{"id":221,"date":"2006-09-02T08:41:47","date_gmt":"2006-09-02T15:41:47","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=221"},"modified":"2008-04-21T15:31:32","modified_gmt":"2008-04-21T22:31:32","slug":"the-20-million-dollar-tv-guide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=221","title":{"rendered":"The $20 Million Dollar TV Guide"},"content":{"rendered":"

America must be sleeping better tonight knowing that their government is ever vigilant of threats from unflattering news reports. An administration obsessed with perceptions is soliciting bids for a contract to monitor media<\/a> reports about the war in Iraq. This $20 million dollar initiative will:<\/p>\n

“provide continuous monitoring and near-real-time reporting of Iraqi, pan-Arabic, international and U.S. media…including, but not limited to tone (positive, neutral, negative) and scope of media coverage.”<\/span><\/p>\n

That the Pentagon considers this a project worthy of millions of taxpayer dollars should not surprise anyone. This is the same Pentagon that paid Iraqi newspapers<\/a> to publish positive<\/em> stories written by an American PR firm. So the Pentagon, not content with planting propaganda in the world’s press, now wants to see how good they’ve been at it. They justify the expense by claiming that:<\/p>\n

“…the Bush administration was countering extremism with hope and democracy.”<\/span><\/p>\n

I wish someone to could explain how monitoring the media for content analysis furthers those goals. While countering extremism is a laudable objective, hope and democracy is not advanced with lies and manipulation. If the Pentagon wants to know what the press is saying about them and the war, all they have to do is pick up a newspaper, turn on the TV, or tune in Voice of America. Oh wait – they closed the Baghdad bureau<\/a> last year. I guess they weren’t getting enough happy stories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

America must be sleeping better tonight knowing that their government is ever vigilant of threats from unflattering news reports. An administration obsessed with perceptions is soliciting bids for a contract to monitor media reports about the war in Iraq. This $20 million dollar initiative will: “provide continuous monitoring and near-real-time reporting of Iraqi, pan-Arabic, international […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1,8,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-propaganda","category-scandalous"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Ijg-3z","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1381,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=1381","url_meta":{"origin":221,"position":0},"title":"The Pentagon Approved Press Corps","author":"Mark NC","date":"8\/27\/2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Stars and Stripes is reporting a disturbing initiative emanating from the Pentagon's communications office: \"As more journalists seek permission to accompany U.S. forces engaged in escalating military operations in Afghanistan, many of them could be screened by a controversial Washington-based public relations firm contracted by the Pentagon to determine whether\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":240,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=240","url_meta":{"origin":221,"position":1},"title":"Propaganda Is Its Own Reward","author":"Mark NC","date":"9\/27\/2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Last year, a PR firm called the Lincoln Group, was hired by the Pentagon to bribe Iraqi newspapers to carry pre-packaged stories that put the U.S. and the war effort in a positive light. But two unrelated articles published today demonstrate that their effort was less than successful, and for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":435,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=435","url_meta":{"origin":221,"position":2},"title":"Iran, Iraq, America: Where Is The Press More Free?","author":"Mark NC","date":"5\/14\/2007","format":false,"excerpt":"In a tale of three troubled and repressive regimes, there is news today of a puzzling variation of values. Stories from a trio of nations put on display the character of the media in our world and show how that world has been turned upside down. The Iran Story: The\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Censorship"","block_context":{"text":"Censorship","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=56"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":874,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=874","url_meta":{"origin":221,"position":3},"title":"Mind War – The Pentagon’s Propaganda Assault On America","author":"Mark NC","date":"4\/21\/2008","format":false,"excerpt":"\"World War Three will be a guerrilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation.\" ~ Marshall McLuhan, 1968 The New York Times has now documented the sad prescience of McCluhan. In an in-depth examination of supposedly independent, retired military analysts, the Times' David Barstow has uncovered what\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":358,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=358","url_meta":{"origin":221,"position":4},"title":"Did U. S. Troops Raid Iraqi Journalists?","author":"Mark NC","date":"2\/22\/2007","format":false,"excerpt":"There is a disturbing report from the International Federation of Journalists that alleges an assault by American soldiers against the Iraq Syndicate of Journalists. The IFJ's account of these events says that... \"United States soldiers caused destruction and havoc last night when they broke into the offices of the Syndicate,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1585,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=1585","url_meta":{"origin":221,"position":5},"title":"Dana Perino And Fox News On Repressive Regimes And Propaganda","author":"Mark NC","date":"3\/10\/2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Ed Brayton at Science Blogs has caught a classic example of hypocrisy from a member of the class that made an art of it: the Bush administration. Former Bush press secretary Dana Perino was on Fox News this weekend and commented on a video produced for the White House web\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=1"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}