From the LA Times:
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.
Though the articles are basically factual, they present only one side of events and omit information that might reflect poorly on the U.S. or Iraqi governments, officials said.
Wow. If that’s the standard for propaganda, we could’ve saved the information op folks the trouble of writing new copy and just reprinted stories directly out of the LA Times…
Records and interviews indicate that the U.S. has paid Iraqi newspapers to run dozens of such articles, with headlines such as “Iraqis Insist on Living Despite Terrorism,” since the effort began this year.
The operation is designed to mask any connection with the U.S. military. The Pentagon has a contract with a small Washington-based firm called Lincoln Group, which helps translate and place the stories. The Lincoln Group’s Iraqi staff, or its subcontractors, sometimes pose as freelance reporters or advertising executives when they deliver the stories to Baghdad media outlets.
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.
Underscoring the importance U.S. officials place on development of a Western-style media, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Tuesday cited the proliferation of news organizations in Iraq as one of the country’s great successes since the ouster of President Saddam Hussein. The hundreds of newspapers, television stations and other “free media” offer a “relief valve” for the Iraqi public to debate the issues of their burgeoning democracy, Rumsfeld said.
The military’s information operations campaign has sparked a backlash among some senior military officers in Iraq and at the Pentagon who argue that attempts to subvert the news media could destroy the U.S. military’s credibility in other nations and with the American public.
“Here we are trying to create the principles of democracy in Iraq. Every speech we give in that country is about democracy. And we’re breaking all the first principles of democracy when we’re doing it,” said a senior Pentagon official who opposes the practice of planting stories in the Iraqi media.
…and which official is maybe the source for said story?
Anyway, a lot of sanctimonious posturing here. The truth of the matter is, we need to win the war before we can worry about leaving behind a pristine democracy, and what is happening here, it seems to me, is no different than, say, the LA Times or the New York Times reprinting press-releases from the anti-gun lobby—the difference being that while there is clearly a problem with such “journalism” in a free and long-established democratic republic (with an established “free” press), I’m not so sure I see “largely factual” pro-American “propaganda” as too much of a problem if it helps to burnish the image of Americans in the eyes of skeptical Iraqis long under the boot heel of a tyranical dictator—and in doing so, helps save soldiers lives and expedites the victory on the ground and the establishment of a strong and viable Iraqi government.
Also, it bears noting here the the US military is working with willing Iraqi newspapers in an effort to thwart the insurgency by defeating them not just on the battlefield, but in the sphere of public perception.
Questions: have we used these same techniques in other wars? Certainly. Should we? Absolutely—particularly if it could save US soldiers’ lives and help end the insurgency. And interestingly, weren’t many of the critics of these techniques the same people who were absolutely apoplectic when they believed “Scooter” Libby had “outed” a “covert” CIA agent? What activities do these people think covert CIA agents engage in, anyway?
But nevermind that. If the LA Times says largely factual, albeit “one-sided” pro-US, pro-free Iraq stories are insidious propaganda, you can bet that will gin up outrage from those who are always looking for reasons to be outraged over US military behavior, whether it’s the Willy Pete non-story or this particular revelation.
For instance, here’s Justin Gardner, from The Moderate Voice, reacting to LAT story:
Reports like this make my toes curl.
Do they not realize that actions like these simply create an atmosphere where it’s easier to compare us to Saddam? Couple stuff like this with our torture policy, and you have a recipe for credibility damage.
Note the careful wording here, which falls just short of comparing US actions to those of Saddam by buffering the corollation with talk of “an atmosphere” in which an unnamed and hypothetical someone (read: Mr Gardner) might draw the direct connection the author is too afraid to articulate himself. But rhetorical dodges asidde, do actions like these—done in the service of ending an insurgency and saving the lives both of US soldiers and free Iraqis—really rise to the level of Saddam’s stranglehold on information, which served to maintain his grip on power?
Because if anything, its seems to me that the outing of this program—and hysterical shrieks that the US has become like Saddam—is the real propaganda here, and that what began as an interagency dispute over the propriety of this information operation is now more fodder for the cultural relativists in the anti-war movement.
Here’s Garder again:
[…] the Iraq media is a willing participant, and I blame them too, but you can’t stop the truth from coming out, and operations like these don’t do us any good in the long run.
Just project out with me for a second. Once this story hits Iraq, people will probably start turning to “alternative” media sources. Who might put out these new stories? Oh, maybe terrorists sympathizers…
Uh huh. And were that to be the case, what are the chances that the LA Times would be as careful to break that story, which—unlike the story today—would be a story about enemy propaganda…?
Whereas the stories being placed by the US military are hardly different in kind from the stories one reads daily from Reuters or the New York Times.
Just my opinion. I’m interested to hear your take on this.
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Ah, the irony! (via Instapundit)
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update: Ah, the irony, part deux (thanks to alppuccino)
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update 2: Evidently, the WaPo reported on this back in June (via NRO Media Blog’s Stephen Spruieill, who has more; see also, Sundries Shack, Jawa Report, and Chuck Simmins—who was the first to dig out the WaPo link).
Why did the military need to “pay” to have these stories run? IMHO, that is the only part that smells. I’m perfectly ok with every other aspect. Actually, even that part doesn’t bug me much – but I’m just kinda irked that we have to pay for positive coverage over there.
