US TV NEWS Refuses to Report the News That They Brainwashed You With Pentagon PSY-OPS - Page 2 - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

loquitur · 05-11-2008, 04:02 PM

rethought this...........

Shauk · 05-11-2008, 04:05 PM

wow you really can't read.

lol

Charlatan · 05-11-2008, 04:44 PM

To my eyes I don't see anything overtly sinister here. What I see is sophisticated public relations. What the pentagon is doing is no different than any other product or idea that is being sold to us.

The only question that comes to mind isn't that news media is in collusion rather it is, why isn't the media doing its job? It is one thing to use a spokesperson or a press release as a source but it is essential to let your viewers/readers know the potential biases of your sources. It also holds, that other sources should be sought out in support of your original source.

host · 05-11-2008, 04:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by loquitur

I believe politicians, including those in office, generally like to "get their message out." Giving "access" to journalists, sometimes with "exclusives," is a common way of doing it. Briefings for journalists where the administration operative puts out his view to a select group are not uncommon either.

If you step back, you see that that's all that's going on here.

Host just thinks it should never be done with ex-military, and he puts a sinister spin on it.

Brian Williams's, late April, bullshit defense of his two generals makes a laughingstock of your argument, in the face of the five years old reporting on the two generals' outrageous conflicts of interests, and Williams's admission in writing, of the fact that he still has not broadcast about the NY TImes reporting, or about the failure of NBC news to disclose the conflicting interests of the two generals, of the past six years.

You are an attorney, and I have presented a trove of evidence of violations of FCC regulations by the networks and of federal laws by pentagon officials, but you are also a conservative....so....it's host's overreaction, move along folks, noithing to see here.

I wouldn't trust Brian Williams to deliver a reliable local weather report. I don't think you even notice that the consitutional protections we enjoyed on Jan. 19, 2001, are almost all disappeared, now.

The DOD, with the help of a compliant media, have turned their PSY-OPS weapon of war on the country they are sworn to defend, and it's fine with you....it's host's problem, not yours....

Quote:

Originally Posted by Charlatan

To my eyes I don't see anything overtly sinister here. What I see is sophisticated public relations. What the pentagon is doing is no different than any other product or idea that is being sold to us.

The only question that comes to mind isn't that news media is in collusion rather it is, why isn't the media doing its job? It is one thing to use a spokesperson or a press release as a source but it is essential to let your viewers/readers know the potential biases of your sources. It also holds, that other sources should be sought out in support of your original source.

Myself and at least another poster have cited and quoted the laws and regulations that have been broken, the evidence from the pentagon's own website of the Pentagon strategy to control the flow of information exclusively to those in agreement, and the financial and political conflicts of the two generals reporting as military consultants for six years, in the words of the most watched network news anchor who denies that the conflict of interests is even his business to find out about or tell his viewers about, even though the seriousness of the details of the generals' conflicts were published five years ago.

Then....you weigh in from your residence in a foreign country where no criticism of the government by the media or by anyone, publicly, is permitted, to say that you see nothing sinister here, only sophisticated PR.

A rather wide gulf between us, on this issue???

<h3>To both you guys....part of the process of reaction is not to wait until Pentagon PR flack Larry DiRita is televised sitting in Brian Williams's ole anchor chair on your screen as you view the NBC nightly news at 6:30 pm.</h3> If you aren't going to react to proof that the pentagon ran a program designed to "weed out" network military consultants who did not parrot the pentagon script on TV news, and intended to have their own pentagon briefed "water carriers" steer the networks to cover only the stories the pentagon wanted presented, only in the way the pentagon wanted them presented, what exists in your version of "the process" to prevent DiRita and the defense industry via it's pentagon controlled, board member investor generals, from simply dropping all pretenses and putting DiRita in the anchor chair?

roachboy · 05-11-2008, 05:08 PM

at one level, charlatan is right--one way to see this is as a huge breakdown in journalism---the major television "news" networks did not check out their sources. whether there was collusion or not is in the air--but they did not check out the sources. period.

what i'm amazed at in the thread is that so few are even willing to acknowledge that much.

there are systemic problems with how the american major media operate--there are an illusion of critique which is of a piece with the illusion of relatively unproblematic information--and unproblematic information is central to the coherent functioning of a democratic polity. the idea is that the polity, confronted with information, is capable of deliberating and acting on what results from that deliberation. in the states, deliberation is collapsed mostly into a logic of consumer choices. in the states, "democracy" is like shopping. in the states, there is no democratic polity: and it seems that alot of folk who have posted to the thread are just fine with that--rationalize it away, pretend it isn't so--of make no coherent arguments and just attack host. personally, i think the states is a soft authoritarian state ruled by an oligarchy that engages in rituals of faction rotation every 2 years, with the major cycle unfolding every 4 years. there is little meaningful difference between the factions. there is little ideological diversity at all in the states--there is much in the way of diversity of opinion, and if you talk to people they have views that range well beyond what they are told to think--but then again they also accept the idea that the oligarchy is diversity and that faction rotation is enough and that democracy can happen with systematically distorted information.

well, it can't.

rationalize it if you like, but politically this is a fucking problem.

a soft authoritarian regime in which the official political discourse is democratic is a *problem* because it continually sows the expectations that the ideological arrangement is other than it is---at certain points, the gap separating ideology and the facts of the matter surface--this is one of them--but it is hardly unique--and what's funny is that confronted with this gap, alot of folk don't seem to care.

so we don't really have a democratic polity even, if tfp is any indication of what's abroad in the land--we have a polity made up largely of people who live in an illusion and like that illusion and know that it is an illusion, but they like the illusion, so the problem really is anyone who says that it is an illusion, not that it is an illusion.

loquitur · 05-11-2008, 05:19 PM

so guys, start a new network. It's not even that costly now with web and all.

I see the issue here is that people have an "ideal" in mind for what news is supposed to be, and they are measuring the real flesh and blood institutions against the ideal and finding it wanting. Well, yeah. Of course. Most institutions are like that, mainly because they are made up of people and people are flawed.

That's why I don't get excited about most of this stuff the way host does or roachboy does. I don't expect any better. People tend to do what's good for themselves and their "in-group," however defined - and that goes for politicians, journalists, network execs, retired military, etc etc etc. It's also why I generally don't like any concentration of power that isn't subject to checks and balances.

host · 05-11-2008, 05:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

--and what's funny is that confronted with this gap, alot of folk don't seem to care.

so we don't really have a democratic polity even, if tfp is any indication of what's abroad in the land--we have a polity made up largely of people who live in an illusion and like that illusion and know that it is an illusion, but they like the illusion, so the problem really is anyone who says that it is an illusion, not that it is an illusion.

Too shrill, I guess, but you gotta feel something to write anything about anything. I got an ancestor who, at age 80, road in an oxcart over shitty colonial new england roads, for two days in April, 1775 to respond to the Lexington alarm. What's happening on this board and in this country makes me weep, so I write to keep my eyes dry. People....WTF? You're going to lose everything, if you haven't already, but....so what?

roachboy · 05-11-2008, 05:22 PM

it's funny being accused of idealism by someone who confuses hayek's market fictions with the real world.

"start your own network"--say now that's a fine suggestion. no reason to think too hard about the existing state of affairs--if you don't like this reality, buy yourself another one. that how you live your life, loquitor?

loquitur · 05-11-2008, 05:26 PM

nice snark, roachboy.

you think sitting on the sidelines tossing rotten tomatoes is reality? that's all you ever offer.

As for Hayek, he does certainly seem to have worked a good deal better than Marx, hasn't he? And Friedman has triumphed over Keynes as well. So no, I don't accept your premise.

I live my life by being generous to other people and not assuming that everyone who thinks, looks or acts differently from me is stupid or evil. How about you?

roachboy · 05-11-2008, 05:35 PM

that wasn't even particularly snarky, loquitor. you haven't got me even started...i'm not sure this is a game worth playing, since it's mostly about derailing the thread. personally, i'd rather the thread continue. snarkiness can wait.

o yeah-so you know i live pretty much the same way in 3-d that you say you do.
what's a little different apparently is i don't generally make stupid recommendations to other people on messageboards either because i figure it's symmetrical. different aesthetics i suppose.

and i don't derive any solace from refusing to look at the world. that too is doubtless an aesthetic matter.

and no, hayek hasn't worked so well. neither has uncle milty. and i remember reading about keynes being overthrown, but then i remembered the "free marketeers" love of military expenditure as a way of being keynesians. that made me laugh.

host · 05-11-2008, 05:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by loquitur

so guys, start a new network. It's not even that costly now with web and all.

I see the issue here is that people have an "ideal" in mind for what news is supposed to be, and they are measuring the real flesh and blood institutions against the ideal and finding it wanting. Well, yeah. Of course. Most institutions are like that, mainly because they are made up of people and people are flawed.

That's why I don't get excited about most of this stuff the way host does or roachboy does. I don't expect any better. People tend to do what's good for themselves and their "in-group," however defined - and that goes for politicians, journalists, network execs, retired military, etc etc etc. It's also why I generally don't like any concentration of power that isn't subject to checks and balances.

How could you end with that sentence? Don't you have a strong, or any sense at all....that YOU are the "checks and balances", that all of the balance of power is hanging in the balance.....a "bluff", that the other guy becomes emboldened to "call". The networks are gambling that their bluff won't be called, just as Bush and Cheney have....

You're laying the duty of bluffing on me....or not...you don't seem to care. Where on earth do you think the "checks" that provide the balance will come from? Jefferson, Madison, Adams, and Washington knew where the checks came from and how to use them. Franklin said that we must hang together or we will hang separately, It takes so little to check the bluff at every turn and so much more effort, if they call the bluff and take the fucking pot !

<h3>Already, the networks think they can keep their broadcast licenses while they pull this shit, a blackout on coverage of their misleading their viewers. We have to bluff them into feeling less certain of that.....</h3>

THE REASON we even have any of this material to comment on is because of two reporting sources... a team at the NY Times in 2008, and one at The Nation magazine, in 2003, and FOIA requests of the pentagon.

If your POV becomes anymore widespread, why would the owners of either media outlet even pay their staff to come up with these reports or file the FOIA requests with the pentagon? Why would the pentagon even bother to respond.

All of that activity resulted in Glenn Greenwald of Salon, challenging NBC's Brian Williams.

Is it more likely that Williams and other networks are not talking about this controversy "on the air", because of attitudes like yours....or like mine?

ottopilot · 05-12-2008, 08:46 AM

host - Yes, the idea of being mislead by commercial news providers in cahoots with the "military" is not ethical behavior. If nothing legally can be done to adress this practice (if it really happened the way you presented it), and you're mad as hell and can't take it anymore, please, by all means, start your own fair and balanced network. loquitur and I have both suggested this route, and you have yet to address this suggestion.

dc_dux · 05-12-2008, 08:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ottopilot

host - Yes, the idea of being mislead by commercial news providers in cahoots with the "military" is not ethical behavior. If nothing legally can be done to adress this practice (if it really happened the way you presented it), and you're mad as hell and can't take it anymore, please, by all means, start your own fair and balanced network. loquitur and I have both suggested this route, and you have yet to address this suggestion.

