julia

Title
Media:AFP:Pentgn sspnds milt anlysts prgrm

Link
Pentagon Suspends Military Media Analysts Program - Media on The Huffington Post
-----------------------------------------------------
Excerpt

Pentagon Suspends Military Media Analysts Program
AFP April 28, 2008

AFP reports:

The Pentagon has suspended a public affairs program that has come under fire for using retired military "media analysts" as surrogates to get out its messages on the Iraq war, a spokesman confirmed Monday.


Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the program was undergoing an internal review following criticism that the retired officers offered Pentagon talking points as their own during the run-up to the Iraq invasion and thereafter.


The program, which was first reported in the Sunday New York Times on April 20, came under intense scrutiny from journalists. Ari Melber has a roundup of some of the criticism.

But as HuffPost's Jason Linkins notes, the Times has done little to advance its blockbuster story since it was first reported (unlike the Washington Post's aggressive series of follow-up stories on the Walter Reed scandal):

There has been a single editorial comment, inexplicably published on Saturday, six days after the story broke. On the same day, David Barstow followed up by reporting on the Pentagon's decision to suspend "its briefings for retired military officers who often appear as military analysts on television and radio programs."

Buried in Barstow's follow-up, however, was an admission: the Grey Lady had been scooped on the story by Stars and Stripes a day earlier. Additionally, the New York Times seems completely unaware that two days after they published their story, Fox News aired quotes from one of the individuals named in their original article, retired Major General Robert H. Scales. It is impossible to know every single possible avenue for follow-up, but surely we can agree that when one of the named networks brazenly deploys one of the named "message force multipliers" in its coverage, it's worth a mention.

------------------------------------------------------
Comment:

It's about time!

It's a shame to the military and the nation.

PursuitOfHappinessParty

This is akin, or at least reminds me, of a story I saw a couple of days ago. All thos 'retired' ex-military analysts for the MSM, well it seems most of them aren't so retired. Most work for private security contractors and as such aren't exactly unbiased in their conclusions.

__________________
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It puts the lotion on its skin, or else it gets the hose again.

julia

This is a follow up to that story, PoHP.

BillCosby

Yep............ Were is the media cry about the media cry????

Straight up propaganda..........

This is one more good reason not to watch this crap news/media events staged for your viewing pleasure & the selling of toilet paper....

__________________
Preventive war is not war!!!!Counter-terror is not terror