NYT Proves Pentagon Media PSYOP

Its official. Pentagon money and influence were going into keeping up the desired spin in the US news media. Everything you ever suspected is true. "Military analysts," you know, those guys who are always on the news cheerleading for whatever war the POTUS has started now, were practically on the payroll.

NYT:

Message Machine
Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand

By DAVID BARSTOW
Published: April 20, 2008

To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.

The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants. The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration’s war on terror. It is a furious competition, one in which inside information and easy access to senior officials are highly prized.

Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks.

...

(11 more pages at the link...)

In an editorial, the Boston Globe says it better than I ever could:

Propaganda at home

April 22, 2008

ANYONE who has watched the military analysts hired by TV networks has heard rosy assessments of the war in Iraq. The similarities between their judgments and the Pentagon's are not coincidental. As The New York Times demonstrated by suing the Pentagon to obtain 8,000 pages of documents, those analysts were enlisted by the Defense Department in a psychological warfare operation targeting the domestic audience. And, as the newspaper reported Sunday, many of the retired military officers appearing on news shows were using their access to the Pentagon and the airwaves to procure lucrative contracts for some 150 defense contractors, which employed them as consultants, board members, lobbyists, or executives.

This is no subtle attempt to influence public opinion. It is a government program to corrupt the free flow of information that serves, in a healthy democracy, to inoculate the public against official lies, bad policy, and misbegotten wars.

...

This is a tactic more suitable for Vladimir Putin's Russia. In fact, the Pentagon's manipulation of the media has been more deft than the Kremlin's because it was better hidden.

In the end, the government's disguised lies have done more damage to American democracy and the national interest than to any foreign enemy. History's epitaph for the Pentagon's psywar operation will be: "We fooled ourselves."

Media Matters has more on the subject here.

Score one for this blog. We've been saying that domestic PSYOPS are selling wars to our people for 10 years now. It wasn't really much of an accomplishment, though. When your nose tells you that something is rotten, it nearly always is.

AIR AMERICA RADIO IMPLODES!

Goodbye Air America Radio.

The new boss is actually NOT same as the old boss.

He's worse.

Now, Randi Rhodes had been looking to get out of her contract for quite some time. She hated Air America and they hated her. She had issues with management from day one. First she thought Al Franken was a weak lead in, then she thought they should have promoted her show more, then she decided she hated New York (presumably one winter there too many), etc etc etc etc etc. On and on.

I know, professionals tough it out, but that in fact is what she did. To a fault, in fact. She re-signed with them twice, even though it was obvious that everything had gone straight down the crapper and was going to stay there. Sounds professional to me.

Meanwhile her alleged main squeeze had gone over to NovaM, the new network started by Drobny after HE got screwed over by AAR management, starring Mike Malloy who had been stupidly fired by same. (NovaM is promising. Not particularly relevant from a radio business standpoint right now, but promising. I think I'll go to their web site and give them some money.)

One can say that Randi's show sucked, and to some extent it did, compared to what she's capable of, but that's not the point. The point is that Air America management walked right into a bear trap, and then did nothing about it.

Randi was suspended essentially for getting all pottymouth in a bar. That's right. She used potty words. In a bar. In San Francisco. HORRORS!!!! The woman should be STONED!!!!!!!!!!!! (Or maybe she was.)

BFD.

OK, it was at a station event, maybe on AAR's dime.

BFD.

OK, she called Hillary a [intercoursing] [person who is paid for sex]. Hillary's been called worse. BFD.

With blitherheads like this for management, no wonder everyone wants out. They don't recognize a lose-lose situation when they see it.

OK... the news has been developing all day, but at the end this is what we have. Some of the sources no longer exist. One (Randi Rhodes Message Board) was taken down by Air America Radio management, corporate [intercoursing] [persons who are paid for sex] that they are. Another (Air America Place) crashed from too many users when the news got out. So you'll just have to Google around for the links. But I kid you not here, this is the poop:

1. Randi Rhodes, the biggest arrow in Air America's admittedly rather tiny quiver, left the company today after a protracted dispute involving her suspension after video of the potty mouth episode became the latest Internet fun. Her position is that they are in breach of her contract. Their position is that she is in breach of her contract. Either way, sayonara.

2. Radio 960 in San Francisco, the one whose fund raiser had the potty language that started all this, immediately announced she'd be on their station Monday.

3. Mere hours later, way too soon for any of this to be a surprise to any of the players, NovaM announced she was signing to their network and would start Monday. Rumor has it that they are paying her pretty much what she'd been getting from AAR.