Otto...IMO, the better and more practical solution would be for more Americans to express their outrage or concern over such practices as host has done.

And to some degree it has happened. The public outing of the Pentagon practice has resulted in the program being "suspended for further review" and has also resulted in the likelihood of congressional hearings.

Thats how the system should work...not starting your own network.

roachboy · 05-12-2008, 08:59 AM

o i addressed it, otto.
it's a stupid suggestion.
let's try for a minute to make sense of it, shall we?

you appear to have a kind of facile cynicism about information streams and make no particular connection between the quality of information that is available to the public, the public's capacity to make informed judgments--not to mention political judgments--and anything about a democratic political system, no matter how shallow that system might be.

instead, you seem to think of information as a kind of retail operation like shoes or vegetables and that you can go shopping for the kind of information that you prefer to consume and like shoes or vegetables. so you are not interested in critical thinking--you're interested in being able to find information that reinforces an image of the world that you want to see---and you assume that everyone works with as shallow a relation to information as you do. with that shallow a relationship, it is no wonder that you dont connect problematic information streams to problems of democratic process.

tv doesn't tell you there is such a connection so there must not be one.
if you think there is, then start your own network.

jesus....

Charlatan · 05-12-2008, 04:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

Myself and at least another poster have cited and quoted the laws and regulations that have been broken, the evidence from the pentagon's own website of the Pentagon strategy to control the flow of information exclusively to those in agreement, and the financial and political conflicts of the two generals reporting as military consultants for six years, in the words of the most watched network news anchor who denies that the conflict of interests is even his business to find out about or tell his viewers about, even though the seriousness of the details of the generals' conflicts were published five years ago.

Then....you weigh in from your residence in a foreign country where no criticism of the government by the media or by anyone, publicly, is permitted, to say that you see nothing sinister here, only sophisticated PR.

A rather wide gulf between us, on this issue???

I don't see the illegality of what you are listing. Sorry, just don't. I do see that it is unethical on the part of the Pentagon and certainly lazy journalism on the media's part.

Public Relations, by it's nature, is not necessarily an evil thing. Put simply an organization, whether they are the Pentagon, a maker of vacuum cleaners or a film company, has a story they would like to get covered. They will do any number of things to get their story to the public via the editorial news media (as opposed to paid ads, though good campaigns will often use both). They will, issue press releases, stage press conferences, supply experts, etc.

On the "fluffy" side of things, a company that supply baking ingredients might send a baking expert to do a spot on the morning news show, giving a demonstration of how to bake using their products. On the "sinister" side, nation states like Kuwait will stage a press conference to show how their babies are being killed by an invading army in an effort to win US public opinion to supporting them.

What the Pentagon is doing is controlling their message. They want their version of events to be carried in the media. They have been stung in the past by "negative" messages that have turned public opinion against them. It is not in their interest to let this happen again. Why wouldn't they hire experts that can spread their point of view?

The issue for me sits squarely in the lap of journalism. It is their job to dig beyond the PR, beyond the spin. When they simply parrot a press release, or report a Pseudo-event as fact rather than offering alternative points of view... they are letting down their end of the balance.

It is quite easy for some to say, "start your own network". Clearly this is just a way of avoiding the issue. Quite frankly, television news is largely pap. They rarely do investigative pieces anymore. They are victim of their own success (business success). They chase ratings rather than "truth".

And Host... your comments about my current place of residence are way off base. Please stick to the issue and leave where I live out it.

host · 05-12-2008, 07:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Charlatan

....What the Pentagon is doing is controlling their message. They want their version of events to be carried in the media. They have been stung in the past by "negative" messages that have turned public opinion against them. It is not in their interest to let this happen again. Why wouldn't they hire experts that can spread their point of view?....

....because, (the DOD didn't hire the network's retired military officers/consultants...they had press credentials, they worked for the networks, they were acting as representatives of the network press as they were being briefed by the DOD....) when DOD employees use federal funds appropriated for defense to do it, (Psy-Ops directed at a domestic, civilian population) and they restrict briefings to network news conusltants who are agreeable with their script and goals and exclude the ones who are not agreeable, these DOD employees have broken the law.

Charlatan...I posted the FCC position on the network's obligation to present "REAL" news, in an earlier post, and here is the first prosecutor, in what capacity, I don't know....who agrees with my reaction to this. I am confident that there will be more to follow. Why would former head pentagon PR flack, DiRita act like he is acting....if he has no worries?

Quote:

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIP.../27/rs.01.html
CNN RELIABLE SOURCES

Media's Coverage of Pennsylvania Primary; 'New York Times' Reveals DOD Media Program

Aired April 27, 2008 - 10:00 ET

...KURTZ: Larry Di Rita, were you, the Pentagon, Don Rumsfeld, trying to get a positive message out through these TV analysts, these retired military men, who appeared to the viewer at home to be Independent?

LAWRENCE DI RITA, FMR. PENTAGON SPOKESMAN: Positive, no. I think our objective was a balance, a richer set of understandings. There was a general sense, and I think the public often -- it showed up in polls -- that they weren't getting the breadth of the story.......

(near the ens of the transcript):

.....KURTZ: I talked to retired Colonel Bill Cowan, who was a Fox military analyst. He said that three years ago, after he criticized the war effort on "The O'Reilly Factor," he was booted off the group, was never invited to another briefing, never got another telephone call, never got another e-mail. <h3>So it sounds like access was provided to those who weren't too critical.

DI RITA: I don't know anything.</h3> I heard -- I saw that in the story. I've heard other assertions to that effect. <h3>It was certainly not the intent.</h3>

Excerpt from Dirita's own email, provided by the pentagon, linked and displayed in this threads OP:

Quote:

http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/milanaly...20-%207922.pdf

(PAGE 7815)

