Exclsuive!
Posted on 02/24/2006 12:36:24 PM PST by baseball_fan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Tuesday he was mistaken when he stated last week that the U.S. military had stopped paying Iraqi newspapers to publish pro-American articles.
Rumsfeld had said in a television interview on Friday that the U.S. military had ceased paying to place positive stories in Iraqi media after criticism in the U.S. Congress and press. Rumsfeld made similar comments the same day to the Council on Foreign Relations.
"I just misstated the facts," Rumsfeld told a Pentagon briefing on Tuesday.
Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said the military command in Iraq was still paying to plant positive stories, even as U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Scott Van Buskirk investigates it.
Rumsfeld said he did not know whether Van Buskirk's inquiry would be completed soon. The review was ordered by Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, officials said.
On "The Charlie Rose Show," aired on PBS stations, Rumsfeld said, "The press got it, then the Congress starts calling for hearings and fussing about this, and complaining about that, as though it was something terrible that happened."
"It wasn't anything terrible that happened. When we heard about it, we said, 'Gee, that's not what we ought to be doing.' And we told the people down there, and they -- they told the contractor who did it -- it wasn't a military person -- and they stopped doing that," Rumsfeld added in the interview.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
(b) "Yet this has been portrayed as inappropriate -- for example, the allegations of someone in the military hiring a contractor, and the contractor allegedly paying someone to print a story -- a true story -- but paying to print a story," Rumsfeld said.
what does the policy need to be?
"Reuters"
Whereas to plant a story with Reuters, all it takes is a $40 steak dinner and a few double neat Stolys.
Voice of America reportedly took on a critical tone towards America.
The left does not like this country. Liberal guilt will be the ruin of us all.
What was terrible was the fact that Congress even Complained & Fussed incessantly over it.
Bloviated, over-sized, squalling babies so many Congressional Liberals are.
Exclsuive!
"Voice of America reportedly took on a critical tone towards America. "
\
I think that's one of the signs of the end times....
In a word, CONSISTENT!
Really, this admin. is in dire need of some PR advice. Otherwise, Mr. Rumsfeld should stay away from the press for awhile..
That's the problem. Neither the source of the news story nor the fact that it was a paid advertisement was made clear in the articles published. Thus, they were, for all intents, propaganda.
This is not new, nor is it limited to Iraq. Many presidents, including Clinton and Duhbya have paid for pro-government stories. Duhbya got caught paying columnists, which was widely circulated, but what wasn't widely circulated was that he also directed the HHS to produce a series of pro-medicare drug give-away 'video news releases' that were distributed to US news outlets and broadcast as real news stories.
These also failed to disclose the fact that they were pro-government pieces directed at American citizens for the express purpose of generating popular support for Duhbya's medicare drug give-away and did not disclose the source of the information or the fact that they were produced by the federal government. The GAO investigated and labeled them propaganda.
They came to this conclusion mainly because of the sign-off used by the so-called reporter, Karen Ryan. When closing the pieces, she would say, "Karen Ryan reporting...", which indicates is 'news', not an advertisement.
When called on it, Bush claimed that it was the responsibility of the news stations themselves, to disclose the source, not the federal government.
This runs contrary to every truth-in-advertising law on the books.
Too bad Duhbya didn't know this when he paid many thousands of dollars for favorable coverage to Maggie Gallagher, Suzanne Goldenberg, Michael McManus and Armstrong Williams, eh?
that makes perfect sense...thank you.
Yeah, well... Reuters is a cheap date, if you know what I mean.
Normally, you pay a PR company, and they take care of the rest.
In the old days, getting certain things covered was considered "action" which was part of the CIA's mandate. The military by all means should be doing this, but it should be handled as intel "action" and should be deniable and denied.
"The military by all means should be doing this, but it should be handled as intel "action" and should be deniable and denied."
was it a mistake, then, accepting your premise for a moment by way of analysis, for him in correcting the record not to say we need to keep this as a policy option so expectations can be set with the American public making it politically sustainable? if another case were to emerge, it would seemingly make it much harder to sustain at that point if the American public is not already on-board.
also according to the Secretary's statement this was a case of planting "true" information. i assume, accepting your premise for analysis again, that there would need to be the policy flexibility to plant disinformation as well, such as occurred when we made it look like Patton was heading up the invasion of Normandy in WWII?
would you recommend any built-in protections, however, in the use of this power?
We need to be more realistic and aggressive in the media propaganda wars. It is a facet of warfare, much as any other, and has shown in the past that it can lose wars if not handled correctly.
We are having propaganda used against our country as a matter of course. It is easy to sit back and take the stance that all propaganda is bad, but propaganda does not need to be outright lies ala Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union.
Propaganda can be implemented as a positive point of view. For example, if you visit DefendAmerica.mil, it presents a point of view. Sure, it goes much heavier on the positive spin than a site such as www.nytimes.com, but there are no outright lies at DefendAmerica.mil. (Of course, we all know there have been outright lies at the NY Times...can you say Jayson Blair?)
The point is, propaganda was and is used to great advantage against us around the world, and I do not believe we should relenquish that battle to our foes.
I know what Stoly's is...have known for years...but what is a double neat Stoly? Actually my comment was: We spent millions upon millions over the years with "Radio Free Europe"...now this uproar over paying to have a story in a newspaper. This ole boy thinks "Have we lost of F...king minds".. get serious. We are fighting a war for our very survival...and those snot nosed little turds in the media need to take a break and go find a job and earn a living...
Well put. I like your tagline, by the way.
And, thanks for your service. While your tagline says it all, there are indeed many of us who give thanks for guys like you every day.
An excellent comparison. Here we have Secretary Rumsfeld admiting that he mistakenly misrepresented the facts once, while the MSM and Democrats have spent the past week deliberately misrepresenting the facts of the DP World deal 7/24.
In the middle east, again, the press is almost completely hostile, so getting your side of the story out becomes a real challenge. We'll never win if our purposes are filtered by Al Jazeera. So how do you get past that? The enemy's propaganda war is succeeding, and ours is largely failing.
So you have to develop ways of getting your message out. You hire, or set up, PR firms. PR differs from advertising, as you know, because while ads are intended to be traceable back to you, PR masquerades as news. Or, better yet, PR develops strategies for getting the hostile press to cover your story your way. Or, even better yet, PR develops strategies for getting a hostile press to be less hostile.
And if PR is done properly, it isn't traceable back to you.
You can't win if you don't do this. You can't kill everyone, you don't even want to kill everyone. The killing stops when your message takes hold and displaces your enemy's message in the popular mind.
It isn't a matter of using propaganda to distort an otherwise pure and objective press coverage, but quite the opposite; your enemy is effectively controlling the message, and effectively distorting your message. His propaganda is carrying the day. Most arabs know that we are stealing their oil, and that jews are selling the blood of arab children. This is what you are up against. Either you develop an effective response, or you lose.
As for protections from abuse or disinformation, again, you have to understand that you are being propagandized already, by your enemy. Your side has to find a way to communicate its message, or it doesn't get communicated. It helps that its true; but being true is insufficient, it has to be communicated.
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