SUSPICIONS about the Bush Administration's secrecy and behind-the-scenes dealings have always been rampant, but now we have some concrete evidence that this government was seriously fiddling with the dissemination of information about the Iraq war. Yesterday's New York Times lead story highlighted the Pentagon's spoon-feeding and manipulation of cable news military analysts, who were duped into portraying the war in Iraq and the larger War on Terror from a pro-administration perspective. The story epitomizes more important problems about the media in general: The press now focuses more on controversy and presenting various viewpoints - like propping an official government message that in the case of Iraq has been misleading - rather than maintaining an independent, objective stance on truth.
The NYT article begins by analyzing the Administration's response to calls for shutting down Guantanamo. The Administration herded a bunch of military analysts and flew them to Guantanamo for a "carefully orchestrated tour." After this "tour," in which the analysts were told that everything in Guantanamo was fine, they stormed cable news and reported that the reaction by human rights groups had been overblown. This general pattern -- the Pentagon taking the analysts somewhere and telling them everything was fine, hoping for favorable coverage in return -- was repeated quite often, usually without the knowledge of the stations.
The Pentagon was under no illusion about its power and ability to influence and even dictate news coverage. The article says that "internal Pentagon documents repeatedly refer to the military analysts as "message force multipliers" or "surrogates" who could be counted on to deliver the administration "themes and messages" to millions of Americans "in the form of their own opinions"." Apparently the Pentagon and the administration in general worried that a collapse in public will would derail the war effort like in Vietnam, so they redoubled their efforts to tweak media coverage. These incidents reveal quite a bit about how incompetent the press has become lately. That these events went on for years and some major networks had no idea about them is the height of irresponsibility. Some, like Fox News, had a certain inkling about what was going on, but they didn't really mind spreading the official story anyway, which makes this entire situation all the more pathetic because it means that some media outlets chose to relinquish their status as independent organizations and become administration puppets.
The media has succumbed to a broader pattern of indolence where they take any claim at face value and simply regurgitate its opposing counterpart, hoping to get some yelling and screaming along the way. An unfortunate undercurrent in this story may be that even if those organizations had known about the government's manipulation, they would have simply allowed the analysts to speak and then brought in other "qualified" people who disagreed with them.
Part of the reason why the press has become so docile is fear. They are afraid that they might lose access to administration personnel if they become too nosy and recalcitrant. They can't risk losing those big interviews for something called truth, since obviously those interviews are much more urgent and important. So they toe the official line, drag their feet and once in a while say something contrarian that might reflect reality.
The press needs to take its independence back. It should adopt a neutral perspective when reporting on stories
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