I guess I have a little bit different take on the current flap over the military planting pro-American news stories in Iraqi papers. Some want this to be seen as proof that the war is going badly, and that “good news” must be bought.

Richard Edelman, CEO of the Edelman public relations firm, rips the practice as "utterly unacceptable behavior" and told the Poynter Institute that it is "a perversion of our business, an intentional blurring of a clear demarcation between paid and earned media."

Here's a journalism lesson: If they're buying fake news, the real news must be really bad.

Others want to call it undermining journalistic ethics.

But I see it as a simple use of propaganda to help bring victory. If it were possible to slip some truthful coverage about the war into German newspapers in 1943, would it have been unethical to do so? Or would it have been one more means of undermining the enemy? Heck, what are Voice of America and Radio Marti?

Every bit of good news that brings support to the new Iraqi government also serves to undermine the terrorists. Every word is a bullet, every story a bomb, directed right at al-Zarqawi and his minions. Getting the good news out is key to winning the war. We should not refuse to use the truth as a weapon.

UPDATE: Captain Ed offers a different -- and much more extensive -- take on the story and how the military should have proceeded in this case. I don't necessarily agree with him, but he does have a good point.

This still comes back to building credibility with the Iraqi people. The free press in Iraq is a vitally important part of building the democratic structures necessary to make Iraq into a strong and free ally in the Middle East -- an example of how Arabs can lead themselves, without the traditional strong-man rule of dictator or emir. While exploiting newspapers to surreptitiously get out our point of view might seem like a smart tactical move to counter al-Qaeda propaganda, it's probably a huge mistake strategically in the long run. We're already teaching the Iraqis that their press is nothing more than paid mouthpieces for hidden Powers That Be, feeding into the common Arab predilection for grand conspiracies.

UPDATE 2: More interseting views from Dafydd at Big Lizards.

In other words, the huge "scandal" is that Coalition forces commissioned American soldiers to write "factual" accounts (nobody disputes that they were factual) of military engagements and rebuilding efforts, to counter the malicious lying by the terrorists and the American and international MSM. These accounts were handed to a third party in order to protect the Iraqi newspapers from reprisals by Zarqawi. The stories written by the soldiers were run as ads and paid commentary, which is a normal way to get your message out in Iraq; and they were supposed to have been identified as having been written by American soldiers.

But somehow, attribution didn't always get attached. Who could be responsible for that? Was it deliberate "propaganda," as the Associated Press has taken to calling it?

In fact, the Times even admitted that typically, the stories were identified as adverts, and were sometimes run in special fonts, typographies, and colors. But evidently, not every Iraqi stringer working for the Lincoln Group identified the purchaser as the Coalition when he sold the stories.

In other words, the LA Times even admits that the US military did nothing wrong.

Posted by: Greg at 12:56 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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