The Pentagon’s new censorship program

July 6, 2006

Part of the point behind the military’s embedded-reporting program was to “bypass the filter.” [tag]Journalists[/tag] could work literally alongside the troops, in the field, and report back on events in [tag]Iraq[/tag] without “editorial [tag]bias[/tag]” or “[tag]media[/tag] [tag]slants[/tag]” getting in the way. Or so administration officials believed three years ago.

Now, [tag]Rod Nordland[/tag], Newsweek former Baghdad bureau chief sees a very different approach in place. (via TP)

“The military has started censoring many [[tag]embedded[/tag] reporting] arrangements. Before a journalist is allowed to go on an embed now, [the military] check[s] the work you have done previously. They want to know your slant on a story — they use the word slant — what you intend to write, and what you have written from embed trips before. If they don’t like what you have done before, they refuse to take you. There are cases where individual reporters have been blacklisted because the military wasn’t happy with the work they had done on embed.”

As if these journalists didn’t have enough to worry about being in the middle of a war — a war from which far too many reporters won’t come home — they now apparently have to deal with administration [tag]censorship[/tag] and [tag]blacklisting[/tag].

And the [tag]Bush[/tag] [tag]administration[/tag]’s war on the [tag]freedom of the press[/tag] continues…

As I’ve mentioned, I suspect that Bush suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder, one characteristic of which is:

Narcissists are (a) extremely sensitive to personal criticism and (b) extremely critical of other people. They think that they must be seen as perfect or superior or infallible, next to god-like (if not actually divine, then sitting on the right hand of God) — or else they are worthless. There’s no middle ground of ordinary normal humanity for narcissists. They can’t tolerate the least disagreement. In fact, if you say, “Please don’t do that again — it hurts,” narcissists will turn around and do it again harder to prove that they were right the first time; their reasoning seems to be something like “I am a good person…”

  • While I don’t actually think the U.S. Military has an obligation to provide security and assistance to a free media, I’ve got to think this is pretty stupid. Along with the attacks on the NYT’s over the SWIFT story, at some point the Bushites are going to really anger the most powerful force in this country.

    And yes, I think they are just stupid enough to do it 😉

  • From the first time I saw them use “embed” to describe journalists’ relation to our troops I couldn’t imagine a more inappropriate word to describe a free press. Here’s the American Heritage definition:

    1. To fix firmly in a surrounding mass: embed a post in concrete; fossils embedded in shale. 2. To enclose snugly or firmly. 3. To cause to be an integral part of a surrounding whole: “a minor accuracy embedded in a larger untruth” (Ian Jack, Granta Fall 1988). 4. Biology To enclose (a specimen) in a supporting material before sectioning for microscopic examination.

    I particularly like “fossils embedded in shale – can’t think of a more apt description of effective inertness.

  • Lance, I think the administration could be stupid enough to anger the media — I just don’t think the media we have now is really capable of getting angry at this administration. Republicans are calling for treason prosecutions and wanting to send reporters to the gas chamber, and the media continue to treat them as reasonable people making valid points. It seems like everyone’s eager to take the Fox route.

  • “I just don’t think the media we have now is really capable of getting angry at this administration.” – KCinDC

    The MSM is now mostly Corporate owned, and the Bushites are Corporate owned. The problem is that the Bushites won’t give up attacking the media. Someone is going to point out, again, that the Bushites and their kept pundits who are calling for the execution of NYT editors should be applying the same rules to the Wall Street Journal. And if they do, they are really going to create a conflict of wills.

    Maybe the media is spineless. But the fact is, if you keep on bullying people, sometimes they snap and strike back. It’s long past due in this case (and with the gutless Congressional Democrats) and might happen any day. Don’t forget, it was the media that destroyed Richard Nixon.

  • Lance writes: “Someone is going to point out, again, that the Bushites and their kept pundits who are calling for the execution of NYT editors should be applying the same rules to the Wall Street Journal. … But the fact is, if you keep on bullying people, sometimes they snap and strike back… Don’t forget, it was the media that destroyed Richard Nixon.”

    Oh, Lance how I wish you were right! But I’m with KCinDC. Karl Rove’s genius is to enforce the double standard and everyone goes along with it. Thus, no challenge to the Wall Street Journal, just the wringing of hands and self-examination at the NYT (ad nauseum, I might add). They will think three times before they report the news again. If the media was going to “strike back” they would have by now. But they are like frightened junkies, living off the largesse of press releases from this administration and they will take what they get and like it. Thin-skinned, lazy and spineless–they bear no resemblance to the prevailing spirit of the media in Nixon’s day, 30 years ago.

  • Nice to know that OberKommandoWehrmacht (Fuhrer OKW), formerly known as The Pentagon is “doing its duty.” Coal-scuttle helmets, Waffen-SS-style battle fatigues, and now this. What ever happened to the U.S. Army?

  • “the wringing of hands and self-examination at the NYT” – Frak

    I don’t know. I heard the editor (K… something) defending his publication and it didn’t sound like hand-wringing to me.

    These papers are getting LEAKS out of this administration. They don’t need Tony Snow’s press releases. They are getting the truth because honest Americans who are sick of the Bushites are letting the truth out for the American People to see and judge.

    All the more amusing, as the SWIFT people were giving the U.S. government information in response to Supeonas, which is what we want the Bushites to use, after all. Why did this come across as a bad news story?

    I must be missing something.

  • Lance–The editor (Keller), and others at the Times, protest about and analyze this too much. They should have just stated the obvious, that they have every right to print the story and be done with it. I’m sure they were shocked by the hoopla about that story since they thought it was safe–Bush has been bragging about the substance of it for years.
    Believe me, they still haven’t gotten over the Jayson Blair debacle. They are thin-skinned and their reporting has been woefully timid and inadequate; that’s why they swallowed Judy Miller’s gung-ho war stories whole.
    The “leaks” they are getting from this administration are just Rovian ways to get talking points out without attribution so that it looks like independent news. That is what passes for journalistic digging nowadays.
    Censorship. blacklisting and the politics of personal destruction are the hallmarks of this administration. Nothing new there. Paging Mrs. Wilson…

  • Is there anything that the Bush administration and the other people currently running the Republican Party despise more than the First Amendment?

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