Talk about 'œbad news,' said The Boston Globe in an editorial. The Pentagon admitted last week that an exposé in the Los Angeles Times was correct: It's been paying Iraqi newspapers to publish pro-American articles masquerading as news stories. Written by military personnel and translated into Arabic, the articles gave no clue that they were part of a propaganda campaign. But 'œmaybe it shouldn't be so stunning.' The Bush administration has made no secret of its disdain for impartial journalism—from paying pundit Armstrong Williams to promote the No Child Left Behind Act to giving press credentials to blogger Jeff Gannon so he could 'œask softball pro-Bush questions at news briefings.' But corrupting the media of a fledgling democracy 'œtakes deceit to a new level.' The worst part is that by turning Iraq's fourth estate into an organ of state power, the White House undermines the very democracy 'œit purports to be building.'
High-minded talk about a free press is nice, said Walter Jajko in the Los Angeles Times, but we're at war. Controlling information 'œis a critical part of any war,' but especially so in our globalized Information Age, when 'œeven third-rate countries use information and misinformation' to advance their interests. In this case, the U.S. effort was bungled; after all, it was exposed. But that's because the U.S. has largely forgotten 'œhow to play this game.' The point is not that propaganda has no place in a war, but rather that the U.S. needs to get better at it. Besides, said Jed Babbin in The American Spectator, 'œ'news' in the Arab world is usually nothing more than propaganda.' Since this war began, our enemies have flooded the Iraqi media with 'œevery bit of bad news available, tilting public opinion' against us. What's wrong with fighting fire with fire?
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