Pentagon massages media
Monday, April 21st, 200821/4/08
The Pentagon has used military analysts in a campaign to generate favourable news coverage of the Bush Administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found. The men appeared tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service had equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-September 11 world. Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus intended to shape coverage. The effort, which began with the build-up to the Iraq war and continues today, 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 rarely disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks. But collectively the analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants.
