Submitted by John Stauber on
"The Pentagon is setting up a stock-market style system in which investors would bet on terror attacks, assassinations and other events in the Middle East. Defense officials hope to gain intelligence and useful predictions while investors who guessed right would win profits. ...
Submitted by Laura Miller on
"Qorvis Communication is helping Saudi Arabia lash out at critics who believe the 'blanked-out' section of the Congressional 9/11 report exposes the Kingdom's involvement in the terror attacks," O'Dwyer's PR reports. "The Bush Administration demanded that the 28-page section dealing with the role played by Saudi Arabia and other governments in 9/11 be omitted from the 900-page report." Qorvis has a $200,000 a month contract with the Kingdom for PR work. Saudi Arabia spent $288,000 at Patton Boggs -- a well connected D.C.
Submitted by Laura Miller on
"If President Bush's White House is known for anything, it is competence at delivering a disciplined message and deftness in dealing with bad news," Washington Post's Dan Balz and Walter Pincus write. "That reputation has been badly damaged by the administration's clumsy efforts to explain how a statement based on disputed intelligence ended up in the president's State of the Union address." The shifting White House story about it's references to Iraq, Niger and uranium continues to draw attention to the Bush administration deception.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
During the war in Iraq, Paul Moran, a TV cameraman for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), was killed by a suicide bomber. After his death, his hometown newspaper discovered that Moran also worked for the Rendon Group, a secretive public relations firm that works with the Pentagon.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
New York Times reporter Judith Miller has begun revising her first draft of history, some two months after her widely criticized stories made the case that evidence of Saddam's unconventional weapons was being found.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
"As frustration over their lengthening deployment grows among troops in Iraq, soldiers are smacking head-on into limits on their public speech," writes Steve Liewer, a correspondent for the European version of Stars and Stripes magazine. Troops interviewed in Germany and Iraq say they have been briefed to refer questions to a public affairs specialist and that soldiers have been getting in trouble for speaking out. "I'm not comfortable telling you what I really think, and I'm not going to lie to you, so it's better if I just don't say anything," said one soldier.
Submitted by Laura Miller on
"In England, they shot the messenger," the Los Angeles Times' Robert Scheer writes, referring to the apparent suicide of British biological weapons expert David Kelly. The scientist, who worked for the British Ministry of Defense, found himself at the center of a battle between the British government and the BBC over a BBC report that the government "sexed up" a September 2002 intelligence dossier on Iraq's weapons.
Submitted by Laura Miller on
"Jessica Lynch, the wounded Army private whose ordeal in Iraq was hyped into a media fiction of U.S. heroism, was set for an emotional homecoming on Tuesday in a rural West Virginia community bristling with flags, yellow ribbons and TV news trucks," Reuters reports. "But when the 20-year-old supply clerk arrives by Blackhawk helicopter to the embrace of family and friends, media critics say the TV cameras will not show the return of an injured soldier so much as a reality-TV drama co-produced by U.S. government propaganda and credulous reporters.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
David Kelly, the scientist whose suicide marked a tragic twist in the unfolding controversy over British intelligence dossiers that supported the war in Iraq, was "ripped apart in the middle" of a "war of spin," said an editor at the British Broadcasting Corporation. The BBC has come under intense criticism for its reports alleging that top British officials "sexed up" the dossiers, and now it is being criticized on grounds that its reports may have contributed to Kelly's suicide. "Yes, we had a role in it," the editor said.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
British Prime Minister Tony Blair is under pressure following the apparent suicide of Iraq weapons expert David Kelly.
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