Missile Hype and Invertebrate Pressmen

Here's another in the long list of administration story plants that prove the mainstream media needs a backbone transplant and a lesson in actually writing news instead of regurgitating briefings wholesale.

An announcement is made by an anonymous defense official that the "missile defense shield" is being activated because of fears over the imminent launching of a new North Korean missile. Of course, the press and rightwing bloggers swallow it wholesale (they only distrust the Pentagon when it disagrees with Bush).

It is then left to arms-wonk bloggers like the amazing Noah Shachtman (DefenseTech) and crew to point out that the ability of the "missile defense shield" to hit a barn door at 20 paces is questionable at best and the intention/ability of NK to launch a new ballistic missile is of the same order of credibility. None of this stuff is secret - it is all easily available with a little research. Noah's been blogging about it for ages, as have others like The Arms Control Wonk.

None of which will make it back into the MSM because they are all too scared of being cut out of the loop of background briefings by those famous un-named sources.

Noah isn't scared, yet he keeps getting invites to all those Pentagon bashes nonetheless. A lesson that the propagandists in the Bush administration need the press more than the press needs those anonymous sources, maybe?

[Links to both DefenseTech and The Arms Control Wonk are on my sidebar. I heartily recommend them. You cannot understand American foreign policy without understanding defense policy, the arms trade and - just as importantly - the hype anonymous officials invariably put on threats from foreign nations to justify all those arms purchases and sales.]