<h3>From: Oi Rita. larry,</h3> elv. OSD·OASD·PA I Sent: Monday. January 17, 2005 7:27 AM To: I
~~:;~,~;:~~~~~P~~~~~d~~'O~::\~~~~~~l •.i:;f:.. ;X}"1
Ca t. USMC, OA~~::. Lawrence, Dallas, OASD PA, Keck. Gary, Col, OASD4j;!i,;~,/il I
c~: ~=~.-.FIS·HQlPIA I
Subject: Re: New Ideas for Military analyst coverage • Iraq trip I
. This is a thoughtful note ...r think it makes a lot of sense to do as you suggest ana 1
I
guess I thoughjt we already were doing a lot of this in terms of quick contact, etc...we
ought to be doing this. though, and we should not make the list too small ...
I
Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld
I I
-----Original Message----From:
Merritt, Roxie T. CAPT, OASD-PA
I
~~~i~~R~~~~i~5tW;0~,%h:l;c~~~~;~.~~~~~;~,<~~~~y~~~:;~
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I I I Bryan, SES, OASD-PA <.B .W· a" 0 ' .. Lawrence, Dallas OASD-PA
BACKGROUND:
One of the most interesting things coming from this trip to Iraq with the media \
analysts was learning how their jobs have been undergoing a metamorphosis. There are
several reasons behind the morpho .. with an all voluntary military, no one in the media I
has current military background. Additionally, we have been doing a good job of keeping
these guys informed 50 that ~hey have the ready answers when the network comes calling.
I
CURRENT ISSUES:
I
The key issue here is that more and more, media analysts are having a greater impact
I
on the television media network coverage of military issues. They have now become the geI
to guys not only on breaking storys. but they influence the view5 on issues. Th~y also h.ave a huge amount of influence on what stories the network decides to cover proactively I I with regards to military. In media ops, I have been using them more frequently to get our side of the story out II with media sensitive departments such as USD!, which is typically hard to penetrate with traditionally media, but that we have found to be receptive to talking to the analysts I I such as ~en Robinson. RECOMMENDATION:
I
1.1 I recommend we develop a core group from within our media analysts list of those
I
that we can count on to carry our water. They become part of a "hot list" that we
I
immediately make calls to or put on an email distro before we contact or respond to media
I
on hot issues. We can also do more proactive engagement with thiB list and give them tips
on what stories to focus on and give them heads up on upcoming issues as they are I
I developing. By providing them with current and valuable information, they become the key
go to guys for the networks and
<h3>it begins to weed out the less reliably friendly analysts I
I by the networks themselves.</h3>

From the NY Times reporting, last month:

Quote:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/wa...l?pagewanted=5

...Many also shared with Mr. Bush's national security team a belief <h3>that pessimistic war coverage broke the nation's will to win in Vietnam, and there was a mutual resolve not to let that happen with this war.</h3>

This was a major theme, for example, with Paul E. Vallely, a Fox News analyst from 2001 to 2007. A retired Army general who had specialized in psychological warfare, Mr. Vallely co-authored a paper in 1980 that accused American news organizations of failing to defend the nation from "enemy" propaganda during Vietnam.

"We lost the war -- not because we were outfought, but because we were out Psyoped," he wrote. <h3>He urged a radically new approach to psychological operations in future wars -- taking aim at not just foreign adversaries but domestic audiences, too. He called his approach "MindWar" -- using network TV and radio to "strengthen our national will to victory."</h3>....

...and this was in the transcript, from the pentagon's linked page, I posted in post <a href="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpost.php?p=2448647&postcount=3">#3...</a>

Quote:

.....On Tuesday, April 18, some 17 analysts assembled at the Pentagon with Mr. Rumsfeld and General Pace, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

A transcript of that session, never before disclosed, shows a shared determination to marginalize war critics and revive public support for the war.

"I'm an old intel guy," said one analyst. (The transcript omits speakers’ names.) <h3>"And I can sum all of this up, unfortunately, with one word. That is Psyops. Now most people may hear that and they think, 'Oh my God, they’re trying to brainwash.'"</h3>

"What are you, some kind of a nut?" Mr. Rumsfeld cut in, drawing laughter. "You don't believe in the Constitution?"......

I have information besides <a href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/07767728164957616364">this</a> and this:

Quote:

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?bl...87979604801635
Click on "show original post", (This is in the first sentence):

Not as an ardent Bush admin-
istration critic, not as a prosecutor, I don't take any joy in today's verdict....

...that the author of this "letter" is a prosecutor:

Quote:

http://letters.salon.com/opinion/gre...fc8ceebf1.html
*
DiRita needs a lawyer

The examples that DiRita argues are proof that the program was not as GG characterizes -- essentially, that because they continued dealing with some analysts who were critical (well, whom DoD claims were critical), they therefore weren't involved with weeding out the dissenters -- are completely inane. It's like saying 'I didn't rob that bank because I walked by lots of banks and didn't rob them.' And even if true, they are not exculpatory.

And this was so lame it's almost comical; in the update, he complains:

One factual error that I ask you to corect (sic): I did not tell you or anyone else that either Joe Galloway or Barry McCaffrey were part of any particular program.

That's not only parsing so extreme as to be meaningless, it's also rather undermined by the first thing he says in his first email to GG:

I'm confident in my characterizations of the intent of the program. Some of the analysts were quite favorable to the president's goals in the war, others were not.

Well, if he's not providing Galloway and McCafferey as examples of those "others" in the "program" who were "not" favorable to the "president's goals in the war", why the hell is he bringing them up?

DiRita is an idiot for sending these emails (they are also appallingly sloppy for a Fortune 500 communications rep). He needs to hire acriminal defense attorney.
-- Jestaplero
[Read Jestaplero's other letters]
Permalink Monday, May 12, 2008 10:25 AM

Quote:

http://letters.salon.com/opinion/gre...454ba4158.html
Any admissions by the parties?

Nice work, Glenn.

I'm astonished that, in all of the documents you have quoted and/or referenced, unless I'm wrong I have yet to see any acknowledgment by the parties that the program was likely illegal. It's not like it was some obscure statute, because as you pointed out, the Armstrong Williams affair was recent.

I've been constrained by work from examining the document dump myself - have you seen any such admissions, or efforts to conceal these actions?

Such statements don't go to culpability, of course - ignorance of the law is no excuse - but would go to proof.
-- Jestaplero
[Read Jestaplero's other letters]
Permalink Monday, May 12, 2008 09:37 AM

http://letters.salon.com/opinion/gre...5197a1168.html
#
Jestaplero

I've been constrained by work from examining the document dump myself - have you seen any such admissions, or efforts to conceal these actions?

Such statements don't go to culpability, of course - ignorance of the law is no excuse - but would go to proof.

This, of course, is the most secretive administration in a long, long time. And particularly DoD-related matters were almost never disclosed. It's clear none of them ever thought that what they were doing would be disclosed, and of course the DoD fought for a long time -- to the point of being threatened with sanctions, according to the NYT -- not to have to disclose these documents.

There are examples of them concealing things --- asking the analysts not to identify the briefings, who they briefers were. CNN asked if they could film the analysts coming and going to the meeting with Rumsfeld and were told that they'd be prohibited from doing that, that the analysts wanted to remain discreet.

I just don't think they gave much though to concealing this specifically because everything they did was done behind a wall of secrecy.
-- GlennGreenwald
[Read GlennGreenwald's other letters]
Permalink Monday, May 12, 2008 09:54 AM
#

Quote:

http://letters.salon.com/opinion/gre...e66eabb57.html

Larry Di Rita should be indicted.

Since the Congress has explicitly banned the use of government funds for propaganda purposes of this kind, any use of government facilities or materials for this project violated the US Code.

Even if there was no punishment indicated in the law where the Congress banned propaganda, there IS a punishment listed in the section of the US Code that bans the appropriation of government property for banned uses:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18...1----000-.html

641. Public money, property or records

Whoever embezzles, steals, purloins, or knowingly converts to his use or the use of another, or without authority, sells, conveys or disposes of any record, voucher, money, or thing of value of the United States or of any department or agency thereof, or any property made or being made under contract for the United States or any department or agency thereof; or

Whoever receives, conceals, or retains the same with intent to convert it to his use or gain, knowing it to have been embezzled, stolen, purloined or converted—

Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; but if the value of such property in the aggregate, combining amounts from all the counts for which the defendant is convicted in a single case, does not exceed the sum of $1,000, he shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.

-- BrianScheetz
[Read BrianScheetz's other letters]
Permalink Monday, May 12, 2008 09:40 AM

Quote:

http://letters.salon.com/opinion/gre...483837043.html

#
@jjs123

Why do these guys leave an email trail?!

Glenn touches upon why these particular actors may have felt safe, in his earlier response to me.

But generally: when I was fresh out of law school, my first job was doing document review for extremely large-scale corporate litigation. If I was left with one principal impression from that experience, it was "I can't believe the kinds of things people say in emails."

There was one particularly amusing bit of discovery that my colleagues and I were forced to disclose to the other side: two pharmaceutical reps engaged in a series of x-rated emails that can only be described as virtual sex via email. One of the participants at one point asked "Aren't you worried about putting all this in email?" to which the other replied "Oh, who's ever going to read this stuff?!"

That's when I instituted what I call my "New York Post" rule: before hitting send on any email, I always ask myself "Would I be comfortable if this email was published on the front page of tomorrow's New York Post?"
-- Jestaplero
[Read Jestaplero's other letters]
Permalink Monday, May 12, 2008 11:36 AM
#

Quote:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/op...entagon&st=nyt
May 11, 2008
The Public Editor
Information That Doesn’t Come Freely
By CLARK HOYT

NINA BERNSTEIN, a Times reporter, wrote a front-page article last June about the deaths of prisoners in the fastest-growing form of incarceration in America, immigration detention.

Civil rights attorneys believed that, since the start of 2004, about 20 people had died while in custody facing possible deportation, but a spokeswoman for the federal immigration agency told Bernstein a surprising fact: the number was 62. Bernstein asked for details, like who they were and how they died. The spokeswoman refused, so Bernstein did what reporters often do — she filed a request under the federal Freedom of Information Act, known as FOIA, for what she believed should be public records. Although the law required the agency to answer such a simple request within 20 business days, Immigration and Customs Enforcement initially responded the way many agencies do — with silence.....

,,,,,,,Bernstein, who has a busy beat, immigration in the New York area, wrote her article without the details and moved on. But months later, right around Thanksgiving, she received an envelope containing a chart listing the people who had died in immigration detention — now 66 of them — with their dates of birth and death, the locations where they had been held, where they had died and the causes of death. Her FOIA request had been granted. That led Bernstein to a front-page article published last Monday about Boubacar Bah, a 52-year-old tailor from Guinea, who fell while in detention, received no medical care for 15 hours and died of severe head injuries.

Times reporters use FOIA aggressively, and it has been central to two major stories in just the last three weeks — Bernstein’s and an article by David Barstow on April 20 about a Pentagon program to cozy up to military analysts on television and radio in hopes of generating favorable coverage of the administration’s war on terror. But it is increasingly difficult to pry records that should be open out of federal agencies. A study last year by the Coalition of Journalists for Open Government found that FOIA requests were becoming more backlogged, waits for information were getting longer and agencies were saying “no” more often, using one of nine exemptions in the law for such considerations as national security or privacy.

Though late, at least Bernstein got records without having to go to court. The Times was not so fortunate in Barstow’s case, which seemed to show that an agency that does not want to obey the law can find a million creative ways to delay coughing up information that the public has a clear right to know.

Barstow first asked more than two years ago, on April 28, 2006, for records describing the Defense Department’s involvement with the analysts, most of them retired officers, many with business dealings with the Pentagon. He said he wanted transcripts of briefings and conference calls, records of trips and any documents describing the Pentagon’s strategy and objectives in what turned out to be a carefully planned program to try to, as Barstow’s article said, “transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse.”

As the law provides, he asked for expedited handling of his request. He was turned down, though he said the Pentagon did not tell him for a month after the decision. It said the information he wanted did not deal with “a breaking news story of public interest.”

Barstow appealed, arguing that the war on terror was by definition a breaking news story and certainly of public interest. The appeal was denied on Aug. 20, 2006, with bizarre reasoning familiar to anyone who has tried to wrest public information from a federal agency that does not want it released. “Your request is not for information on the war on terror,” the denial said. “It is for Department of Defense interactions with military and security analysts who discuss the war on terror. Therefore, you did not establish a compelling need for the information you requested.”

Barstow kept pressing and two months later received 687 pages of documents, mostly, he said, talking points and other briefing documents representing only a small portion of what he had requested.

