The Charge of The Pentagon Media Brigade

Bloggers to the Left of them

The Armchair Generalist has this snippet from a report by the UK's Bradford Non-Lethal Weapons Research Project, which gives an account of a conference at which a Pentagon spokeperson exhorting their media friends:

Over lunch on the first day of the conference a representative from the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defence for Public Affairs discussed strategies to counteract critical viewpoints of the non-lethal weapons programme in the media. She encouraged those present to keep repeating a positive message particularly when there was a negative story published, and not to shy away from commenting. If there was negative coverage about an important programme that could be derailed by the general public or congress then they would ‘really go after them’, she said. She indicated that officials would give increased information access to ‘bread and butter military journalists’ as opposed to the ‘60 minutes type journalists’ in return for more positive coverage. She also advocated a strategy of targeting military analysts working for various news media and getting them on message. She admitted, however, that they ‘still don’t know how to handle the bloggers’. (Emphasis mine)

Heh.

Bloggers to the Right of them

Praise be Noah Shachtman at Defense Tech, an invaluable resource for all bloggers. Here he has a glorious story about what he calls the "Internet tinhat-factory World NetDaily" repeating without checking the lurid story that Iran is planning to cripple the US with "a king-sized electromagnetic pulse, triggered by a nuke in the skies." The WND report was even referred to in Congress. The trouble is, Noah tells us, the Iranian report that the wimps of the Ist Armchair Brigade have been mentioning to scare their readers ...doesn't mention EMP, not once. In fact it doesn't mention nuclear weapons. It's about electronic warfare.

Double Heh.


I expect eventually the Pentagon will take a leaf out of Education's handbook and simply secretly buy off some pundits to promote their plans. If so, they should try to pick ones brighter than the folks at WND...and who read less comix.