[Media-watch] Embedded Journalists Have Pentagon minders

[Chris Keene]

Embedded Journalists Have Pentagon
Minders 

      http://www.prwatch.org/spin/

*Pentagon Embeds Public Affairs Officers With Journalists 
<http://www.prweek.com/news/news_story.cfm?ID=175623&site=3>

1st April 2003

*
    "They may not get as much attention as their media counterparts, but
    dozens of Pentagon public affairs officers are 'embedded' right
    alongside the reporters in Iraq," PR Week reports. "The Pentagon
    also maintains the Coalition Press Information Center (CPIC) in
    Kuwait, a base of operations for public affairs officers not
    traveling with troops. A 24-hour operation designed to keep up with
    news cycles in every time zone, ... one of the CPIC's most vital
    roles is to discourage 'rogue' journalists from venturing into
    dangerous areas by providing the information they might otherwise
    attempt to get on their own." The Wall Street Journal praised the
    Defense Department's PR Strategy. "The embedded reporters will
    continue to be a brilliant strategy by the Pentagon -- one that
    should echo in the rules of corporate communications," the Journal's
    Clark S. Judge writes. "As the Pentagon has demonstrated so aptly,
    the essential strategy for becoming the standard of truth when no
    one believes you is to open your operations to the kind of risk that
    no one would take if he were planning to lie. Spin is out of the
    question. Good or bad, the story is there for the reporter to see."
/
    Source: PR Week, March 31, 2003; Wall Street Journal, April 1, 2003
    http://www.prwatch.org/spin/
    /



-- 
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the
merger of state and corporate power." (Benito Mussolini).

Chris Keene
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