Pentagon Pundit Scandal Broke the Law

[maddezmom]

Pentagon Pundit Scandal Broke the Law
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on Mon, 04/28/2008 - 19:04.
Topics: democracy | ethics | media | propaganda | pundits | secrecy | third party technique | U.S. government | war/peace

The Pentagon military analyst program unveiled in last week's exposé by David Barstow in the New York Times was not just unethical but illegal. It violates, for starters, specific restrictions that Congress has been placing in its annual appropriation bills every year since 1951. According to those restrictions, "No part of any appropriation contained in this or any other Act shall be used for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States not heretofore authorized by the Congress."

As explained in a March 21, 2005 report by the Congressional Research Service, "publicity or propaganda" is defined by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) to mean either (1) self-aggrandizement by public officials, (2) purely partisan activity, and (3) "covert propaganda." By covert propaganda, GAO means information which originates from the government but is unattributed and made to appear as though it came from a third party.

These concerns about "covert propaganda" were also the basis for the GAO's strong standard for determining when government-funded video news releases are illegal:

The failure of an agency to identify itself as the source of a prepackaged news story misleads the viewing public by encouraging the viewing audience to believe that the broadcasting news organization developed the information. The prepackaged news stories are purposefully designed to be indistinguishable from news segments broadcast to the public. When the television viewing public does not know that the stories they watched on television news programs about the government were in fact prepared by the government, the stories are, in this sense, no longer purely factual -- the essential fact of attribution is missing.

more:http://www.prwatch.org/node/7261

Pentagon Propaganda May Have Been Illegal
It was saying, "We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you,” Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and former Fox News analyst told the NY Times.... did not share any misgivings with the American public.The Bush Administration does not have clean hands when it comes to propaganda, so this latest news about the Pentagon's manipulation of Iraq war news by spoon-feeding talking points to military officers who in turn regurgitate on TV "news" should be no real surprise.

The fact that many said officers also had a vested monetary interest in armaments and other war contracts should raise more than eyebrows. But it won't, at least not with this White House and this press corps.

A reminder: the 1948 Smith-Mundt Act prohibits domestic dissemination of US propaganda. What you and I may think of as propaganda may not be the law, however.

That law seems to have acted only as a speedbump for the Bush/Rumsfeld Pentagon. Rolling Stone reported in 2005 that in October 2003:


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=103&topic_id=354158

[Nothing Without Hope]

1. K & R - we can't let this be buried n/t