VodkaPundit is reporting that Our Loyal Opposition is already speaking truth to power with the unbiased opinion that this is “fascist” and “spreading pro-US lies.” See here:
http://vodkapundit.com/archives/008314.php
Good news for US: US Propaganda
Bad news for US: LSM Propaganda
TW: waiting. I’m waiting for an unbiased media in this country, but I’ll probably die first.
I think you emphasized the essence of the problem. Facts are clearly not essential to what is considered ‘unbiased’ information anymore. What has become essential, is that ‘unbiased’ journalism consists of presenting both sides of an argument. This is the downfall of mainstream media. For some reason they feel like they need to nod to each side of the debate, not state the facts and deliver the ‘news’. Personally, I like to develop my own opinions based on fact, not develop have my choice of opinions as delivered by a talking head.
Ack.
Frost: What the hell are we supposed to use man? Harsh language?
LA Times: No.
Indeed.
There’s nothing wrong with it. You can question its effectiveness, since one must assume that the Iraqis know which papers are carrying water for the US and which aren’t. Must be a slow news day because this doesn’t seem like a big deal.
Scratch that lost looking ‘develop’ in the last line.
I think the LA Times is just pissed that Al Qaeda and the Ba’athists have held out on them for so long. Where’s the love, Osama? When do we get paid?
So these two dips from the LATimes are breaking this hot story on propoganda being written by US soldiers. There were dozens of headlines to choose from and they picked “Iraqis Insist on Living Despite Terrorism”.
That was their best, most earth-shattering example of blatant US Military propoganda?
What were the headlines they passed over?
“Iraqis Attend New Schools Despite Terrorism”
“Iraqis: A Proud People”
“Iraqis Continue to Eat Despite Terrorism”
“An Iraqi Smiled at Me Yesterday”
Though the articles are basically factual, they present only one side of events…
BECAUSE OF THE HYPOCRISY!
(Man, I can’t believe nobody else bothered to trot that out!)
Planted stories? Who cares?
The part that bothers me is that we are “training” Iraqi reporters in American-style journalism ethics and standards.
Who are the keynote speakers at these workshops? Mary Mapes? Eason Jordon? Jayson Blair? Pinch Sulzburger? The staff of the Boston Globe?
I dare say the Iraqis would be better off just muddling through on their own. They couldn’t do a whole lot worse.
Phinn’s got a point. It worked for us, anyways.
Thank God the LA Times alerted the world to these inequities!
Honestly, what is gained by printing this story?
If the US military is writing positive stories for the Iraqi press—stories even the critics admit are factual—then who the hell’s writing the doom-and-gloom crap in our media? Osama?
Christ, I fucking hate the press. They have become the exact opposite of what a free society needs.
More faux outrage for BDS sufferers. I mean, hell, apparently someone asked about WP at a Rumsfeld press conference.
Pretty sure Justin Gardner is way overstating the effect this bit of news will have on Iraqis.
Won’t it seems a bit tempest in a teapot to them?
If the bought stories are true Iraqis will know that the stories comport with what their eyes see and with what people they trust say.
They will be glad that at long last their newspapers have veracity.
Contrast that with what they’ve had for reading material in recent decades.
“America is paying our newspapers to print factual stories? The bastards!”
The US Press, more like useful idiots working for the enemy.
Saddam printed propagada.
The US prints propagada.
It makes sense to me.
We also use chemical weapons and torture, just like Saddam.
Because it is an open market. If we insisted they print the stories, then it really would be like Saddam. And it allows an additional source of inflow into the economy, however little it might be.
Just when will the MSM drop the shroud and admit what they think? There is no constitutianal requirement for the media to present balanced coverage. Let the free market decide who stands and who falls.
The US is paying for *everything* else there, so why not include the press? And everyone knows it, so it’s not a big deal. Saying the US paid the paper to print a story is like saying the US paid to build a school. So.What?
The CIA did this sort of thing all over the world, throughout the cold war.
So, at want point are we allowed to use the word ‘Treason’?
Isn’t this a deliberate attempt to undermine legitimate and legal U.S. military efforts to stabilize and secure Iraq? Is ‘Voice of America’ suddenly to be considered anti-democratic? Were the news reels from the front aired in movie theaters during WWII anti-democratic because, though basically factual they were terribly one sided, and because they were paid for, written, and edited by agents of the US government?
I’m serious, how far do those idiots over at the LA Times have to go before we are allowed to use the word ‘Treason’? How valuable does the intelligence and propaganda that they provide to the enemies of the U.S.A. have to be before we can say that it is a treasonous act? How direct does the connection between thier actions and the loss of U.S. life have to be before we can call it ‘Treason’? We’d better start having a serious discussion about it now, because they are getting really darn close to that line if we haven’t already jumped over it.
I mean, surprise surprise, the US government is engaged in a propaganda effort to win hearts and minds. Imagine the hue and cry that we’d hear (legitimately I might add) if it wasn’t.
Is the LA Times the voice of the AIF?
Why didn’t I get paid? Karl, please send me my check ASAP. Thanks, DR
If they did that, then they’d have to admit there’s a need for competition. As it is, so long as they say they’re “balanced”, there is no need for anyone else in the field.
