....LMB: "Media Assault"....

February 25, 2003

Pentagon's Recipe for Propaganda- unlike the Gulf War, the Pentagon is at least pretending to give reporters full access to the battlefield. This will be done by having journalists go through specialized combat-preparedness training, and then "embedding" them within a military unit "for life":

At a recent orientation meeting with Washington bureau chiefs, [Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Bryan] Whitman described the ideal "embed" as one who follows a unit (ground, air or sea) from load-out to deployment through combat (subject to field approval) to the "march on whatever capital we happen to march on" to the return trip home and the "victory parade." This could take "two weeks, two months, two years." If reporters leave a unit there is no guarantee they can return or even join another unit. Probably they will be "pooled" in mobile media clusters that form and dissolve as the action dictates. "Itinerants" (reporters working independently) are not encouraged.

In other words, journalists will be trained as soldiers, and then live, work and risk their lives with American soldiers for the duration of the war. Could this lead the reporters to identify very strongly with the soldiers and lead to strongly positive coverage of the war? Nah.

Journalists Are Assigned to Accompany U.S. Troops- as if the mild brainwashing above wasn't enough, journalists will need to get permission from "their" commanding officer about "live, continuing action," "future operations or postponed or canceled operations." While that sounds reasonable in the name of military secrecy, I also note that "the outcomes of mission results can be described only in general terms," and most tellingly, that "other ground rules remain to be spelled out." Which could presumably include complete censorship when the military feels like it.

MSNBC adjusts image as war looms- apparently the MSNBC news channel is "rebranding" itself as a "hard news" station. Which probably has more drawing power than their previous, unofficial "we kinda suck" brand image.

Caught on Film: The Bush Credibility Gap- are the Democrats growing some balls? They are allegedly beginning a new political and media strategy of questioning the truthfulness of George W. Bush. This page is a series of comparisons between what Bush says at political photo ops, and how his true policies frequently contradict this statements 100%. The page appears on the Appropriations Committee Democrats webpage.

Fla. Court Overturns Reporter's Jury Award- this one pisses me off because I've been writing about this story for years. Back in 1997, two Tampa reporters put together a series of television news segments about the use of artificial Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH) in dairy cows to increase their milk production. The two found that rBGH posed a risk to human health, and that there was really no way of knowing if the milk Floridians were drinking came from rBGH cows or not. Enter Monsanto, one of the most evil corporations on planet Earth. Before the story aired, Monsanto (which manufactures and sells "Posilac," the most popular brand of rBGH) intimidated the reporters' television station into re-editting the piece so that it was "more fair" to Monsanto's point of view. But repeated re-writse were not good enough for the scared execs, and eventually the reporters were fired for refusing to lie in their story.

The reporters recently sued their old employers, claiming that they had violated the state's whistleblower act. The two argued that they were about to "blow the whistle" on their station's illegal practice of distorting the news, and that their station illegally fired them in retaliation. They won the suit.

And then their win was overturned. This latest judge found that the whistleblower claim didn't hold up, because her station did not violate the law. And since they didn't violate the law, they couldn't have a whistle blown on them.

The ruling explicitly claims that when a TV station distorts the news, it is not violating FCC regulations. In other words, it is perfectly legal for television news to lie to you. Which is good for the Fox News Channel, I suppose.