Tom Maguire asks some good questions about the recent news item involving Barack Obama’s aunt:
Barack Obama has an aunt (OK, a half-aunt) living in Boston and we need a British newspaper to tell us this? What else are we going to learn about Obama after we elect him? And will we learn it from our own ever-vigilant press, or must we rely on the kindness of foreigners?
While “ever-vigilant” drips with sarcasm, the fact is that there are still certain segments of the press that have tendencies to occasionally ask other than softball questions of the Obama campaign.
But there’s a penalty to be paid. When they do, they are dropped from the campaign, and good luck covering anything after that:
The Obama campaign has decided to heave out three newspapers from its plane for the final days of its blitz across battleground states — and all three endorsed Sen. John McCain for president!
The NY POST, WASHINGTON TIMES and DALLAS MORNING NEWS have all been told to move out by Sunday to make room for network bigwigs — and possibly for the inclusion of reporters from two black magazines, ESSENCE and JET, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.
[…]
After a week of quiet but desperate behind-the-scenes negotiations, the reporters of the three papers heard last night that they were definitely off for the final swing. They are already planning how to cover the final days by flying commercial or driving from event to event.
This is not to say that the above newspapers are in the “ever-vigilant” category, but I think they’re at least occasionally vigilant. And we can’t have incidents of occasional vigilance, can we?
Meanwhile, retired military officers who have offered analyses to the occasionally vigilant press are finding themselves investigated by the FCC:
A Federal Communications Commission investigation of on-air military analysts is providing a glimpse of what Democrats and an Obama administration will do to critics once they capture Washington.
The FCC has sent letters to some of the nation’s most prominent military analysts — some of them pro-President Bush and pro-war — suggesting they may have broken the law when they appeared on television stations to comment on and explain the war on terrorism.
And if you think it will have a chilling effect, you’re right! The military commentators are feeling the chill:
The probe is sending chills through the ranks of military commentators, some of them decorated war heroes who share their expertise with millions of lay viewers. They see it as one in a series of moves the Left is making to intimidate and shut up its critics.
“We are seeing the dawn of a new era of the current Democratic leadership trying to muzzle free speech and the First Amendment,” retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Tom McInerney, a Fox News analyst, told HUMAN EVENTS. “It may be the most invasive intrusion that we have seen in our history. There will be more of these tactics to follow.”
Said retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely, one of Fox’s first defense analysts, “It’s an affront to freedom of speech. As retired officers, we’re private citizens and can say anything we want under the First Amendment. The whole thing was to explain to the American people what was going on in war and analyzing it.”
If we move from the occasionally vigilant to those who might really have earned the title of ever-vigilant (i.e. critical), the author thinks there’s a lot more to come. Like government censorship:
Democrats have more in store to try to muzzle conservatives. They talk of reactivating the so-called Fairness Doctrine in which federal government bureaucrats monitor radio and TV programs and rule on their fairness. Conservatives say the real goal is to kill right-leaning talk radio.
Kill talk radio? You mean, the people who want to listen to the commercially popular Rush Limbaugh might not like being forced to hear the commercially failed Al Franken delivering rebuttals? Imagine that!
Considering the multi-level government investigation of Joe the Plumber (an ordinary citizen who asked Obama a question prompting his “spread the wealth” reply), I’d say that if Obama is elected, all signs point in the direction of a major crackdown on vigilance.
This is the first time I’ve ever seen a presidential campaign which has repeatedly sought criminal prosecution of its critics.
We’ve all heard that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
But if the price of vigilance means a literal loss of freedom, what then?
Comments
18 responses to “The price of vigilance”
Eric
Do you even bother to find out what you’re cutting & pasting before you put it on your blog? Those “retired military officers who have offered analyses” who are the focus of the FCC probe were part of a government propaganda program masquerading as independent analysis. They aren’t under investigation because they were war cheerleaders, they are under investigation because they were effectively receiving kick-backs to be war cheerleaders. See the difference?
I’m a little curious how you think this propaganda program squares with your previously posted quote of the year, “A free and healthy democracy cannot function when it has no way to determine reality.”
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Pentagon_military_analyst_program
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/washington/20generals.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
I checked your sources, doc, and I think you’re making that up.
Neither of your sources shows the generals did anything illegal. All they say is that the Bush administration favored analysts who supported the adminstration’s position. A little unseemly, maybe. But it’s hardly surprising that an administration would enlist experts to sell it’s policies. Bush is not the first and he won’t be the last.
Second, I don’t see anything connecting that program with the FCC investigations. Instead I see this: “The FCC letters came at the behest of two House Democrats, who say the analysts parroted on air the private briefings they received at the Pentagon. This may have broken the law, the lawmakers said.”
