By: E&P Staff Several articles and columns at E&P Online have harshly criticized the Pentagon's use of retired military officers to help sell the Iraq war via cable and network TV (as revealed by The New York Times' David Barstow) -- and the networks' lack of response in taking some blame. So here we will link to a commentary that only agrees partly.
"I need to weigh in on the controversy surrounding that now-infamous New York Times article about the Pentagon's secret campaign to influence network military experts," Rachel Sklar at The Huffington Post relates. "There has been a lot of outrage about it, and that outrage is not misplaced ? but it's been way, way too generalized.
"It's a 7,500-plus-word story ? 16 pages printed out ? so it's not surprising that so many of the people who are brandishing it angrily online didn't take the time to thoroughly examine who, exactly, was accused of doing what, exactly ? and with what proof. That's their fault, but it's also the fault of author David Barstow and the New York Times for presenting the article as a broad, sweeping indictment of all analysts on all networks ? and allowing their excitement about uncovering a significant, damaging story to affect their journalistic integrity in whom they allowed it to implicate."
The Times, she writes, "proved their case against the Pentagon, hands down. But they did not prove their case against the generals and other military men whom they name-dropped in that story. Which means they did not necessarily prove their case against the networks.
"I'm going to address these issues in two parts, because they are separate, and ought to be treated as such ? the first deals with the duty of the independent analyst to be, well, independent, and the second deals with the duty the networks owe the viewer, both in vetting who speaks on air and responding to this kind of attack on their journalistic credibility."
Read the whole lengthy post at Huffington Post's "Eat the Press" media section:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/13/the-emnytems-selective-mi_n_101015.html
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