Oh, sure, they pay lip-service to competition by acting like the networks are in competition, but by-and-large, they’re not. Most of what they cover is identical, in terms of particular stories, sources, and approach. All the nets key what they cover by what’s on the front page of the NYT; if they didn’t, then they’d be ignoring a major story, right?
Fox was hated because it broke lock-step. They covered other stories, or approached them differently. I get the feeling that’s changing—see the Katrina debacle—as Fox personnel learn how wonderful it is to be lauded by their “peers” and buy into the MSM mindset.
The press is corrupt, in the sense of rotten and diseased. What a pity there’s nothing to replace it yet.
I feel a torrent coming on this story. Rush is covering it now… Drudge won’t be far behind. And both are hours behind the hive!
There’s more than one side to facts?
The Los Angeles Times ran this “exposé”?
The same Los Angeles Times that ran the N. Korea, Without the Rancor propaganda spiel on their front page earlier this year? (see Patterico’s, Winds of Change’s, and Powerline’s commentary on the story at the time)
Hahahahahahahahaha… oh, damn, my irony detector just broke!
I imagine the Los Angeles Times is just mad that the Iraqi papers are imitating their business model. They really shouldn’t be, though, as it’s clear that the Iraqi papers are not going after the same market space as the Times. The Iraqi papers are running pro-U.S. stories, after all—something the Times wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot pole.
celebrim,
I don’t know that it is treason yet, but they are continuing to leak sensitive information. As little traction as this story may get on main street, it still provides sucor for the terrorists. Not to mention their own fodder for propganda.
This “crime” is as nothing.
See this on U.S. presidents and the press during time of war.
The media has always, but always, been a concern for presidents in a time of war. Lincoln and FDR both threw the Constitution in the toilet re: the press, and yet, they are now revered icons. Were Bush to remotely attempt any such things as these two did, some of the more extreme rhetoric spewed about him would be justified.
Hell, as it is, Bush gets tarred with stuff like this, written about Lincoln by a major media organ of his time and found at my above link:
Abe McHitler.
The idea that, during a war, planting pro-U.S. pieces in the Iraqi press is some grave outrage is, historically, silly.
Shad: Plus the Los Angeles Time is losing a bunch of money. At least the Iraqi papers are improving revenue and profits.
Pick up any fucking newspaper and read it. You don’t get a factual who, what, when & where. You end up with maybe a half of a fact wrapped up in some reporter’s analysis. There aren’t any reporters anymore – they’re all columnists and opinion writers operating under a reporter’s byline.
I continually inundate the reader’s rep at the KC Star about opinion pieces in the “news” section of the paper.
I date their (the Left, Dimocrats, the Press) treason to 1975, when their dishonorable and treasonous refusal to continue aid to S. Vietnam guaranteed that our soldiers would die in vain and that 65,000 S. Vietnamese would be shot…not to mention the boat people that lost their lives etc. See former SecDef Melvin Laird’s excellent piece on the withdrawal of US forces from Vietnam (sorry don’t have a link…try google
)
Use of the word treason has been severely circumscribed for 50 years since the Left effectively demonized Joseph McCarthy.
It is a perfectly good word in urgent need of rehab.
So do you think the Baghdad Times runs Doonsebury now? Or just Mary Worth?
<blockquote>Because it is an open market. If we insisted they print the stories, then it really would be like Saddam. And it allows an additional source of inflow into the economy, however little it might be.</blockqoute>
I meant it more in the sense that something smells when they have to be paid to do the “right” thing. Irksome.
The sanctimony in this LATimes article is a little hard to take.
Facts aren’t enough, you must provide both sides of the “story.” I get it. You must give equal balance to the truths and falsities, as if the US Military, or the US government policy is to be something other than pro-US.
This is no different than the Democrats’ complaints regarding the Bush Administration, using a litigation analogy:
“As attorney’s for the defense, your honor, we object because the plaintiff’s attorney is not making an adaquate or complete presentation of OUR case, before this court. It is not possible for us to defend OUR position without the plaintiff’s cooperation in this matter!”
It’s no wonder that military personnel returning home do not understand what is portrayed in the coverage of news from Iraq, as it is not an accurate picture of what has happened on the ground. As my nephew–served in OIF II from Mar ‘04-to-Mar ‘05–told me, they rarely watched US news channels as the reports were regularly wrong, not just biased.
The remarks in the article regarding journalistic ethics would be funny, that is, if journalism had any ethics, but as it is “journalistic ethics” is an oxymoron–that’s the joke!
Yeah, well, yknow,
“War is irksome.”
-William Tecumseh Sherman
What would it have been called when Clinton did it?
I mean goddammmm!!!
More evidence of the lack of adults among the Bush administration’s opponents.
I wonder what they think of the people who produced all those anti-Hitler films in WW II?
Wait, I can guess:
FASCISTS!!
Like Hussein, I turn oxygen into carbon dioxide, when I breathe.
Man, these parallels just keep coming. I’m just like Saddam!
Wow, propaganda during wartime. Who’d have thunk!
Change the word “poorly” to “favorably” and you’ve got our MSM in a nutshell. The LAT is just bent out of shape because no one pays them to print their crap.
Hey, media, just give us the facts and we’ll draw our own conclusions. You report, we’ll decide.
