Questions Linger about the Military-Media Complex
Two disturbing questions linger on the follow-up to the New York Times story exposing that former military officers presented as experts on TV were actually spouting Pentagon spin on the war in Iraq:
1. Why did TV outlets, the networks as well as the more culpable cable units, rush these folks on the air with little regard to potential conflicts of interest?
2. Why did the story attract little or no interest from other print organizations when it certainly should have?
The television networks became enablers, largely for Pentagon spin. The generals and colonels called in for quickie interviews should have been vetted for independent thinking. They weren't.
Of course, Fox was the most willing to put the Bush administration's best foot forward on almost any aspect of the nonending conflict. Nothing new there.
The motto of "we report, you decide" from Fox has been a joke all along. Roger Ailes, the news organization's top newsman and a former Republican consultant, knew what he was doing when he formed the GOP-slanted network.
Back when the war started—so long ago—the Pentagon invited former top brass in for a briefing. It amounted to a Don Rumsfeld snow job.
One well-known Marine general told me he never went back to a Rumsfeld briefing and did his own reporting with private visits to the Pentagon.
The second question is equally puzzling. Once this story broke in the Sunday Times , it apparently was too exclusive for the rest of the media to follow up. Perhaps the TV organizations were too embarrassed, but the editors of newspapers didn't give it any legs.
USA Today did write a tough editorial deserving of quoting: "It was a tour de force in deception and manipulation, a credibility killer but nothing new in Washington."
Nothing new is right.
Tags: Iraq war (2003-) | media | military
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Reader Comments
John Mashek on the "discreditted triple dipping Generals-Admirals"
Right on (my respected friend, John Mashek:
I must say I have been talking back to the TV set displaying these triple dippers since the Iraq War was prepping. There ought to be some procedure where by these Generals and Colonels, and Admirals could lose retirement rank for these egregious greedy, egocentric actions. I would expect such "pre-emptive actions by the Pentagon, but I do not excuse the retirees who have entered into these unethical business arrangements with the networks, NOR do I excuse the network executives who hired them, for whatever the costs, NOR do I excuse the anchors of the networks who led, hour after hour, into these military retiree prostitutes. The experienced anchors, network and cable, should have been challenging their executives from the get-go; afterall, the executives need jouranlistic, ethical, guidanace from their "over-paid, " so called, "journalist anchors." Strong e-mail to follow.
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John W. Mashek covered politics in Washington for four decades with U.S. News & World Report, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and the Boston Globe. His primary beats were Congress, the White House, and national politics. He covered every presidential election from 1960 to 1996. He was a panelist in three televised presidential debates in 1984, 1988, and 1992.