PR in Iraq

I have beeen wanting to get into this for the past few weeks.

NEWS ITEM: The U.S. military is "secretly" paying Iraqi newspapers to run positive stories (written, apparently, by U.S. soldiers) to fight what the military called "misinformation."

And a lot of people are upset by it. Huh? First a quote or two from the Christian Science Monitor story on 12/1/05.

"Here we are trying to create the principles of democracy in Iraq. Every speech we give in that country is about democracy. And we're breaking all the first principles of democracy when we're doing it," said a senior Pentagon official who opposes the practice of planting stories in the Iraqi media.

And

"In the very process of preventing misinformation from another side, they are creating misinformation through a process that disguises the source for information that is going out," said John J. Schulz, dean of Boston University's College of Communications and a veteran journalist. "You can't be creating a model for democracy while subverting one of its core principles, a free independent press."

Now, I'm no fan of most public relations (or the war in Iraq), but isn't that really what's being done? Simple PR?

Subverting a core principle of a free independent press? If we cut out the placing of favorable stories in the news media, a lot of flacks would have to get real jobs. Maybe I am missing something.

Now, the president's OK of the NSA spying on us -- and we DO believe him when he said that all civil liberties were protected -- that's a horse of a different color.