Pentagon Profiling Reporters

...For Neutralization

August 27. 2009

The Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia (USA)

An explosive article published this week stated, the U.S. Pentagon, which houses the Department of Defense, who ironically appear in this Column's site statistics as frequent visitors, has been profiling journalists, selecting candidates for neutralization, based on their negative coverage of combat in the Middle East.

The Constitution guarantees Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Press, yet the Defense Department, is behaving in a manner contrary to the law of the land.

What is the Defense Department going to do about the many thousand reporters around the world writing about the wars in the Middle East in a very unflattering manner? Are people supposed to be happy and cheerful at the fact civilians and soldiers are dying for wars many do not understand or support. 

Files prove Pentagon is profiling reporters

Thursday, August 27, 2009 - WASHINGTON — Contrary to the insistence of Pentagon officials this week that they are not rating the work of reporters covering U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Stars and Stripes has obtained documents that prove that reporters’ coverage is being graded as “positive,” “neutral” or “negative.”

Moreover, the documents — recent confidential profiles of the work of individual reporters prepared by a Pentagon contractor — indicate that the ratings are intended to help Pentagon image-makers manipulate the types of stories that reporters produce while they are embedded with U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

This pie chart was extracted from a report by The Rendon Group, evaluating the focus of coverage by a reporter for a major U.S. newspaper. It indicates the firm’s conclusion that the reporter’s coverage was 83.33 percent neutral and 16.67 percent negative in relation to the military’s mission objectives.

One reporter on the staff of one of America’s pre-eminent newspapers is rated in a Pentagon report as “neutral to positive” in his coverage of the U.S. military. Any negative stories he writes “could possibly be neutralized” by feeding him mitigating quotes from military officials.

Another reporter, from a TV station, provides coverage from a “subjective angle,” according to his Pentagon profile. Steering him toward covering “the positive work of a successful operation” could “result in favorable coverage.”

The new revelations of the Pentagon’s attempts to shape war coverage come as senior Defense Department officials are acknowledging increasing concern over recent opinion polls showing declining popular American support for the Afghan war...

“These ground rules recognize the inherent right of the media to cover combat operations and are in no way intended to prevent release of embarrassing, negative or derogatory information,” reads the “News Media Ground Rules” issued by U.S. military officials for embedded reporters in Iraq.

Several professional journalists’ groups as well as media ethicists criticized the Pentagon’s attempts to rate and manipulate reporters. And at least one military official with knowledge of the profiling system has also begun to raise objections.

“It’s troubling that the military is contracting a private PR firm, paid with U.S. taxpayer dollars, to profile individual reporters,” said one servicemember who declined to be identified for fear of official retribution. “It shows utter contempt for the Constitution, which we in the service pledge our lives to defend.”

http://www.stripes.com