Ethics Newsline®

“It was them saying, ‘We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you.’”

– Former Fox News analyst Robert Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret, speaking to the New York Times about Pentagon efforts to assemble a team of retired military officials who would promote the administration’s views as military analysts in broadcast news on ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and CNN. The Pentagon used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance,” reports David Barstow of the Times. “Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air. Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves.”

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“The intent and purpose of this is nothing other than an earnest attempt to inform the American people.”

– Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman, rejecting the substance of the Times’s piece, and insisting that the Pentagon program was not psyops that converted ex-military officials into “puppets of the Defense Department.”

Source: New York Times, Apr. 20.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Mar. 17 — Related Newsline story, Dec. 5, 2005 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 21, 2005 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 31, 2005 — Related Newsline story, Dec. 20, 2004 — Q&A with Times reporter David Barstow, Apr. 21.