AP Versus the Military-Industrial-Media Complex, Pts 2 and 3

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"You want to make sure you edit it in the right way," said Major Alayne Conway, who served as a U.S. military public affairs officer in Iraq [6]. When preparing videos for media outlets and websites like YouTube, she said her goal was "something that is going to make Joe Six-Pack look up from his TV dinner or his fast-food meal and look up at the TV and say, 'Wow, the American troops are kicking butt.'" The Associated Press notes that "the Pentagon now spends more than $550 million a year -- at least double the amount since 2003 -- on public affairs," not including personnel costs. The military's training manual calls public affairs a "perception management tool [7]," though it's supposed to provide "facts but not spin" to U.S. audiences. Instead, public affairs seems focused on promoting the military, flying "friendly bloggers to Iraq and Afghanistan [8]," increasing media embed [9] rules, "expanding its Internet presence from 300 to 1,000 sites and increasing its free cable programming on the Pentagon Channel [10] by 33 percent to 2,080 programs." AP's chief executive, Tom Curley, is calling for media organizations "to re-negotiate the rules of engagement between the military and the media [11]. ... Now is the time to resist the propaganda the Pentagon produces [12] and live up to our obligation to question authority and thereby help protect our democracy."