Typical smoke and mirrors from the good doctor. I’m surprised you didn’t say anything about this passage, which I think will yield better material for you:
“The FCC has sent letters to some of the nation’s most prominent military analysts — some of them pro-President Bush and pro-war — suggesting they may have broken the law when they appeared on television stations to comment on and explain the war on terrorism.”
Our Good Dr. No Bell seems to be one of the “Obama is always right” supporters, no matter what.
Perhaps Dr. No Bell is even more to the left than Obama and unwilling to consider anything he does not already believe, but this is impossible, only conservatives have closed minds.
Hugh
Eric,
I checked your sources, doc, and I think you’re making that up
No Eric, you are trying to spin away Bush admins propaganda war to hoodwink American public into supporting the Iraq war.
As noted by NYT:
The administration?s communications experts responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guant?namo.
To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as ?military analysts? whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.
Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration?s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.
The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.
Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants. The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration?s war on terror. It is a furious competition, one in which inside information and easy access to senior officials are highly prized.
Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse ? an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks.
Analysts have been wooed in hundreds of private briefings with senior military leaders, including officials with significant influence over contracting and budget matters, records show. They have been taken on tours of Iraq and given access to classified intelligence. They have been briefed by officials from the White House, State Department and Justice Department, including Mr. Cheney, Alberto R. Gonzales and Stephen J. Hadley.
In turn, members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated. Some analysts acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their access.
A few expressed regret for participating in what they regarded as an effort to dupe the American public with propaganda dressed as independent military analysis.
?It was them saying, ?We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you,? ? Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and former Fox News analyst, said.
Kenneth Allard, a former NBC military analyst who has taught information warfare at the National Defense University, said the campaign amounted to a sophisticated information operation. ?This was a coherent, active policy,? he said.
As conditions in Iraq deteriorated, Mr. Allard recalled, he saw a yawning gap between what analysts were told in private briefings and what subsequent inquiries and books later revealed.
?Night and day,? Mr. Allard said, ?I felt we?d been hosed.?
The Pentagon defended its relationship with military analysts, saying they had been given only factual information about the war. ?The intent and purpose of this is nothing other than an earnest attempt to inform the American people,? Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said.
Internal Pentagon documents repeatedly refer to the military analysts as ?message force multipliers? or ?surrogates? who could be counted on to deliver administration ?themes and messages? to millions of Americans ?in the form of their own opinions.?
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I’m not surprised though that you are defending Bush’s illegal propaganda war against Americans. You support man like Gordon Liddy after all 🙂
Meyrav
Hugh, I’m still searching for the (online) Obama supporter who is willing to honestly recognize his shortcomings and allow discussion without snark and cheap shots.
I don’t know of any right wing blog who think’s McCain is a great candidate. Instead, what I see on the right is “we’ve weighed them both and McCain is the better choice.” What I see on the left is “Obama is The One of whom nothing bad shall be said.”
Here’s more info on Bush’s propaganda war:
NPR:
When news networks seek to explain how things are going in Iraq, they often interview their own paid consultants ? a cadre of retired military officers conferring expertise and credibility on their television employers.
But it turns out the Pentagon has cultivated those network analysts as a hidden weapon in a sophisticated campaign for the minds of the American people. And that revelation has made media executives squirm.
“There was a deliberate attempt to deceive the public,” says Andrew Heyward, president of CBS News from 1996 to 2005. “Analysts whose real allegiance was to the Pentagon and who apparently were given at least special access for that allegiance were presented as analysts whose allegiance was to the networks and, therefore, the public.”
The New York Times successfully sued the Pentagon and obtained 8,000 pages of Pentagon e-mails and documents. It reported last week there had been an initiative stretching back to 2002 to co-opt those military analysts by doling out access to senior Defense officials, arranging trips abroad and issuing talking points. Some who strayed from the message were dropped from the invite list.
Others had an even stronger reason to want to be able to boast of access to Pentagon officials ? they worked for, or on behalf of, military contractors. CNN last year dropped one analyst after belatedly discovering his work for a contractor, included bidding on a multibillion dollar contract. Several former military officers tell NPR their peers pulled their punches in public in order to stay in the Defense Department’s good graces.
“This is a very deliberate attempt on the part of the administration to shape public opinion,” says former Army Maj. Gen. John Batiste.
In all, 75 former flag officers were included in the Pentagon initiative. Not all were cheerleaders. Yet e-mails obtained through the Times’ suit show some repeatedly sought to help military officials. And Batiste says their upbeat comments during dark days often rang false.
“It also sounded to me as if they were parroting administration talking points,” Batiste says now. “It sounded very much to me like I was up against an information operation. I had no idea that it was so extensive.”
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Meyrav
tim
These gentleman are (allegedly) part of the same propaganda program that sought to pass off commentary bought and paid for by the DOD as that of independent analysts.
