not repeat the Bush administration's official line were denied further access to information.

Hastings said he is concerned about allegations that the Defense Department's relationship with the retired military analysts was improper.

"Following the allegations, the story that is printed in the New York Times, I directed my staff to halt, to suspend the activities that may be ongoing with retired military analysts to give me time to review the situation," Hastings said in an interview with Stripes on Friday.

Let me point out to Stars & Stripes that the issue is not so much that the Pentagon was “feeding information” to retired military officers serving as network and cable news analysts. It’s that they they were feeding these so-called “analysts” spin, talking points and propaganda. And these so-called “analysts” were in most cases willing propaganda-pushers:

Though many analysts are paid network consultants, making $500 to $1,000 per appearance, in Pentagon meetings they sometimes spoke as if they were operating behind enemy lines, interviews and transcripts show.

Some offered the Pentagon tips on how to outmaneuver the networks, or as one analyst put it to Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, “the Chris Matthewses and the Wolf Blitzers of the world.” Some warned of planned stories or sent the Pentagon copies of their correspondence with network news executives. Many — although certainly not all — faithfully echoed talking points intended to counter critics.

“Good work,” Thomas G. McInerney, a retired Air Force general, consultant and Fox News analyst, wrote to the Pentagon after receiving fresh talking points in late 2006. “We will use it.”

Or, how about this one:

At the same time, in e-mail messages to the Pentagon, [Fox News analyst] Mr. Garrett displayed an eagerness to be supportive with his television and radio commentary. “Please let me know if you have any specific points you want covered or that you would prefer to downplay,” he wrote in January 2007, before President Bush went on TV to describe the surge strategy in Iraq.

Aww. That’s so sweet! Thanks for thinking of us!

It is tempting to fault the Pentagon and the phony “analysts” for this scenario, but really I fault the networks and cable news. Why weren’t they paying attention? Why weren’t they examining who these phony “analysts” were? Why this:

The analysts, they noticed, often got more airtime than network reporters, and they were not merely explaining the capabilities of Apache helicopters. They were framing how viewers ought to interpret events. What is more, while the analysts were in the news media, they were not of the news media. They were military men, many of them ideologically in sync with the administration’s neoconservative brain trust, many of them important players in a military industry anticipating large budget increases to pay for an Iraq war.

Why, CNN? Why, MSNBC? Why, CBS and ABC?

Why didn’t you do your job and report the news? Why did you never once question the information your phony “analysts” presented on the air?

What’s truly amazing to me is that despite pulling out all the stops, despite all of the propaganda and media manipulation, 63% of Americans still think the war was a mistake.

After all of that, Americans still aren’t buying it.

But the news media--and this extends to the New York Times, which happily printed Judith Miller’s BS on page one--has a lot to answer for. Their willing compliance in the largest scam ever perpetrated on an entire nation’s populace will have deep repercussions years down the road. They have blood on their hands for pushing America to war.

And as they continue to promote the same thinkers and opinion makers who were wrong about everything on Iraq, all I can say is: Stop hurting America. And stop hurting yourselves.

Media Trojan Horse

Why I don't trust the mainstream media:

Smell The Propaganda

Some of us have known about this for a long time, but it’s good to see the media finally catching on to the fact that they’ve been had:

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.

So most of the experts and analysts the media trots out to give us objective information about the war in Iraq actually have ties to the very companies profiting from the war.

Knock me over with a feather.

I mean, GE owns NBC Universal. It’s also a defense contractor. We’re supposed to ignore that fact as we watch the NBC Nightly News. It’s the same issue, taken to a far more extreme, dangerous and lethal level, that I wrote about in this post last week. Business with an interest in manipulating coverage has infiltrated our news media.

A famous Republican President warned us about this many years ago:

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Well, when the militaryindustrial complex has infiltrated the news media, you can scratch that “alert and knowledgeable citizenry” thing. Nice idea, though.

Wake up and smell the propaganda, people.

ABC Calls Central Casting

Looks like when the producers at ABC News were too ashamed to ask that ridiculous “flag pin” question at Wednesday’s debate, they found the perfect patsy person to do it for them. Meet Nash McCabe, Obama hater:

But she sees a difference between the two. In Clinton, she sees someone who has struggled for years, just like her, and has earned the right to be president. In Obama, she sees someone who rose like a rocket, always has a smooth explanation for everything — whether it's about his former preacher or the flag pin — and who makes it all look too easy.

"That's what upsets me about Barack Obama," she says. "He takes everything so nonchalantly."

So Nash McCabe, the lady who asked the infamous “flag pin” question, has some issues. She appears--dare I say it?--bitter. Okay, fair enough. But how did ABC find this lady?

