It's fine for the WaPo's top hand to declare 'Access restriction? I hadn't noticed!'

The people's army at war isn't a screen drama, where suspension of disbelief is more important to audience enjoyment than studio politics, casting and actor coaching. It's not a fashion show, where the backstage press is decidedly friendly, or relegated to view the runway portion under controlled lighting.

The fiasco in Iraq is a war in which contractors like Rendon provided Congressional profiles, so that uniformed operators in theater could pass one-sheets ahead of an elected rep, 'set the conditions' that he/she would encounter in talking to troops.

A war in which SecDef Rumsfeld declares US voters to be 'the strategic center", 12,000 miles from the battle, is a constitutional crisis.

The army has a right to tell it's story, sure, and an officer ought to have a basis for trust before opening his unit to a reporter that has the power to screw him. But neither individual nor institution has the right to control the 'information battlespace' within the democracy it serves.

In all conflicts, the military wants to put on it's best face, but in conflicts involving insurgencies, requiring lengthy involvement periods and a steady trickle of causalities, the Pentagon works particularly hard to maintain a façade of hope and possible success. Without the support of the citizenry and the politicians representing them, there is little hope that an intervention will succeed, and in fact, will likely be undercut. That support must be balanced by an honest evaluation of the probable success of tamping down an insurgency and stabilizing the political situation. For the voter and his/her political representative, it becomes important to winnow through the conflicting media reports and try to determine whether an intervention is worth the effort or not. When the military is caught trying to stack the deck in favor of continuing the conflict, then ultimately the thinking voter comes to distrust any Pentagon pronouncements on the conflict; therein lies the problem. Will I believe the military pronouncements when I see what appears to be efforts like this to control the message? An earlier example of this was the prepping of so-called military experts to appear on major networks to give the Pentagon's take in the Iraq war. Somewhere a line must be drawn so that the average person can get at the unvarnished truth; this must be done without revealing sensitive information that might endanger American personnel. Even in wartime, we remain a democracy and a effective democracy runs on quality information.

The one-year, $1.5 million contract [with Rendon] was for a range of media analysis services beyond just the profiles and was just the latest contract for services it had provided the military for years. The company has a long history of contracting with the Defense Department and the CIA on controversial media projects.

From the "puffing" link above.

You mention public affairs officers twice, but they were not the ones writing the reports. And rest assured, it is very unlikely that you will ever see a Rendon-produced file on yourself.

PS Great picture - I'd like to know the google search you did to find it.

Easy for you to say... You've BEEN 'vetted' by CNAS. A Neo-liberal think tank which most likely ALSO believes the BS about Leo Strauss' 'Noble Lie'.

But you ain't no philosopher or holy man, and neither is anyone you work with who might believe that it's OK to lie for the 'greater good' (whatever THAT is..)

Personally, I EXPECT the Pentagon to lie. That's what those thousands of PR flacks dressed in officer's uniforms are paid to do, right?

Heck! Dougie Feith had a whole office full at the OSP and went on to a short-lived job @ G-Town where he peddled disinformation to the people he was 'teaching'.

These people were your 'bread and butter' when you worked at the Post, and YOUR JOB, if you did it right, was to cut thru their BS.

It must be easy when you don't have to do that and just say "So what?". Be careful... Your credibility as a legitimate 'journie' is on the line.

But the BIG problem in MY estimation is not that the Pentagon lied, but they LIED MULTIPLE TIMES not just about Rendon's involvement, but about the timing and motivation for involving those creeps in the first place.

They (The Pentagon... all the way up to SecDef Gates) ARE my employees, as a taxpaying citizen, and they're LYING to me.

If YOU were their boss Tom, what would you do?

Truly a beyond the line of sight picture. Situational awareness all the way up the echelons. You had a very good vacation.

Bravo, Tom....I don't know what is worse -- the military thinking it can bend the arc of embed reporting with such assessments, or the public's reaction to it. It's all part of the normal give and take, so long as it doesn't lead to black-listing.

