Networks reportedly refused to appear on PBS' NewsHour to respond to NY Times' military analysts story; several continue blackout
SUMMARY: In an April 24 PBS NewsHour report about a New York Times article that revealed "the role of military analysts on TV and in the Pentagon," Judy Woodruff stated:"[W]e invited Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and NBC to participate, but they declined our offer or did not respond." Further, according to a search of programs in Nexis, several of these outlets have yet to report on the revelations in the April 20 Times article.
The three major broadcast networks -- ABC, CBS, and NBC -- and the three major cable news networks -- CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC -- all reportedly declined to participate in a segment on the April 24 edition of PBS' NewsHour regarding "the role of military analysts on TV and in the Pentagon." Further, according to a search of programs in Nexis, several of these outlets have yet to report on the revelations in an April 20 New York Times article by investigative reporter David Barstow, who wrote that "the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform" media military analysts, many of whom have clients with an interest in obtaining Pentagon contracts, "into a kind of media Trojan horse -- an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks."
During the NewsHour segment, senior correspondent Judy Woodruff discussed the Times report with John Stauber of the Center for Media and Democracy, and Robert Zelnick, former ABC News Pentagon correspondent. Woodruff stated: "And for the record, we invited Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and NBC to participate, but they declined our offer or did not respond." She added: "We've been talking to the Pentagon since Monday about participating in this segment, but when we finally scheduled it today, they were unable to supply a guest on short notice."
Media Matters for America previously noted that, in contrast with The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Comedy Central, as of 11:59 p.m. on April 22, none of the following outlets had covered the Times report on shows whose transcripts are available in the Nexis database: PBS, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News, and NPR. A follow-up search* on April 25 determined that as of 11:59 p.m. ET on April 24, ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox News had still not covered the report during news programs whose transcripts are available in the Nexis database.**
From the April 24 edition of PBS' The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer:
RAY SUAREZ (guest anchor): Now, a look at the role of military analysts on TV and in the Pentagon. Judy Woodruff has our story.
[begin video clip]
LESTER HOLT (NBC News anchor): We turn to retired Army Colonel Ken Allard in "The War Room" -- Colonel?
RETIRED COL. KEN ALLARD (former MSNBC military analyst): Lester, good evening.
WOODRUFF: Since the months leading up to the start of the Iraq war in March 2003, dozens of retired military officers served as analysts on cable and network television.
FORMER MILITARY ANALYST: We've got to have Umm Qasr to bring the humanitarian goods in. We've seen the problem about Al Nasiriyah, the fighting with the Marines --
RETIRED MAJ. GEN. PAUL VALLELY: In this case, we're moving to Baghdad, Bill, and we're going to remove that regime very shortly.
WOODRUFF: These former generals and colonels have been a mainstay of commentary and analysis. And the networks paid them for their appearances.
Now, a lengthy New York Times investigation, published on Sunday, revealed the Pentagon targeted many of these analysts as part of an "information apparatus" to "generate favorable news coverage of the administration's wartime performance."
Pentagon officials organized "hundreds of private meetings with senior military leaders" and the military analysts. They included talks with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
According to the Times, analysts were also "taken on tours of Iraq and given access to classified intelligence." In turn, "members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated."
It was also disclosed that most of the analysts have ties to military contractors.
JIM LEHRER (NewsHour anchor): And we go again now to our retired colonels --
WOODRUFF: For the record, the NewsHour briefly put five military analysts on a retainer in 2003. But none of them attended Pentagon briefings while on retainer to the NewsHour.
In the Times report, Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman defended the program and said, "The intent and purpose of this is nothing other than an earnest attempt to inform the American people."
[end video clip]
WOODRUFF: For more now on all this, I'm joined by John Stauber. He is the founder and executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy. It is a nonprofit organization that investigates and reports on public relations tactics. He's also the author of several books, including Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq.
And Robert Zelnick, he spent more than 20 years with ABC News and served as their Pentagon correspondent from 1986 to 1994. Today, he teaches journalism at Boston University.