A long succession of phone calls and written appeals, some from David McCraw, a vice president and assistant general counsel for The New York Times Company, prompted a trickle of additional material. Last summer, the Pentagon gave Barstow transcripts of briefings received by the analysts, with large portions blacked out. Barstow appealed the deletions, saying it was “ludicrous” to withhold material disclosed to selected representatives of the news media in a briefing. Two months later, the Pentagon relented — and on the same day gave Barstow another transcript, of a briefing with Donald Rumsfeld, the defense secretary, with more deletions.

The Times, committed to spending resources on important FOIA matters even during a time of economic stress for newspapers, took the Pentagon to court last fall. Under the supervision of a federal district judge, Richard J. Sullivan, The Times and an assistant United States attorney representing the Pentagon agreed to deadlines for producing the records Barstow wanted. The Pentagon kept missing the deadlines.

At a hearing in February, Sullivan said the Pentagon was playing “cute” and refused to give any more extensions. “Two years is a long time,” he said. But in April, the parties were back in his courtroom, with the Pentagon pleading for more time. Sullivan was having none of it. “My orders have been issued since November,” he said. “I am not used to having to do this five or six times.” <h3>The judge threatened to bring Pentagon officials into court “to explain the delay and why they shouldn’t be held in contempt.”

With the records it had already obtained, The Times published Barstow’s article the following Sunday. Three days later, the Pentagon gave Barstow 2,800 more pages. His reporting continues. FOIA, he told me, has become “a cruel joke.”</h3>

Late last year, Congress passed the Open Government Act of 2007, with the intention of forcing better compliance with FOIA and heading off situations like Bernstein’s and Barstow’s. (Full disclosure: I testified in favor of the law as a representative of the Sunshine in Government Initiative, a coalition of 10 news organizations.) President Bush signed it on the last day of the year, but his administration quickly set about trying to dismantle one of its key features, an independent ombudsman who could mediate FOIA disputes before they turn into expensive lawsuits, like the one The Times is still pursuing.

The administration proposed no financing for the new office and tried to move its responsibilities to the Justice Department, which defends agencies trying to withhold information. Senators Patrick Leahy of Vermont and John Cornyn of Texas wrote to the White House last week to protest the transfer of the ombudsman, saying it would violate the law.

Leahy is a liberal Democrat and Cornyn is a conservative Republican, and while they do not agree on a lot of issues, they agree that bad things can happen when a government tries to hide the records of its actions.

<h3>Charlatan, </h3> every day that the US corporate owned, broadcast media continues it's co-ordinated silence on this American tragedy, and their part in it, only adds to the resolve of those who object to what is happening to diminish what our free press and government once seemed to symbolize. The internet was developed in the nick of time. I've been following current events to some degree since the launch of the soviet Sputnik satellite and the soviet downing of U2 spy plane pilot Francis Gary Powers shocked us American public in the 50's. I've never experienced anything as arrogant, destructive, unethical, and secretive as our current government.

I don't think it's possible to overreact to unfolding events. The broadcast media have set themselves apart from the NY Time's biggest story of the last six weeks. They've switched off. Unprecedented that they've made themselves irrelevant....as they made the choice to deliver the script of power instead of speaking truth to it....

mixedmedia · 05-13-2008, 02:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

o i addressed it, otto.
it's a stupid suggestion.
let's try for a minute to make sense of it, shall we?

you appear to have a kind of facile cynicism about information streams and make no particular connection between the quality of information that is available to the public, the public's capacity to make informed judgments--not to mention political judgments--and anything about a democratic political system, no matter how shallow that system might be.

instead, you seem to think of information as a kind of retail operation like shoes or vegetables and that you can go shopping for the kind of information that you prefer to consume and like shoes or vegetables. so you are not interested in critical thinking--you're interested in being able to find information that reinforces an image of the world that you want to see---and you assume that everyone works with as shallow a relation to information as you do. with that shallow a relationship, it is no wonder that you dont connect problematic information streams to problems of democratic process.

tv doesn't tell you there is such a connection so there must not be one.
if you think there is, then start your own network.

jesus....

I think we're just getting what we deserve.

I started to give up a long time ago.

Threads, such as this one, don't help.

Yay, misanthropy.

We're all getting exactly what we deserve.

Up the butt.

The story is over and it worked.

pig · 05-13-2008, 03:28 AM

I'm just glad we're fighting them over there - God knows I don't want to fight 'em over here. If Iraq hadn't attacked us on 911, we wouldn't have had to drive Al Queda out from under Saddam Hussein's quid-pro-quo protection in Iraq. The thing that really pisses me off is when the press reports on all the deaths of solidiers and the small handful of thankful Iraqi citizen-patriots who die as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom, but leave out all the great things happening over there. All the success stories. All the lollipops and laurels and rosebuds thrown upon the freshly razed ground where cherubic children come to play and laugh at our Divinely victorious feet.

---------

charlatan: i would say a small difference is that the DoD is not, obstensibly, a private company. They are a wing of our government, and as such theoretically shouldn't be selling me a military product. I simultaneously think this is a huge issue, and yet I'm not surprised by it at all. Duplicity is expected at this point, which is a sad thing and makes me feel more jaded as time goes by.

ottopilot · 05-13-2008, 03:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

o i addressed it, otto.
it's a stupid suggestion.
let's try for a minute to make sense of it, shall we?

you appear to have a kind of facile cynicism about information streams and make no particular connection between the quality of information that is available to the public, the public's capacity to make informed judgments--not to mention political judgments--and anything about a democratic political system, no matter how shallow that system might be.

instead, you seem to think of information as a kind of retail operation like shoes or vegetables and that you can go shopping for the kind of information that you prefer to consume and like shoes or vegetables. so you are not interested in critical thinking--you're interested in being able to find information that reinforces an image of the world that you want to see---and you assume that everyone works with as shallow a relation to information as you do. with that shallow a relationship, it is no wonder that you dont connect problematic information streams to problems of democratic process.

tv doesn't tell you there is such a connection so there must not be one.
if you think there is, then start your own network.

jesus....

... or

Perhaps your 3D view is really more like tunnel vision through a socialist lens. If you, host, or anyone of the self-proclaimed 3D minded would force yourselves to actually look at the larger picture, you'd understand that there are many avenues available (to boys and girls just like you and me) for changing corporate behavior that you do not agree with.

If you cut through all the bullshit, all I'm hearing is whining about how the commercial networks won't report something. It appears that the issue is caught insulated between some legal and ethical holes and will most likely not be prosecuted. I have not said once that I approve of the behavior. I never once said that I didn't think that network news is highly influential. And don't make me laugh about what the hell you believe about my need to justify my views, you are the master of shallow generalizations and rationalizations. You reach deep in to your bag of stereotypes, often based on very little information, roll it in crap, spray it with pseudo-intellectual deodorant, and deliver it so cleverly condescending.

Here's where the 3-D part of your intellect should have kicked in. The suggestion of "start your own network" is admittedly a stick in the eye, but absolutely an option if someone had the initiative and creativity to act on their convictions. Boycotts on products and viewing may also be unrealistic to the paper activist, but would be easier and less capital intensive than a new network. But like anything substantial, it would require lots of good old-fashioned hard work, and that's probably a show-stopper right there.

How many creative ways can be thought of by someone of your massive intellect to approach a solution to this problem of the free-market? Because that's what it is.

If you want more laws, get them passed (this is always the laziest and the most popular method with lib/socialists). If you want to prosecute violations of current laws, then prosecute (but that's no fun, enforcing existing laws just doesn't fill that need to save the stupid from themselves or provide that "feel good" quality satisfying one's sense of convenient righteous indignation). If those measures require too much actual work and you don't like what the network news sources don't report, then I suppose turning the channel, turning off the TV, reading a newspaper, searching the internet, starting a boycott, starting a complaint write-in campaign, would be way too much trouble. You can always just start your own network.

dc_dux · 05-13-2008, 04:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pig

I'm just glad we're fighting them over there - God knows I don't want to fight 'em over here. If Iraq hadn't attacked us on 911, we wouldn't have had to drive Al Queda out from under Saddam Hussein's quid-pro-quo protection in Iraq. The thing that really pisses me off is when the press reports on all the deaths of solidiers and the small handful of thankful Iraqi citizen-patriots who die as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom, but leave out all the great things happening over there. All the success stories. All the lollipops and laurels and rosebuds thrown upon the freshly razed ground where cherubic children come to play and laugh at our Divinely victorious feet.

pig...you can read about the lollipops and laurels and rosebuds...where cherubic children come to laugh and play.....on the DoD arabic news website in Iraq:

Quote:

The news sites are part of a Pentagon initiative to expand "Information Operations" on the Internet. Neither the initiative nor the Iraqi site, www.Mawtani.com, has been disclosed publicly.

At first glance, Mawtani.com looks like a conventional news website. Only the "about" link at the bottom of the site takes readers to a page that discloses the Pentagon sponsorship. The site, which has operated since October, is modeled on two long-established Pentagon-sponsored sites that offer native-language news for people in the Balkans and North Africa.

Journalism groups say the sites are deceptive and easily could be mistaken for independent news.

"This is about trying to control the message, either by bypassing the media or putting your version of the message out before others (and) … there's a heavy responsibility to let people know where you're coming from," says Amy Mitchell, deputy director at the Project for Excellence in Journalism. A disclosure on a separate page "isn't something most people coming to the site are likely to see."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/militar...30-sites_N.htm

Arabic original >>>>>>>> English (google translator)

I dont see anythring wrong with the DoD offering a news site in Iraq.....if it were more upfront about the sponsorship of the site. In the current format, I think its a bit deceptive.

roachboy · 05-13-2008, 04:38 AM

otto, darling, it is obvious that you didn't understand my posts to this thread.

first off, to address your crackpot insults directed at me personally, behind roachboy:

like alot of people i work, in my modest way, to help bring down this entire order of things. you make stuff, it's a political action. you put it out into the world, it's a political action. what varies is the channels you use to make the actions, and so who interacts with the results. it is obvious that all of this involves a degree of rationalization--the gap between what one imagines oneself to be doing and what the results of that doing can effect out there in the world is a matter of readership or listenership--as you know, in your way, as i remember somewhere reading that you are or were a musician. so you know the gap that separates what you animates your relation to what you do and what you think it could or should do in the world and what it might actually do.

i am not interested beyond this in connecting my 3-d activities to this thread.
i don't need to defend anything---"what exactly do *you* do to effect the change that you want to see"---funny one internet persona asking that of another.

=================================================

on the networks: when you "strip away the bullshit" as you so daintily put it, what you strip away is the ability to make the first bit of sense of what i wrote to this thread.

i am not interested in fighting my way through reading comprehension issues in order to engage in some no doubt pointless exchange when i know up front that you don't bother to work out what an actual argument is and where it leads to--so since you did not bother to work out what i wrote, what you stripped away was the actual argument, otto, and what that left you with is what you want to see.

i dont have time to deal with reactionary narcissists. either figure out the argument and respond to it, in which case we can talk, or dont--but dont waste my time with some cheap term substitution the only function of which is to enable you to hector me about issues that are only of concern to the version of roachboy that floats around within the confines of your skull, the one that you might be able to imagine takes you seriously.

it's funny how often it turns out to be the case that the folk whose politics blab so much about individual initiative turn out to be inert particles intellectually themselves.

Charlatan · 05-13-2008, 05:38 AM

Perhaps I am a bit thick... did the DOD pay these network consultants (i.e. retired military types) money to be reps for the DOD or were they being paid by the networks (or both)?