Ok, first let’s agree on the meaning of some terms:
The US is NOT a Democracy, pristine (ha!) or otherwise. It’s a Democratic Republic, and that’s what we’re trying to give the Iraqis. Who generally don’t worry much about the “pristine-ness” of their government, thay just don’t want it to start with the dictatorial horror show again. Mukhbarat. Rape rooms.
Also: Any of the monkeys screeching that Saddam “can’t get a fair trial” ever see the video of his takeover at the Ba’ath Party congress in what, ‘74?
The one where they start taking people out of the convention and shooting them, while everybody else swears eternal devotion to “Abu Saddam”?
This is not a problem. If the LA and other elements of the MSM are outraged by this, it’s probably because they don’t have a DoD contract. All Rummy has to do is offer them one, and I’ll bet they roll over at the increased cash flow.
Leave it to the MSM to take an integral part of fighting a War and trying to make the US look bad. Shame on them! And what do they regard the content of Al-Jazeera to be? The whole, unbiased truth? Maybe the LA Times needs to disclose its true intentions…. Like working with the Dems to hurt this country as much as possible. If we don’t spread the good news to the Iraqi people, just whom is going to do it? It isn’t happening in this country by our so-called FREE press. The fact the US Military is actively doing this is good news.
I am the first to note that:
a) This story was first published by the Washington Post in June 2005.
b) The contract is not covert, as both the DOD and the Lincoln Group have it publicly available on their sites.
c)It isn’t even a real story. No name sources are quoted. No public documents are cited. I did more reporting in the ten minutes it took me to google and post my story earlier today.
http://blog.simmins.org/index.php/2005/11/la-times-fails-reporting-standards
Thanks, Jeff. Media Blog got it from me.
The MSM, whether they want to admit it or not, are the terrorists’ most important and effective ally.
Twisting the Times article ever so slightly, for additional irony:
“As part of an information offensive in America, the anti-war left is secretly supplying US newspapers with stories written by radical anti-American writers in an effort to tarnish the image of the U.S. mission in Iraq.”
etc
HAHA. I think you can say treason anytime you want.
http://nitpicker.blogspot.com/2005/11/pravda-in-iraq.html
http://www.themoderatevoice.com/posts/1133367551.shtml
http://www.prwatch.org/node/4235
I’m not going to DU or (Can’t)MoveOn to see what they are writing, but I think it’s pretty obvious what the LA Times hoped to gain.
What I find most amusing is the LA Times openly admits they are offended by someone reporting only the facts without finding some angle that damages the US. Hey, at least they’re honest (this time).
All I’m seeing here is the theoretical defense of a practice; there’s no reference to its wisdom or productivity. In my mind, you’re missing the point. More here (LINK)
Callimachus nails it dead on with his analysis of the current state of journalism.
Jeff Bull —
That’s all you’re seeing because that’s the implicit criticism of the LAT.
For some perspective, after World War II, Italy had the largest Communist Party in Western Europe. To counteract this, we provided money under the table to Italian Democrats.
50 years later, one of my Professors [who teaches at the College of Europe] was taken to task by a group of Italian students for this. A Bulgarian stood up and told them to sit down and thank God that they’d had the luck to be so manipulated.
As someone who has practiced this public diplomacy thing in the Arab world, I would ask you all to leave your own sanctimonious posturing just long enough to look at this in practical terms.
Considering the stage of this war we’re in, normal “wartime propaganda” rules of engagement should not be applied. PSYOPS has traditionally been targeted toward “the enemy” and those noncombatants who happen to be under their control. In such circumstances, “manipulation” such as the planting of these kinds of stories without revealing their source would certainly be appropriate. But we’re not targeting the enemy—we’re competing with him for the hearts and minds of people who share the same language and culture as his—not an enviable position, but then, we do have the truth on our side.
In my experience, our main problem in this PR battle is that we simply haven’t built up much credibility with the audience—which is why we’ve resorted to hiding the source of these stories. That may give us a short-term gain (until we’re caught, anyway), but what does it do in the long term as far as building up our credibility? Not a damn thing.
In fact, it actually hurts us, because it confirms in the minds of most Arabs that we have no interest in engaging them as human beings, rather than manipulating them. Arabs generally don’t believe what we say, and question the stated motives for our policies. Why then, would we want to do stupid shit like this?
I think a quote from John Pike, in his WP oped (also in today’s LA Times, interestingly enough) is appropriate here:
The only scandal here is that our government allowed the nation to fall victim to clumsy, cheap anti-American propaganda. At least during the Cold War, we made the Soviets work to discredit us.
The Lincoln Group and the Defense Dept. both announced the contracts. This was hardly covert. And as I noted in my piece, what they are doing is no different than what the LAT or Reuters or NYT does daily.
Excuse me if I don’t buy YOUR pieties about our refusal to “engage them as human beings”; unless you wish to argue that the NYT has been treating me as a subhuman for years.
In which I case I might concede the point.
Or consider the pro-war and pro-Stalin propaganda that FDR pushed via, for example, Mission to Moscow,a film based on a book by his ambassador to the USSR, Joseph Davies. To excerpt from my linked piece:
FDR and all those New Dealers—fascists, all!
Yeah, well nobody was talking about it on the cocktail circuit.