And for the record, we invited Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and NBC to participate, but they declined our offer or did not respond.
We've been talking to the Pentagon since Monday about participating in this segment, but when we finally scheduled it today, they were unable to supply a guest on short notice.
Even Chuck Tatum, the character in that movie "Ace in the Hole", felt bad having manipulated the People by way of the Press (and gotten that guy who was stuck in the cave-in, Leo, killed in the process).
Of course, that's just the fiction of the movies: In the real world, the aceholes of Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and NBC, couldn't give a damn, and don't feel bad in the least.
It'd be as if the fictional Chuck Tatum, upon hearing that Leo had died down there in the cave, had responded "Leo? Leo who?'
I heard the justification for this the other day by some right wing writer. He said that it was not unusual for former generals who had friends still in the service to be repeating the party line, and that this was really just a non story. Apparently, someone hadn't taken journalism 101. Meaning, if you're passing yourself off as an expert on something, and showing up on news shows, you'd want to put out there where you got your information from. These folks didn't. And funnily enough, most seemed to tote the party line quite well, and kept telling us how things were going great, and so on and so forth.
It's called having an independent news society, and with the infiltration of these folks who were being fed information, and then they were spewing it out, it was really not much better than propaganda. If the administration wanted to do that, they should have just kept sending out spokespeople from the military to do that, since we were getting the same information from these so called "analysts", who never really analyzed much of anything, but rather gave us the Bush administration spin on what was happening in Iraq, which as we know, was far from what was actually really happening in Iraq.
And hey, if things are going great in Iraq now. I'd love to hear about it. How about Afghanistan? We don't hear a lot about Iraq, but remember, we still have a fairly large group of troops on the ground in Afghanistan. How come we don't hear too much about how we're still fighting there and all?
I notice there aren't a lot of the flag-waving idiots chiming in on this one. Just for fun, I checked this item from the other day, and notice that only the most imbecilic wingnuts were brainwashed enough to take a shot at being apologists.
I hate when the offenses of this administration are so blatant that we're deprived of the entertaining attempts to spin it. This story may be ignored to the point where righty radio isn't even programming the zombies with talking points, but I hope they slap something together. It's always interesting to see how far they can stretch.
I was listening to NPR the other day, and they were discussing this issue. Someone asked the right winger on the show this hypothetical situation.
What if during Bosnia and the Clinton administration's intervention there, Clinton and company would have had surrogates come out in the media and pose as analysts who just regurgitated the party line? What would the conservatives say about that?
You can bet your arse they'd be calling for someone's head.
But as with a lot of things, IOKIYAR.
Mag, I didn't see your comments until I posted.That is an interesting approach, that the commentators are going along with those under the command of the current administration. Agreed, I don't think it would have been shrugged off if it was Clinton.
I'm going to scan as many news shows as I can tonight to see what happens with this.
I'm thinking little to nothing is going to be said about this, mostly because most of the folks implicated in the whole thing are the news sources themselves. Why would they report badly upon themselves? Know what I mean?
Of course this wouldn't be given a pass if it were Clinton, or hell, any other democrat in the White House for that matter. We all know that. The hell hounds would be out in force no doubt.
It's just another piece of the false tales told to us by the administration and its surrogates during the lead up to the invasion of Iraq, and the aftermath of it all I think. Spin, spin, and more spin. And make sure that when just about any news network gets professional analysis from anyone, make sure that they've gotten their stories and information, yep, straight from the administration. It's breathtakingly bold actually. It's like when the Bush Administration was getting "news" stories published in various news sources that wasn't news, but were more or less press releases written and passed off as news.
I hold the MSM to be far more guilty here than the so-called analysts. After all the lies we've been fed, they (the MSM) are still spreading this BS without any vetting of the sources.
I'm going to scan as many news shows as I can tonight to see what happens with this.- Col. Harlan Sanders
Diddly-squat. Shark attack, bear attack, and some more video of Jeremiah Wright. Damn liberal media.
