Money military spends winning hearts and minds (propaganda) grew by 63% over past 5 yrs.

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Pentagon sets sights on public opinion
Money spent on winning hearts and minds at least $4.7 billion this year

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On an abandoned Air Force base in San Antonio, Texas, editors for the Joint Hometown News Service point proudly to a dozen clippings on a table as examples of success in getting stories into newspapers

What readers are not told: Each of these glowing stories was written by Pentagon staff. Under the free service, stories go out with authors' names but not their titles, and do not mention Hometown News anywhere. In 2009, Hometown News plans to put out 5,400 press releases, 3,000 television releases and 1,600 radio interviews, among other work — 50 percent more than in 2007.

The service is just a tiny piece of the Pentagon's rapidly expanding media empire, which is now bigger in size, money and power than many media companies.

In a yearlong investigation, The Associated Press interviewed more than 100 people and scoured more than 100,000 pages of documents in several budgets to tally the money spent to inform, educate and influence the public in the U.S. and abroad. The AP included contracts found through the private FedSources database and requests made under the Freedom of Information Act. Actual spending figures are higher because of money in classified budgets.

The biggest chunk of funds — about $1.6 billion — goes into recruitment and advertising. Another $547 million goes into public affairs, which reaches American audiences. And about $489 million more goes into what is known as psychological operations, which targets foreign audiences . . .

read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29040299/



related:

Inspector General Reports Pentagon Merged Their Propaganda With PR - Friday, December 12, 2008
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/11/AR2008121103319_pf.html
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4635878

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