From what I am gleaning here, they are not being paid by the DOD (though I admit I may have missed that bit) but rather getting access to breifings while those who present a negative POV are excluded from the breifings.

Again, I find this unethical but not illegal.

roachboy · 05-13-2008, 05:57 AM

the interpretive problem that we're running across with this, charlatan, is whether co-ordination of message by the pentagon is different from private sector pr: personally, i think it is, simply because when the state acts--including by proxy/at an arm's length--it makes the situation it acts upon political.

that's why i thought it appropriate to link this story to wider questions of information and opinion management as a political question, and to link this to the sad state that of american "democracy."

so to my mind, this is not a particularly overwhelming or even surprising development (the ny times story etc.)--it's more indicative of a broader pattern of political management.

the problem for systems of ideological co-ordination systems comes when their function as ideological co-ordination systems emerges. that's why this is interesting, in my view.

as is the lack of concern about it.

Seaver · 05-14-2008, 04:41 AM

Please move to Paranoia. This is just like his eight 9/11 threads which were allowed to linger here way too long.

dc_dux · 05-14-2008, 04:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seaver

Please move to Paranoia. This is just like his eight 9/11 threads which were allowed to linger here way too long.

How about waiting until after the DoD internal review and Congressional oversight investigation to determine if laws (or DoD policies and procedures) were broken regarding preferential treatment to the analysts/surrogates and defense contracting.

roachboy · 05-14-2008, 04:58 AM

seaver: if you're seriously advocating that position, demonstrate that the op is false.
put up or shut up.

short of that, i will not move the thread.

host · 05-14-2008, 09:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seaver

Please move to Paranoia. This is just like his eight 9/11 threads which were allowed to linger here way too long.

Quote:

http://www.flakmag.com/opinion/pentagonpundits.html
<img src="http://www.flakmag.com/opinion/images/pentagonpundits.jpg">

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/wa...in&oref=slogin

..... Analysts have been wooed in hundreds of private briefings with senior military leaders, including officials with significant influence over contracting and budget matters, records show. They have been taken on tours of Iraq and given access to classified intelligence. They have been briefed by officials from the White House, State Department and Justice Department, including Mr. Cheney, Alberto R. Gonzales and Stephen J. Hadley.

In turn, members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated. Some analysts acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their access.

A few expressed regret for participating in what they regarded as an effort to dupe the American public with propaganda dressed as independent military analysis.

<h3>“It was them saying, ‘We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you,’ ” Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and former Fox News analyst, said.</h3>

Kenneth Allard, a former NBC military analyst who has taught information warfare at the National Defense University, said the campaign amounted to a sophisticated information operation. “This was a coherent, active policy,” he said.

As conditions in Iraq deteriorated, Mr. Allard recalled, he saw a yawning gap between what analysts were told in private briefings and what subsequent inquiries and books later revealed.

<h2>“Night and day,” Mr. Allard said, “I felt we’d been hosed.” ......</h2>

Quote:

http://www.reuters.com/article/lates.../idUSN22334887
grooming TV analysts
Tue Apr 22, 2008 4:53pm EDT

WASHINGTON, April 22 (Reuters) - A newspaper report that U.S. military analysts working for television networks were coached by the Pentagon provided "very clear evidence of conflicts of interest" at the Defense Department, a senior U.S. senator said on Tuesday.

Sen. Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he was sending Defense Secretary Robert Gates a letter urging him to make "sure access to the media is even, is not selective, they're not picking people for favorable treatment."

The New York Times on Sunday reported that retired senior officers received private briefings, trips and access to classified intelligence to influence their comments about the Iraq war on television networks.

"It's a very, very significant disclosure of the New York Times," Levin told reporters.

The newspaper quoted Robert Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and former Fox News analyst, as saying, "It was them (the Bush administration) saying, 'We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you.'"

A Pentagon spokesman told the Times that the analysts were only given factual information about the war in Iraq.

Levin also complained that some of the analysts were "apparently on the payroll of defense contractors and those defense contractors apparently believe they have special access" to the Pentagon.

Quote:

http://www.senate.gov/~levin/newsroo....cfm?id=296687

Levin Asks Gates to Investigate Allegations that Pentagon Provided Special Treatment to TV Analysts

WASHINGTON --- Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., has asked Defense Secretary Robert Gates to investigate claims laid out by the New York Times on April 20 that the Pentagon gave special treatment to retired military personnel who served as TV analysts in support of the administration’s policies.

“While the media clearly have their own shortfalls for paying people to provide ‘independent’ analysis when they have such real and apparent conflicts, that doesn’t excuse the Department’s behavior in giving both special treatment and valuable access to analysts who provide commentary in favor of DoD’s strategy, while not offereing similar access to some other analysts and cutting off access to others who didn’t deliver as expected,” Levin wrote in a letter to Gates.

A copy of Levin’s letter to Gates can be viewed here. [PDF]

<h3>Sen. Carl Levin chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee</h3>

Quote:

http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/sup...tes.042308.pdf
Unitcd States Senate
Honorable Robert M. Gates
Secretary of Defense
1000 Defense Pentagon
Washington, DC 20301-1000

Dear Mr. Secretary:

I am writing in connection with a front page story in the New York Times on
Sunday, April 20, 2008, entitled "Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon's Hidden Hand."
I am deeply troubled over the allegations in the story that:

(1) retired military personnel performing media analysis were accorded special
treatment by being provided with talking points and unique access to senior
civilian and military officials with the expectation (usually realized) that they
would provide positive analysis from the Department's perspective;

(2) some analysts, who were accorded special treatment, were on the payroll of
Defense contractors with an interest in gaining or preserving military contracts.
While the media clearly have their own shortfalls for paying people to provide

"independent" analysis when they have such real and apparent conflicts, that doesn't
excuse the Department's behavior in giving both special treatment and valuable
access to analysts who provide commentary in favor of DoD's strategy, while not
offering similar access to some other analysts and cutting off access to others who
didn't deliver as expected.

would appreciate your promptly investigating the specific allegations in the
article and advising me of your findings and any actions you intend to take.

Sincerely,
Carl Levin

You've been fucking "hosed", Seaver....your "belief system" has been taken apart and exposed....suck it up. Don't try to make it my problem.

Charlatan · 05-14-2008, 04:18 PM

I can agree that the discussion really should be one that discusses how PR is carried out by the government in general.

Levin's letter above makes the whole thing much clearer.

1) Special access given to those who would provide positive spin while denying or curtailing access to those who don't

2) Some of the analysts have were on the payroll of Defense contractors at the same time.

The first point is really just about access and who gets it. Should there be equal access to all? To answer this you need to look at the government as a whole. Who gets access to information. Who gets briefed by congress, the president, etc? Are other branches offering this sort of access while (deliberately or inadvertently) excluding others?

The second doesn't have much to do with the PR message but does have everything to do with giving Contractor X, with an analyst that has access, more information than Contractor Y that does not. This could possibly have an effect on the fairness of bidding processes (though I suspect that this is a bit of a red-herring as there are likely many other ways to get this information and it probably isn't all that relevant to the bidding process).

The key issue in point two really falls to the media. They should be disclosing any conflict of interest. Any real journalist (as opposed to an analyst) with a potential conflict would make these disclosures.

dc_dux · 05-14-2008, 05:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Charlatan

I can agree that the discussion really should be one that discusses how PR is carried out by the government in general.

Levin's letter above makes the whole thing much clearer.

1) Special access given to those who would provide positive spin while denying or curtailing access to those who don't

2) Some of the analysts have were on the payroll of Defense contractors at the same time.

The first point is really just about access and who gets it. Should there be equal access to all? To answer this you need to look at the government as a whole. Who gets access to information. Who gets briefed by congress, the president, etc? Are other branches offering this sort of access while (deliberately or inadvertently) excluding others?

The second doesn't have much to do with the PR message but does have everything to do with give Contractor X, with an analyst that has access more information than Contractor Y that does not. This could possibly have an effect on the fairness of bidding processes (though I suspect that this is a bit of a red-herring as there are likely many other ways to get this information and it probably isn't all that relevant to the bidding process).

The key issue in point two really falls to the media. They should be disclosing any conflict of interest. Any real journalist (as opposed to an analyst) with a potential conflict would make these disclosures.

Which is why there should be an FCC investigation in addition to the DoD internal review...as requested in Cong. Dingell's letter to the Chair of the FCC:

Quote:

As a result of the program, analysts, many of whom represented military contractors or ran their own military consulting or contracting firms, were granted special access to the senior civilian and military leaders directly involved in determining how war funding should be spent. According to the report, analysts that were critical of the administration’s policy could “lose all access,” creating an environment in which these analysts felt compelled, and at times eager, to convey specific Defense Department talking points to the American public, even when they did not necessarily agree with them. It could appear that some of these analysts were indirectly paid for fostering the Pentagon’s views on these critical issues.

Our chief concern is that as a result of the analysts’ participation in this DoD program, which included the DoD’s paying for their commercial airfare on DoD-sponsored trips to Iraq, the analysts and the networks that hired them could have run afoul of certain laws or regulations, among them the sponsorship identification requirements in the Act and the FCC’s rules. For example, we are concerned that the military analysts may have violated Section 507 of the Act, 47 U.S.C. § 507, which, among other things, prohibits those involved with preparing program matter intended for broadcast from accepting valuable consideration for including particular matter in a program without disclosure. Similarly, the Commission’s rules require a station to make an appropriate announcement when it receives a disclosure from someone involved with preparing program matter for the station, 47 C.F.R. § 73.1212.

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6558164.html

This is not about starting your own station if you dont like what the DoD and networks did... as some have suggested with offhand comments.

It is about ensuring that laws and regulatory rules and procedures are not violated for political (or financial) purposes.

echo5delta · 05-14-2008, 08:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by host

Much worse....the broadcast networks hire retired military officers as "consultants". The networks represented these officers as apolitical military experts.

O Rly?

No, before you ask, not "O'Reilly", but "Oh? Really?" I hate that cocksucker anyway.

Back on topic: A few thoughts and questions - to which I'd like firm answers - do spring immediately to mind.

Also, I would like to point out that this thread title is (thinly) based on a single quote. I know fairly intimately what a *tactical* psyops team does. If you'd like to deem your citations as *strategic* psyops, then I think I could honestly concede that point.

That being said:

1) Are any of these "consultants"/"analysts" retired enlisted men? Like, the type who compose a vast majority of the actual military itself? And who historically make up most of those killed in any war?

I reviewed the list of the attendees of the April 18, 2006 meeting you cited. Seems like the lowliest coffee-fetching bitch in the room was likely a Navy Captain, or perhaps a retired GS-15 civilian.

2) Are you mostly upset about Iraq? Hell, I'll even give you the deceitful lie that may or may not be our current conflict in Afghanistan, which has a far, far higher percentage of international forces still in the fight.

Because personally? My biggest problem in this "gigantic ruckus" you beat to death in this thread isn't necessarily the media, or their haphazard retention of so-called "military analysts/consultants". "Apolitical" is the most bullshit word you could use to describe any "analyst" or "consultant" of any stripe who has appeared on TV or written an editorial in my young lifetime.

Dude, every major media outlet has their own fucking agenda. Print, broadcast, or on teh intarwebz, it doesn't matter. Be it Fox News or Air America (RIP), everyone's got their own story to tell, shareholders and boards of directors included.

If you wish to credibly indict the military-industrial complex, why not go after all those senior officers? Again, I point out that not one of those men you named from the April 18, 2006 meeting was enlisted.

And let's face it, an Air Force BGen who's already heavily involved in, say, the Joint Strike Fighter program could easily "retire" and start the very next day at Northrop-Grumman or McDonnell Douglas for more than double his military paycheck, with much better benefits. Personally, that seems like a far, FAR larger moral and ethical violation than going to work for CNN or some shit, regardless of the pay there. Compare the taxpayer dollars spent in either scenario... hmmm...

