A few days ago, I took a look at a Stars and Stripes story detailing the Pentagon's hiring of a PR firm to gauge whether reporters embedded with the military had previously offered "positive" coverage:
U.S. public affairs officials in Afghanistan acknowledged to Stars and Stripes that any reporter seeking to embed with U.S. forces is subject to a background profile by The Rendon Group, which gained notoriety in the run-up to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq for its work helping to create the Iraqi National Congress. That opposition group, reportedly funded by the CIA, furnished much of the false information about Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction used by the Bush administration to justify the invasion.
In the wake of that Stars and Stripes story, a lot of hemming and hawing ensued, as one might expect. Quite interesting that the story came from the paper funded by the Pentagon itself (editorially independent, clearly).
Now the Pentagon is cancelling the contract with the Rendon Group. Looks like a victory for the concept of a free press. The big question it raises, however, is whether the actual concept of reviewing the reporters' coverage itself has been cancelled, regardless of the PR firm (or government agency) employed to do it. Maybe (too bad it's a big maybe) this has something to do with who's in charge now.
From today's Reuters story: "The paper [Stars and Stripes] said the profiles included suggestions on how to "neutralise" negative stories and generate favourable coverage."
