PBS Breaks 'Media Blackout' of NYT Story on 'Pentagon Propaganda'!

PBS Breaks 'Media Blackout' of NYT Story on 'Pentagon Propaganda'!

thinkprogress.org

On Sunday, The New York Times published an explosive report exposing the Pentagon’s secret campaign to use analysts in order to “generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance.” Since that time, TV news organizations have largely been silent on their role in the propaganda. Ari Melber notes that last night, PBS’s Newshour finally broke this blackout, but couldn’t convince the other networks to participate:

(visit the link for the full news article)

YEEESSS!!! THANK YOU PBS!!!

This is unreal! We have near TOTAL media collusion with gov and military talking heads, spewing propaganda and lies to keep these atrocities going, and they are all trying to cover it up and pretend it didn't happen!

The NYT and now PBS are exposing this fraudulaent sham of a Main stream Media we have!!

Everybody needs to see this, and send it out to everyone you know! This is disgusting and wide spread!

JUDY WOODRUFF: 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.

^^^I BET THEY DID!!^^^

thinkprogress.org
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 25-4-2008 by DimensionalDetective]

The divide widens! There will be many who still cling to the lies. As Obama has been repeating, there will certainly be change soon. The food-class war-riot type of change.?

reply to post by DimensionalDetective


Here's a previous post of mine on the topic:

The Pentagon's "Message Force Multipliers" in Run-Up to Iraq Invasion

Good find. Glad PBS is doing something. Of course the MSM isn't reporting it, they're the ones that employed these "retired experts".

I just wonder...........everyone always talk of "exposing the truth"and "fighting"for the right thing............But will you(any of you)really do anything if you had the chance?


Its justyou always bring this up,but I find it hard to believe if it is true(which it might be)if you are going to DO ANYTHING BESIDES POST ONLINE.

Will you fight?

Will you speak out IN FRONT OF THE WORLD,WHILE RISKING YOUR FREEDOM?



What would you really do if tomarrow the gov. and the "NWO"took over?

WOO-HOO!!! Now the San Francisco Chronicle is getting in on the Fray! Hopefully this blasts WIDE OPEN...Go after these corrupted, lying scum---From the Gov to their infiltrated and polluted sock-puppet, propaganda spewing mouthpiece MSM outlets!!! This may be what FINALLY wakes the slumbering populace up to how we are all being decieved!!


All The Presidents Liars:
Fun New Game! Which TV News "Military Expert" is Really a Whore For the Bush administration?(Hint: All of Them)

Did it work? Were you duped?


Were you calmly and methodically and rather nefariously led to believe that maybe, just maybe, the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan and Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and the rest, right along with tales of soldier suicides and torture and staggering civilian body counts and the utterly disastrous Bush military policy weren't really all that bad after all?

-----

Did you watch any CNN or Fox News or MSNBC, lo, these past five or six years, listen to the pundits and ponder the wise, informed comments of all the military experts the networks brought on to discuss Iraq policy, then conclude that maybe this war, this appalling invasion might actually be positive, that maybe the surge is working and torture ain't all that bad and the democracy is taking root and America is proud and perky and victorious once again?

------

Did you believe any of it? Because oh my God, they sure as hell worked us over like a rabid dog works a hunk of gristle.

Who are "they," exactly? Why, they're the newly discovered and rather unexpected fraternity of expert BS artists, a highly specialized group known to gullible Americans as stoic, stern-faced retired generals, colonels, majors, military advisers, former Pentagon officials, the ones you've heard and seen on TV news for years, but who are known to the Bush administration as a delightfully dishonest gaggle of preferred liars, lackeys, shills, puppets and mouthpieces for Dick Cheney and Donny Rumsfeld and Dubya himself.

-----

The truth is as sad as it is revolting: You have been lied to, again and again, perhaps even more than you imagined, in a rather unexpected way, perhaps like no other time in American history, in a more carefully orchestrated and widespread effort than any presidential administration has managed to attempt in the past.

------

Here is the New York Times, still managing to do what it does best despite the era of dying newspapers and disrespected journalism, running a simply astonishing piece on all the dishonest "military consultants" who've appeared for the past half decade on every major network — and yes, Fox adores these liars best of all — to discuss Iraq, surges, U.S. military strategy, the works.

Here is the Times revealing, after two years of battling the Defense Department to release the 8,000 pages of incriminating documents by way of instigating lawsuits and leveraging the Freedom of Information Act — and barely even then — that this entire dour fraternity of deceitful military cretins has been in service of BushCo since Sept. 11 — and still is, to this very day.

