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Pentagon propaganda is bad news

There is one sure-fire way to destroy the credibility of the nascent Western-style press sprouting in Iraq and that is to pay it for positive news coverage. Yet that is precisely what the Pentagon has been caught doing.

While the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development are spending millions of dollars to educate Iraqi journalists on the basics of independent and unbiased reporting, the Defense Department is spending additional millions of dollars to corrupt local reporters and newspapers, paying them to spin the news in the United States' favor.

It is hard to know just how counterproductive this covert propaganda program is to the effort to win over Iraqis' hearts and minds. But there is the danger that Iraqis will soon discount all encouraging news reports, assuming that the story is just another puff piece bought by the American government.

The campaign was designed to plant positive stories in local media on issues such as the state of the Iraqi economy and containing the insurgency. Some friendly journalists were paid a monthly stipend for their help.

Why is anyone surprised? This is the same administration that was recently admonished by the Government Accountability Office investigation for creating phony video news reports for distribution to U.S. television stations and paying some conservative commentators to promote administration programs.

Engaging in covert propaganda is illegal at home. While there is no law against it overseas, it doesn't take a genius to understand that a plan to manipulate the Iraqi public by undermining the objectivity of its press will backfire as surely as a 1958 Edsel.

Since the program has come to public light, the White House has expressed consternation and Sen. John Warner, Republican chairman of the Armed Services Committee, demanded a briefing, the White House expressed concern and the Pentagon promised an investigation.

If the point of our continued presence in Iraq is to bring democracy and freedom to its people, as the president has repeatedly stressed, then the Pentagon is getting in the way of its own objective. We should be encouraging robust, responsible and ethical new media that act as a counterweight to repression and a force for governmental accountability when the American military finally departs. Instead, we are teaching Iraqi journalists to follow the example of places like China, Uzbekistan and the old Iraq, where those in power use the press as a propaganda organ.

[Last modified December 8, 2005, 00:50:19]