The links I provided explain the DOD “analyst” program in general. If you (or Eric) had bothered to do anything more than read the wildly incomplete Human Events story, you’d have found that these letters are being sent to the subjects of the earlier investigative reporting from the NY Times.
Here–I’ll do Eric’s work for him (it took me 90 seconds to find these stories):
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/washington-whispers/2008/10/6/fcc-probes-pentagon-analysts.html
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/washingtonpostinvestigations/2008/10/fcc_pushing_to_finish_analyst-.html
Honestly, does the government paying analysts to promote official government talking points under the guise of independent analysis not make you angry?
Hugh
I don’t believe Obama is involved in this matter in any respect. Perhaps you have different information.
And, for the record, if Obama sets up a propaganda program where he uses paid operatives masquerading as independent analysts to sell any of his programs, I’ll support an investigation of that as well.
tim
“Hugh, I’m still searching for the (online) Obama supporter who is willing to honestly recognize his shortcomings and allow discussion without snark and cheap shots.”
While you and Hugh are the only ones discussing Obama in this thread, I’ll happily oblige: I disagreed vehemently with Obama’s vote for telecom immunity, and I think his current (if tepid) support for offshore drilling is a fairly disingenuous and transparent political sop.
“Hugh, I’m still searching for the (online) Obama supporter who is willing to honestly recognize his shortcomings and allow discussion without snark and cheap shots.”
I’m voting for Obama. But simply because he is lesser of the two evil.
I have residency in NH. During the primaries I voted for Kucinich.
And to be honest, there isn’t much of a difference between Republicans and VP candidate Biden.
Biden is the architect of the so-called Bankruptcy Reform bill passed few years ago.
It comes down to some fundamental rights: Abortion.
Palin is against abortion even in cases of rape/incest. The woman thinks people and dinosaurs roamed together 6000 years ago.
Oh paleeeze! This is the 21st century people. And Palin is simply a kook.
Meyrav
Meyrav
You and I disagree about Biden, and I do not care much at all for Kucinich (I think he makes the perfect the sworn enemy of the good), but we shouldn’t let the other posters here know that their fantasy of a monolithic, homogeneous, and unthinking base of support for Obama might not be precisely true.
By the way, what are you planning to do with all the money we’re being paid to post blog comments? I’m thinking about a walk-in humidor, but it seems wasteful given I hardly use the one I already have. I’ll probably just end up blowing it all on another gold-plated edition of Das Kapital for my collection.
Doc,
I agree with Kucinich’s healthcare program. Hence my vote for him.
Seriously, the fact that our health insurance is tied to having a job is completely crazy.
I’m planning to spend the “troll” money on a bus ticket to go down to Florida for the winter.
I can’t afford to pay for the high cost of oil in cold NH thanks to Bush’s socialism for his supper rich oil executives buddies.
Meyrav
Actually, doc, neither of us was discussing Obama. We were discussing Obama supporters. Nice of you and Meyrav to come with something when called on the carpet. I’ll put more stock in your posts when you do it of your own free will, as you’ve seen me do with McCain.
tim
Got it. You’ve never seen an (online) Obama supporter who is willing to recognize his (Obama’s) shortcomings, except when they do, and those don’t count because they aren’t the result of free will.* Glad we were able to clear that up.
Now, are you willing to concede at this point that there might be something to the FCC investigation of the military “analysts” other than simple political persecution?
*holy shit–are you controlling my mind!?
The fact that health care is tied to jobs was the direct result of FDR and the Democrats in charge during WW2.
You see they had salary caps and businesses had to think of a way to entice workers that was not construed as salary.
See – once you start fixing the economy the fixes will need more fixes (government intervention) because we can’t have unfairness now can we? So the unfairness multiplies. And government gets more control.
Say. Isn’t Obama trying to fix the unfairness in the economy? That will work. I’m sure of it. FDR was not as smart as Obama.
Dr. No Bell,
The question is: were the analysts right or wrong? If they were right, what is the beef?
Meyrav Levine, Dr. Nobel says:
Obama propaganda good, Bush propaganda double plus ungood!
Simon,
The fact that health care is tied to jobs was the direct result of FDR and the Democrats in charge during WW2.
You see they had salary caps and businesses had to think of a way to entice workers that was not construed as salary
Baseles assertion or are you going provide the law that imposed salary cap passed by the Congress and signed by FDR?
Simon: The question is: were the analysts right or wrong? If they were right, what is the beef?
The answer is: The analysts had a conflict of interest. Instead of providing fair, balanced, and objective analysis, as they were pretending to, they were taking money from the DOD contractors and were in lying to the American public in the service of Bush administration.
The result: We are stuck in a war of aggression that is a drain in terms of life as well as treasure.
Meyrav