Turns out it wasn’t too hard, seeing as how McCabe was interviewed by the New York Times on the flag pin issue earlier in the month.

What a coinky-dinky! Or, you know, not. Turns out McCabe wasn’t exactly a random representative of voters. She was “cast.” She’s certainly entitled to her opinions, no matter how much I may disagree with them. But heads up to ABC: You don't "cast" the news. That's crossing the line into manipulation.

Here's a good explanation:

So Nash McCabe wasn't located at random at all. Instead, someone at ABC News decided that they wanted to go after Obama on the patriotism issue, and they actively sought a Pennsylvanian who they knew wanted to bring it up. I assume they thought it would sound better if "a typical voter" asked the question instead of Charlie Gibson. "You see, we're only raising the issue the voters really care about," they can claim.

Uh-huh. Way to go, ABC. That’s a real class act.

For ABC News to set up Barack Obama--or any candidate--in a debate this way is a low blow. And it further proves what I’ve been saying all along: that this election is just Kabuki theater to the news outlets. It’s entertainment, just another story to file in between their coverage of today’s crazy polygamist cult and the celeb divorce du jour. They don't even take it seriously enough to cover it accurately. Instead they are going to "stage" it, to maximize the entertainment value.

This stuff matters, ABC. The ship of state has been steered into deeply troubled waters. We’re electing a leader. It matters. “Casting” your debate questioners is just wrong.

I doubt they get it. In fact, I’m sure they don’t.

Fuck ‘em.

“Tennessean” Gets Astroturfed

Can you smell the propaganda? The Tennessean apparently can’t: our daily fishwrap just got astroturfed by GOP front group Veterans For Freedom. The Sunday local news section featured a story on the group’s visit to (where else?) a church in Williamson County. The headline says it all: "Veterans tell 'true story' of Iraq.” This part is priceless:

The good news, Hegseth said, is that since June, attacks in Iraq and sectarian violence have decreased 70 percent.

"We're combating the talking points of 2006, which was outright civil war in Iraq, and if folks haven't gotten the memo, civil war in Iraq is over," he said.

Uh, right. I guess Hegseth hasn’t gotten the memo about what’s happening with the Mahdi Army.

Anyway, it would have been nice if someone at the paper had done the most cursory check of Veterans For Freedom before filing this propaganda piece. If they had, then maybe they would have mentioned VFF's ties to the Bush Administration, the GOP, and partisan activities targeting anti-war Democrats. Sadly, The Tennessean's reporters and editors never bothered to check into VFF at all. They failed to do even the simplest Google search; heck, they probably didn't even spell check the thing.

Sad, but not surprising.

Typical of astroturfers, VFF presents itself as a non-partisan, grassroots organization. Instead, they are a GOP front group familiar to the netroots for their efforts to defeat anti-war Senate candidate Ned Lamont in 2006.

The group started out with the help of former White House spokesman Taylor Gross’ PR firm, the Herald Group. They tried to get newspapers to embed their Jeff Gannon-like mouthpieces in Iraq until they were busted by Buffalo News reporter Jerry Zremsk:

WASHINGTON - A former spokesman for President Bush recently offered to several newspapers supposedly objective freelance stories from Iraq by two combat veterans who lead a pro-war group with deep Republican ties.

Several months after revelations that a Pentagon contractor was paying Iraqi news outlets for favorable war coverage, former White House spokesman Taylor Gross approached at least four major newspapers, including The Buffalo News, with the offer.

Gross' pitch to The News said the two highly decorated veterans could serve as embedded correspondents and "offer balanced and credible viewpoints gained directly from those closest to and most affected by the Iraq War." One of the reporters, former Marine Lt. Wade Zirkle, helped run Republican Jerry Kilgore's 2005 campaign for governor of Virginia.

Zirkle and the other reporter, David Bellavia of Batavia, are top leaders of Vets for Freedom, a new group with a highly polished Web site hosted by a firm that previously worked for the 2004 Bush-Cheney re-election campaign and the Republican National Committee.

Yes, that would be Campaign Solutions:

The group’s Website is hosted by Campaign Solutions, a high-profile political consultancy that does Republican-campaign Web work. Clients have included Bush-Cheney ’04 and the Swift Boat Vets. “Vets for Freedom are the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” of the ’06 cycle, says Stauber.

Zirkle no longer works for Vets For Freedom--he’s been replaced by Pete Hegseth, quoted in the Tennessean article--but Hegseth is a former policy specialist for the right-wing Manhattan Institute, a think tank started by William Casey, Ronald Reagan’s CIA director.

Dan Senor, who worked for the Bush Administration in Iraq as a Senior Advisor to Paul Bremer III , was quoted in the Wall Street Journal as saying he was advising the group. Nope, no partisanship there.

