Post by RS Davis on Mar 2, 2004 2:46:57 GMT -5
[glow=red,2,300]James W. Harris Wrote:[/glow]
U.S. government officials and the Pentagon have long complained that U.S. media coverage of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is biased and unbalanced.
So they've decided to fix the problem -- by launching the Pentagon's own news service, to bypass the civilian media (also known as "the free press") entirely.
The American public "currently gets a pretty slanted picture," Army Capt. Randall Baucom, a spokesman for the Kuwait-based U.S.-led Coalition Land Forces Command, told Associated Press (presumably one
of those biased U.S. news services). "We want them to get an opportunity to see the facts as they exist, instead of getting information from people who aren't on the scene."
So starting in April, the Pentagon plans to send military video, photos and text from war sites directly to the Internet and to news outlets.
At $6.3 million, the project, called Digital Video and Imagery Distribution System (DVIDS) is one of the largest military "public affairs" (i.e., propaganda) projects of recent years.
U.S. officials charge that the non-government media focus unduly on catastrophic events like car bombs and soldiers' deaths, while not paying sufficient attention to the military's efforts to rebuild the countries it bombed and invaded. DVIDS is intended to "balance" that.
DVIDS will also let the Pentagon provide hand-picked photos, footage and stories to the media concerning events from which the military has barred the civilian media from covering -- thus giving the government
virtually total control over coverage of such events.
"We have an unfair advantage," Baucom said. "We're going to be able to get closer to the incident and provide better spokespeople to give the right information. The important thing is that we provide the public with accurate information."
Critics, however, note that the Pentagon is not renowned for providing "accurate information" about controversial military events. Many view this as simply the latest move in an increasing effort by the military
to censor and control civilian press coverage.
"The Army wants to get their view across and they are using a technique as old as any public relations maneuver ever devised," Aly Colon of the Poynter Institute, a journalism research and education
center, told Associated Press.
"I would view the Army's decision, in the same way that I would view OPEC creating a communications system to help the American public understand what it means when prices go up," Colon said.
"This is the kind of news that people get in countries where the government controls the media. Why would anybody here want to buy into it?" Mac McKerral, president of the Society of Professional Journalists, told Associated Press.
DVIDS will put a lot of their effort into providing locally focused stories to small and medium-sized newspapers and TV stations in the U.S. The local angle -- and the zero cost -- are intended to make the stories attractive to such media, and the result is expected to be a
vast increase in positive coverage of war-related matters -- a major propaganda coup.
"There are numerous good news stories that aren't told that do provide a better balance on the overall successes we achieved in Iraq," he said. "We'll be able to provide the option for those types of stories.
They're not going to lead in a major daily newspaper, but they'll play well in smaller daily papers and especially weekly papers."
(Source: Associated Press
www.wtnh.com/Global/story.asp?S=1675781 )
U.S. government officials and the Pentagon have long complained that U.S. media coverage of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is biased and unbalanced.
So they've decided to fix the problem -- by launching the Pentagon's own news service, to bypass the civilian media (also known as "the free press") entirely.
The American public "currently gets a pretty slanted picture," Army Capt. Randall Baucom, a spokesman for the Kuwait-based U.S.-led Coalition Land Forces Command, told Associated Press (presumably one
of those biased U.S. news services). "We want them to get an opportunity to see the facts as they exist, instead of getting information from people who aren't on the scene."
So starting in April, the Pentagon plans to send military video, photos and text from war sites directly to the Internet and to news outlets.
At $6.3 million, the project, called Digital Video and Imagery Distribution System (DVIDS) is one of the largest military "public affairs" (i.e., propaganda) projects of recent years.
U.S. officials charge that the non-government media focus unduly on catastrophic events like car bombs and soldiers' deaths, while not paying sufficient attention to the military's efforts to rebuild the countries it bombed and invaded. DVIDS is intended to "balance" that.
DVIDS will also let the Pentagon provide hand-picked photos, footage and stories to the media concerning events from which the military has barred the civilian media from covering -- thus giving the government
virtually total control over coverage of such events.
"We have an unfair advantage," Baucom said. "We're going to be able to get closer to the incident and provide better spokespeople to give the right information. The important thing is that we provide the public with accurate information."
Critics, however, note that the Pentagon is not renowned for providing "accurate information" about controversial military events. Many view this as simply the latest move in an increasing effort by the military
to censor and control civilian press coverage.
"The Army wants to get their view across and they are using a technique as old as any public relations maneuver ever devised," Aly Colon of the Poynter Institute, a journalism research and education
center, told Associated Press.
"I would view the Army's decision, in the same way that I would view OPEC creating a communications system to help the American public understand what it means when prices go up," Colon said.
"This is the kind of news that people get in countries where the government controls the media. Why would anybody here want to buy into it?" Mac McKerral, president of the Society of Professional Journalists, told Associated Press.
DVIDS will put a lot of their effort into providing locally focused stories to small and medium-sized newspapers and TV stations in the U.S. The local angle -- and the zero cost -- are intended to make the stories attractive to such media, and the result is expected to be a
vast increase in positive coverage of war-related matters -- a major propaganda coup.
"There are numerous good news stories that aren't told that do provide a better balance on the overall successes we achieved in Iraq," he said. "We'll be able to provide the option for those types of stories.
They're not going to lead in a major daily newspaper, but they'll play well in smaller daily papers and especially weekly papers."
(Source: Associated Press
www.wtnh.com/Global/story.asp?S=1675781 )
