The information war

The Bush Administration appears to have learned the lessons of Vietnam, contrary to what certain prominent critics might think.  The Vietnam War was lost on the battlefield of public opinion.  Confirmation that the Administration understands this comes in a Washington Post article by Walter Pincus under the headline, Positive Press on Iraq Is Aim of U.S. Contract.

U.S. military leaders in Baghdad have put out for bid a two-year, $20 million public relations contract that calls for extensive monitoring of U.S. and Middle Eastern media in an effort to promote more positive coverage of news from Iraq.

[...]

A public relations practitioner who asked for anonymity because he may be involved in a bid on the contract said that military commanders "are overwhelmed by the media out there and are trying to understand how to get their information out.

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In a speech before the American Legion on Tuesday, Rumsfeld said that a search of leading newspapers revealed that a soldier punished for misconduct was written about "10 times" as often as the first recipient of the Medal of Honor in anti-terrorism efforts.

Mr. Pincus, to his everlasting credit, refrained from any characterization of the public relations effort as propaganda.

Comments

[Mike Roark]

Frustrated. Why did it take so long? Seems like this has been clear for several years. There are an awful lot of bright people working on the problem of terrorism and they just now finaly figured this out?

[Tom Bowler]

I suppose I shouldn't be, but I'm actually surprised at the media's persistance in presenting all that is negative and ignoring anything that would reflect well on the Administration. The fact is, though, the Administration has been trying to get their story out for a long time, but the media effort to counter them has been incredible.

[Mike Roark]

I agree that the administration has been trying to get the word out and I also agree that the media effort to counter has been significant. What puzzles me, is that it seems obvious how important the information war is and that the administation wasn't winning it,that it took them this long to raise the priority to get the message out - both here and abroad.

[Tom Bowler]

Maybe they were less agressive about it before, for fear of having it all dismissed as propaganda. I share your concern, but I hesitate to second guess.

[Teresa]

Sadly none of the Republicans learned a single thing from Ronald Reagan about doing an end run around the press. Reagan was able to do it with ease. Bush could too - but chooses not to for whatever reason. If they want to get a message to the people - all the President must do is call a press conference. He could have an expert speak ahead of him and then put in his bit about agreeing and reinforcing what needs to be done. It's always disturbed me that there is such a dearth of knowledge about how publicity can work in your favor by this Administration.

[Tom Bowler]

Well Teresa, maybe now that we're into the stretch run for the midterm elections we'll see a little more of it. He gave a pretty good speech today, so I'm told. But if there is one thing the Plame affair has told us, people in the Bush Administration have to be very careful about taking the PR offensive. That said, I agree with you. He has the advantage in that he can dictate the discussion and force the Democrats to react to what he says. Maybe he'll use it.