Glenn Greenwald: the retired military analysts story continues to be censored by the networks
Glenn Greenwald has posted another excellent report on corruption of the corporate media.
Here’s the background. In 2008, the NYT’s David Barstow broke the story of how retired generals posing as media analysts, “had been co-opted by the Pentagon to make its case for the war in Iraq, and how many of them also had undisclosed ties to companies that benefited from policies they defended.” Barstow’s story received extremely limited play by the corporate electronic media.
Image by the Department of Defense (public domain)
Even though Barstow has now won a Pulitzer Prize, his story about the analysts is still being censored. By whom? By the television networks that made unethical use of the generals’ highly biased analyses.
By whom were these “ties to companies” undisclosed and for whom did these deeply conflicted retired generals pose as “analysts”? ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN and Fox — the very companies that have simply suppressed the story from their viewers. They kept completely silent about Barstow’s story even though it sparked Congressional inquiries, vehement objections from the then-leading Democratic presidential candidates, and allegations that the Pentagon program violated legal prohibitions on domestic propaganda programs.
As Greenwald reports, these networks are now adding insult to injury. They are not even reporting on the basis for Barstow’s Pulitzer.
The outright refusal of any of these “news organizations” even to mention what Barstow uncovered about the Pentagon’s propaganda program and the way it infected their coverage is one of the most illuminating events revealing how they operate. So transparently corrupt and journalistically disgraceful is their blackout of this story that even Howard Kurtz and Politico — that’s Howard Kurtz and Politico — lambasted them for this concealment.
Greenwald provides lots of details in his article, and numerous relevant links.
