Study finds Pentagon benefited from U.S. media ‘embed’ program in Iraq.
Study finds Pentagon benefited from U.S. media ‘embed’ program in Iraq.
Writing in the American Sociological Association’s “Contexts” magazine, sociologist Andrew M. Lindner found that journalists embedded with American troops during the invasion of Iraq “emphasized military successes more often than they covered consequences for Iraqi citizens” which represented a “communications victory” for the Bush administration:
The embedded program proved to be a Pentagon victory because it kept reporters focused on the horrors facing the troops, not the horrors of the civilian war experience. [...] The end result: a communications victory for an administration that hoped to build support for the war by depicting it as a successful mission with limited cost.
The New York Times recently documented the Pentagon’s domestic propaganda program using “military analysts” in the media to garner support for the Iraq war.
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May 18th, 2008 at 6:00 pmWriting in the American Sociological Association’s “Contexts” magazine, sociologist Andrew M. Lindner found that journalists embedded with American troops during the invasion of Iraq “emphasized military successes more often than they covered consequences for Iraqi citizens” which represented a “communications victory” for the Bush administration
Sad that it takes 6 years for this sociologist[?] to come up with we all knew all along!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
May 18th, 2008 at 6:09 pmAnd then a few pictures taken by bored guards at Abu Ghraib flattened the propaganda like a spoon, in a carefully constructed mound of mashed potatoes.
May 18th, 2008 at 6:09 pmOn another thread, OneCitizen has dubbed the beast ‘Military-Industrialized Media (aka “MIM”).’
That’s brilliant. I’m coppin’ it. So much more accurate than “MSM.”
May 18th, 2008 at 6:18 pmThis all has to do with how the Bush Administration has successfully framed the War in Iraq. They have made every discussion of the war begin within the framework that it was a necessary war to have in the first place. (As Keith Olbermann has so eloquently summarized it, “The purpose for the war in Iraq, is to ensure that there is a war in Iraq.”) If we who oppose the war attempt to discuss something that works outside of the framework that “we must have this war and any talk of ending it is ‘defeatist’”, there can never be an honest, open discussion about what to do there. Republicans and conservatives who support having a war in Iraq do not want to talk about anything that would lead to not having a war in Iraq.
May 18th, 2008 at 6:19 pmAh, yes, one of the many freedoms Pres Bush already told us they hate us for.
I can only imagine what the US would look like without a free press. Oh, wait…
May 18th, 2008 at 6:35 pmI have had the dubious honor of living through a number of this Country’s military endeavors while only participating coincidentally in one. The first I remember was “the big one” and Covers of the issues of the Saturday Evening Post and the “Movie-Tone (I think I got it right) News are still vivid. Even through Korea and, to a great extent, Viet Nam the reportings of the media were not questioned in terms of fact or manipulation. However, since that time the communications attributed to the MSM have drawn some serious scrutinity. The credibility of those communications has been reduced to nothing but another opportunity for the greedy politicians, bureaucrats, and corporate leeches, to spread their self-serving bull shit.
I will never see the day again where the news media just reports the facts and I can draw my own conclusions. It is now, and probably ever will be, the time that the “News Media” (I apologize for the Senior Moment that denies me another amusing moniker for the lying bastards) spout their paid-for opinions and we, the citizens of this country that support their BS by paying our cable TV bills and buying the useless products of their sponsors, have to search for the facts at places like TP.
May 18th, 2008 at 6:37 pm#7 Crusty Old Bastard Says:
It is now, and probably ever will be, the time that the “News Media” (I apologize for the Senior Moment that denies me another amusing moniker for the lying bastards) spout their paid-for opinions and we, the citizens of this country that support their BS by paying our cable TV bills and buying the useless products of their sponsors, have to search for the facts at places like TP
That would be “Corporate Media” controlling the masses…
Those that print the ‘HEADLINES’ control the discourse.
In short, FASCISM!
May 18th, 2008 at 7:36 pmman thinkprogress.org It’s getting to the point where everytime I read your headlines I think to myself “no shit sherlock”
in other news!
I’m goin to be talkin to this woman from Paris thats going to be touring the country to do a documentary on America’s Do It Yourselfers.
click Here to set a reminder. Hope you all enjoy it. I know I will.