Did you see John Oliver's commentary on this issue on the daily show? They showed clips of the same issues during the Clinton and the Bush administration of Fox pundits. It was absolutely brilliantly (and sadly) hilarious. It is called "The Meter is Running" parts 1 and 2. Check it out if you haven't seen it:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?searchterm=the+meter+is+running&x=0&y=0&search_title=Search+Results
We've been talking to the Pentagon since Monday about participating in this segment, but when we finally scheduled it today, they were unable to supply a guest on short notice.
I bet they could have found a couple dozen "experts" in a couple of minutes if the topic was some fancy, expensive weapons system.
Bomb Iran with fancy new weapons system?
Now I'm off to buy some ear protection. I understand it's dangerous for ears around here.
Time for a change.
It was also disclosed that most of the analysts have ties to military contractors.
What an absolute disgrace. C-Span was showing the White House Correspondents' Dinner tonight, all those folks yukking it up together while the chaos they helped to unleash in Iraq causes devastating suffering and death.
I am surprised that Media Matters has failed to note that Bill Moyers Journal this past Friday night vindicated Rev. Jeremiah Wright from his front-page, wide-screen, hi-def lynching.
But it should come as no surprise to anyone that the so-called "main-stream media" are totaling ignoring the hour-long Bill Moyers Journal on Rev. Jeremiah Wright that PBS aired on Friday night. Nonetheless, I am infuriated over this fact. Why am I so incensed about this? Because the "main-stream media" have morphed, for the most part, into the "main-stream garbage."These character assassins took great pains to trash Rev. Wright, heretofore a highly respected pastor in both white and African American Christendom, for the ugly "sake" of a "good story." These despicable fabricators ripped those totally out-of-context "inflammatory, anti-American" sound bites from a few of Rev. Wright's sermons without any regard whatsoever to the true meaning and message of those sermons. Why? Because these bright yellow "journalist", video butchers and wannabe "pundits" don't give a damn about truth and fairness. These garbage pickers are nothing more than purveyors of deception and lies.I characterize their behavior as that of a lynch mob. Indeed, Rev. Wright was the victim of a front-page, wide-screen, hi-def lynching.And what do these lynchers do? They live in a world of abject ignorance and denial. They don't dare search for or face the truth. Hence their choice to pretend as though the Bill Moyers Journal of Rev. Wright does not exist. And what does this encourage them to do? Obviously to perpetuate the monstrous lies and deceit of their creation. Welcome to American journalism. Ugly, is it not?So Generals went on tv and said that they want America to win the war. How evil. Don't they understand that they must abide by Media Matters' motto that you must only say negative things about the war at all times?
Wake up.
What a stupid comment. I guess you just LOVE propaganda as opposed to actual unbiased information. What part of THIS
Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform" media military analysts, many of whom have clients with an interest in obtaining Pentagon contracts, "into a kind of media Trojan horse --
Did you NOT understand? Analysts with a clear conflict of interest, that is those with clients who want Pentagon contracts, are commenting and giving the Pentagon spin. If Democratic spokesmen with clients who were seeking contracts with say the Sierra Club were spouting off about Global Warming the screaming from the right in general and YOU in specific would spin the Earth right out of its orbit.
Anyone ever hear of a phyrric victory??
The costs of this war contnue to be totally unacceptable. Any "win" will come at a cost of financial degradation.
Please --I cannot hear another broadcast, or poll that separates the issues of the war and the economy,
Think the term used in the pentagon for them was, media force multipliers. They were quite pleased with the results of their use against the natives(us).
They sucessfully performed phsycological warfare upon the American population.
I have a problem with this. I hate to say, roasting someone on a spit appeals to me right now. Having said that, it'll never leave my brain again.
Unlike Rush, I don't think all my dreams need to go anywhere near reality. One I have no problem with is civilian authority takin names and kickin ass.