-------

To clarify: Whenever you've seen one of those dour-faced retired generals discussing details of U.S. war strategy on MSNBC, chances are staggeringly good he was/is in the pocket of Rummy or Cheney. Whenever a wise old colonel has appeared on Fox or CNN or CBS News to say the surge is working or troop morale is strong or that all those suicide bombings aren't really so bad, chances are overwhelmingly good that he is lying outright and you're hearing exactly what Donald Rumsfeld wanted him to say. Isn't that refreshing?

The Times story is simply astounding. Up and down the line, from major to general to colonel to every sort of expert they have, it's the same story. Over and over again, presented "tens of thousands of times" and totaling countless hundreds of TV and radio hours, it's been a near constant stream of calculated deception and misrepresentation and bogus pro-Iraq spin. Neutrality? Fair analysis of the war? Criticism of Bush? Not a chance.

Full story:

www.sfgate.com.../g/a/2008/04/25/notes042508.DTL



[edit on 25-4-2008 by DimensionalDetective]

Here in ATS is been people like me that never believe the propaganda spew by the corporate news media.

We always fought back with the truth that in many instances was not from the US "reliable sources"for that we were tagged many times, anti-Americans, un patriotic and terrorist sympathizes, more often enough even told to leave American if we didn't like what was going on.

This was all by the part of the government "apologists".

I am glad that now Justice has been served.

And they can take that to the bank.

The military always spew propaganda through the 4th branch of the government, the corporate controlled media. I love how some people call it the "liberal" media when there's nothing liberal about it. Liberal implies open-minded and when you're fed bull# news from a few companies that own all the media outlets, we all know there's nothing open-minded about that.

The government needs a propaganda machine such as the media to ensure it stays alive. Without it, they'd probably be dead by now.

If we actually had independent media, Bushie could not get away with half the crap he says. Its just the media decides only to play about 1/4 of his idiotic statements.

The man's a puppet, impeach him already.

Originally posted by DimensionalDetective

YEEESSS!!! THANK YOU PBS!!!

This is unreal! We have near TOTAL media collusion with gov and military talking heads, spewing propaganda and lies to keep these atrocities going, and they are all trying to cover it up and pretend it didn't happen!

The NYT and now PBS are exposing this fraudulaent sham of a Main stream Media we have!!

Everybody needs to see this, and send it out to everyone you know! This is disgusting and wide spread!

Thanks for finding this very important topic. Without the cowardly media/governement collusion, all the warmongering and hatepreaching would be impossible.

The only thing sounding strange about the story is that the NYT is also a den for warmongers, like Thomas Friedman for example...



[edit on 25-4-2008 by ergoli]

Yet ANOTHER article talking about this sickening corruption! This ties in perfectly with my other thread titled "Mass Mind Control Through Network TV"....Anybody still believing that the media is not brainwashing its audience is living in a dream world!


Pentagon Propaganda: So Much Worse Than We Thought

David Barstow of the New York Times has written the first installment in what is already a stunning exposé of the Bush Administration's most powerful propaganda weapon used to sell and manage the war on Iraq: the embedding of military propagandists directly into the TV networks as on-air commentators. We and others have long criticized the

widespread TV network practice of hiring former military officials to serve as analysts, but even in our most cynical moments we did not anticipate how bad it was. Barstow has painstakingly documented how these analysts, most of them military industry consultants and lobbyists, were directly chosen, managed, coordinated and given their talking points by the Pentagon's ministers of propaganda.

------

Thanks to the two-year investigation by the New York Times, we today know that Victoria Clarke, then the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, launched the Pentagon military analyst program in early 2002. These supposedly independent military analysts were in fact a coordinated team of pro-war propagandists, personally recruited by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and acting under Clarke's tutelage and development.

One former participant, NBC military analyst Kenneth Allard, has called the effort "psyops on steroids." As Barstow reports, "Internal Pentagon documents repeatedly refer to the military analysts as 'message force multipliers' or 'surrogates' who could be counted on to deliver administration 'themes and messages' to millions of Americans 'in the form of their own opinions.' … Don Meyer, an aide to Ms. Clarke, said a strategic decision was made in 2002 to make the analysts the main focus of the public relations push to construct a case for war."

------

Clarke and her senior aide, Brent T. Krueger, eventually signed up more than 75 retired military officers who penned newspaper op/ed columns and appeared on television and radio news shows as military analysts. The Pentagon held weekly meetings with the military analysts, which continued as of April 20, 2008, when the New York Times ran Barstow's story. The program proved so successful that it was expanded to issues besides the Iraq War. "Other branches of the
administration also began to make use of the analysts. Mr. Gonzales, then the attorney general, met with them soon after news leaked that the government was wiretapping terrorism suspects in the United States without warrants, Pentagon records show. When David H. Petraeus was appointed the commanding general in Iraq in January 2007, one of his early acts was to meet with the analysts."

