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posted December 1, 2005 at 11:00 a.m.

US military planting stories in Iraqi papers

Report: Soldiers write positive stories, papers paid to run them.

By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com

As part of its efforts to counter what it calls "misinformation" in the Iraq media, the US military has been secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish stories. The Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday that the stories were written by "US information troops," then translated into Arabic, and then "placed" in Baghdad newspapers with the help of a defense contractor. The stories are often presented as unbiased news stories written by independent journalists.

The Times reported that interviews with military officials and records show that the US military has paid Iraqi newspapers to run dozens of articles.

The operation is designed to mask any connection with the US military. The Pentagon has a contract with a small Washington-based firm called Lincoln Group, which helps translate and place the stories. The Lincoln Group's Iraqi staff, or its subcontractors, sometimes pose as freelance reporters or advertising executives when they deliver the stories to Baghdad media outlets.
The military's effort to disseminate propaganda in the Iraqi media is taking place even as US officials are pledging to promote democratic principles, political transparency and freedom of speech in a country emerging from decades of dictatorship and corruption.

GovExec.com, a business news publication for federal managers and executives, reports on the operations of the Lincoln Group in its December magazine issue and the company's "tough to follow" history. Reuters reports that spokesmen at the Pentagon and with the US military command in Iraq did not deny the report.


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Yet the program has not been universally accepted by the military, the Times also reported. Some senior officers in Iraq and at the Pentagon say that the operation will become yet another blow to the credibility of the US media in Iraq and around the world.

"Here we are trying to create the principles of democracy in Iraq. Every speech we give in that country is about democracy. And we're breaking all the first principles of democracy when we're doing it," said a senior Pentagon official who opposes the practice of planting stories in the Iraqi media.

The Associated Press reports that the Pentagon was giving out mixed signals about its support of the program.

Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a military spokesman in Iraq, said the program is "an important part of countering misinformation in the news by insurgents." A spokesman for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, however, called a report detailing the program troubling if true and said he was looking into the matter.

The Washington Post reports that military sources in Iraq tell them "officers in the field believed that normal press operations needed supplementing to get the message out."

"The realities of the environment here demand something more ambitious than people might understand," said one officer in Iraq who spoke anonymously because he is not authorized to discuss the program. "The information environment is almost as important as the combat environment. It's absolutely essential to our success to get the facts out there. We're not going to spread misinformation."

But media experts say that while the soldiers may think that they are doing a good thing, they are ultimately creating a worse problem in the long run.

"In the very process of preventing misinformation from another side, they are creating misinformation through a process that disguises the source for information that is going out," said John J. Schulz, dean of Boston University's College of Communications and a veteran journalist. "You can't be creating a model for democracy while subverting one of its core principles, a free independent press."

The New York Times reports that the military's actions actually counteract other US government programs. Patrick Butler, vice president of the International Center for Journalists in Washington, said the American government paid for many programs that taught foreign journalists not to accept payment for articles nor to print government propaganda disguised as news.

"You show the world you're not living by the principles you profess to believe in, and you lose all credibility," he said.

But Michael Rubin, who worked in Iraq for the Coalitional Provisional Authority in 2003 and 2004, defended the practice.

"Informational operations are a part of any military campaign," he added. "Especially in an atmosphere where terrorists and insurgents – replete with oil boom cash – do the same. We need an even playing field, but cannot fight with both hands tied behind our backs."

The Voice of America reports that the official communications principles of the Defense Department say that information will be "timely and accurate" but do not prohibit paying media outlets to run stories.

The Guardian reports that the Los Angeles Times story appeared the same day that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was saying that one of the greatest success stories in Iraq was the number of "free" media organizations in Iraq, which offer a "relief valve" for the Iraqi public to "debate the issues of the day."

Iraqi editors apparently reacted with a mixture of shock and shrugs when told they were targets of a US military psychological operation. The editor of Al Mada, widely considered the most thoughtful and professional of Iraqi newspapers, said if his cash-strapped paper had known the story was from the US government he would have "charged much, much more."

Part of the reason for the decision to plant stories in the Iraqi media may be the lack of success of other US-funded media operations in Iraq, such as the satellite TV channel Al Hurra, and Radio Sawa. Al Hurra consistently ranks much lower that other cable channels Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, which take a much more critical view of the US role in Iraq.

MSNBC reports that two other government agencies have been investigated in the past year for similar activities, leading the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of the US Congress to condemn one of them, the Education Department, for engaging in illegal covert propaganda.