The Pentagon's Corrupt "Military Analysts" Media Scheme

By Gareth Porter

In Sunday's New York Times, investigative reporter David Barstow exposed television's "military analysts" on the Iraq War as sock puppets of the Pentagon who consciously peddle the Bush administration's talking points on Iraq while hiding their own vested economic interest in selling the public on the Bush administration's happy talk about the war.

This very long and very well-documented story lays bare the most blatantly obnoxious feature of the "Military-Industrial-Media Complex" which ensures that the airwaves convey the administration's major messages on the war day in a day out. The story should mobilize the blogosphere and news media figures who still have some integrity to demand immediate reform of a massively corrupt network system of covering military affairs.

For starters, the networks should be forced to fire every "military analyst" who has been recruited and accepted all-expenses-paid trips to Iraq, uncritically mouthed the administration talking points while concealing their special relationship or maintained vested financial interests in Pentagon contracts through business relationships with contractors.

Based on 8,000 pages of email messages, transcripts and records, Barstow recounts a successful effort by Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon to use retired military officers to create a "media Trojan horse" on the Iraq War. Not only did the "military analysts" routinely violate basic ethical standards of journalism by accepting trips completely arranged and paid for the administration; they were consciously participating in its strategy to manipulate public opinion by regurgitating the pro-war arguments they were given in top-level official briefings -- which they had to promise to keep secret.

.....

The story of the Pentagon's "media Trojan horse" should bring overwhelming public pressure for the immediate termination of any "military analyst" who has been compromised by links with the Pentagon and/or its business allies. The television networks should adopt transparent rules about who can and can't be hired as analysts on military issues that would keep out paid agents of the war system. Unfortunately the networks themselves appear to be such an integral part of that system that they couldn't care less about conflicts of interest.......