Perhaps I am just no longer capable of sympathy for "Joe Six Pack" who believes that "TV said it, so it must be true!"

Some of the most moronic people I know still understand that CNN is more liberal/socialist, Fox is more right wing/GOP, et cetera, et cetera. In this day and age, if nobody's spelled those nuances out to you, you're probably never going to be concerned with changing your nation's politics, anyway.

And sadly enough, any media outlet in existence is going to retain military analysts/commentators who fit their own agenda, and nobody who retired below the paygrade of O-6... maybe O-5. Because in this world, it's all about your class, caste, and education if you want credibility. In the media, at least.

The retired/retiring officers you cited are all just trying to make bigger bucks, as are the ones who hire them. Is it despicable? Hell yes. Is there anything you and I are doing about it?

Well, shit. That's a hell of a question, ain't it?

One last question: is there any "analyst/consultant" currently paid by any media outlet who is currently on active duty? Because I'm genuinely interested in those numbers, since that's pretty much chargeable under the UCMJ.

host · 05-15-2008, 02:45 AM

echo5delta, we got something for everyone in our "bag of tricks", this AM..... an answer to your question about former enlisted military in the ranks of the retired military consultants, working for the networks, and a little nugget for you, too, Seaver!

My question is.....does the ideology of the military establishment, polluted with their openly partisan leanings, give them, with the influence of their neocon allies....the "balls"....to actually provide the "antidote" (punishment) for the American voters electing democrats? Are they sick, sick, desparate delusional people, or are they sitll as dangerous as they've already demonstrated they can be?

Quote:

http://www.dailytexanonline.com/news...-2330453.shtml
10/4/06
Protests, insults disrupt Kristol 9/11 speech

By Cara Henis

Page 1 of 1

William Kristol speaks about changes in American politics following the events from 9/11 Tuesday evening, while Dean James Steinberg looks on.

A speech by William Kristol, former chief of staff for former vice president Dan Quayle and editor of The Weekly Standard magazine, turned hostile Tuesday when students began hurling insults at Kristol, alleging his and the U.S. government's complicity in the Sept. 11 attacks.

"9/11 is your Pearl Harbor," said one student protestor, referring to a pre-Sept. 11 statement released by the Project for a New American Century, a conservative think tank Kristol chairs.

In a Sept. 2000 report titled "Rebuilding America's Defenses, " the group wrote, "Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, <h3>absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor."</h3>

Quote:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24629509/
Audio of Rumsfeld on Iraq creates buzz
Audio of luncheon with media military analysts posted on Newsvine

MSNBC
updated 7:47 p.m. ET, Wed., May. 14, 2008

......The clips Gillis provides include one in which the media analysts suggest, with Rumsfeld's agreement, that Iraq needs an authoritarian dictator. In another, Rumsfeld suggests that the American public lacked the "maturity" to understand that the nation remained under threat from terrorists and that the only "correction" would be another attack on the U.S........

DELONG: Politically, what are the challenges because you're not going to have a lot of sympathetic ears up there.

RUMSFELD: That's what I was just going to say. This President's pretty much a victim of success. We haven't had an attack in five years. The perception of the threat is so low in this society that it's not surprising that the behavior pattern reflects a low threat assessment. The same thing's in Europe, there's a low threat perception. <h3>The correction for that, I suppose, is an attack.</h3> And when that happens, then everyone gets energized for another [inaudible] and it's a shame we don't have the maturity to recognize the seriousness of the threats...the lethality, the carnage, that can be imposed on our society is so real and so present and so serious that you'd think we'd be able to understand it, but as a society, the longer you get away from 9/11, the less...the less... December 12, 2006.

<h3>Background:</h3>

There is a retired army Command Sgt. Major, (#10 On the list below, of Rumsfeld luncheon attendees....)

http://www.defenselink.mil/specials/.../enlisted.html

Quote:

Faculty
Steven Greer Professor Steve Greer is a military analyst for Fox News Channel ... of the Lightfighters School, and Command Sergeant Major for several units. ...
http://www.amu.apus.edu/Academics/Fa...?facultyID=449

Quote:

http://jfxgillis.newsvine.com/_news/...onald-rumsfeld

<img src="http://www.newsvine.com/_vine/images/users/nws/jfxgillis/1482374.jpg">
<h5>This is apparently the list of attendees at Secretary Rumsfeld's valedictory luncheon with the military analysts.</h5>

On Thursday, May 8, <a href="http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/rdroom.html">the Department of Defense released to the public<a> all the items they had turned over to the New York Times. One item that was released that has generated no notice in the media accounts so far is an audio recording of a valedictory luncheon Rumsfeld hosted for those analysts on December 12, 2006--a month after Rumsfeld had been cashiered by President Bush and only a few days before Rumsfeld's replacement Robert Gates assumed the post of Secretary of Defense. The file, very large, is <a href="http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/milanalysts/23%20Apr%2008/Audio%20Files/SecDef%20with%20mil%20analysts%2012.12.06.wav">here</a>

The recording is just over an hour long, so I clipped a few of the more notable moments. By "notable" I mean "at times chilling, infuriating, even shocking."

<h3>"We Can't Win"</h3>

In one of the first substantive comments Rumsfeld makes, the second clip from the top (0:36), he explains carefully that while the USA is involved in asymmetric warfare, we can't lose militarily--but we can't win militarily, either.

.....<h3>The Correction</h3>

Finally, let's get to politics. Pure, unadulterated partisan politics. One of the questioners, I think probably Lt. General Michael DeLong (USMC, Ret)--you can hear Rumsfeld address "Mike" earlier in the question and there's only one Michael in the room--opens a "way, way off the record" question by trashing Senator Carl Levin, the incoming chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Representative Silvestre Reyes, the incoming Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, then tries to goad Rumsfeld into joining in by suggesting the "we have a really rough two years coming." Rumsfeld rambles on about European demographics, Chinese cyberwar and smallpox as a bio-weapon before the questioner prods him back on topic by asking, "Politically, what are the challenges because you're not going to have a lot of sympathetic ears up there [on Capitol Hill]?" which is where I pick up the clip (1:17).(Clip 6)

Rumsfeld's answer is nothing short of stunning. No, not the part where he claims Bush is a "Victim of his success." That's just stupid. And no, after hearing his previous insult to the American public, his condemnation of us because "we don't have the maturity" to recognize the threat of terrorism--the further we get from 9/11, the less and less . . . he trails off. But that's not shocking, nor is his doomsday scenario, all things considered.

So let's summarize. According to Rumsfeld and his media sycophants, America has real problems: We're weak-willed, we're immature, we're forgetting what happened, <h2>and oh my God, we've elected Democrats to Congress. So, what's the "Correction" for those problems? Listen to him:</h2>

<h3>Another 9/11 attack.</h3>

Actually, I think I'll have a liquid lunch, too.
Correction:

Command Sergeant Major Steven Greer (USA, Ret), who attended the luncheon, has informed me that the liquid in the "Liquid Lunch" was non-alcoholic, iced tea in his case, and that alcohol was not served at these functions. Therefore, the impression I create of the consumption of alcohol at the luncheon is false.

dc_dux · 05-15-2008, 04:50 AM

The American people have heard from politicians, pundits, and generals, but not, up to this point, from the average boots-on-the-ground soldier.

Today, several of those boots-on-the-ground veterans will testify about the effects of the occupation in Iraq ...at the same time that Congress debates a bill extending funding for the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan through 2009.

Will these members of Iraq Veterans Against the War be treated as respected vets with an opinion based on personal experiences or treated as angry vets who disrespect their fellow troops?

Bios of the the soldiers/marines who will testify today.

Watch live on C-SPAN 3 at 9:30 am

roachboy · 05-15-2008, 04:57 AM

the space occupied by the war in iraq is interesting, if you think about it: a thick veneer of denial surrounds almost everything about it, but information nonetheless circulates which blasts that veneer apart. the extent to which political opinion and particularly mobilization in the states around this is a function of information streams is a difficult question--the movement against the war collapsed when move on shifted organizational strategy and moved away from organizing at the public protest level. since then no-one has filled in the gap--meanwhile the war has kinda faded from view in a way--and this seems difficult to not see as a choice.

i am busy this morning, so i'll just leave this at the barest outline and pose the question of what is at stake in the deliberate manipulation of the nature and orientation of information concerning a policy disaster. the war in iraq is a policy disaster. sometimes it seems that the interests of the administration and that of the dominant media in the state coincide to the extent that crisis is a management problem, that all relations which matter to the commercial media operate within a context that substitutes routine disruptions and discontinuities for system crisis, and that therefore the political problems of the administration and the commercial interests of the dominant media de facto coincide in the massaging of infotainment about iraq.

this is the main reason why i think that charlatan's take, while accurate on restricted logical grounds, is problematic at the same time in that it brackets the situation itself.

gotta go.

Charlatan · 05-16-2008, 07:08 AM

I was purposely bracketing the issue of Iraq because I felt it necessary to look at this issue in the abstract first before dealing with the specific later. I want to understand the process of PR and government organizations and the issue of providing (potentially) insider information to those who stand to gain financially from it.

If these things are not illegal for, let's say, the agriculture department or the education department, why should they be an issue for the pentagon.

To be clear, I am not addressing the moral implications, just the legality.

roachboy · 05-16-2008, 07:30 AM

i'm not sure that it makes sense to bracket iraq in this case.
i would simply argue that the situation is qualitatively different from insider trading and/or routine conflict of interest...

dc_dux · 05-16-2008, 10:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Charlatan

I was purposely bracketing the issue of Iraq because I felt it necessary to look at this issue in the abstract first before dealing with the specific later. I want to understand the process of PR and government organizations and the issue of providing (potentially) insider information to those who stand to gain financially from it.

If these things are not illegal for, let's say, the agriculture department or the education department, why should they be an issue for the pentagon.

To be clear, I am not addressing the moral implications, just the legality.

Charlatan....it is illegal for a federal agency to disseminate propaganda disguised as unbiased news.

<iframe height="339" width="425" src="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22425001/vp/6799214#6799214" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>

The GAO found that the Bush administration acted illegal in paying news commentators to promote the No Child Left Behind program, the marriage initiative, etc. as if they were objective analysts presenting news story.

Quote:

Buying for News by Bush's Aides Is Ruled Illegal

Federal auditors said on Friday that the Bush administration violated the law by buying favorable news coverage of President Bush's education policies, by making payments to the conservative commentator Armstrong Williams and by hiring a public relations company to analyze media perceptions of the Republican Party.

In a blistering report, the investigators, from the Government Accountability Office, said the administration had disseminated "covert propaganda" in the United States, in violation of a statutory ban....

full story: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/01/politics/01educ.html

***
The Government Accountability Office has found that the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and the Department of Health and Human Services engaged in illegal “covert propaganda” by hiring a public relations firm to produce and disseminate fabricated video news reports. Investigative reporters have disclosed that the Department of Education paid a journalist to promote the No Child Left Behind Act in television and radio appearances and that the Department of Health and Human Services had a contract with a syndicated columnist who promoted the President’s marriage initiative....

CRS report on GAO findings (pdf)

Charlatan · 05-16-2008, 09:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

i'm not sure that it makes sense to bracket iraq in this case.
i would simply argue that the situation is qualitatively different from insider trading and/or routine conflict of interest...

I'm not so sure I'd agree with that. Isn't the difference just a matter of scale?

As for the illegality issue, were these retired officers still on the Pentagon's payroll? I understood they were being paid by the Networks and, in some cases, by defense contractors.

It does not strike me as the same thing as the example you are using.

host · 05-17-2008, 12:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Charlatan

I'm not so sure I'd agree with that. Isn't the difference just a matter of scale?

As for the illegality issue, were these retired officers still on the Pentagon's payroll? I understood they were being paid by the Networks and, in some cases, by defense contractors.

It does not strike me as the same thing as the example you are using.

Charlatan, if you scroll about 85 percent of the way down the article web page, you come to this

Quote:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/wa...pagewanted=all

...View From the Networks

.....Mr. Allard and other analysts said their network handlers also raised no objections when the Defense Department began paying their commercial airfare for Pentagon-sponsored trips to Iraq — a clear ethical violation for most news organizations...

