There is a devastating article in todays New York Times detailing just how the Pentagon "analysts" that appear on the cable and network news twist the coverage of terrorism and the war in Iraq.
There is a devastating article in todays New York Times detailing just how the Pentagon "analysts" that appear on the cable and network news twist the coverage of terrorism and the war in Iraq.
The way this administration has used their internal "analysts" to shape the coverage of their military adventures is no secret to us. We all know that most of these talking heads have an agenda when they go on these shows, but the NY Times lays it out in a way I haven't seen it covered before.
To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as "military analysts" whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.
Unfettered? Hardly. There's always a secret hand guiding their words.
The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.
Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves.
Wait just a minute. Isn't it the network's job to vet these sources? Seems to me, the fact that we're in Iraq in the first place has everything to do with the "journalists" not digging hard enough to find out the truth behind the White House spin. Wasn't there a lot of discussion about how the media wasn't doing their job during the run up to the war? Looks like things haven't changed.
These analysts were apparently seduced into supporting the White House talking points by gaining access to classified documents and the big players themselves, including Cheney, Gonzalez, and Hadley.
In turn, members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated. Some analysts acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their access.
And here's the money quote:
A few expressed regret for participating in what they regarded as an effort to dupe the American public with propaganda dressed as independent military analysis.
"It was them saying, ‘We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you,’ " Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and former Fox News analyst, said.
Please go read the entire article. As I said before, the article doesn't tell us much that we don't already know, but the fact that it's now gaining some national attention is heartening in the bigger picture of media bias.