4. Randi, who has often said she wants to do her show from Florida, will do her show from Florida.

5. Randi, in a statement, says she's pleased to be working with Manzo again. (I'll bet she is.)

6. Sam Seder, who subbed for Randi today, is not a happy camper. Right before yet another web site (the Sammycam) went down, there were interesting word choices made that indicate maybe he too will be on his merry way before long. At the end of his show, he told Randi that if she was listening, good luck and "maybe I'll see you soon." ????????

7. I would imagine this just about wraps it up for Air America's credibility as a serious progressive radio programmer. Minus Randi's contract, they might even be in better shape as a business, but they are dead meat on a stick as far as the respect of listeners is concerned. They're last year's news. Bye Air America Radio. Nice knowing you.

You Gotta Be On Acid to Wanna Kill Off KLSD!!!!!

Or you have to be Clear Channel Radio, apparently. Has ideology finally trumped common sense at one of CC's best rating turnarounds using the progressive talk format? Or is it just another questionable business decision motivated by a possibly faltering buyout?

According to NonStop Radio, the persistent rumors are now truth:

SAN DIEGO, WAKE UP!
KLSD AM IS ABOUT TO GO DARK

San Diego, it has been confirmed–act now or lose your link to Air America, Jon Elliot, Ed Schultz, Stacy Taylor, Mike Malloy, Scooter and Progressive Talk. Several people have decided to have a rally at the Clear Channel HQ in San Diego, 7:30 a.m. Monday. Download the flier for it, print as many as you can, and get the word out NOW.

NonStop Radio needs your help in order to be as effective as possible in coordinating all local activists into a single engine of will. Contact us immediately if you intend to help the effort to save KLSD, and we will put you in touch with those who are already working on it.

Time is of the essence! Join forces and save the station NOW!

The rumors (now apparently substantiated) involve another of those Clear Channel flips to a local sports/ talk format. According to Liberal Talk Radio blog, a local business person affiliated with CC has already registered the new Web domain, and filed for a callsign currently held by Entercom.

Local sports haven't always done well in SoCal, where there is plenty of on-air competition from major league teams to draw away listeners not interested in how the Aztecs are doing. In addition, several big signals from competing stations would reach San Diego (two even have transmitters just south in Mexico), but KLSD's little signal would not have a comparable reach. If the motive is not ideology, or just stupidity, it would have to be a mysterious collapse in KLSD's latest book. Liberal Talk Radio blog:

...David Tanny at San Diego Radio News is a bit skeptical, given that the two other sports stations in town aren't really setting the world on fire. Meanwhile KLSD has been doing well with liberal talk, getting the best ratings the signal's gotten with various other past formats, though they took an unusual drastic slide in the most recent ratings report, dropping from 2.2 to 0.9 overall. With such a slide, which seems like a fluke to me, no doubt will there be rumors flying.

Save for the most recent book, KLSD has done well with the format, getting its best ratings since the 80s. The station has also helped to spawn local talent, such as Air America Radio's Jon Elliott and frequent fill-in Stacy Taylor.

Used to be, you got more than one lousy book. This would be especially worth considering in our current summer of post-Congressional despair, when left wing politics in general are pretty toxic to one's mental health. (This also explains why this blog hasn't been posted to since last April).

Still, you used to get more than one book. Of course, that was then and this is now.

NBC's Psycho Killer Night! (Details at 11)

No partial birth abortions for NBC. They delivered the Antichrist, alive and healthy, and now they're going oops.

They seem to want it both ways. It's almost as if they're going, "Sure we won the ratings, big-time, after we got lucky the psycho killer chose us, even with the wrong ZIP code, but now we regret any further trauma this material has caused anyone....."

The hell they do. I strongly suspect they're crying all the way to the bank with this one.

What's especially pissing is when they whine that somehow the Psycho Killer Video took on a life of its own. Now they're saying how responsible they are being by taking it out of heavy rotation (after everyone has seen it and it's old news).

What a crock.

The fact is, NBC very likely loved every minute of it. The facts are that they showed it to the cops to cover their legal ass, and when the cops said they didn't need it for evidence (since they already knew the killer was a whack job), they wallpapered the nightly news cycle with it, and then then blamed the video itself for existing.

(I have noticed that about video. You have to watch it every second, or it oozes itself off the tape or disk, and slips silently and unnoticed onto the air.)

