Pentagon's News Clipping Service Gets Spun
Kristof wrote that the traditionally "dispassionate collection" of articles was, of late, reflecting some spin. "Lately it has been leading with in-house spin," wrote Kristof. "The Early Bird of Nov. 20, for example, began with three separate unpublished letters to the editor by Pentagon officials before getting to the news from around the world." Pentagon Correspondent David Martin confirms that he's noticed the same pattern in the past month or two, and it appears to be a part of the larger communications strategy that the Pentagon has adopted recently. One aspect of that strategy includes rebutting news reports that the Department of Defense perceives as inaccurate or misleading.
In the past, says Martin, the Early Bird has always been a "fair mix of news" in which you could "almost never spot any slant." At some point during Sec. Rumsfeld's tenure, says Martin, the first section of the Early Bird began including corrections of military-related stories that had been printed in newspapers the previous day. They were primarily small factual corrections, such as a major general being referred to as a brigadier general, etc.
"There was this sort of unstated editorial point that these corrections were important" since they appeared before other news, and "it just emphasized the point that newspapers get it wrong sometimes," said Martin. Nonetheless, he doesn't think most reporters thought too much of it.
But more recently, letters from the Pentagon to the editors of various papers have been included in the front section of Early Bird, and "they were contesting not just an individual fact, but sometimes contesting the whole thrust of a story." It's an example of the types of rebuttals that have been identified as part of the Department of Defense's new strategy, says Martin, referring to a recent situation in which a public affairs officer took issue with CNN reporter Barbara Starr's tone in calling a top military spokesman's comments a "stunning development" in a news segment.
"When you walk around this building, you will inevitably run into someone who's been tasked with responding to the thrust of some story," said Martin. "That means putting it in the Early Bird. It's part of this battle to get their message out."