Nation Topics - David Barstow | The Nation

The petite bourgeoisie are legitimately pissed off.

The talking heads of cable news are leading double lives as paid lobbyists for corporations.

Reflections on troops that don't depart, experts who never leave the scene, an Air Force that suddenly wasn't there and a war that no longer needs justification.

A few weeks ago, I posted on New York Times reporter David Barstow's front-page story exposing the Pentagon's propaganda machine.

Through rigorous documentation, Barstow revealed the incestuous relationship between the government, the networks and so-called "independent" military analysts, who echoed Pentagon talking points in order to gain access and, possibly, advantage for defense contractors to which they were tied. (The Times screwed up royally in the run-up to the war, think Judith Miller,but they got this one right. Read ombudsman Clark Hoyt's story on the Times two-year battle with the Pentagon to obtain this information.)

According to the Times, the Pentagon recruited more than 75 retired military officers as its "message force multipliers" or "surrogates," and they in turn passed along Bush Administration "themes and messages" to Americans in the "form of their own opinions." Participants were not to disclose their contacts with the Pentagon, and networks rarely disclosed their "analysts'" ties to defense contractors with vested interests in the war policies under discussion.

As posts on this site by Katrina vanden Heuvel and Ari Melber outline, yesterday's New York Times' front-page piece convincingly exposed the Pentagon's propaganda machine, its control over access and information, and its selling of the "war on terror" -- beginning with the buildup to the Iraq war. David Barstow's excellent reporting also underscored the complicity of the major media.

The scheme reaches all the way to the Bush White House, where top officials recruited dozens of "military analysts" to spread favorable views of the war on TV and radio -- without revealing they were working from Pentagon scripts and often lobbying for major military contractors. However, spreading "covert propaganda" is illegal under federal law, as a new campaign by our friends at Free Press is reminding us. Therefore Congress must investigate these military pundits and their ties to the Bush administration, defense contractors and our national news media.

Watch this video to see how bad the problems are.

The Sunday Times' article detailing the massive, secret coordinated campaign by the Pentagon and all the leading television news channels to sell and defend the administration's Iraq policy is a critical piece of investigative journalism. David Barstow provided meticulous and aggressive reporting, even referencing how The Times'amplified Pentagon "surrogates" without sufficient disclosure for readers. The Times also deserves credit, both for running the lengthy piece and suing the government to obtain related documents. (Read the whole thing here, or try this YouTube excerpt.)

The Nation's Katrina vanden Heuvel is urging Congress to investigate the program exposed by the article:

In its rigorous documentation of the relationship between the government, the networks and retired military analysts, the lineaments of the corrosive structure and impact of a new military-media-industrial complex are exposed. This corrupt complex demands investigation by all relevant Congressional committees...

Glenn Greenwald, who has written extensively about the media's pro-war bias and undisclosed conflicts of interest, flags the galling (non)-response of several news organizations, near the end of the article: