I was seated in my dentist’s chair this afternoon midway through a very lengthy visit when I hard an NPR report about the U.S. Army writing positive stories of the goings-on in Iraq then paying freelancers to pay Iraqi newspapers to publish them.

Evidently, this operation is conducted in such a way as to conceal any connection between the stories and the U.S. military.

read on…

It’s from a Los Angeles Times piece, which says in part:

Many of the articles are presented in the Iraqi press as unbiased news accounts written and reported by independent journalists. The stories trumpet the work of U.S. and Iraqi troops, denounce insurgents and tout U.S.-led efforts to rebuild the country.

Though the articles are basically factual, they present only one side of events and omit information that might reflect poorly on the U.S. or Iraqi governments, officials said. Records and interviews indicate that the U.S. has paid Iraqi newspapers to run dozens of such articles, with headlines such as “Iraqis Insist on Living Despite Terrorism,” since the effort began this year.

One quote to which the Times objects is:

“Both cities [Karabilah and Husaybah] are stopping points for foreign fighters entering Iraq to wage their unjust war,” the storyboard reads.

This is factually true, but it does not represent the POV of the foreign fighters entering Iraq to wage their unjust war.

Look, it’s rare we see any reporting without bias. The LAT article cited contains this blurb:

Iraqi newspaper editors reacted with a mixture of shock and shrugs when told they were targets of a U.S. military psychological operation.

“Targets of a U.S. military psychological operation.” That biased statement most certainly does not reflect the military’s side of the story. It is, quite simply, the reporters’ bias.

I’m naturally averse to our government, including the military, planting any stories in our domestic press without a proper label, but we’ve been dealing with anti-military types printing their bias without label for decades.

The fault here, if any there be, lies with the Iraqi newspapers. If they’re accepting stories merely because they are paid to do so, without attempting to validate them, then they are every bit as journalistically corrupt as is, say, the New York Times, and deserve the condemnation of the Iraqi people who agree that this is the case, just as the Times is criticized by those who do not accept their bias.