Free Media
Mostafa Zein Al-Hayat - 22/04/08//
The American attempts to "win hearts and minds" in the Middle East began before the war on Iraq, and are continuing today. They have involved the use of all types of media and non-media. Big institutions and respectable research centers, with huge financial resources at their disposal, have circulated millions of misleading documents and information. The CIA has set up private television and radio stations to justify the war and cement the conviction among the public that its noble goal can be summed up in spreading freedom, democracy and the American way of life.
In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the former US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, set up the Office of Strategic Influence to provide the press with misleading information. For even more misinformation, the office provided information to news agencies and the press via a third party. The office remained active until the press revealed its existence, and the Pentagon was forced to shut it down.
Another scandal the US occupation forces took part in was unveiled in 2005 and involved the "bribery of the Iraqi press." A number of veterans formed a company called the Lincoln Group and won a contract to oversee the writing of articles, later translated into Arabic by an Iraqi contractor, and then given to another contractor, who would disseminate them in the newspapers, via a prior agreement, without any reference to their being advertisements. Naturally, other newspapers that were unaware of the activity reprinted these articles, on the basis of their status as reliable sources of information.
These articles focused on the human side of American soldiers, like saving a child from death, providing medical attention to wounded people, getting water to villages, or sponsoring reconciliation between tribes, especially if they were from different sects.
If the exposure of these scandals caused the closure of companies and institutions created by the US government, the administration continues to play the same role, with different methods, which will be revealed later. The latest example is the scandal of coaching former military officers to serve as head analysts on television, and distributing them among media outlets after providing them with information, some of which was true and the other misleading.
This scandal was exposed two days ago by the New York Times, which said that the Pentagon had organized special trips for these people to Iraq. They would come back and spread the information they had received on the way, without referring in their analyses to what they saw on the ground.
The Pentagon was able to guarantee the loyalty of these analysts in two ways. The first was because they were veterans, who could not stand against the institution where they spent their lives. The second was that the Pentagon was paying these people for their work, above what they were making from the media in question. The dangerous thing is that the interest of these people began to lie in extending the war. They would base their analyses on the necessity of its continuing in order to "root out terror."
The scandals of the free media are many, sometimes equaling the number of war crimes that have been committed.
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