This blog item is not being paid for by the U.S. government

Reports earlier this month about a U.S. military contractor secretly paying to get favorable articles in the Iraqi press brought appropriate condemnation from Congress, and the White House disavowed any knowledge of the practice. But a 1,200-member psychological operations unit based at Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, N.C., also produces “truthful messages” that it pays to plant in Iraqi and Arab press, The New York Times reported. “We call our stuff information and the enemy’s propaganda,” a former commander said. Thanks for the clarification. The Lincoln Group, a private contractor hired as part of a White House-initiated campaign to improve the U.S. image abroad, also pays to plant news stories and editorials, the Times reported. This is how we are spreading democracy?
Posted by Phillip Brownlee

5 Comments

  1. Steven E.
    Posted December 13, 2005 at 1:21 pm | Permalink

    Did the story on the Dept of Education paying a conservative black columnist to make favorable plugs about NCLB generate one tenth of coverage this story has?

    I don’t think so!

    Why the difference?

  2. Galahad
    Posted December 13, 2005 at 1:33 pm | Permalink

    Google Armstrong Williams and Jeff Gannon.

    You’ll see paying shills to run articles in media is par for the course for this administration.

    It’s also illegal, but since when has that stopped them from doing what they want?

  3. Jed
    Posted December 13, 2005 at 2:22 pm | Permalink

    It’s also unethical for news organizations to print propaganda. They need to check out the sources and veracity of their information before it goes to press!

  4. J M Walker
    Posted December 13, 2005 at 2:44 pm | Permalink

    Sheesh . . . haven’t governments been putting out propaganda since writing was invented? What’s different now? I think just the fact that Bush is so hated by most people that it has become an issue. In my mind, it’s a non-issue.But . . . the left is going to use this until they’ve flogged it to pieces. Another example of why the left is so far out of touch.

    Find something positive and run with it. Get back to IDEAS and quitcher bitchin’. Nobody likes whiners.

  5. farnacle
    Posted December 20, 2005 at 1:25 am | Permalink

    After the CBS Rathergate mess, where their news department was caught foisting off forged documents that they paid for, it is impossible for all the administration haters to claim any high moral ground in their closed world of leftist journalism.

    There is nothing wrong with the government’s paying to tell true stories. Advertising is a long honored thing. Journalists conspire to tell only their biased side of the story, then rend their garments when the other side pays to get its story out.

    What hypocrites the media are.