The article is influenced by the study of the 8000 pages the NY Times sued the pentagon for release of, and from interviews with analysts and broadcast networks and pentagon officials, like Larry DiRita.

Above the excerpt, there is a repetitious account of the incentives for the analysts to cooperate with the intent of the pentagon that they help broadcast, during their network TV comments, the pentagon's messages.

The reward was also the conflict of interests. Analysts "carrying water", received exclusive briefings and invites to pentagon paid trips to Iraq and Gitmo, and to dinners where they got close to pentagon officials. These retired military ananlyst/consultants sold their relationship and proximity to pentagon officials in the US and in Iraq, via their consulting businesses, and their dual roles as lobbyists representing defense crontractors. The also invested in and served on boards of the defense contractors.

If you were "in good" with the pentagon, you could sell that to defense contractors....it's a daisy chain, Charlatan. There was no profit in disagreeing on TV with the pentagon message, and you got excluded from the briefings and from the pentagon paid for trips. The pentagon hired a consultant who monitored every comment that the consultant/analysts made in broadcasts. They presented reports on this activity to the pentagon, and the result was that those who dissatisfied the pentagon, lost their access.

All of the taxpayer money spent on this "OP", is of questionable legality, most of all the trips for the analysts at taxpayer expense and the cost of the time spent by pentagon staff and the media consultant hired to organize, communicate with, and track the consultant/analysts TV performances.

Charlatan · 05-17-2008, 01:59 AM

I can agree that this is fishy and feel that the biggest conflict of interest (aside from them already being retired from the military which makes their ability to be objective a bit difficult) is the fact that they are double dipping as consultants to contractors and the media. This certainly raises a lot of questions.

However, the point made in the quote, "— a clear ethical violation for most news organizations... " isn't conclusive. The key word being "most". I know, from doing PR for years, that there are some journalists and organizations that will pay their own way on a junket and there are those that will accept "freebie". Again, this is not technically illegal. To put this into perspective... did all of those embedded journalists pay for their flights to Iraq, their accommodations and every K ration they consumed? Probably not.

Personally, I think news outlets should never accept gifts or services in kind. But in practice it happens all the time.

To be clear, I am not defending their actions here. I think there is definitely something here that stinks but this is still a moral one rather than a legal one (though I think there might be something verging on illegal with the consultants that were also representing military contractors, I will wait for the report before I make up my mind).

host · 05-17-2008, 10:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Charlatan

.....To put this into perspective... did all of those embedded journalists pay for their flights to Iraq, their accommodations and every K ration they consumed? Probably not.....

Charlatan, I took a look at that issue when I was putting together my last post.
The rules for embedded journalists were:

(I'm not a fan of Michael Yon, but this doesn't seem obviously slanted...)

Quote:

If this won't work, http://michaelyon.blogspot.com/2005/10/embed.html ...try this for text only:

http://209.85.215.104/search?q=cache...&gl=us&strip=1

Thursday, October 13, 2005
The Embed

Baghdad

I've returned to Iraq.

People ask how journalists get embedded. This seems a fair moment for synopsis of some firsthand experience.

The process begins with an application to the Combined Press Information Center (CPIC). This is simple to complete with emails. If a journalist works for a credible media organization, and can pass some kind of background check—quick and transparent—in all likelihood, CPIC will instruct the applicant to fly to Kuwait.

My second application for an embed was recently declined, a process from which I learned that simple is not always straightforward. For me, one of the sharp turns came just before the intersection of independence and affiliation. Although the guidelines for embedding with the military stipulated an affiliation with a media organization, I was previously embedded, for more than eight months, as a completely independent writer.

For some reason, this time my independent status caught up on a snag and seized the embed machinery. Some have speculated that dispatches like "Proximity Delays" might have brought deliberate, even disgruntled, scrutiny to my work, but whether or not there's merit to that claim does not alter that I did not have a formal affiliation with any media organization.

CPIC insisted that I needed affiliation to re-enter Iraq. Many newspapers, magazines, and broadcast media had used my photographs and writing, and more than a dozen had offered different types of affiliation. Although some were tempting financially, and others appealed more to prestige, my independence mattered most. In the end, The Weekly Standard supported my re-entry by offering affiliation with independence.

With that obstacle down, the CPIC granted the embed. I was instructed to fly to Kuwait, and told the best place to stay would be the Hilton.

The Embed Equation

People who wonder about the limited number of reporters on the ground in Iraq probably think it's the danger that keeps many away. This certainly is true for some. For others, the persuasive problems are more practical: the expenses can be severe. There's expense associated with planning and applying for the embed. There is specialized gear to be purchased: protective equipment alone can cost thousands of dollars per person, and even in peaceful times, the desert climate is still extremely hard on electronic equipment. Getting to the Middle East requires a long, expensive flight. And the Hilton that came so highly recommended also came with a high room rate: $590 for a room that would have been worth maybe $150 in Florida. There was nothing to drink in the room, but the front desk offered to send up two bottles of water for about $23. There was no internet cable in the room. For $590 per night, a guest shouldn't have to pay for water, or call for an internet cable. For that kind of money, there should be a helipad on the roof. (The next night I got a room at the same Hilton for closer to $200, and negotiated the first room down.)

These would be trivial matters if the prices were reasonable. Across years spent exploring remote areas, in jungles and deserts, I've never been bothered by lack of electricity, phones, or even running water. But start charging hundreds per night . . . well, the mallet schlags the frustration gong.

An Army Captain arrived to meet me around 4 p.m., and we waited together in the lobby for a radio journalist from the Netherlands, a Dutchman who introduced himself as Hans. The three of us ambled down to the restaurant to discuss the details of our trip to Iraq over coffee and tea.
After the Army Captain departed, Hans and I had dinner. This was one of many trips to Iraq, he said, having just been to Texas to cover Hurricane Rita. Apparently he'd crisscrossed the globe many times. When our discussion moved to the more practical considerations of life as an embedded journalist, it underscored just how dear it is to cover this war intensively.

It cost Hans' employer thousands of dollars per week just for the insurance to cover his time in Iraq. Add that to his wages, the cost of his airplane tickets, the ground transportation and hotel charges he incurred, and his company was on the hook for thousands of dollars per day to put their reporter in the field, where he spoke into a microphone with no camera.

Television crews often use two- or three-person teams, spending dollars by the bucketful, covering events that few people in major markets still consider a priority. Add danger to that pile of money, then subtract all the information freely and widely available from the military, and the result is a small number of journalists in Iraq.

In World War II, writers like Hemingway and Ernie Pyle loaded up and packed off, sweeping across places like northern Africa, Italy, France, Germany, and the Pacific islands. They wrote about war, but also about fascinating cultures scattered across new landscapes. And the war itself seemed to obey simpler rules: there were tremendous human losses, but when Europe's cities were liberated one after another, they stayed liberated. Victory was cumulative and satisfying, not slapped together with slogans covering festering resistance. But since WWII there have been few "great adventures" in war, and even less glory in reporting war, and most people tasked today with naming a "living war correspondent" would come up blank.

For most journalists considering Iraq, where the frustrations and dangers are high, where there is little glory and less money, and where the expenses vomit—I've now got probably $35,000 worth of gear that might burn up in the next IED explosion—nobody needs a calculator to figure out this one. Food and lodging are free after the embed process—which greatly helps—but that does not settle the account....

Different rules, Charlatan.... no "carry water for us or you're cut off", and no pentagon VIP tour treatment, for REAL journalists....

05-11-2008, 04:02 PM	#41 (permalink)
loquitur Junkie Location: NYC	rethought this........... Last edited by loquitur; 05-11-2008 at 05:24 PM..

05-11-2008, 04:44 PM	#43 (permalink)
Charlatan Getting it. Super Moderator Location: Lion City	To my eyes I don't see anything overtly sinister here. What I see is sophisticated public relations. What the pentagon is doing is no different than any other product or idea that is being sold to us. The only question that comes to mind isn't that news media is in collusion rather it is, why isn't the media doing its job? It is one thing to use a spokesperson or a press release as a source but it is essential to let your viewers/readers know the potential biases of your sources. It also holds, that other sources should be sought out in support of your original source. __________________ "My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars." - Old Man Luedecke

05-11-2008, 05:08 PM	#45 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	at one level, charlatan is right--one way to see this is as a huge breakdown in journalism---the major television "news" networks did not check out their sources. whether there was collusion or not is in the air--but they did not check out the sources. period. what i'm amazed at in the thread is that so few are even willing to acknowledge that much. there are systemic problems with how the american major media operate--there are an illusion of critique which is of a piece with the illusion of relatively unproblematic information--and unproblematic information is central to the coherent functioning of a democratic polity. the idea is that the polity, confronted with information, is capable of deliberating and acting on what results from that deliberation. in the states, deliberation is collapsed mostly into a logic of consumer choices. in the states, "democracy" is like shopping. in the states, there is no democratic polity: and it seems that alot of folk who have posted to the thread are just fine with that--rationalize it away, pretend it isn't so--of make no coherent arguments and just attack host. personally, i think the states is a soft authoritarian state ruled by an oligarchy that engages in rituals of faction rotation every 2 years, with the major cycle unfolding every 4 years. there is little meaningful difference between the factions. there is little ideological diversity at all in the states--there is much in the way of diversity of opinion, and if you talk to people they have views that range well beyond what they are told to think--but then again they also accept the idea that the oligarchy is diversity and that faction rotation is enough and that democracy can happen with systematically distorted information. well, it can't. rationalize it if you like, but politically this is a fucking problem. a soft authoritarian regime in which the official political discourse is democratic is a problem because it continually sows the expectations that the ideological arrangement is other than it is---at certain points, the gap separating ideology and the facts of the matter surface--this is one of them--but it is hardly unique--and what's funny is that confronted with this gap, alot of folk don't seem to care. so we don't really have a democratic polity even, if tfp is any indication of what's abroad in the land--we have a polity made up largely of people who live in an illusion and like that illusion and know that it is an illusion, but they like the illusion, so the problem really is anyone who says that it is an illusion, not that it is an illusion. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

05-11-2008, 05:22 PM	#48 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	it's funny being accused of idealism by someone who confuses hayek's market fictions with the real world. "start your own network"--say now that's a fine suggestion. no reason to think too hard about the existing state of affairs--if you don't like this reality, buy yourself another one. that how you live your life, loquitor? __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

05-11-2008, 05:35 PM	#50 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	that wasn't even particularly snarky, loquitor. you haven't got me even started...i'm not sure this is a game worth playing, since it's mostly about derailing the thread. personally, i'd rather the thread continue. snarkiness can wait. o yeah-so you know i live pretty much the same way in 3-d that you say you do. what's a little different apparently is i don't generally make stupid recommendations to other people on messageboards either because i figure it's symmetrical. different aesthetics i suppose. and i don't derive any solace from refusing to look at the world. that too is doubtless an aesthetic matter. and no, hayek hasn't worked so well. neither has uncle milty. and i remember reading about keynes being overthrown, but then i remembered the "free marketeers" love of military expenditure as a way of being keynesians. that made me laugh. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

05-11-2008, 04:05 PM	#42 (permalink)
Shauk Confused Adult Location: Spokane, WA	wow you really can't read. lol

05-11-2008, 05:19 PM	#46 (permalink)
loquitur Junkie Location: NYC	so guys, start a new network. It's not even that costly now with web and all. I see the issue here is that people have an "ideal" in mind for what news is supposed to be, and they are measuring the real flesh and blood institutions against the ideal and finding it wanting. Well, yeah. Of course. Most institutions are like that, mainly because they are made up of people and people are flawed. That's why I don't get excited about most of this stuff the way host does or roachboy does. I don't expect any better. People tend to do what's good for themselves and their "in-group," however defined - and that goes for politicians, journalists, network execs, retired military, etc etc etc. It's also why I generally don't like any concentration of power that isn't subject to checks and balances.