------

Barstow spent two years digging, using the Freedom of Information Act and attorneys to force the Bush Administration to release some 8,000 pages of documents now under lock and key at the New York Times. This treasure trove should result in additional stories, giving them a sort of "Pentagon Papers" of Iraq war propaganda.

Full Story:
alternet.org...



[edit on 25-4-2008 by DimensionalDetective]

What to do, what to do...,?

Every now and again someone cries out - "what are you going to do about it?"

So we fear the concept of an NWO or corporate fascist regime, we cringe at the thought of cookie cutter molds for a life and big brother's nasty 'eye' peering at us day and night. The idea of a single will, that supersedes our own collective will, is anathema to us. We know the PTB can pull the plug, lock us down, 'disappear' us into the night. Some expect that our roar of defiance will echo down the streets into a roar of indignation that will sweep all the 'bad' people out of their 'fat-cat' offices, yanking all the sweetheart deals of family and club members off the table and the milk and honey will flow again.

We have watched as civil disobedience and conscientious activism migrate closer and closer to the legal realm of 'terrorism' and we find our 'rights' as citizens degraded beneath the corporate citizen's profit model.

Maybe there is something that can be done. Maybe, the right words can 'awaken' our fellow countrymen to the realities that have infected their understanding of the world.

But this is not a playground, there is no TV audience to cheer us on, there is no means to operate with any sense of support from those we would believe we are fighting to protect. Our politicians are tools, nothing more. They aren't working for us, even when they think they are. Some of them are so addicted to the 'big time' that they see it as the whole purpose of their existence. For them it's a game, and they LOVE playing. Most were lucky enough to be born on third base, and deluded enough to believe it means they hit a triple.

The quick solution is an illusion. There is no 'happy ending' after the 1/2 show wraps up. The fix is a non-fix, a dream of rapture and some hero coming to the forefront to save the day.

Each of us must create the momentum to reach the light switch, and then switch it on so those cockroaches can go back under the fridge, where they belong. This starts in our spheres of influence, not at the bar, or in the gym. It wont have anything to do with toting guns like they do on those cool Hollywood movies, nor will there be a crescendo of inspirational theme music thrumming in the background. There will be no flag fluttering proudly in the breeze.

This has to do with absolute accountability and transparency in government, nothing less will work.

here's the To-Do list:

Every government secret must be identified, if not outright divulged.
Every 'confidential' matter must be discussed, every national security concern must be specifically identified.
Demand prosecutions for violations of oath,
accept no 'corporate or commercial' trade secret as a deterrent,
refuse to acknowledge the voice of the corporate machinery,
disallow all governmental 'contractor' relationships,
destroy all commercial opportunity at the government level.
Cease to offer benefits for public service - period.
Demand absolute surrender of financial privacy for all executive-level governmental relationships,
Demand PUBLIC polygraph examinations for all such governmental leaders.
Mandate comprehensive audits of all government 'think-tanks'
Completely and utterly ABOLISH the Democrat and Republican party structure. Criminalize it.
Force a complete overhaul of the 'political' party regime.
Remove ALL subservience and accountability to foreign nationals for national policy.
Disavow ALL international allegiances without complete disclosure of all parties AND their personal representatives and stake holding.
Destroy all PACs,
eliminate all confidential and undisclosed lobbying,
attach personal liability to all actions as a public servant.
DESTROY the existing corporate citizen status.
Nationalize ALL (EVERY) industry profiting from natural resources.
Eliminate all broadcasting companies,
revoke ALL corporate and bank charters - force re-issuance under new public scrutiny.

Now who do you think can actually address the to-do list? You, me, some political party? Stop asking what to do, just pick something and do it.

Maxmars, that is what I been doing for the last few years, sending letters to congress over and over again.

I do this so often and has been so critical to the state representatives that my husband and I were audited by the state on back taxes.

They charged up 16 thousand dollars in the last two months for something that was nothing more than 3 thousand dollars.

They when back eight years of taxes in their audit.

Somebody told me a while back that they will do that when you bother your politicians too much.

Well I thought that it would not happen to us.

It did.

But I am still sending letters to my state Representatives and you know what I have been receiving personal responses very often lately

Addressed to me by name.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

BTW we settler the tax matter.

Something I have learn from the tax ordeal, you can not back off or be afraid of the government because when you are afraid they win.

I bet my name is in the person of interest list

reply to post by Maxmars

This has to do with absolute accountability and transparency in government, nothing less will work

I won't apologize for pushing this guy every chance I get...

