House Votes to Ban Pentagon Propaganda: Networks Still Silent

[Joanne98]

by Josh Silver
You probably didn’t hear about the House voting to ban Pentagon propaganda last Thursday — since the television networks have once again conveniently failed to cover the story.

But in a surprise move, a 2009 defense policy bill passed with an amendment, sponsored by Rep. Paul Hodes (D-N.H.), that outlaws the Defense Department from engaging in “a concerted effort to propagandize” the American people. The measure would also force an investigation by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) into efforts to plant positive news stories about the war in U.S. media.

An April 20 front-page New York Times article first reported how the Pentagon cultivated and coached more than 75 former military officers who became regulars on Fox News, CNN, the broadcast networks, and even NPR. One week later, the Pentagon announced that it would suspend the “briefing” program pending an internal review, which is continuing. On May 13, watchdog Media Matters documented that analysts in the Pentagon’s program appeared or were quoted in major outlets more than 4,500 times.

If the Senate also passes the propaganda ban, it will send a strong message to the Pentagon and other government agencies that the Congress will not allow the continued manipulation of public opinion.

But let’s not forget that this is just the most recent major government propaganda revelation in recent years. In March 2005, the New York Times revealed that several federal agencies were producing fake “video news releases” that local television stations aired as if they were bona fide news reports.

Two months before that, several “payola pundits” were discovered to be receiving lucrative government PR contracts to opine in favor of Bush administration policies — without disclosing their financial arrangement. Armstrong Williams was the poster-child, with his $240,000 contract from the Department of Education to promote the president’s “No Child Left Behind Act.”

It is crucial to understand that with or without the Pentagon’s program, there will always be well-credentialed analysts pushing to get on the air who are eager to toe the administration’s line for fame, ideology or money. And the right is historically much better at training them and getting them in front of cameras.

But at the end of the day, it is the television newsroom producers and “bookers” - and the executives who hire them — who decide who gets on TV and who doesn’t. And the vast majority of them consistently turn to government officials, major politicians and party insiders. They seldom turn to dissenting voices, critical public interest advocates and fierce critics of government policy.

On May 5, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews revealed that “all my bosses … basically pro-war during the war. … and I was up against that.” Again, a major revelation ignored by most of the press that explains the culture that subsumed every major network newsroom.

On Friday, the GAO said it had already begun looking into the program and would provide a legal opinion. On the same day, the inspector general’s office at the Defense Department also announced that it would investigate the Pentagon program.

The House spending bill will be taken up by the Senate after next week’s recess, and legislators will have to insert a similar amendment. The White House has threatened to veto the entire bill, citing concerns with several provisions.

Congress should hold high-profile hearings to get to the bottom of the Pentagon program and force the issue into the news. If the networks won’t cover it, at least C-SPAN will.

Two things are certain. First, consolidated, corporate media is failing to provide critical journalism, and is aiding and abetting government propaganda. Second, this is not the last time this media blight will rear its ugly head, and as long as it does, the American public will continue to be led by the nose to support disastrous wars, policies and politicians.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/25/9187/

[Ravy]

1. Without Pentagon propaganda, I would *expect* them to be silent...

at least, until a major corporation has some story they need to get out.

[Nictuku]

2. I thought it already was illegal to propagandize the american public...(nt)

[Nictuku]

3. I found an interesting article about the Legality involved

... It is never as simple as one might think. I was wondering why Congress was wasting time on a ban on pentagon propaganda, when that is already illegal..... but it would seem that the law is not all that clear:

http://hnn.us/articles/20418.html

"But, what of federal propaganda directed towards domestic audiences? A near century-old law (5 U.S.C. 3107) prohibits federal funds from being “used for the compensation of any publicity expert unless specifically appropriated for that purpose.” And annual appropriations acts often include provisions stating “No part of any appropriation contained in this Act shall be used for publicity or propaganda purposes not heretofor authorized by Congress.” Together, these prohibitions might seem like a formidable bulwark against federal agencies and officers engaged in activities to promote government policies and people.

Why, one might wonder, don’t they? Well, a host of minor reasons might be cited, but the big problem is that Congress never bothered to define what constitutes “propaganda” or “public relations.”

<snip>

Readers might be tempted to condemn Congress for failing to define what constitutes acceptable agency communications with the public and what is “propaganda.” The problem, though, is that defining good government communications from bad ones is not easy task. Crack open the Oxford English Dictionary and one finds “propaganda” defined as the “systematic propagation of information or ideas by an interested party, especially in a tendentious way in order to encourage or instill a particular attitude or response.” Defined thus, the Department of Transportation’s media campaigns to discourage drunken driving and nearly every campaign for public office might constitute “propaganda.” A peek at Dictionary.com also doesn’t carry one much further — “The systematic propagation of a doctrine or cause or of information reflecting the views and interests of those advocating such a doctrine or cause.”

[Joanne98]

4. It is. But the media execs are above the law, apparently...

:sarcasm:

[applegrove]

5. I know I'm from Canada - but isn't the use of propaganda against the

American people by their government allready illegal??

[Berry Cool]

6. To be fair, Keith Olbermann has mentioned this on his show

and posted a few comments about it on Daily Kos.

[Joe Chi Minh]

7. I wonder if all the laws passed on Capital Hill, but which Bush has arbitrarily vetoed, illegally,

will be re-instated "en masse" via a single bill by the incoming Democratic administration?