Newspaper Inspections at 08:00
Salon’s War Room flags a new front being opened in the War on Snippy Journalists:
… As the Washington Post reports today, U.S. military officials in Iraq are offering a $20 million public relations contract that includes “extensive monitoring of U.S. and Middle Eastern media in an effort to promote more positive coverage of news from Iraq.”
The goal? Help the military to understand “the communications environment” in order to “develop communication strategies and tactics, identify opportunities, and execute events … to effectively communicate Iraqi government and coalition’s goals, and build support among our strategic audiences in achieving these goals.”
So, the question: Is this sinister or just pathetic? We were ready to go with the latter until we read this: As part of the contract, “monitors” are “to analyze stories to determine … whether [their] ‘tone’ is positive, neutral or negative” and track various “media outlets” for “how they present coalition or anti-Iraqi force operation. …
Tim Grieve (War Room’s Harlem Globetrotteresque political correspondent) has his own comic take on the situation so I won’t reveal his elegant and economical solution. But $20 million does seem to be a bit much to pay to get better press releases into the papers.
Unless of course the media are seen as effective tools of social influence that need to be rewarded or cajoled depending on their willingness to support the military perspective during a multi-hundred-billion-dollar military operation.
In that case, $20 million is chump change.
