Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon's Hidden Hand

The Pentagon has cultivated "military analysts" in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the Bush administration's wartime performance. Full Story »

Posted by Leo Romero

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Review

Margarita Persico
3.9
by Margarita Persico - Dec. 31, 2008

This investigative report is about war analysts efforts to convince the majority of Americans who were calling the war on Iraq a mistake. Americans in 2005 started expressing concerns and criticism over Guantánamo Bay, which led to investigations and analysis of this situation and the war. The investigation exposed that many of these analyst, who met 18 times with Rumsfeld and made three trips to Iraq, were bias because they were friends and colleagues. It also exposed the fact that many analysts had personal interest with defense companies, some lobbying for the defense industry, or ideological interest, and also gave some of the analyst a business advantage. They exposed that the analyst misled, that they used the media – though not quite a self-investigation, since broadcast media such as CNN carried most exposure. Though the story is very informative and documented, it is too long and might lose the average reader. With analysis this long, perhaps considered dry information by most readers, though of valued, I would suggest to the writing team to also produce some type of “Reader’s Digest” version to access the busy person who has perhaps just 10 minutes to read the story and no access to the Internet to see the multi-media summaries. ======== On Multi-media: The article is well supported by video are divided in three chapters “The Generals’ Revolt,” “A Private Meeting,” and Deployed on Air” explaining the process using audio, video, and documents such as letters, transcripts of a meeting between military analysts and Donald Rumsfeld. An analyst tells Rumsfeld that he is winning the war, but the media is focusing on the negative. There is a section in the multi-media with only excerpts from selected documents and another with all the documents the NYT had available.

“Federal agencies, for example, have paid columnists to write favorably about the administration.”

I found it too long, though a reminder that we must question everything, especially from the so call “experts”. What are they trying to sell me on? What is their slant?

“CNN requires its military analysts to disclose in writing all outside sources of income. But like the other networks, it does not provide its military analysts with the kind of written, specific ethical guidelines it gives its full-time employees for avoiding real or apparent conflicts of interest.”

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Margarita's Rating

Overall
3.9

Good
from 13 answers
Quality
4.1
Facts
4.0
Fairness
4.0
Information
5.0
Sourcing
3.0
Style
4.0
Context
4.0
Depth
4.0
Enterprise
4.0
Popularity
3.0
Recommendation
3.0
Credibility
3.0
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