Let’s face it – The msm are just quislings – they’re not anti-war, they’re on the other side. And right now the LAT is trying (I’m sure with no chance of success) to grab the title of Quisling Central from the nyt.
What’s the difference between propaganda and PR? What’s wrong with pushing factually accurate stories with a pro-American bias?
I’m not so sure I see “largely factual†pro-American “propaganda†as too much of a problem if it helps to burnish the image of Americans in the eyes of skeptical Iraqis long under the boot heel of a tyranical dictator
Al Jazeera has given George W. Bush approximately 500 hours of airtime, while Bin Laden has received about 5 hours of airtime, yet people here have advocated bombing it as an “enemy propaganda arm”.
Consider the possibility that Arabs, including Iraqis, think Al Jazeera more objective than any news station using these US stories.
Consider the possibility that they are right.
The Lincoln Group and the Defense Dept. both announced the contracts. This was hardly covert. And as I noted in my piece, what they are doing is no different than what the LAT or Reuters or NYT does daily.
Oh, stop it, Jeff. Yes, the contracts are public. But the contracts don’t stipulate which pieces, which bylines, or which dates the stories would run. The fact that the specific pieces are products of a DoD contractor is hidden from the reader (until, like I said, we got caught), and you know it.
And if this is “no different” than what the MSM does on a daily basis, why don’t the stories have military bylines, as most military public affairs products do? When I read an LAT news story, at least I know what I’m getting.
Excuse me if I don’t buy YOUR pieties about our refusal to “engage them as human beingsâ€Â; unless you wish to argue that the NYT has been treating me as a subhuman for years.
“Pieties?” It wasn’t a value judgement. Just an observation about the audience based on my experience. Take it or leave it, but please don’t have a hissy fit over it.
And yes, Jeff, I would argue that the NYT has treated you—and me—as a subhuman for years. But let me ask you this—would “news stories” paid for and written secretly by Liberal interest groups and placed in the NYT as if they were written by independent journalists make you more or less likely to believe the NYT in the future?
Phoenician, the Arab world thinks that all the jews were sent home from the WTC. Consider the possibility that its dark where your head is.
TW: waiting. I’m waiting for an unbiased media in this country, but I’ll probably die first.
Your grandkids will probably die first. :~(
Bill, the NYT has already been caught doing such.
Bill, the NYT has already been caught doing such.
Really? Tell me more.
Well, considering that it’s the NYT, and that’s been the majority of its content for years, it could hardly make them less credible.
No, I don’t think those stories are very influential. I think the Arabs have a pretty good sense for what they are and where they come from, because I credit Iraqis with having both intelligence and sense, which the Leftist bigots do not. (And you may read the italicized bit whichever way you like, including both)
But they are at worst harmless. What must be considered remarkable is that the LA Times feels that its duty is to make the stories less credible. That’s a whole different debate.
Regards,
Ric
PiatoR:
Consider the possibility that you are wrong:
Couldn’t the military solve all of its ‘propaganda’ problems simply by adding a line like this:
”Critics say some Iraqis refuse to insist on living despite terrorism. A high administration official, who wishes to remain anonymous, contends some Iraqis are merely resigned to living despite terrorism. .”
Automatic unbiased journalism. Just like the NYTs and LATimes.
Well, considering that it’s the NYT, and that’s been the majority of its content for years, it could hardly make them less credible.
Exactly. Tell me again why we would want to follow this kind of strategy, considering how the credibility of the NYT has been trending in recent years?
And like I said, when you read Dowd/Krugman/Apple et al. you know what you’re getting.
because I credit Iraqis with having both intelligence and sense, which the Leftist bigots do not.
Then why don’t you trust them with knowing the source of these stories? I don’t see why Arabs—or anyone else—would view a deceptive stunt like this as showing appreciation for their intelligence.
But they are at worst harmless.
If you really believe that, I don’t want you on my team.
“Al Jazeera has given George W. Bush approximately 500 hours of airtime, while Bin Laden has received about 5 hours of airtime,”
And this proves exactly what?
Dammit, there is nothing new about this! How many times have you read a story in, e.g., Popular Science extolling the virtues of nailguns, or seen an HGTV special on sodding? How many of us are dumb enough not to realize that Bosch, Skil, et. al., are contributing mightily to PS in the hope of selling nailguns, or that sod providers are subsidizing HGTV in the expectation that many people will pay them for beautiful green lawns?
I simply credit Iraqis with the same good sense you and I have. If it reads like an ad for nailguns, it probably is. If it reads like a DNC press release, complete with typoes, that’s probably where it came from. If it praises the U.S. Army to the skies while not mentioning DU fragments, it probably…
Your position is that Iraqis are too stupid to separate the wheat from the chaff, and will get grouchy when somebody points out their mistake. I simply don’t think it will generate any “kill the infidel!” moments. I think it will be more like, “well, d’oh!”, or however you say that in the Iraqi dialect of Arabic. That’s because I expect Iraqis to be at least as bright as I am, though having different points of view because of different life experiences. I don’t think they’d have any trouble whatever separating Ron Popeil from a genuine news story.
And as long as the articles are factual, however one-sided, I don’t think they do any harm whatever. The problem we have with the MSM is not so much that they reprint Howard Dean’s wet dreams without consideration, it’s that what they print and show either isn’t true or skates so close to falsehood as to (deliberately) give rise to a false conclusion. A factual article provides a few data bits, however ideologically skewed. What the MSM has been giving us is hate and discontent without the factual part.