And welcome back....it's been a tough August w/o you....had to start reading Jamie McIntyre's blog....

It is good to be back.

I actually have been blacklisted, too, but I think that is part of the game too. I always thought it was foolish to do it, because it violates the principle of holding one's friends close, and one's enemies closer. But they were free to do it.

I agree that they should keep tabs on reporters covering the wars. But they shouldn't restrict access based on that unless the reporter is blatantly making things up. As badly as people like Rummy and Cheney miscalculated the impact of propaganda in the war on turr, it's a good idea for the military to know what's going on in the media--especially with reporters on their beat. They should still have alerted the public to their snooping a long time ago. Now that it gets leaked into a military newspaper 8 years after the fact they look like fascists. another blow in the propaganda war they thought they were making progress in. interesting trivia about the Japanese ciphers too. Glad we got yamamoto before them pinkos leaked the info.

Is this really shocking? Wow! The sheets have been pealed back and certain media types are clearly out with an agenda. The military has its agenda. I am a little comforted that the military actually knows the customer. I remember the story of the young CPT appearing on this blog about being conflicted about his new career choice in journalism. I clearly remember him writing about a photojournalist making fun of the people/soldiers who protected him while he was embeded with them. So the gloves have come off politically...the media has chosen their side. Those caught in the middle of having to do the dirty work actually have to cover their @!$#* so they don't get caught in the web of spin. It sounds and looks like the disease and the symptoms...that's my sarcastic, apathetic, cynical comment for the day.

I have nothing against the military finding out the backgrounds of reporters. Given the access they are given to behind-the-lines military security, this makes complete sense. But I draw the line at blacklists. The Stars and Stripes story makes clear that negative or critical stories got reporters blacklisted, while a background of positive stories gave reporters greater access. Using these methods to gain only positive coverage is plain wrong.

the military the legal power to blacklist? Do those officers still hold to the oath of office for the commission?

Hi, Tom-- I have the healthiest of respect for you, but I think you're missing the boat on this one. I'm not going to blame it on the fact that you've probably rarely wanted for access to a unit, but as a reporter who WAS blacklisted in Iraq back in 2006 -- allegedly for being "a New York liberal," according to a the photographer who DID get into the unit I was going for -- I think allowing an ideological PR firm like Rendon to vet reporters is dangerous.

And while I understand the military's needs to know who they're dealing with, the S&S doesn't make it sound like a simple fact-finding report. It's a judgment and recommendation on allowing access. While that may be fine for a big corporation, for a tax-supported branch of the government to do that in a time of war... well, that just sticks in my craw and makes me fear for the democracy the military is allegedly protecting.

www.insurgencywatch.com

As a former financial journalist and journalist with Stars and Stripes, I am totally against selecting who will or will not be given credentials to cover the war, the White House or anything else. But on the flip side, understanding how a journalist approaches his or her craft is a good professional PR practice. It's like a journalist digging for information before an interview. So some of the whining seems like a double standard. I just posted about this, including reference to your post on Foreign Policy and your creative choice of photograph. http://www.gablepr.com/blog/

As much as I admire Tom's work, I think he is missing the point on this issue. All of us who have covered military affairs know that the military does its homework and vets us in one way or another. That is only good business practice.

The issue here is not that the Army or the Pentagon is doing it, but that the profiling is being out-sourced to a private company that may or may not have a political agenda that could factor into their grading of reporters.

From what I have been able to determine from the Stars and Stripes stories, and from other sources familiar with the practice, Rendon had no oversight on how it came to its conclusions on various reporters. That gave a private firm answerable to no government or civilian oversight a great deal of power in shaping the message coming out of the war zone by determining who provides that message.

Besides, since the military already does its own profiling, why spend nearly $2 million to let a private company do it when that money, in a particularly tight economy, could be much better used to assist returning veterans and their families?