Experts, Crooks and the American Media
April 24th, 2008 by WILLIAM KERN
The repercussions of a recent New York Times article about how the Pentagon manipulated the American media have begun to be felt in the foreign press.
Serge Truffaut writes for Montreal’s Le Devoir,
“The old adage that “the first casualty of war is truth” is one to which the Pentagon has stuck to with unheard of will, strength, and consistency. Thanks to the Benedictine work a journalist from The New York Times - and there is no better word to describe it- we now know that the U.S. executive has applied itself to building a propaganda machine so powerful, that it highlights the disdain that Bush and company feed on with respect to democracy.”
And who is to blame, according to Truffaut?:
“Every aspect, element and factor of this story depends on a … state of mind! … That of Rumsfeld and Cheney. It has been repeated often enough that these veterans of the Nixon and Ford Administrations have never digested the obligation they were given when Ford was in the White House: to manage the diminishment of Executive power that resulted from Watergate and the Vietnam War. When they returned, their inclination for an Imperial America had combined with a relish for revenge and the recovery of lost mandates of the 1970s. And with the great damage we now know.”
By Serge Truffaut
Translated By Ebtehaj Kalantar
April 22, 2008
Canada - Le Devior - Original Article (French)
The old adage that “the first casualty of war is truth” is one to which the Pentagon has stuck to with unheard of will, strength, and consistency. Thanks to the Benedictine work a journalist from The New York Times - and there is no better word to describe it- we now know that the U.S. executive has applied itself to building a propaganda machine so powerful, that it highlights the disdain that Bush and company feed on with respect to democracy.
[The “Benedictine” New York Times reporter in question is David Barstow. The headline is Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand ].
Well before the tragedy of September 11, Torie Clarke, then boss of public relations at the Pentagon, had decided to set up a group of retirees within the military, capable of properly posing as television analysts. Obviously, she had taken particular care to ensure that these men shared the neoconservative views of the administration.
Quite simply, the group’s purpose was to subvert the work of traditional journalists who occupy the media space with experts in the pay of the Pentagon. The operation was successful beyond expectations and those of Donald Rumsfeld, then Secretary of Defense, and Dick Cheney, the Vice President. Thus these 80 generals and colonels who have regularly paraded on television screens have in fact proven to be the true chroniclers of the war in Iraq. And this, from the moment the White House had decided to overthrow Saddam Hussein. In other words, this slew of men of rank simply relayed and then covered up the lies about weapons of mass destruction.
Even worse, the major networks; CBS to CNN, not to be outdone by FOX, NBC and ABC, have repeatedly resorted to these soldiers without verifying whether they were part of the conflict of interest, as they do with journalists.
READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing translated foreign press coverage of the United States.
This entry was posted on Thursday, April 24th, 2008 at 4:42 pm and is filed under CNN, Hypocrisy, The New York Times, Newspapers, Fox News, Wall Street Journal, Journalism, Pentagon, MSNBC, ABC News, Intelligence Community, CBS, Gerald Ford, NBC, Fox, Bush Administration, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Canada, Iraq, Foreign Affairs, Military, TV News, Foreign Politics, Scandals, Donald Rumsfeld, News, Quebec, Neoconservatives, Columnists, Original Reporting. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