And then there's MSNBC. This misbegotten little network has actually evolved into one of the few American news organizations that even fitfully attempts to cover both sides of Washington political issues. This is praiseworthy, but when it comes to hard news, obviously what bleeds, leads.

Oh, they had their boss on, saying something about how they considered it their public responsibility not to suppress the news. Then, since it bled, it led. All evening. Continuously. Loop job. "Here it comes again, folks, Psycho Killer Video. Is this guy crazy or WHAT??? Whoo-HOOOOO!"

What got even more bogus was when they started making shrinks watch it. They'd dial through the Rolodex and drag in various forensic psychologist types. "Shrink," they'd ask, "You are about to watch the Psycho Killer Video along with us, please get as revolted by it all as we are and then render your learned diagnosis."

Then they'd start up the loop, again. Look, there he is, the KILLER!!!! "Kill nasty gun bang bang, you people all made me do it, die kill bang bang evil kill. (Don't I look scary with my vest on?)"

"Shrink," they'd ask, "What is your diagnosis from watching this psychotic whack job ranting at his Webcam?" Shrink would answer, "You just aired a psychotic whack job ranting at his Webcam." "Thank you, Shrink."

It gets better. After MSNBC's live shows ended, the canned documentary stuff was apparently morphed into Psycho Killer Night. I don't know for sure, because I can't watch any of their overdramatized fear-twang even on a good night. ("You're going INSIDE, to see really EVIL people treated REALLY BAD in prisons!!!!!") But it's what I'm told.

Now NBC is sending the flaks out to say how sorry they are, and how long their suits agonized on this one. I'll bet they did. They probably had one whole meeting on their legal liability exposure if they ran like the wind with it. They might even have had another one on how much they should hold back for rating sweeps.

Then they went out and won their time period.

I doubt they'll ever apologize for this thing imprinting itself on the mass consciousness, not to mention the Internet, where now it can inspire the next 30 years of campus mass murderers. And the best we can do as a culture is to debate whether or not college students should be allowed to pack heat in class.

The United States just became a more dangerous country. Try though it may, NBC cannot truthfully deny their share of the blame.

WRONG!!!!! Nooz Totally Blows Huge Shooting Story

I hate going to bed with one set of facts and waking up the next morning to find out they were all wrong.

Oh, they got one thing right. Someone shot up a university campus. That's about all they reported accurately. In the evening, the shooter was a Chinese national on a student visa who had entered through San Francisco a few months ago, and who didn't attend the university.

We all know what THAT means. I would imagine that by now the the Nooz would be calling it terrorism. Anything to shift the blame away from our relentlessly violent culture, giving an excuse for months of punditry about the shortcomings of someone else's culture. Fortunately for us, and for China, the media had apparently made it up as they went along.

On the bloody morning after, the cops identified the shooter as a Korean-American English major living on campus, who had lived in the US for many years as a resident alien. Oh, and he was so quiet...

After 24 hours, the various Nooz types still can't agree on a body count. 33? 24? 30? Some don't count the shooter. Dunno, he looks pretty dead. At least make the goddamn phone call and get the numbers from the local authorities. How hard can that be? It's called reporting, and lots of people do it every day.

Then you have the inevitable feeding frenzy on this stricken campus. Look at all the satellite dishes lined up in front of what until yesterday was the engineering school. They should send the EE students down there for some practical observation of the misuse of what they're learning to design.

Meanwhile, the cable channels have their various photogenic stand-up talent running around trying to corner the shocked and grief-stricken students, who they like to call "kids." You just know the Nooz just wants to stick cameras and mikes in their faces, getting in extra close on their reactions to all the usual tacky Nooz questions like, "How does it FEEL to see your entire Fluid Dynamics 102B class gunned down right before your eyes?" (Hint: pretty shitty.)

Fortunately, no one seems to be talking to them. This is a good thing. It saves us from having to watch what should be private, and it gives the anchors more time to make up facts.

Then there is CNN. There is always CNN. Alas, poor CNN, I knew it well (when it was good and had the International Hour and actually tried to get the facts straight).

One SO hates to pick on poor benighted CNN. It's like stealing a blind person's dog. In this case, though, CNN is making the whole world blind, so they're fair game.

The lowlight definitely had to be Wolf Blitzer (who still insists that's his real name) counting the gun shots on that cell phone video they may never stop looping. He actually put up a score board on his whoopy doo 8-screen video wall thing.

A score board. Like at the hockey game.

And so on the left, here's the video, immediate as hell, if not very revealing. On the right, here's a large, funereal number, over a lurid reddish-purplish background that suggests someone's internal organs falling out. And Wolf goes "There were TWENTY-SEVEN, count them, TWENTY-SEVEN gun shots heard on this video!"