Perhaps the weirdest thing I found out about VFF is that one of their spokes-vets/anti-liberal agitators is a former gay porn star.

It doesn’t take any magical google-fu to find this stuff. But apparently even that is beyond the abilities of the crack stenographers at The Tennessean.

Compare, Contrast

Hillary Clinton is taking a lot of heat for a planted question at one of her Iowa campaign appearances:

The Clinton campaign operation in Iowa was forced to admit that it had set up the question on climate change at a town hall rally in Newton last Tuesday. The meeting had been an important set-piece for Clinton, with several members of the national media present.

After Clinton spoke, a student in the crowd was invited to pose a question. "As a young person, I'm worried about the long-term effects of global warming. How does your plan combat climate change?" the student asked.

Okay, I can’t defend this, planting a question when the national media is present is the worst sort of PR manipulation. And this was such a lame setup; Clinton might as well have been wearing an “ask me about global warming!” T-shirt.

But hey, it’s not the worst thing. She wanted to talk about global warming. That’s a softball? It’s not like she set up a phony town hall meeting and filled it with adoring supporters who wanted to know what brand of pantyhose she wears or her favorite lipstick shade. But you’d think she had, judging from the head-spinning rage of folks like Michelle Malkin, who used insults like “crapweasel” and “phony baloney” after the incident.

I don’t recall Malkin having a problem with President Bush’s planted questions or his staged “town hall” meetings that were as scripted as a Tony winning production. (She may have--I’m not, ahem, one of her regular raeders.) Still, wrong is wrong. Let’s hope Hillary has learned her lesson.

That said, let’s do a fun little comparison exercise. Can you spot the phony-baloney crapweasel?

Hillary Clinton:

"As a young person, I'm worried about the long-term effects of global warming. How does your plan combat climate change?"

And now, President Bush, 2007:

What do you pray about, and how we can we pray for you?

Yikes. Let’s try that again.

Hillary Clinton:

"As a young person, I'm worried about the long-term effects of global warming. How does your plan combat climate change?"

And now President Bush, 2004

THE PRESIDENT: You got a question?

Q I, too, want to say God bless you, Mr. Bush. My husband and my twins and I pray for you daily, as do many home schoolers. (Applause.) Thank you for recognizing home schoolers.

THE PRESIDENT: Let's see, who've we got here? You got a question?

Q Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. President, for visiting Oregon. I've heard through the grapevine that Oregon is one of the most unchurched states in the union, and I really feel like it shows up in every walk of our society. Could you take a moment to pray for Oregon, for us, right now?

[...]

THE PRESIDENT: -- Jack in the Box. Go ahead.

Q -- I want to thank you for everything you did after September 11th. I was in Israel then, and it was hard getting back. And it was very devastating. And you -- no one could have done what you did any better. (Applause.)

Wow, that was fun! Let’s try just one more. Hillary Clinton:

"As a young person, I'm worried about the long-term effects of global warming. How does your plan combat climate change?"

And now President Bush, 2005:

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, sir.

Q Thank you. Senate Democratic leaders have painted a very bleak picture of the U.S. economy. Harry Reid was talking about soup lines, and Hillary Clinton was talking about the economy being on the verge of collapse. Yet, in the same breath, they say that Social Security is rock-solid and there's no crisis there. How are you going to work -- you said you're going to reach out to these people -- how are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?

Okay, who can spot the phony-baloney crapweasel in these examples. Anyone?

Ace In The Hole

Watching CNN’s Kiran “Chit-Chat” Chetry and other MSM outlets cover the Utah mine story in agonizing detail, I’m reminded of the wonderful Billy Wilder film ”Ace In the Hole” (later re-released as “The Big Carnival”), which covers a similar scenario.

First released in 1951, the film stars Kirk Douglas as a manipulative news reporter who prolongs the rescue of a man trapped in a cave so he can milk the story for all it’s worth and return to the big time from his exile in Bumfug, New Mexico. It’s inspired by the true story of a trapped Kentucky caver, whose story earned a Courier-Journal reporter a Pulitzer waaaay back in 1925.

You mean, media manipulation, crooked local officials, sensationalist journalists, and gullible Americans aren’t new issues? People were talking about this stuff back in 1951? Even back in 1925? Be still my cynical heart.

Although the film was nominated for two Oscars, it seems to have disappeared from our film lexicon, rarely surfacing on cable TV. It’s almost as if the big media companies don’t want us to see a film about how Americans are manipulated by big media companies.

Heh.

But just last month the film found its first video distributor. You can now rent it on Netflix, for the first time ever.

I highly recommend that you do.