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Pentagon Opens Propaganda Office for Iraq/Afganistan News
Unhappy with free-press outlets of information, the Pentagon has decided to start its own news service focusing on the successes in Iraq/Afganistan. The government-funded news service will be given $6.3 million to start and be evaluated after a few months. So much for the free press.
Source: TheTip/Reuters, 2004-02-27
Candidate: Big Government
KUWAIT CITY, Kuwait - The U.S. military will launch its own news service in Iraq and Afghanistan to send military video, text and photos directly to the Internet or news outlets.
The $6.3 million project, expected to begin operating in April, is one of the largest military public affairs projects in recent memory, and is intended to allow small media outlets in the United States and elsewhere to bypass what the Pentagon views as an increasingly combative press corps.
U.S. officials have complained that Iraq-based media focuses on catastrophic events such as car bombs and soldiers' deaths, while giving short shrift to U.S. rebuilding efforts.
The American public "currently gets a pretty slanted picture," said Army Capt. Randall Baucom, a spokesman for the Kuwait-based U.S.-led Coalition Land Forces Command. "We want them to get an opportunity to see the facts as they exist, instead of getting information from people who aren't on the scene."
The project, called Digital Video and Imagery Distribution System or DVIDS, will also give the Pentagon more control of the coverage when calamities do happen.
Army camera teams will be able to use their access to battle zones or military bases to film the aftermath of rebel attacks on U.S. troops — or U.S. raids on insurgent targets — and then offer free pictures to news outlets within two hours.
At times civilian media are kept away from such events.
"We have an unfair advantage," Baucom said. "We're going to be able to get closer to the incident and provide better spokespeople to give the right information. The important thing is that we provide the public with accurate information."
But media analysts argued that the military has a vested interest in making sure its viewpoint is heard.
"The Army wants to get their view across and they are using a technique as old as any public relations manuever ever devised," said Aly Colon, an ethics group leader at the Poynter Institute, the journalism research and education center in St. Petersburg, Fla.
"I would view the Army's decison, in the same way that I would view OPEC creating a communications system to help the American public understand what it means when prices go up," he said.
"This is the kind of news that people get in countries where the government controls the media. Why would anybody here want to buy into it?" Mac McKerral, president of the Society of Professional Journalists, told The Associated Press.
The Army is in the midst of contracting to outfit five Mobile Public Affairs Detachments with a suitcase-sized reporting kit containing digital video and still cameras, a laptop computer and a Norsat NewsLink 3200 satellite broadcast terminal. Four teams will be based in Iraq and one in Afghanistan.
Much of the effort is aimed at packaging and shipping locally focused stories to small and medium-sized newspapers and TV stations in the United States, said Army Col. Rick Thomas, who heads the effort.
Most small U.S. media outlets can't afford to send a reporter to Iraq to cover a local military unit, Thomas said. Since the ongoing troop rotation involves several Army National Guard and Reserve units from communities across the United States, there are small media outlets who might never get news of their neighbors' work in Iraq.
"The vast majority are dependent on other news organizations to get their products," Thomas said. "We think we can give them some more focused copy. We can shoot video of someone from, say, Tupelo, Miss., and they've got what looks like a very good hometown piece."
The military brass was surprised and impressed with the speed and immediacy of the coverage of journalists embedded with U.S. combat units during the war, and wanted to develop the same capabilities, Thomas said.
Television crews demonstrated their equipment for Army public affairs teams, and Thomas said his staff compiled a list of equipment needed to cover breaking news.
The Army already has dozens of its own reporters in Iraq and Afghanistan writing for internal newsletters and magazines. Thomas said he hopes civilian media can reuse the same stories, or at least the Army's photos and video.
The military's reporters will transmit their stories and video to servers at Third Army headquarters in Atlanta, and allow access to them over a password-protected Internet site, Baucom said. Accredited news organizations will be allowed to register for free access, he said.
