beltway bandit time

Media's refusal to address the NYT's "military analyst" story continues.

I was hoping to write about the fallout from the NYT's Saturday story regarding the media's use of Pentagon-controlled "independent" military analysts, but there hasn't really been any fallout at all. Despite being accused by the NYT in a very lengthy, well-documented expose of misleadingly feeding government propaganda to their viewers and readers, virtually all media outlets continue their steadfast refusal to address or even acknowledge the story. How can "news" organizations refuse to address -- just completely ignore -- accusations which fundamentally indict their behavior as "journalists"?

As I noted on Sunday, the most striking part of the roughly-7000-word article was that several of the most guilty news outlets -- CBS, NBC and Fox -- just outright refused to answer the NYT's questions about their use of military analysts, what they knew about their analysts' dealings with the Pentagon and the defense industry, and what procedures they use (then and now) to ensure that they don't broadcast government propaganda disguised as independent analysis. Identically, other news organizations not explicitly mentioned by the NYT article but which used some of the tainted sources (such as The Washington Post) have similarly failed to address their role in disseminating this Pentagon-controlled propaganda. More

Interview with Aaron Brown on NYT "military analyst" story

Yesterday, Democracy Now broadcast an excellent report on what ought to be (but isn't) the ongoing scandal revealed by the NYT concerning the establishment media's use of "military analysts" in the run-up to the Iraq war and after. The whole segment is worth watching or reading (transcript and video are here) -- retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner, for instance, opined that "when you put together the campaign that [Pentagon Communications official] Torie Clarke did with these three elements, you're very close to a violation of the law" which prohibits the use of military propaganda -- but I want to highlight one vital fact conclusively demonstrated by this segment.

The severe problems created by using retired U.S. Generals as military analysts to comment on American wars have long been brought to the attention of the establishment media -- long before Sunday's NYT story. Democracy Now's Amy Goodman had a rather contentious interview all the way back in 1999 with then-CNN anchor and vice-president Frank Sesno regarding the use of these retired Generals to comment (in an almost uniformly pro-Government/pro-war manner) on the Clinton administration's bombing campaign in Serbia (that interview transcript is included in the above link). Even back then, Goodman repeatedly asked CNN's executive why anti-war voices were excluded almost entirely from CNN's coverage of that war and whether CNN was concerned about the obvious conflicts and propaganda risks in "putting retired military generals on the payroll as military analysts." More