One of the most important, yet seemingly downplayed controversies in the media over the past few years was the Pulitzer prize-winning NY Times Article by David Barstow published in April 2008 "Message Machine: Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon's Hidden Hand." It is no earth-shattering fact that military propaganda does exist and has existed, but the fact that TV military analysts were being briefed by the Pentagon about what to report and what not to report based on what the Pentagon felt that the public "needed to know." The government blatantly took advantage of the public and used an army of "message machines" as their personal voices to Americans. The presented slanted and sometimes even completely false stories and much of the original support for the Iraq War was based on the reporting done by these analysts. It is especially disconcerting that the severity of this matter was not made as big of a story as it should of been, thought this is probably due to the fact that this was clearly an embarassment to news networks who are supposed to bring unbiased, truthful stories to the public. The news media's ultimate and fundamental purpose is purely to bring the vital news that the public needs to hear. If these sources that people feel they can trust turn out to be corrupt, there is a major hole in the news system. Obviously there is much bias in the news media, yet the bias displayed by these analysts is unacceptable. The media is meant to present accurate information and protect against the propaganda of the government and if these analysts were presenting the information that government deemed "acceptable" directly contradicts everything the news has been about since it first began.
The following is a news broadcast made by PBS in response to Barstow's story. This is a display of excellent journalism because PBS chose to accept the fact that they were deceived by these analysts and even gave major networks the opportunities to come forward to explain themselves and how they would avoid a similar incident from reoccurring. Another facet of this report that makes it unique is that the experts presented
The following report by the Huffington Post is slightly disturbing because it highlights the fact that there are many news media outlets still using military analysts without introducing possible conflicts of interest. I believe that it is in fact important for a news station to announce any possible conflicts that may inhibit the truth of a story, yet it is more important to choose an analyst without any conflicts in the first place.
This broadcast, reported by NPR's David Folkenflik, gives further support to the initial story published by Barstow through interviewing former CBS analyst Army Maj. Gen. John Batiste who was let go from CBS after not being invited to Pentagon briefing sessions and even going so far as to appear in an anti-Bush ad. This broadcast goes in-depth down the very root of where all this began and cites specific examples of propaganda from major networks. Another interesting point I found in this broadcast is that, like the PBS report, NPR acknowledges the fact that they too had contacted many major news networks and all declined to comment. Another important trend I noticed was that NPR also had one of these corrupted analysts on several times since the beginning of the Iraq War and, upon the breaking news of Barstow's article, said they would be much stricter when looking for expert advice
This was a link I found very interesting because it puts a more personal spin on this story in an Op-Ed piece in USA Today. It is easy to just post links to many news reports, yet an Op-Ed comes directly from the opinion of the American public. Another useful aspect of this source is that there is a comment thread directly below it so others can post their opinions in response. Though some opinions may just be blind attacks at the other users, it is useful because the issues are being debated by a variety of different viewpoints so that the reader may take everything into consideration and judge for themselves what their take on the issue is.
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