From his Quotes Page

"Government is supposed to be of the people, by the people, and for the people. Instead it has turned against the people. Politicians and government bureaucrats of both parties want to impose their will and take control over every aspect of the lives of the American people. It's time to turn the tables. I will fight on behalf of the people. I will defend the constitution. I will repeal laws, not create new ones. I will cut government, not grow it. I will find programs to terminate, not create new ones. The only power I will relish is the power of the veto. I love the smell of vetoes in the morning! I vow to veto more bills than any President in history."

"Government should be of the people, by the people, for the people. What part of that do politicians and government bureaucrats not understand? Government has no right to keep secrets from the people. The people are paying for it. It's THEIR government. They have a right to know everything going on. I will make government transparent. One big reality show. I will eliminate the back-alley deals, the smoke-filled rooms where secret deals are made. With me, what you see is what you'll get. I'll bring it all out into the open. The people will be back in charge."

--Wayne Allyn Root

All the Issues

[edit on 4/25/2008 by RabbitChaser]

reply to post by Maxmars


I'm not sure whether what you describe would be easier or indeed harder to acomplish in the US compared here in the UK owing to many centuries of deference-education to your peers, perhaps the US has taken all those years of lessons-learnt from the old world establishment and implemented them so a Cromwellian revolution could never occur on US soil by US people on the scale seen in the 17th Century when the people took up arms against the monarchy and established the British society we see today, certainly seems that way to me.

This is a very important thread. Bump it until everyone on ATS reads it. Do not let it pass into interweb oblivion.

Everyone needs to be aware of how the propaganda machine works and what lengths they will go to, to control opinion and actions of the American taxpayers.

This BS about the MSM being a tool of the left must end.

Sheep no more!

S&F as usual DD



[edit on 25-4-2008 by whaaa]

Hiding behind terrorism to slowly take away freedoms and values is the new campaign.



[edit on 25-4-2008 by ppleLOSINGpower]

Many eloquent replies in this thread. I've read the articles and saw the video. I am totally unsurprised by this finding but I am surprised that any network would touch this subject with a 10 foot pole. Good for PBS. Would Hitler have been so successful without Goebbel's Ministry of Propaganda? I doubt it.

This is a bit of an aside but... this is exactly the sort of thing that would have coined the phrase the truth hurts. People don't want to know this kind of thing because when you become aware of the truth it hits you everyday and it's a relentless assault when you can see motives behind pretense. Some people wake and go back to sleep because it's so intense they would rather be blind to it and enjoy what little of their life they can. Most never wake. Most will also despise, laugh, ridicule, ostracize you if you try and give them a glance inside. It's a frustrating path to be sure but it's a worthy one. Mark Twain said it best:

"In the beginning of a change, the Patriot is a scarce man, brave, hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a Patriot."

Our fundamental right, the freedom of press is there to check the abuses of power, not abet them.

The fact is, truth can be hidden for only so long. Now we in America have been fed the "Big Lie" since right after WWII. And it's taken half a century or more for that to get out. But it will fail. Lies always get found out.

And if this doesn't do the trick of causing change, then the next one will, or the one after that. How much grief the housecleaning will cause is anyone's guess, but it's coming.

And to all of those who moan about how people on ATS are not doing anything with all of their posting, then take a look here. We've been yelling ourselves hoarse over these things. Now a portion of MSM is agreeing. I wonder why? Could a few of them came here and heard the "other viewpoint" and then run with it? Could some of these reporters be closet ATSers, using what they learn here, along with some hard legwork, to make a bid for a Pulitzer Prize?

The things we discuss here NEED talking about, and to as wide an audience as we can get. Each of you that have gripped in your heart that ATS was getting too big, too wide open, too willing to be a big voice when you wanted more focus on your pet subjects, to the exclusion of all others, here's the payoff. MSM has no choice but to listen to the likes of us.

We don't advocate rebellion, we don't recruit for some army of a new republic, we obey the law and tell the world to open it's mind. And slowly, like the petals of a flower, minds are opening. The revolution is one that must occur in the minds and hearts of humans before it's worth a tinkers damn on any other plane.

The pen is mightier than the sword.

Unfortunately nobody but us and some other scattered people give a #$@#

Nothing new in news these days, the propaganda machine has been running full steam with the military industrial complex for at least 100 years I would wager, and now and then someone sounds off about the morality and legality of such an affair. Yet, no one gets fired, the propaganda hasn't slowed, we're all still eating a $%&^ sandwich and ordering seconds.

Money and power are some pretty bad things to give to people.

There's nothing I can add to this . Change IS coming , excuses are running out . Surely everybody has a threshold at which you can't bite your tongue anymore . S&Fd