Regards,
Ric
If the NYT articles were “basically factual”, there’d be less of a problem. Still something of a problem since the entire paper is lopsided, but less of one.
So we’re paying newspapers to run articles. That means there are newspapers, and we have to pay them to run our articles. We’ve already accepted that the articles are accurate. The remaining point seems to be that the articles are not bylined by the Lincoln Group. Is that what the fuss is about?
The NYT and LAT print enemy propaganda for free. We are paying Iraqi newspapers which didn’t exist two and a half years ago to print some stories from our point of view, a point of view that is pro-Iraqi and pro-American.
But they may not be accurately attributed. That is a valid criticism, but not much of one in this case.
Mistah bin Laden, he dead.
. We’ve already accepted that the articles are accurate.
It has been asserted that the articles are factual. No proof has been provided, and no-one has bothered to query this received wisdom.
Cf: “We know where the WMD are”…
Ric:
First, your last post illustrates why you are the last person on earth to tell me what my position is.
Dammit, there is nothing new about this! Yep, and that’s the problem. My whole point here is that what was done during WWII and the Cold War, or how nail gun manufacturers get their products placed in magazines, are the last thing we would want to do, given a) our current position WRT our target audience, and b) the media landscape of today.
And if you are suggesting that said nailgun manufacturers, etc., would risk their credibility by placing a fake news item in a publication, rather than trusting a real journalist to give them a fair shake, you are more clueless than I thought. Currently, the only organization dumb enough to try something like this seems to be the U.S. government.
This is PR 101, for fuck’s sake. Media coverage is better than buying advertisement space/time, because it provides independent verification of your message. Ergo, planting fake news items in an independent publication not only exposes your own propensity to deceive, it “poisons the well” so to speak by pissing away whatever credibility that publication may have had.
This has nothing to do with generating “kill the infidel” sentiments, but losing the vast middle who don’t hate America, but don’t like our policies or believe much of what our government says, either (i.e., most Arabs).
My position is that we should give them wheat and not chaff. Your position is that we can give them chaff disguised as wheat, but that it doesn’t matter, because they’ll be able to figure out the diference anyway. How anyone would think this is a strategy for success is beyond me.
My point is not, as you have suggested, that Arabs are too dumb to realize these fake news stories are really just our press releases under disguise. My point is that they will figure it out, and this is actually worse than if we actually succeeded in deceiving them. So why do it?
Look, we agree on one thing—that we are the ones who have the truth on our side. So let’s fucking act like it.
And as long as the articles are factual, …
Jeez, you just don’t get it, do you? The point of this whole exercise is to convince them that they are factual. This is not a given. If it were, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
It’s called persuasion, and generally, it isn’t done by amateurish, lame-ass attempts at deception.
Here’s PIATOR from July 4 2003. Salt Lick brought it to my attention on another thread, but I think this deserves repitition, just so we know who we’re dealing with:
The LAT said that the articles were “basically factual”. Of course, the LAT might be wrong. There might not be any articles. Who is to say?
TW: Glass, as in I think I’ll have another.
Yeah, sure. And having a tagline “Proudly Sponsored By USIA!” is going to convince them it’s factual? Tell me, what’s the fine structure constant of your Universe? The cosmology dudes could use a cross-check.
The point of the exercise is NOT “to convince them that they are factual”. The point of the exercise is to get the information out. We don’t believe the MSM because too many of us can walk out of our doors and observe that the sky is not purple, at least not where we are. If the facts being presented check out, the source will gradually be assumed to be fact-based. There is no other way for it to happen.
Regards,
Ric
Here’s PIATOR from July 4 2003.
And?
Cf: the comparison between the USSR in Afghanistan and the USA in Iraq.
Afghanistan: Russians make dolls and toys with explosives inside and leave them for children to pick up. Bad, evil Russians.
Iraq: “Insurgents” make dolls and toys with explosives inside and leave them for children to pick up. HEROIC RESISTANCE FIGHTERS! GIVE THEM THE NOBEL PRIZE!
Regards,
Ric
No comparison. We’re not the ones seeding the landscape with booby-trapped toys.
And you’re trying to change the subject away from the orgasmic joy you feel when Americans die.
Afghanistan: Russians kidnap tribal leaders and try to extort cooperation from their people. Bad, evil Russians.
Iraq: “Insurgents” kidnap anybody they can and use them to gain publicity and get cash. HEROIC RESISTANCE FIGHTERS! KNIGHTHOODS ALL ROUND! RESERVE NEXT YEAR’S NOBEL PRIZE!
Regards,
Ric
Afghanistan: Russians invade the village in force, kill anybody who won’t cooperate, and use the village as a base. Bad, evil Russians.
Iraq: “Insurgents” invade the village in force, kill anybody who won’t cooperate, and use the village as a base. HEROIC RESISTANCE FIGHTERS! BUILD MORE STATUES! NOBEL PRIZES FOR 2008-2050 NOW RESERVED!
Regards,
Ric
Afghanistan: Russians blow up a school with children inside, explaining that it was an arms cache. Explosives are found inside. Nevertheless, vile, evil Russians.