DIY in the USA
May 18th, 2008 at 7:36 pmWOW! I sure ruffled a few feathers at TP. All I did was address the difference between Sunday Dinner and Sunday Supper and TP got pissed because they weren’t invited. I will just eat your piece of chicken–so there!
May 18th, 2008 at 8:04 pmIn short, FASCISM!
May 18th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
you don’t have to control what people think as long as you control what they think about.
in the Corporate State, corporate media are the State Media…
May 18th, 2008 at 8:05 pmDepicting it as a successful mission with limited costs may been at one time been an objective truth but it is no longer seen that way in ‘reality-based’ world but as an ongoing quagmire with escalating costs.
May 18th, 2008 at 8:11 pmSince Granny says dinner, or supper if you will as Sunday dinner always was fried chicken and I can’t have anything but a skinless breast on the South Beach Diet, (Aside, I have never eaten any part of the fried chicken but the neck, back, and ribs because when I was a kid the grown-ups ate first and got all the good pieces. When I got to be a grown-up the protocol had changed and the kids ate first and got all the good pieces. Ergo I still eat the backs and necks, Granny eats the wings and the dog gets the rest.You grammarticians can have a field day!) won’t be ready for an hour or so I have (Had: that last sentence was a horror!) a few minutes to pontificate.
May 18th, 2008 at 8:12 pmSee 13 above. TP took exception to the reference to Ann Coulter and a female canine but loves horror. I forgot the rest of the diatribe so just enjoy your dinner/supper as the case may be!
May 18th, 2008 at 8:14 pmMIM’s the word. Pass it on…
I stuck the acronym on my variation of a phrase which world-class investigative journalist Norman Solomon used here
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2627
Thanks for the recognition, jonny.
May 18th, 2008 at 8:15 pmOT”check this crowd out at Obama’s rally in Portland OR today.
May 18th, 2008 at 8:19 pm75,000 attended!
Last night I watched “Transformers” with my six year old son. This is a silly adventure flick about robots that turn into trucks and cars – based on the successful line of Hasbro toys.
Who leads the team of daring soldiers and the boy to fight the machines, you ask. The secretary of defense (played by Guliani flack John Voight).
Let me ask you something: in 10,000 stupid movies like this, how many have had the secretary of defense as the hero?
Also noted, the film featured the F-22 joint strike fighter, the fruit of a $34 billion dollar (so far) pentagon program to win air superiority over the non-existent jets of our enemies.
Throughout the movie, the message is militaristic, and the civilian boy hero is finally welcomed into the ranks as the macho military hero (who shoots the bad Transformer in the balls with a grenade launcher) “you’re a soldier now”.
Transformers was released last summer, but it was conceived back when there was one and only one SecDef, the same guy who lunched with Brian Williams and all those “independent expert” whores as part of the Pentagon “psychological warfare” program: Donald Rumsfeld.
I think the Pentagon’s “communications” efforts are more extensive than we know, yet.
May 18th, 2008 at 8:28 pm60 Minutes just had a story about the sorry failure of the US to allow Iraqi refugees into the country–Iraqis who helped this country overthrow Saddam. This country is so screwed in every way I can name. It will take a generation to undo the damage.
May 18th, 2008 at 8:28 pmhad enough,
What a pleasing development! Having spent more years than I wouuld have preferred in Oregon it is delightful to see that Global Warming has dried the moss from the brains of the thinking Oregonians to the point that they can actually have an original thought.
May 18th, 2008 at 8:31 pmquestioneverything Says:
“It will take a generation to undo the damage.”
Good News, my friend, it will take only ONE ELECTION to start the process.
START CAMPAGNING!
May 18th, 2008 at 8:34 pmObviously the editorial/kicktheirassout programmers are single! They do not know that bi!ch is a term of endearment!
May 18th, 2008 at 8:49 pmHAs anyone read the originsal article? This is ridiculous. TP takes something from a different source, presents it as conspriacy, and you guys buy it. READ the original and then use your powers of rationale to make a logical conclusion. For one, this guy is as much a sociologist as I am – he is a grad student. Two, wouldn’t embedded reporters ALWAYS tend to focus on the military and not the civilian aspects? This is common sense — why would one need a study to figure that out? Wow, big surprise, the reporters who travel with the platoons report on the platoons and those situated in Baghdad tend to report more about civilian aspects. Whoa… suprising. I am gonna go out on a limb and say that has probably been the case in every war this country has ever fought.