Here we go, carnage fans: Bang. 1. Bang bang. 2, 3. Bang. 4. Pause to reload. Bang bang bang bang bang. 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. And so it goes.

Too bad Vonnegut wasn't alive to see THIS one. It would surely have inspired his next novel.

After this, it got better. Wolf's next victim, oops I mean guest, was apparently some expert on how they train SWAT teams. Wolf made him listen to the shots on the video, reminding us that they were 27 count em 27 of them and you can hear them too, right there on CNN Situation Room. Then he asks, what in your expert opinion do you hear?

The answer was distant gun shots.

When pressed hard by Mr. Blitzer, he theorized (just to avoid dead air) that maybe it was police ordnance going off, in return fire. Wrong. The police didn't fire any shots at the shooter, though the one big bang at the end does most certainly sound like the chained doors being breached.

Today, the university community was supposed to come together for a convocation/ service to start the healing process. Our fine "president" had already made the obligatory statement of shock and dismay in a White House room nicely decorated for the occasion. Unfortunately, he subsequently decided this convocation might also be a good way to continue the media process. Therefore, he and the vivacious, intelligent Laura plan to show up.

Now, the President of the United States does not show up anywhere without hijacking the event. Something about helicopters, armored limos, snipers, a press bus, and a zillion feds in dark suits with handguns of their own tends to change the character of the day a little. Apparently even mass expressions of community grief are no longer excluded from the photo-op list. This borders on ghoulish, but then ghoulish is what America seems to do best.

Today the cable channels have had time to get their graphics in gear. After all, this isn't a war, where typically there have been a few weeks to get all those subliminally unsettling AMERICA GOES APE SHIT graphics together in all their orange and black glory. Yesterday, then, was refreshingly graphics-free. Today, though, they've gotten up an appropriately creepy MASSACRE ON CAMPUS over ghostly blurred whatever, and maybe the occasional cross hairs depending on context.

You know, anyone who watches this stuff every day must be crazy by now. One gun owners' association has already started making the talk show rounds saying that the solution is for every man, woman, and child to pack heat at all times. Unfortunately, the poor deteriorating United States is so amped on violence that I seriously doubt such an armed society would actually be the promised polite society. It would probably just be a dead society.

All in all, what we have here is the best shot (no pun intended) in a long time for an event to finally surpass OJ as the historical US media low point. There's a long way to go, but we've only started.

I need to take a long walk now.

Did Katrina Never Happen? Ask Google.

In the old USSR, it was never a good thing to remember too much. History had a way of changing... Orwell's Memory Hole.

The USSR is gone, or is it? Now we discover, from an article in the Huffington Post, that Katrina never happened. At least it never happened on Google Maps, which the HuffPo writer notes have oddly and disconcertingly reverted to the satellite images used before Katrina. No floods, no levee breaches, no nothing. The old place never looked so good.

I just checked Google Earth, and Katrina never happened there either. I'm looking at all the places I got eyestrain going over after Google changed the pictures to post-Katrina. I'm remembering my long hours finding levee breaches, flood traces, damaged infrastructure, and entire earthen embankments which had moved 30 feet from where they had been before the storm.

No more. Google has changed all the pictures back, and Katrina never happened. Did I just imagine it? Was it all a bad dream caused by watching too many of those "It Could Happen Tomorrow" shows on the Weather Channel? Worse, was I the victim of liberal media propaganda?

It's positively dizzy. One Google Earth place mark says "Katrina Barge," where at one time a barge had gone through the breached levee and come to rest in a neighborhood. But now, there is no barge. There is no breached levee. Weirdest of all, there IS a Lower Ninth Ward. There are houses and trees and cars and people. Birds sing and dogs bark and children play in the street.

To the southwest, the chemical dump that blew up and burned for 3 days has storage tanks again. The river boat dock is back. Is the river boat back too? The aquarium looks as if Katrina had never happened at all. Oh wait, that's right. It didn't.

On the London Avenue Canal, a place mark mentions a levee breach. But there is no breach, there never was a breach, and we have always been at war with Oceania (or is it Eastasia, or does it really matter?).

Up by the lake, the Southern Yacht Club is still there. It never burned and fell into the water after all. The marina has boats in it, and the street doesn't, despite a place mark with a photo that would suggest just the opposite.

This is remarkable. Wait until Brownie finds out he has his old job back. Heck of a job, Google!