05-11-2008, 05:26 PM	#49 (permalink)
loquitur Junkie Location: NYC	nice snark, roachboy. you think sitting on the sidelines tossing rotten tomatoes is reality? that's all you ever offer. As for Hayek, he does certainly seem to have worked a good deal better than Marx, hasn't he? And Friedman has triumphed over Keynes as well. So no, I don't accept your premise. I live my life by being generous to other people and not assuming that everyone who thinks, looks or acts differently from me is stupid or evil. How about you?

05-12-2008, 08:46 AM	#52 (permalink)
ottopilot let me be clear Location: Waddy Peytona	host - Yes, the idea of being mislead by commercial news providers in cahoots with the "military" is not ethical behavior. If nothing legally can be done to adress this practice (if it really happened the way you presented it), and you're mad as hell and can't take it anymore, please, by all means, start your own fair and balanced network. loquitur and I have both suggested this route, and you have yet to address this suggestion. __________________ "It rubs the lotion on Buffy, Jodi and Mr. French's skin" - Uncle Bill from Buffalo

05-12-2008, 08:59 AM	#54 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	o i addressed it, otto. it's a stupid suggestion. let's try for a minute to make sense of it, shall we? you appear to have a kind of facile cynicism about information streams and make no particular connection between the quality of information that is available to the public, the public's capacity to make informed judgments--not to mention political judgments--and anything about a democratic political system, no matter how shallow that system might be. instead, you seem to think of information as a kind of retail operation like shoes or vegetables and that you can go shopping for the kind of information that you prefer to consume and like shoes or vegetables. so you are not interested in critical thinking--you're interested in being able to find information that reinforces an image of the world that you want to see---and you assume that everyone works with as shallow a relation to information as you do. with that shallow a relationship, it is no wonder that you dont connect problematic information streams to problems of democratic process. tv doesn't tell you there is such a connection so there must not be one. if you think there is, then start your own network. jesus.... __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

05-13-2008, 03:28 AM	#58 (permalink)
pig pigglet pigglet Location: Locash	I'm just glad we're fighting them over there - God knows I don't want to fight 'em over here. If Iraq hadn't attacked us on 911, we wouldn't have had to drive Al Queda out from under Saddam Hussein's quid-pro-quo protection in Iraq. The thing that really pisses me off is when the press reports on all the deaths of solidiers and the small handful of thankful Iraqi citizen-patriots who die as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom, but leave out all the great things happening over there. All the success stories. All the lollipops and laurels and rosebuds thrown upon the freshly razed ground where cherubic children come to play and laugh at our Divinely victorious feet. --------- charlatan: i would say a small difference is that the DoD is not, obstensibly, a private company. They are a wing of our government, and as such theoretically shouldn't be selling me a military product. I simultaneously think this is a huge issue, and yet I'm not surprised by it at all. Duplicity is expected at this point, which is a sad thing and makes me feel more jaded as time goes by. __________________ You don't love me, you just love my piggy style

05-13-2008, 04:38 AM	#61 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	otto, darling, it is obvious that you didn't understand my posts to this thread. first off, to address your crackpot insults directed at me personally, behind roachboy: like alot of people i work, in my modest way, to help bring down this entire order of things. you make stuff, it's a political action. you put it out into the world, it's a political action. what varies is the channels you use to make the actions, and so who interacts with the results. it is obvious that all of this involves a degree of rationalization--the gap between what one imagines oneself to be doing and what the results of that doing can effect out there in the world is a matter of readership or listenership--as you know, in your way, as i remember somewhere reading that you are or were a musician. so you know the gap that separates what you animates your relation to what you do and what you think it could or should do in the world and what it might actually do. i am not interested beyond this in connecting my 3-d activities to this thread. i don't need to defend anything---"what exactly do you do to effect the change that you want to see"---funny one internet persona asking that of another. ================================================= on the networks: when you "strip away the bullshit" as you so daintily put it, what you strip away is the ability to make the first bit of sense of what i wrote to this thread. i am not interested in fighting my way through reading comprehension issues in order to engage in some no doubt pointless exchange when i know up front that you don't bother to work out what an actual argument is and where it leads to--so since you did not bother to work out what i wrote, what you stripped away was the actual argument, otto, and what that left you with is what you want to see. i dont have time to deal with reactionary narcissists. either figure out the argument and respond to it, in which case we can talk, or dont--but dont waste my time with some cheap term substitution the only function of which is to enable you to hector me about issues that are only of concern to the version of roachboy that floats around within the confines of your skull, the one that you might be able to imagine takes you seriously. it's funny how often it turns out to be the case that the folk whose politics blab so much about individual initiative turn out to be inert particles intellectually themselves. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 05-13-2008 at 04:42 AM..

05-13-2008, 05:38 AM	#62 (permalink)
Charlatan Getting it. Super Moderator Location: Lion City	Perhaps I am a bit thick... did the DOD pay these network consultants (i.e. retired military types) money to be reps for the DOD or were they being paid by the networks (or both)? From what I am gleaning here, they are not being paid by the DOD (though I admit I may have missed that bit) but rather getting access to breifings while those who present a negative POV are excluded from the breifings. Again, I find this unethical but not illegal. __________________ "My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars." - Old Man Luedecke

05-13-2008, 05:57 AM	#63 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	the interpretive problem that we're running across with this, charlatan, is whether co-ordination of message by the pentagon is different from private sector pr: personally, i think it is, simply because when the state acts--including by proxy/at an arm's length--it makes the situation it acts upon political. that's why i thought it appropriate to link this story to wider questions of information and opinion management as a political question, and to link this to the sad state that of american "democracy." so to my mind, this is not a particularly overwhelming or even surprising development (the ny times story etc.)--it's more indicative of a broader pattern of political management. the problem for systems of ideological co-ordination systems comes when their function as ideological co-ordination systems emerges. that's why this is interesting, in my view. as is the lack of concern about it. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

05-14-2008, 04:41 AM	#64 (permalink)
Seaver Junkie Location: Fort Worth, TX	Please move to Paranoia. This is just like his eight 9/11 threads which were allowed to linger here way too long. __________________ "Smite the rocks with the rod of knowledge, and fountains of unstinted wealth will gush forth." - Ashbel Smith as he laid the first cornerstone of the University of Texas

05-14-2008, 04:58 AM	#66 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	seaver: if you're seriously advocating that position, demonstrate that the op is false. put up or shut up. short of that, i will not move the thread. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

05-14-2008, 04:18 PM	#68 (permalink)
Charlatan Getting it. Super Moderator Location: Lion City	I can agree that the discussion really should be one that discusses how PR is carried out by the government in general. Levin's letter above makes the whole thing much clearer. 1) Special access given to those who would provide positive spin while denying or curtailing access to those who don't 2) Some of the analysts have were on the payroll of Defense contractors at the same time. The first point is really just about access and who gets it. Should there be equal access to all? To answer this you need to look at the government as a whole. Who gets access to information. Who gets briefed by congress, the president, etc? Are other branches offering this sort of access while (deliberately or inadvertently) excluding others? The second doesn't have much to do with the PR message but does have everything to do with giving Contractor X, with an analyst that has access, more information than Contractor Y that does not. This could possibly have an effect on the fairness of bidding processes (though I suspect that this is a bit of a red-herring as there are likely many other ways to get this information and it probably isn't all that relevant to the bidding process). The key issue in point two really falls to the media. They should be disclosing any conflict of interest. Any real journalist (as opposed to an analyst) with a potential conflict would make these disclosures. __________________ "My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars." - Old Man Luedecke Last edited by Charlatan; 05-15-2008 at 02:36 PM..

05-15-2008, 04:50 AM	#72 (permalink)
dc_dux Location: Washington DC	The American people have heard from politicians, pundits, and generals, but not, up to this point, from the average boots-on-the-ground soldier. Today, several of those boots-on-the-ground veterans will testify about the effects of the occupation in Iraq ...at the same time that Congress debates a bill extending funding for the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan through 2009. Will these members of Iraq Veterans Against the War be treated as respected vets with an opinion based on personal experiences or treated as angry vets who disrespect their fellow troops? Bios of the the soldiers/marines who will testify today. Watch live on C-SPAN 3 at 9:30 am __________________ "The perfect is the enemy of the good." ~ Voltaire Last edited by dc_dux; 05-15-2008 at 05:03 AM..

05-15-2008, 04:57 AM	#73 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	the space occupied by the war in iraq is interesting, if you think about it: a thick veneer of denial surrounds almost everything about it, but information nonetheless circulates which blasts that veneer apart. the extent to which political opinion and particularly mobilization in the states around this is a function of information streams is a difficult question--the movement against the war collapsed when move on shifted organizational strategy and moved away from organizing at the public protest level. since then no-one has filled in the gap--meanwhile the war has kinda faded from view in a way--and this seems difficult to not see as a choice. i am busy this morning, so i'll just leave this at the barest outline and pose the question of what is at stake in the deliberate manipulation of the nature and orientation of information concerning a policy disaster. the war in iraq is a policy disaster. sometimes it seems that the interests of the administration and that of the dominant media in the state coincide to the extent that crisis is a management problem, that all relations which matter to the commercial media operate within a context that substitutes routine disruptions and discontinuities for system crisis, and that therefore the political problems of the administration and the commercial interests of the dominant media de facto coincide in the massaging of infotainment about iraq. this is the main reason why i think that charlatan's take, while accurate on restricted logical grounds, is problematic at the same time in that it brackets the situation itself. gotta go. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

05-16-2008, 07:08 AM	#74 (permalink)
Charlatan Getting it. Super Moderator Location: Lion City	I was purposely bracketing the issue of Iraq because I felt it necessary to look at this issue in the abstract first before dealing with the specific later. I want to understand the process of PR and government organizations and the issue of providing (potentially) insider information to those who stand to gain financially from it. If these things are not illegal for, let's say, the agriculture department or the education department, why should they be an issue for the pentagon. To be clear, I am not addressing the moral implications, just the legality. __________________ "My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars." - Old Man Luedecke

05-16-2008, 07:30 AM	#75 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	i'm not sure that it makes sense to bracket iraq in this case. i would simply argue that the situation is qualitatively different from insider trading and/or routine conflict of interest... __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

05-17-2008, 01:59 AM	#79 (permalink)
Charlatan Getting it. Super Moderator Location: Lion City	I can agree that this is fishy and feel that the biggest conflict of interest (aside from them already being retired from the military which makes their ability to be objective a bit difficult) is the fact that they are double dipping as consultants to contractors and the media. This certainly raises a lot of questions. However, the point made in the quote, "— a clear ethical violation for most news organizations... " isn't conclusive. The key word being "most". I know, from doing PR for years, that there are some journalists and organizations that will pay their own way on a junket and there are those that will accept "freebie". Again, this is not technically illegal. To put this into perspective... did all of those embedded journalists pay for their flights to Iraq, their accommodations and every K ration they consumed? Probably not. Personally, I think news outlets should never accept gifts or services in kind. But in practice it happens all the time. To be clear, I am not defending their actions here. I think there is definitely something here that stinks but this is still a moral one rather than a legal one (though I think there might be something verging on illegal with the consultants that were also representing military contractors, I will wait for the report before I make up my mind). __________________ "My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars." - Old Man Luedecke