May 18th, 2008 at 8:56 pmSo you’re a grad student? what field? where at? I enjoyed that part of my life
May 18th, 2008 at 9:02 pmdbadass,
I graduated from grad school in 2002 – MFA
May 18th, 2008 at 9:04 pmCool, I was doing the my stuff a few years earlier. I think we both might have been insulted had someone implied that we knew “nothing” of our chosen disciplines.
May 18th, 2008 at 9:10 pmMax-1@#1 ~! took the words right out of my keyboard!
May 18th, 2008 at 9:11 pmUm, indy. Not so in Nam. We had embedded reporters who covered stuff like MyLai, the Chu Lai massacres in I corps. They saw the horrors of both sides, up close and personal.
May 18th, 2008 at 9:13 pmindy, did you actually read the article? This was published. In a sociology trade magazine. Doesn’t matter if it was by a grad student, along with other researchers. Their point was the DISPARITY between embedded, versus Baghdad stationed, versus free to roam reporters.
Yes, it would seem like an obvious conclusion, but this is research, not conjecture. Valid topic, and conclusion.
May 18th, 2008 at 9:16 pmTo had enough, @ #16:
Thanks so much for posting the link for the Portland rally — just shared the photos with my four teenage sons: Wow, Wow, Wow, Wow.
Go, Barack! Go, Americans! To the betterment of America!
May 18th, 2008 at 9:18 pmMFA means that you can either act or draw, My six year old granddaughter can do both and has had the talent since she was four.
May 18th, 2008 at 9:22 pmI am gonna go out on a limb and say that has probably been the case in every war this country has ever fought.
You may want to climb back off that limb before someone cuts it off behind you.
The embedding (or “in bedding” as some would call it) of journalists covering GDumbya’s dirty little avoidable war in Iraq is extremely different from how the press operated in “every other war this country has ever fought”.
Apparently, world history wasn’t a part of your MFA curriculum.
Embedding was a requirement in order for journalists to enter Iraq. Therefore, there were no journalists who had anything more than the perspective of the company they were embedded with and its limited mission. All reporting was, then, very myopic and “censored” to the extent that the reporter saw only a small slice of the war, never left their assigned unit and became overly identified with the company that was protecting, transporting and feeding him. In this world of instant communications, the members of that company were also more than likely to read (or be told about) what their reporter had written.
In all previous conflicts, war correspondents have been free to move about in-theater and be more objective in their reporting. The result was a broader understanding and a more accurate and uncensored account than what we got from the “shock-and-awe” press corps in Iraq.
May 18th, 2008 at 9:30 pmThere are none so blind as those who will not see. There are none so dumb as those that will not learn, There are none so young as those that will not not mature. There are none so hopeless as those that will not vote Democratic! QED
May 18th, 2008 at 9:31 pmThe embedded reporters were inbed with the military so it comes as no surprise that they totally took their eye off the ball, which was progress in finding the WMD that was justification for the invasion in the first place. In fact, there were a half-dozen reports of WMD found but every one of them were false stories. And what about the Scuds Saddam was supposed to have pointed as Israel. Oh, there weren’t any. Funny how every thing Hans Blix reported turned out to be true and everything Bush said turned out to be false. So, why wouldn’t Bush consider anything Hans Blix was reporting? Obviously, Bush wanted war so bad he could taste it and nothing or nobody was going to stop him. And now here we are into the 6th year of this Bush war. Impeachment would be too good for Bush.
May 18th, 2008 at 9:40 pmWaltTheMan:
Don’t be a jerk man, there are many necessary things that people with MFA’s provide us. Sculpture, castings, drawings, watercolors, oils, instramentialists vocalists for every type of music, historians and many others that this MBA can’t remember, BTW, how well has your president with his worthwhile MBA done?
Walt I suspect that you, like many people, never had the opportunity to expand their minds by going to college. Interestingly enough, the more I learned in my studies, the more I realized how much we don’t know about anything and everything.
Sometimes educated liberals have a difficult time dealing with conservatives who aren’t burdened with a knowledge of the facts, or the desire to learn them. Ignorance is bliss I guess.