Iraq: “Insurgents” blow up a school with children inside, explaining that they are almost certain somebody in there said something nice about the U.S. in 1971. There is nothing in the school but students and teachers. HEROIC RESISTANCE FIGHTERS! SEND THEM MONEY AND GUNS! NOBEL PEACE PRIZE PERMANENTLY RETIRED; GET THEM TO WRITE SOMETHING AND WE’LL START ON THE LITERATURE ONE!
Regards,
Ric
Oh, sweet bleeding Jesus.
Piator, most of the commenters here likely live with, work with, study with, learn from people who believe as you do every day. We will hardly be thrown into fits of existential agony and anxiety by some neutron-star dense internet troll who likes to think of himself/herself/itself as a dangerous intellect because he/she/it dares to dodge in and out of the comment sections on right-leaning websites and oppose his/her/its unquestioned certainties to theirs in smug little two-line soundbites that sound like discarded John Lennon song titles (Consider that Al Jazeera might be closer to factual than the U.S. media. . .consider it if you can. . .).
Just a suggestion, dear, but as long as we’re on the subject of how best to persuade someone disinclined to agree with us–you might at least start with the idea that your comments do not strike the benighted wingnuts like the monolith struck the neanderthals in 2001. Most of what you say, we have heard many, many times before. Want to persuade us you’re right? Make a fucking effort, have a little irony, and conceive of the possibility of believing other than you do. Conceive of it if you can.
Saintly pure certainty and reciting the gospel over and over ad nauseam may suit an evangelist, but it ill becomes a so-called liberal.
Spamword: wall, as in–’like talking to a. . .’
Ric:
Like I said, you just don’t get it. Period.
Yeah, sure. And having a tagline “Proudly Sponsored By USIA!†is going to convince them it’s factual?
No. Yet again you have failed, wilfully or otherwise, to understand my entire point. Let’s try this one more time …
We are starting from a position of weakness, in that information sourced to us is not very credible in this audience. Hence, we need to get independent, 3rd-party verification of our messages. We have had success in this by engaging independent Arab media—even al Jazeera—and granting them access to our leaders and operations. I’ve found that if you’re straight with them, they’ll be straight-forward in their reportage—certainly not rah-rah, sympathetic coverage, but straight. The long-range goal is to develop a track record of consistent truth-telling, so that in the future, “proudly sponsored by USIA” will not have the negative connotations it does today.
The point of the exercise is NOT “to convince them that they are factualâ€Â. The point of the exercise is to get the information out.
This is by far the most asinine statement you’ve made thus far, and that’s about the nicest thing I can say about it. Seriously, I thought you were joking, but then, your entire line of argumentation throughout this thread demonstrates that you believe it to be true.
But let’s pretend you’re right, for the sake of argument. If this is true, I will ask you again, why then do we have to hide the fact that it’s coming from us? Credibility either matters or it doesn’t. You can’t have it both ways, even in your little fantasy world in which convincing people is neither here nor there.
Bill,
I understand your point, I really do. And I really, really wish the world worked that way.
You consider yourself a pragmatic idealist. What you are, in reality, is an egotistical perfectionist. You believe that the only way is to present an ideal situation so that people will accept it.
They will not. I have a career to prove it.
Your actual affect, whether you intend it or not, is to prevent success by making the criteria for that success impossible. By your rules, if it were not done by walking, through the snow, uphill both ways, the person has not gone to school.
The world is full of propagandists, salesmen, and con artists. Presenting the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth to that mob is simply handing them fresh meat. The nonsystem we used in the United States until sometime after WWII worked because it was a nonsystem—what R. A. Heinlein called “looseness in the corners” was at a maximum. But it absolutely threatens the oligarchs and elitists of the world, and they react in ways that will protect their interests.
An example is the concept of “imperialism”. The United States has not been imperialist in the objective sense since WWI, and the events of the War Century have left the concept in very bad odor with us. That’s clear to anyone who looks at our behavior. What do they do?—invent the concept of “cultural imperialism”. Our way works, and others can copy it without costing us anything, indeed to our benefit as well as their own. But if they do it displaces the oligarchs; therefore one must guard one’s “culture” against “cultural imperialism.” And, of course, one’s “culture” includes the existing elite on top of the heap.
Laying out one’s plans, in detail, with possible ways to frustrate them thoughtfully interlined at every juncture, is suicide. Laying out the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, in the hope that people will accept it because it’s true is no less self-destructive. If your concept of “honesty” will accept nothing less, you have already lost. That would be fine with me if you weren’t taking me down with you.
Regards,
Ric
Yo Bill:
Do you understand that there is not and has never been a free press in Iraq? Do you understand that there is no fucking infrastructure to supply advertisers and money to fund a newspaper? Do you understand that IRAQ IS NOT THE UNITED STATES?
Bribery is not defined the same over there, and they don’t do business the same way we do. Anything being printed over there right now is so far above what those poor bastards are used to I have a serious problem imagining them being too upset about it. And the fact we aren’t signing our name to something isn’t exactly hiding it from them, where the fuck else would it be coming from? I can think of nothing more asinine that holding Iraqi journalism to higher standards than our own.
“Consider the possibility that Arabs, including Iraqis, think Al Jazeera more objective than any news station using these US stories.”
OK. Considering my opinion of Arab political views, this isn’t going to make me appreciate Al Jazeera more, but what the heck.
