Umm... how is this not deep into WCE territory?

sorry for the newb question what is WCE?


btw i do think it is wrong to represent yourself in a manner that is untrue. If you are representing your self as a retired armed services general, the public will believe your expert opinion to be mostly independent. if that is not the case, you are misrepresenting yourself.

razorback, i respectfully disagree that is doesn't matter. it is pretty well documented how the media and propaganda can influence peoples opinions. to what extent it does is up for some debate, but "miltiary experts" claiming the Iraq has WMD and the war/post war will be easily won will influnce the publics views on the war. before the bush admin and the media started beating the Iraq war drum, no one in the american public was thinking to invade iraq.

So too does news outlets like the NYT who will avoid injecting context, and cherry pick information that ONLY paints a grim picture, all the while trying to pass that off as unbiased and neutral. Rather than reporting the WHOLE story, these days nearly all big news media, and many smaller ones, are BEING a part of the story, by shaping the conclusions the reader is supposed to draw:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Estate

And here's the problem - they aren't meeting their own standards these days:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism#Professional_and_ethical_standards

At least the Pentagon doesn't have those standards to meet, as regards political propaganda.

For every example anyone could come up with of the Pentagon shaping or manipulating news reports, I'll bet we could dig up dozens, even hundreds of other news reports that show the news agencies are themselves making propaganda that goes contrary to the Pentagon's aims. Or any other Western military. Objectivity is at an all time low, IMO.

I look forward to you explaining how their conduct is contemptible if they believed what they said.

We use our own best judgment when we read our newspapers and watch our news, we use it to evaluate what is and what isn't relevant and where the newspaper is being factual or biased.

When the government subverts this process,

when it distorts this relationship - between you (me) and our news sources,

it destroys the very foundation of our beliefs :

that we live in a democracy.

Again, if they believed what they were saying, then they were advocates of the government's line. Did we think they were anything else?

You are correct in saying that it distorts the relationship between the viewer and the news sources. However, saying that it "destroys the very foundation of our beliefs" borders on the ridiculous. Destroys? They were not news people. They were military consultants for the news media. How many people believed that they were giving us a completely unbiased opinion?

Also, what about a democracy says that the military cannot try to get their own advocates into the media? There is nothing un-American about that. Hell, it is probably what the founding fathers would have done.

The first thing that authoritarian government do - is to control and manipulate the media, thus control you.

It is not the 'consultant military analysts as “message force multipliers” or “surrogates” ' only, it is the planting of (fake) articles - the distorting of information, the manipulating of truth to fit the present government goals.

If you can't trust the media - how can you make an informed opinion ?

By trusting V-P Cheney word at Face the Nation ?

We crossed a line , between the lines of that article in the NYT you can read a message: we lost our faith in our government's honesty.

Thankfully, our "authoritarian" governments only last for 8-years at a time.

Now, they could not plant anything that the media was not willing to print. So, the greater problem is that the media did not police its own consultants. It did not verify information given to them by the government. In other words, the media was LAZY. It is just now starting to make an effort. If this government was truly subverting the foundation of this country, it would first eliminate the media's ability to do its job. All this government did was manipulate the media and the media allowed it to happen.

If a line was crossed, then it was crossed long ago. Hyperbole aside, the country has not been damaged much by this. The media has been damaged and is now trying to spin itself out of the obvious scrutiny it deserves. If you allow someone to manipulate you, IT IS YOUR FAULT.

Oh, and when did we last believe the government was honest? 200 years ago? I don't think so.

I do find it sad that many of us just chalk this up to Business as Usual. Has it become the norm for our government to be deceitful? Is it "business as usual" to exclude people who don't follow the party line from all the indsider info these "commentators" got?

Is it the norm for all retired officers to move into defense related contract work? It seems so, at least for the ones with the right connections. I guess the ones without the right connections were the ones who spoke up against Rumsfeld.

graves,
np. WCE stands for World & Current Events. It's an old acronym here and basically means those kind of value based discussions that history has shown get us into trouble with each other. So it starts as a WOT thread and pretty soon people are taking it personal and responding in kind. Those personal attacks have no place here.

Now, as Rick said, is this WCE? Yeah, probably is. I know that. We will let certain topics exist depending on how it's presented and the context, and the actions of the participants. So far, I see this debate as just that, a debate. If people are getting hot under their collars, they are controlling their public reactions.

Keep it civil, let's discuss and not cuss each other, and we'll continue.