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Originally Posted by reconmike
Nice logo Otto, is that for the great Dan Rather? Funny that no one has mentioned him here.
Why is that? You people sat and sucked up everything he spit out, where is the difference?
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I assume Rather was not mentioned because it is old news and not really relevant to the current issue under discussion...other than to those who do not want to discuss the use of biased analysts (or analysts protecting a personal financial interest) presented to the public as objective.
But since you insist, on the one hand, you have an anchor who presented a story that he could not fully and accurately source....and subsequently taken off the air (and his career shattered).
As opposed to dozens of former military officers presenting themselves to the public as objective military analysts, yet regurgitating Pentagon talking points on Iraq, whether true or not......and further, not revealing their financial connections to DoD contractors.
Internal Pentagon documents repeatedly refer to the military analysts as ‘message force multipliers’ or ’surrogates’ who could be counted on to deliver administration ‘themes and messages’ to millions of Americans ‘in the form of their own opinions.’
Special Pentagon access came with a condition. Participants were instructed not to quote their briefers directly or otherwise describe their contacts with the Pentagon.
According to the conservative Judicial Watch, such actions could be against the law:
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The Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 (22 U.S.C. ' 1461), forbids the domestic dissemination of U.S. government authored or developed propaganda or “official news” deliberately designed to influence public opinion or policy...
http://www.judicialwatch.org/4303.shtml
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While the article refers to earlier Pentagon (Rumsfeld/'04-05) actions, it may apply to these recent actions as well even though these analysts were not "hired" by the Pentagon.
When DoD misleads the American people by having them believe that they are listening to the views of objective military analysts when in fact these individuals are simply replaying DoD talking points, the department is clearly betraying the public trust.
The actions may also be in violation of specific language in annual DoD appropriation bills:
Section 8001 of the yearly Defense Appropriations bills signed into law has made clear that "No part of any appropriation contained in this Act shall be used for publicity or propaganda purposes not authorized by the Congress."
The DoD is reported to have hired a private contractor to monitor and track the public comments of these military analyst surrogates. As one of them put it, this was "psyops on steroids."
The other legal question is if any DoD contract awards were influenced as a result of the "on air" analysis of these former military officers? (The military analysts involved reportedly represent more than 150 military contractors competing for the hundreds of billions of dollars of defense contracts.)
Rather engaged in shoddy journalism....but did nothing that was potentially illegal.