The Selling of The Pentagon 2013
By Joe Trento, Carrie Waltemeyer, and Becky Gaskill, on September 30th, 2013
National Security News Service
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The former Army officer says, ?Strategic communications may sound like pr to the public. That is not what it is. These are offensive propaganda operations that often include trying to discredit news organizations and reporters who endanger the military reputation or disagree with the information the military wants out. The truth of the information reporters have is not relevant to these guys?
One technique used is to exploit inexperienced bloggers and new media types to put out what they want. They actually hold briefings that target the dumbest of these folks, and they carry the DOD?s message, thinking they got some big scoop.?
A top editor for a major military publication says that
the military has ?almost no respect for today?s web based reporters.? The editor says,
?They hold sessions for bloggers and feed them tidbits and manipulate them because the bloggers, for the most part, don?t have a clue about what questions to ask. The truth is there are very few good reporters still covering the military. Because the news organizations don?t have the resources, the DOD is using contractor-produced, unvetted material to fill this information vacuum. Because of the declining financial condition of the media, this is what has replaced real reporting for many news organizations.?
Many of the major Pentagon expos?s of the 1980s and 1990s came from nonprofit watchdog organizations that focused on military waste, fraud and abuse. The handful of NGOs that did the stories like $600 toilet seats, secret multi-billion dollar programs to resume atmospheric nuclear testing, the infamous School of the Americas, and a general flying his mistresses at taxpayers? expense across the Atlantic stopped getting funding when many of the large foundations? priorities changed and they redirected the NGOs to other areas.
One NGO investigator says, ?The money dried up after 9/11. We just don?t have the money to carry out many deep dive investigations anymore. Without the nonprofits doing the spadework on these kinds of stories, the public is being fed a diet of DOD-contractor propaganda.?
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http://www.dcbureau.org/20130930908...e-selling-of-the-pentagon-2013.html#more-9080
