By: E&P Staff The U.S. military in Iraq is offering to pay a two-year, $20 million public relations contract "that calls for extensive monitoring of U.S. and Middle Eastern media in an effort to promote more positive coverage of news from Iraq," Walter Pincus revealed in The Washington Post on Thursday.
"The contract calls for assembling a database of selected news stories and assessing their tone as part of a program to provide 'public relations products' that would improve coverage of the military command's performance, according to a statement of work attached to the proposal," Pincus wrote.
A public relations official who asked for anonymity said that military commanders "are overwhelmed by the media out there and are trying to understand how to get their information out.
"They want it [news] to be received by audiences as it is transmitted [by them], but they don't like how it turns out," he said.
The proposal calls for monitoring TV outlets, two wire services and The Washington Post, New York Times and Los Angeles Times.
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