We in the information industry are shocked - shocked! - and outraged - outraged!! - at the revelation that U.S. military officials have been planting articles in Iraqi newspapers by paying - paying!!! - journalists to print the Pentagon's version of events.
The best part is the chagrin expressed by one Iraqi publisher, who, had he known he was selling editorial space to the U.S. Army, would have "charged much, much more."
Meanwhile, the diplomatic member of this long-running good cop/bad cop show, the State Department, trains Iraqis in media ethics and "The Role of Press in a Democratic Society." On the other side of the foreign policy street, something called the "Information Operations Task Force" in Baghdad has taken over an Iraqi newspaper and radio station in order to channel its own brand of information in the burgeoning media of the occupied country. Anyone calling themselves the information operations task force must really, really want to be taken seriously. I mean they could have called it the Spin Office, or the Ministry of Lies, or Pravda.
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