http://rawstory.com/news/2005/New_York_Times_documents_planted_U.S._1130.html
Wednesday November 30, 2005
New York Times documents planted U.S. military stories in Iraq
RAW STORY
Entitled "The Sands Are Blowing Toward a Democratic Iraq," an article
written this week for publication in the Iraqi press, was scornful of
outsiders' pessimism about the country's future, the NEW YORK TIMES
begins on Thursday page ones.....Excerpts....
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But far from being the heartfelt opinion of an Iraqi author, as its
language implied, the article was prepared by the U.S. military as
part of a multimillion-dollar covert campaign to plant paid propaganda
in the Iraqi media and pay some friendly Iraqi journalists monthly
stipends, according to and military contractors and officials.
The article was one of several included in a "storyboard," the
military's jargon for a list of articles, that was delivered Tuesday
to the Lincoln Group, a public relations firm paid by the Pentagon,
documents show.
The contractor's job is to translate the articles into Arabic and
submit them to Iraqi newspapers or advertising agencies without
revealing the Pentagon's role.
Documents show that the intended target of the piece about a
democratic Iraq was Az Zaman, a leading independent paper, but it is
not known whether it has been published there or anywhere else.
In addition to paying newspapers to print government propaganda,
Lincoln has paid about a dozen Iraqi journalists each several hundred
dollars a month, according to a person who was told of the
transactions.
Those journalists were chosen because their past coverage has not been
antagonistic to the United States, according to the person.
The military storyboards have in some cases copied verbatim text from
copyrighted publications and passed it on to be printed in the Iraqi
press without attribution, according to documents and interviews.
DEVELOPING...
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Developing? Can it get much worse?
Harry
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