May 18th, 2008 at 9:49 pmindyjones Says:
“I graduated from grad school in 2002 – MFA”
I graduated from grad school in 1973 – MPA
Google says:
MPA-Master of Public Administration
MFA-California Chicken Farm Investigation-Mercy For Animals.
You are right to defend bushco but I am not sure they rise to the level of animals. However, anyone that defends chickens woulkd be right at home defending bushco. Don’t tell your Momma and daddy or they might be sending you a bill!
May 18th, 2008 at 9:52 pmPropaganda works. Surprise! Now all of you trolls can go somewhere else and talk about yourselves. That’s all you know, that’s all you will ever know.
May 18th, 2008 at 10:12 pmWhya are Jihadists allowed to use propaganda but not America?
May 18th, 2008 at 10:40 pm>Last night I watched “Transformers”
> with my six year old son.
wow….you know,..now that I think about it, that movie did reek of military propoganda…with a girl with a VERY nice wrack and eyes to help sell it all…man…these creeps really do have their tentacles into EVERYTHING….boy..if Obama can win this, he may actually be the messianic figure his campaign is advertising him as…
May 18th, 2008 at 10:46 pmWell hello there Al Da God
May 18th, 2008 at 10:48 pmOneCitizen Says:
…
Thanks for the recognition, jonny.
_____
De nada. The actual recognition will come when it goes VIRAL. Which I hope to help it to do.
May 18th, 2008 at 11:15 pmI can’t speak for Walt at all, but I think he just made a joke. He didn´t try to be insulting. He is not like that. And well, he has studies in Engineering besides being somewhat a genius.
On another thing:
Such a beautiful thing
May 18th, 2008 at 11:16 pmAl Da God Says:
Whya are Jihadists allowed to use propaganda but not America?
_____
Because it’s a totalitarian technique. Oh — BTW — AMERICA doesn’t use it. The American RIGHT WING does — because, of course, they’re totalitarians.
PSSST — Plutocracy is TEXTBOOK tyranny. It’s OK if you don’t know — they conceal this type of information in books.
May 18th, 2008 at 11:20 pmWell, not only Transformers, but the whole movie industry in the US is dedicated to the perpetuation of the idea of war being a romantic episode where the braves win and the weak and ugly and bad are defeated.
Hundreds of movies are proof of this, or did you watch Tom Cruise in Top Gun saying: “Well, no, I won’t go out and destroy those jets. I first have to know if they really invaded foreign space…which of course we have done first, because the Persian Gulf is really really far off from home”
Nahhhhh…
May 18th, 2008 at 11:33 pmjonny,
May 19th, 2008 at 12:22 amin WW2 and all wars before that America used propganda and we dehumaized our opponents. Why can’t we do so now?
Why is it when our enemies dehumanize us the Left doesn’t complain?
The rest of the world saw the fiasco of the “embedded” reporters from day one…
May 19th, 2008 at 6:15 amOh, and learn what happened to “not embedded” journalists:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine_Hotel
May 19th, 2008 at 6:26 amSince there’s no thinkfast yet today, I’ll post this here:
2 Colo. men exchange Taser shots over parked van
Colorado men exchange Taser shots in dispute over parked van
It wasn’t exactly pistols at 30 paces, but police say a security company supervisor and a restaurateur shot each other with Tasers in a “bonehead” confrontation over parking.
Officers said neither man needed medical attention after the Saturday confrontation, but Harvey Epstein, co-owner of Mamacitas restaurant, was arrested on suspicion of felony menacing and using a stun gun.
Epstein, 36, didn’t immediately respond to messages seeking comment left at the restaurant and his Longmont home Sunday by The Associated Press.
A police report said Epstein and Casey M. Dane, a supervisor for Colorado Security Services Inc., were arguing over a metal boot that one of Dane’s guards had clamped on a wheel of a van parked behind Mamacitas.
Dane told police he was afraid Epstein was going to hit him with a 2-foot-long pair of bolt cutters. Epstein told police he had only tried to remove the boot with the bolt cutters and hadn’t threatened anyone with them.
Epstein told police Dane put his hand on a holstered pistol and threatened to shoot him. Dane told The Associated Press by telephone that he did put his hand on the holstered pistol but never threatened to shoot Epstein.
Both men drew Tasers.
“They shot each other,” Police Sgt. Pat Wyton told the Camera newspaper. “It was just kind of a bonehead deal.”
