Leaked files indicate U.S. pays Afghan media to run friendly stories

Leaked files indicate U.S. pays Afghan media to run friendly stories

news.yahoo.com

uried among the 92,000 classified documents released Sunday by WikiLeaks is some intriguing evidence that the U.S. military in Afghanistan has adopted a PR strategy that got it into trouble in Iraq: paying local media outlets to run friendly stories.

Several reports from Army psychological operations units and provincial reconstruction teams (also known as PRTs, civilian-military hybrids tasked with rebuilding Afghanistan) show that local Afghan radio stations were under contract to air content produced by the United States. Other reports show U.S. military personnel apparently referring to

(visit the link for the full news article)

Quite often on ATS we go on about the possibility of the government manipulating the mainstream media to portray them in a positive light or to further any agenda they may have. This article confirms though the wikileaks site that they have actually been doing thin in Afghanistan. Would be interesting to know how many of these manipulated stories are permeating down into our western mainstream media.

news.yahoo.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

What's wrong with giving them a little money to do a story that will encourage people to do things that won't get them killed?

War is still war and all the negative feelings in the world toward the ISAF operation in Afghanistan isn't going to diminish the killing power of an American made M16 rifle round.

I don't see anything wrong with spending money to keep people from making this war some of their business because it is not.

This is incredible, but no so after all, here in the US our government does the same thing when most of our media is run by corporate entities within our government.

And anyway we all know that most people believe anything they hear.

All of the media is ran this way, anywhere in the world. It's called PR and if its not done by paying its done by promises.

reply to post by bruxfinn


That’s quite a good point i never really thought of it like that.

Ctrl F, it's your friend.


Great find. Star plus flag. And they were downplaying this as not being like the pentagon papers.


Sigh sigh sigh.

Do we at least know if it was under Bush, Obama, or both?

Ah, I see. under Bush. Any bets for Obama too?

[edit on 29-7-2010 by Gorman91]

This doesn't surprise me in the least...there have been stories regarding military PsyOps in foreign lands for quite some time now...

Case in point...ATS: Comic Books To Be Used For 'Psy-Ops' in Middle East

As for the possibility that the U.S. is influencing the domestic media...I think of course they are. In many respects, the rhetoric provided by our political leaders read just like that...and obfuscation of the issues through partisanship argument does the rest...

reply to post by MemoryShock


Interesting i just looked at mask’s comic and there are some similarities.

reply to post by kevinunknown

That is hilarious and an angle on Mask's comic that I hadn't considered...excellent point.

ATSINTEL anyone?

Originally posted by bruxfinn
What's wrong with giving them a little money to do a story that will encourage people to do things that won't get them killed?

War is still war and all the negative feelings in the world toward the ISAF operation in Afghanistan isn't going to diminish the killing power of an American made M16 rifle round.

I don't see anything wrong with spending money to keep people from making this war some of their business because it is not.

I wonder why the government wants to keep this hidden if there is nothing wrong with it..why would they need to fabricate anything if they were already doing the right thing by being there? do they feel guilty about something we aren't allowed to know?

Those would be the real questions...

The first thing any occupying army must do is control the press. Empire Building 101.

Still it's nice to have direct evidence of such operations, if nothing else than for the afghans over there who have been accused of being overly "paranoid" by their less suspicious countrymen.

If the documents name names, then we might be seeing some suicide bombers hit newspaper/tv buildings in the near future.

reply to post by harrytuttle


Yeah i have to agree with you this actually makes sense for the Americans to do this.

So it's true? I remember this one when it was a conspiracy theory and constantly debunked as such. Betcha the same will show up for Iraq.

[edit on 7/29/2010 by ~Lucidity]

Is anyone surprised?

When you go to set up an operations, you usually go with what you know. In the case of the OP story, it seems that the status quo is being pushed in Afghanistan.

Man that's embarrassing to have been made public. Now I wonder if anyone paid the NY Times to put out that lithium in Afghanistan story. And now if only someone would "leak" the truth about captured alien technology. Imagine how embarrassing that would be for the truth-hiders in office and the military-industrial complex.

reply to post by alienreality


there are many things the government doesn't want you don't know.

the governments enemies don't want you to know about it either.

I'd bet good money that you don't want to know.

be happy that you have other concerns than finding out what the government doesn't want you to know...knowing it won't help most of you of one bit.

but for a bunch of people that define themselves as poppy farmers...a wallet full of Dollars is a pretty good incentive to mind the poppy farm and not someone else's personal affair.

be happy that the governments secret aren't your concern...you can't hang.


As far as ISAF is concerned...the US and the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan are acting totally within the framework of the law...as it is. this I know for a fact.

Next week...who knows what crazy things an overly ambititious politician may do. patience grasshopper, patience.

[edit on 29-7-2010 by bruxfinn]

no, in america they don't pay msm to run friendly stories, since you'd need a trillion dollars to buy off a corporation as huge as time-warner. they just kiss their ass and invite them to super ritzy dinners and fundraisers on your dime.

reply to post by bruxfinn


Yep I know what you are saying...

I was kind of using sarcasm in that earlier post, but forgot to mention that

And you are right, there are a lot of things that I am sure would be very painful for the average American to discover about things their government are doing.... I can see an almost bottomless "rabbit hole" in my mind's crystal ball about that one..

Cheers