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US Troops as Iraqi Journalists

DRB

unemployed bum
Oct 24, 2002
15,242
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Watchin' you. Writing it all down.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-infowar30nov30,1,3365667.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage&ctrack=1&cset=true

As part of an information offensive in Iraq, the U.S. military is secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish stories written by American troops in an effort to burnish the image of the U.S. mission in Iraq.

The articles, written by U.S. military "information operations" troops, are translated into Arabic and placed in Baghdad newspapers with the help of a defense contractor, according to U.S. military officials and documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times

Many of the articles are presented in the Iraqi press as unbiased news accounts written and reported by independent journalists. The stories trumpet the work of U.S. and Iraqi troops, denounce insurgents and tout U.S.-led efforts to rebuild the country.
One of the military officials said that, as part of a psychological operations campaign that has intensified over the last year, the task force also had purchased an Iraqi newspaper and taken control of a radio station, and was using them to channel pro-American messages to the Iraqi public. Neither is identified as a military mouthpiece.

The official would not disclose which newspaper and radio station are under U.S. control, saying that naming them would put their employees at risk of insurgent attacks.
Now it pretty much doesn't matter as they will all become targets.

U.S. law forbids the military from carrying out psychological operations or planting propaganda through American media outlets. Yet several officials said that given the globalization of media driven by the Internet and the 24-hour news cycle, the Pentagon's efforts were carried out with the knowledge that coverage in the foreign press inevitably "bleeds" into the Western media and influences coverage in U.S. news outlets.

"There is no longer any way to separate foreign media from domestic media. Those neat lines don't exist anymore," said one private contractor who does information operations work for the Pentagon.
Why be so sneaky with this? Especially with the following

The military's effort to disseminate propaganda in the Iraqi media is taking place even as U.S. officials are pledging to promote democratic principles, political transparency and freedom of speech in a country emerging from decades of dictatorship and corruption.

It comes as the State Department is training Iraqi reporters in basic journalism skills and Western media ethics, including one workshop titled "The Role of Press in a Democratic Society." Standards vary widely at Iraqi newspapers, many of which are shoestring operations.
How do we manage to f' this stuff up? Arabs already barely believe anything that they read or hear from news sources, now this. How is anyone ever going to know?
 

LordOpie

MOTHER HEN
Oct 17, 2002
21,022
3
Denver
in fairness, it's not this admin... all the previous ones have done stuff like this on varying levels domestically and internationally.
 

Old Man G Funk

Choir Boy
Nov 21, 2005
2,864
0
In a handbasket
LordOpie said:
in fairness, it's not this admin... all the previous ones have done stuff like this on varying levels domestically and internationally.
True dat, but I wonder if other administrations have been so bad about it. We know that they out-right paid at least one reporter to trump up the NCLB bill. We also know that they gave money and influence to another reporter to trump up their "marriage initiatives" (or something like that.) Have other admins been as brazen about it?
 

LordOpie

MOTHER HEN
Oct 17, 2002
21,022
3
Denver
you're right, no other admin has done it to this extreme level -- like putting in a "journalist" in the press corp to lob pre-scripted questions.

Or if previous admins have done this, well, then this one sucks really bad at it.

I don't mind my govt lying to me or the world, but i do mind them getting caught... repeatedly.

Hell, I could suck at it too.
 

Changleen

Paranoid Member
Jan 9, 2004
14,914
2,879
Pōneke
I totally agree DRB, it's a shamockery. However:

Many of the articles are presented in the Iraqi press as unbiased news accounts written and reported by independent journalists. The stories trumpet the work of U.S. and Iraqi troops, denounce insurgents and tout U.S.-led efforts to rebuild the country.
I don't think it's going to take long to spot the paper in question eh?
 

DRB

unemployed bum
Oct 24, 2002
15,242
0
Watchin' you. Writing it all down.
Changleen said:
I totally agree DRB, it's a shamockery. However:

I don't think it's going to take long to spot the paper in question eh?
On the second page of the article it describes that some papers actually distinguished between these articles and articles by their own staffs. In some cases calling them advertisements. Others did not.

It also describes how some of the newspapers were paid to run the articles. I found this quote funny:

Zaki said that if his cash-strapped paper had known that these stories were from the U.S. government, he would have "charged much, much more" to publish them.
The worse thing is that I have a feeling that if the US had established a paper, like Stars and Stripes, that in many cases these other papers would have picked up the articles and ran them as well, as it appears they are all struggling for content.