Thomas said the military also plans to use the equipment for internal video, such as beaming pictures from an aircraft's gun camera to a Pentagon briefing.
The DVIDS units will also make it easier to get positive stories published, Thomas said.
"There are numerous good news stories that aren't told that do provide a better balance on the overall successes we achieved in Iraq," he said. "We'll be able to provide the option for those types of stories. They're not going to lead in a major daily newspaper, but they'll play well in smaller daily papers and especially weekly papers."
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User Originated Comments:
From: USAFARTS
2004-06-08 18:49:45
mike e, what planet are you on freak? you going to
get this site closed down? put up or shut up pal.
go on, shut it down! i dare ya. i double dare ya.
hahahaha, what a lame prick. this site would
present both sides of the story, if you would just
stfu for a while so that we can read what others
think for a change, instead of trying to shut
everyone up by boring them to death with your
tired old cr-p. you really need to get a life pal,
because the one you got totally s--ks.
From:
2004-06-08 07:31:51
mike e, this site is already full of your
garbage.wtf are you on about? get a job you bum.
btw you fricken brain surgeon, liberals don't have
any doctrine to follow, thats what makes them
liberal.
From:
2004-06-08 07:28:14
im all for post natal abortion. lets start with
mike e.
From:
2004-06-05 12:41:34
--------------------------------------------------
------------------------------
from: mike
e
now, are we going to have a *forum*,
where both sides of an issue can be brought up? is
this going to be a site that allows free speech?
or is this site going to *continue* to get rid of
my posts the day after they are put up? because i
can load up each subject title every day, until
you have to shut down this site! if i can not
speak out against your propaganda, if i not have
free speech, why should i play by the rules of
ettiquite? up to now, i have only visited this
site occasionally. but i can make it my business
to do this *every* day! also, someone threatened
that "the administrators can block your postings,
it is easy to do." i really hope you do that,
because *then* i have a legal case of a free
speech violation and we can get rid of this site.
but to that moron who said that, you couldn`t do
it anyway, because i can use 10 different emails
and send from 10 different locations, haha. unless
you want to make the site private and just talk to
yourselves, which is all you`re doing anyway, i`m
one of only a handful of people who acually use
their brain and think and not goose-step to the
same liberal drum that beats "you must be in
lock-step with us. you must have a knee-jerk
reaction every day that promotes hatred for bush.
you must say everything he has ever done is evil
and wrong. he only cares about oil and making his
rich freinds richer. he probably planned and
executed 9-11. all republicans bad, all democrats
good. all wealthy people are evil and made their
money by taking the blood from the poor. (unless
they are liberal) you have no idea, do you, how
ridiculous you sound! but i need a laugh. so,
either i have my freedom of speech, where people
can read my posts, like everyone else on this
site, like americans, or i don`t, it`s up to
you.
------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------
From:
2004-06-05 11:49:09
from: mike e
zell miller and joeseph
lieberman are the only *real* democrats left in
that joke of a party. the founding fathers, even
jack kennedy, are rolling over in their graves
that these socialist scum, like kerry, would use
the word "democrat" for the way they act, the laws
they p-ss, the judges they elect.why do i use such
a strong word? i`ll tell you. they have already
done so much damage to this country it`s going to
take a generation to get rid of the stench of the
clinton years and longer to get rid of those
judges. but people see that now, from the
decimation of our military, to one of the many
clinton-appointed judges in san francisco (sodom)
that is fight`ing so hard to make sure a 9
month-old baby, still in the womb, can legally
have it`s skull crushed and it`s brain s--ked out
to avoid it`s "mother" being a little "depressed".
oh yes, we must avoid that at all costs! we cant
have women running around "depressed"! as a matter
of fact, i know that a lot of women get depressed
after the normal birth of a baby. perhaps a
liberal president like john kerry can do those
women a favor and get a law p-ssed where a woman
can get that same "procedure", as they call it,
done to her week-old newborn! i don`t see the
difference, except for a week.
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