Spreading the Plame
It’s time more journalists were called on the carpet for bad judgment
Broward-Palm Beach New Times
By Bob Norman
Thomas Friedman: “He’s like a mouse on a sinking ship, running from nook to nook as the water comes to flood his excuses.”
Jim Hoagland: “This is sort of the Post’s version of Judith Miller, only he gets more leeway because he’s an op-ed columnist. … Hoagland, to his great detriment, forged a too-close, 30-year friendship with Ahmad Chalabi. It obviously skewed the man’s logic.”
Kingsley Guy: “I put Guy’s name here only because he runs the Sun-Sentinel’s editorial page, where numerous unsigned and unintelligible commentaries have appeared regarding Iraq.”
Nicolas Kristof: “Here’s my advice to Mr. Kristof: Stop trying to fly with the hawks. They’re smarter and meaner than you are. If you’re a dove, be a damned dove.”
Jeffrey Goldberg: “I think Vanity Fair writer James Wolcott got it right when he described Goldberg’s prose as ‘neocon propaganda and scaremongering disseminated under the guise of reporting.'”
PR man Edelman blasts Pentagon’s propaganda campaign
Edelman.com
Edelman CEO Richard Edelman says the Pentagon’s use of the Lincoln Group to place positive stories in Iraqi newspapers “is utterly unacceptable behavior.” He writes: “In no way does this describe public relations. It is pay for play and a PR firm based in the US is doing it. Advertising and public relations are not the same thing. We don’t do storyboards. We don’t buy space. We don’t pay journalists to be on our side. … If a free media is a central aspect of a democratic society, then we cannot allow our PR industry to impede its development. It is a perversion of our business, an intentional blurring of a clear demarcation between paid and earned media.”
U.S. paid Baghdad Press Clubbers up to $200/month for puff pieces (KR)
U.S. Military Covertly Pays to Run Stories in Iraqi Press
By Mark Mazzetti and Borzou Daragahi, Times Staff Writers
According to several sources, the process for placing the stories begins when soldiers write “storyboards” of events in Iraq, such as a joint US-Iraqi raid on a suspected insurgent hide-out, or a suicide bomb that killed Iraqi civilians.
The storyboards, several of which were obtained by The Times, read more like press releases than news stories. They often contain anonymous quotes from US military officials; it is unclear whether the quotes are authentic.
“Absolute truth was not an essential element of these stories,” said the senior military official who spent this year in Iraq.