“Consider the possibility that they are right.”
Er, why?
Care to give me a reason to do so?
Or is this just one of those French foreign policy things? (“Because we said so, dammit…”)
I understand your point, I really do.
I believe that about as much as I believe your earlier claim to have faith in the intelligence of Arabs—then you betray your own arguments with “they can’t handle the truth” nonsense. But you haven’t addressed any of my arguments directly, preferring cowardly evasions.
I’d love to hear more about this “career” you’ve had, but it’s clear to me that it probably involves a lot of bullshit, much like what you’re advocating we do. Unlike you, I’ve actually done this—engaged Arab media (including al jazeera) and publics directly to tell the U.S. side of the story. And unlike you, I actually know how the world works, especially the Arab world. So spare me.
Anyone with two or three years of PR experience (or a high school education, for that matter) would look at your arguments about “how the world works” and laugh. You’re arguing that persuasion—something engaged in by PR professionals and the rest of mankind since the beginning of history—is some kind of unattainable “ideal.”
Like I said earlier, if any of your arguments bore any resemblance to reality, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion, and the LA Times story would be a nonevent. It’s also clear that the military has been listening to hacks like John Rendon—who advocate pretty much the same thing you are—for years, and that we’re losing because of it. That’s reality, my friend—or, to use your language, “how the world works.”
You don’t have the slightest clue what you’re talking about.
And those PR people pay to get their message out. Go have a cream soda and watch some more cartoons, Santa Claus will be here in a couple of weeks.
And who is it that is writing these phony stories for the AmeriKKKan military-oppression complex? Top Rethuglican secret operative JEFF GANNON and his G.P.C.O.L., no doubt.
BECAUSE OF THE HYPOCRISY!!!
The only problem here is that the US military didn’t use LAT reporters to do the stories.
Money talks nobody walks.
Paying to publish one side of a story is unethical.
However, if you do it for the love as in the case of publishing anti Arnold Schwartenegger articles on the eve of an election, well that’s principled.
In the summer of 2003, Eason Jordan, then chief of CNN news, admitted in a letter published in the New York Times, that he had authorized a policy for a number of years to suppress their reporting on atrocities, murders, rapes, etc. by Saddam’s regime done to Iraqi citizens. He claimed at the time it was out of concern that there might be reprisals against CNN’s Iraqi assistants, but also conceded that only by doing so were they allowed to keep operating out of their Baghdad office.
So for a number of years, while our government was trying to explain why it was so essential to force Saddam to quit interfering with U.N. weapons inspectors, and trying to explain why we had reason to believe Saddam supported terrorism, CNN was portraying Saddam and his regime as a benign, placid and civil group. Iraqi kids flew kites, while Iraqi parents beamed, under the beatific and protective watch of titanic monuments to Papa Saddam, according to what we saw on CNN.
Stinking LIARS.
The reality was that Eason and the rest of the CNN Iraqi team KNEW that Saddam’s people were daily murdering, raping, torturing, and slaughtering men, women, and children, simply to brutalize the population into submission. If as they have claimed over and over and over that their responsibility is to report the truth as they see it, they should have closed their Baghdad offices, and left the country to tell the world exactly what they knew Saddam was doing.
They never hesitate to instantly publish any bad thing about the United States.
Such a conspicuous contradiction has its explanation.
The real reason CNN and all the other alleged news organizations were lying for Saddam was to buy their front row seats to the fireworks display, first from Bill Clinton’s cruise missiles (and HE never sought authorization from the U.N. for those, remember?) then for the looming invasion.
And now the left are trying to tell us that our government is EVIL for paying for some newspaper stories that portray our efforts in a positive light?!?!?! In Newspapers that Saddam would have suppressed, and whose editors he would have executed?!?!?!
I will support the propaganda praising our troops and our government any time. CNN and the New York Times have shown their contempt for truth repeatedly, renting themselves out to the highest bidder time and again.
One point that a lot of people won’t pick up on:
In many poor countries, reporters expect to be paid for stories. In China, reporters can extort blackmail from companies to NOT report on disasters, product problems, etc.
In that kind of environment, if you stick to USA rules, you will not achieve much. (Though you will feel good, I guess.)
If everyone is being paid, you have to pay as well.
The Europeans used to be able to write off bribes as a business expense when the US companies couldn’t bribe at all…guess how many Airbuses got sold versus Boeings?
Now, maybe in peacetime we could have the luxury of keeping American journalistic ethics in Iraq, but during wartime, I think you have to consider throwing them out, along with the “thou shall not kill” ethical position.
Also, don’t PR firms in the US send puffball pieces that journalists edit slightly and then present as their own. If I recall, the Men’s Wearhouse PR firm got newspapers to run their “the suits back” stories – the headline being the actual Men’s Wearhouse slogan at the time.
Of course, these ‘ethical’ PR firms didn’t pay the reporters…but giving them free product essentially is a reward in reducing their work-load, no?
http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
ahhhh, yes, from the blogosphere….I wonder why the media doesn’t require posting at the bottom of their stories which PR firm is giving it to them?
You don’t suppose that might have just a little someting to do with the fact that bin Laden is in hiding and Bush is not? Just a little bit?
I have considred it, and it’s ridiculous.