Press abuse

The LA Times reports:

As part of an information offensive in Iraq, the US military is secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish stories written by American troops in an effort to burnish the image of the US mission in Iraq.

The articles, written by US military "information operations" troops, are translated into Arabic and placed in Baghdad newspapers with the help of a defense contractor, according to US military officials and documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

...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.

And links it to what's been going on at home:

The arrangement with Lincoln Group is evidence of how far the Pentagon has moved to blur the traditional boundaries between military public affairs - the dissemination of factual information to the media - and psychological and information operations, which use propaganda and sometimes misleading information to advance the objectives of a military campaign.

The Bush administration has come under criticism for distributing video and news stories in the United States without identifying the federal government as their source and for paying American journalists to promote administration policies, practices the Government Accountability Office has labeled "covert propaganda."

Yes, for an administration that cannot abuse the word democracy enough, they sure don't have much reverence for it, nor a free, independent, incisive media. Planting stories, threatening to bomb media outlets...what's next?