The guard claimed the van, owned by a Mamacitas employee, was on property he was hired to patrol. The van owner denied that.
Now there’s a candidate for funniest home video, if only someone had gotten the confrontation on tape.
May 19th, 2008 at 7:35 ambarfly Says:
Now there’s a candidate for funniest home video, if only someone had gotten the confrontation on tape.
May 19th, 2008 at 7:35 am Recommend (0) | Report Abuse
More moronic and violent people. I really hope they’ve aimed for their respective privates, and have been electrically castrated, for the goodness of the human gene pool.
May 19th, 2008 at 8:27 amAs revealed in the Winter soldier testimonies, when soldiers had embedded reporters among them they did their utmost to follow rules of engagement and do everything by the book. But during normal circumstances when no reporters were with them ROE was just a technicality not to be taken too seriously. Fire on anything that moves. If you kill a civilian just throw a shovel on the body and report it as a killed IED terrorist
And since embedded reporters tend to bond with the soldiers any suspected wrongdoing would never be reported objectively or possibly not investigated at all.
May 19th, 2008 at 8:30 amFrom the Wiki article I linked above:
The Palestine Hotel, often referred to simply as The Palestine, is an 18-story hotel in Baghdad, Iraq located on Firdos Square, across from the Sheraton Ishtar. It has long been favored by journalists and media personnel.
…
Former military intelligence officer, Army Sargent Adrienne Kinne (Ret.) has revealed (Democracy Now – May 13th, 2008) that she saw secret US military documents that listed the Hotel Palestine as a potential target.
May 19th, 2008 at 8:35 amEvil Spaniard, don´t forget this one.
May 19th, 2008 at 8:45 amTo all:
Cool, I was doing the my stuff a few years earlier. I think we both might have been insulted had someone implied that we knew “nothing” of our chosen disciplines.
IT’S NOT ABOUT INSULTING THE ASPIRING SOCIOLOGIST – I AM NOT DOING THAT – THAT IS A DIFFERENT ISSUE. I QUESTION THE APPROACH AS WHOLE AND WHY THIS GENTLEMAN HAD THOUGHT HE WOUCL HAVE REACHED A DIFFERENT CONCLUSION.
Um, indy. Not so in Nam. We had embedded reporters who covered stuff like MyLai, the Chu Lai massacres in I corps. They saw the horrors of both sides, up close and personal.
THE REPORT NEVER SAID THAT THEY DID NOT COVER CIVILIAN CASULATIES AND THE CIVILIAN CONSEQUENCES – IT REPORTS THAT EMBEDDED REPORTERS DO NOT REPORT THEM AS MUCH AS THE OTHER TWO GROUPS.
MPA-Master of Public Administration
MFA-California Chicken Farm Investigation-Mercy For Animals.
You are right to defend bushco but I am not sure they rise to the level of animals. However, anyone that defends chickens woulkd be right at home defending bushco. Don’t tell your Momma and daddy or they might be sending you a bill!
I WORK IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION – AND DO QUITE WELL WITH MY MFA. GOOD SIR, IF YOU INDEED HAVE AN MPA YOU ARE IN NO POSITION TO BE CRITICIZING MY MFA.
MFA means that you can either act or draw, My six year old granddaughter can do both and has had the talent since she was four.
IT IS NOT JUST LIMITED TO ACTING OR DRAWING. I BELIEVE EDUCATION IS EMPOWERMENT AND IT POREPARES ONE TO THINK CRITICALLY – A QUALITY THAT CAN SPAN AND SUPPORT WORK IN A VARIETY OF CAREER FIELDS.
May 19th, 2008 at 10:04 amJuan C. Says:
Evil Spaniard, don´t forget this one.
May 19th, 2008 at 8:45 am
Yes, Juan, indeed. Since day one, USA has been targeting Al Jazeera, simply because is an arab media outlet and not part of the “embedded” strategy. I’ve seen some of their articles and are fairly neutral and accurate but, of course, they aren’t part of the media machinery that the Bush cabinet, with Cheney as field commander on political brainwashing, and therefore a menace to the neocon spin machine.
Nice free speech defenders.
May 19th, 2008 at 11:02 amSome kind of shock this is…yep.
May 19th, 2008 at 1:56 pmCan we all get along…I don’t think so.
May 19th, 2008 at 1:57 pm