Submitted by Laura Miller on
"Determined to change the tone of the national debate over Iraq, the White House and Republicans in Congress launched a tightly coordinated effort last week to begin providing the media with stories of American progress in the still-turbulent country," PR Week's Douglas Quenqua reports.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
In August, the White House announced what it called a "big impact" plan to overwhelm and silence critics of its failure to find Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, with former UNSCOM inspector David Kay assigned to compile a big, impactful report that would answer questions once and for all. According to a Monday report on ABC News, however, a draft version of Kay's report provides no solid evidence that Iraq had such arms when the United States invaded.
Submitted by Laura Miller on
"CNN's top war correspondent, Christiane Amanpour, says that the press muzzled itself during the Iraq war. And, she says CNN 'was intimidated' by the Bush administration and Fox News, which 'put a climate of fear and self-censorship,'" USA Today's Peter Johnson writes. Appearing on CNBC's "Topic A With Tina Brown" with other guests comedian Al Franken and former Pentagon spokeswoman Torie Clarke, Amanpour told Brown that is wasn't a question of being able to do certain stories and not do others. "It's a question of being rigorous. It's really a question of really asking the questions.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has released an updated report chronicling the effects the war on terrorism has had on the public's right to know. The 89-page report, called "Homefront Confidential: How the War on Terrorism Affects Access to Information and the Public's Right to Know," outlines actions taken over the last two years by state and federal government agencies that limit the ability of journalists to do their jobs.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
Following recent revelations that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency misled the public about air quality in New York following the 9/11 terrorist attack, the New York Daily News has been crowing about how columnist Juan González "was the first to sound the alarm" that ground zero was a toxic dump after 9/11. As Cynthia Cotts points out, however, the newspaper "was not always so crazy about González's scoop.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
"Just like in the old days, the military wants you," writes Beth Snyder Bulik. "But these days, Uncle Sam has a better pitch. With the help of big-time ad agencies and sleek messages, the stalwart armed services have modernized their marketing and advertising o and attracted a new generation of recruits in the process." Tactics used to promote its "Army of One" slogan have included interactive games on the Internet and sponsorship of a NASCAR race car.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
"Some time in the next two weeks, David Kay, head of the Iraqi Survey Group, is expected to finally release a crucial report on his findings so far in his search for weapons of destruction," writes Greg Mitchell. "Since no weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) have been found in Iraq, close observers now report that Kay is likely to drop on the media a massive weapon of his own: hundreds or thousands of pages of summaries and documents purporting to prove that Saddam Hussein had WMDs. ...
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
"Salam Pax," the already-legendary writer of a Baghdad-based weblog, tells how his site began as "an internet joke with a friend in Jordan" and grew to become the most famous web diary in the world.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
"Every president deceives. But each has his own style of deceit," writes Joshua Micah Marshall. The Bush administration, he says, specializes in "a particular form of deception: The confidently expressed, but currently undisprovable assertion. ... Many of the administration's policy arguments have amounted to predictions - tax cuts will promote job growth, Saddam is close to having nukes, Iraq can be occupied with a minimum of U.S. manpower - that most experts believed to be wrong, but which couldn't be definitely disproven until events played out in the future."
Submitted by John Stauber on
"Sixty-nine percent of Americans said they thought it at least likely that [Iraq's Saddam] Hussein was involved in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, according to the latest Washington Post poll. That impression, which exists despite the fact that the hijackers were mostly Saudi nationals acting for al Qaeda, is broadly shared by Democrats, Republicans and independents. ... The poll's findings are significant because they help to explain why the public continues to support operations in Iraq despite the setbacks and bloodshed there.
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