folo

The New York Times exposé of the Don Rumsfeld Pentagon’s salting handpuppet “analysts” all over our media (foloed here) has actually — *gasp* — had an effect. Stars and Stripes reports:

ARLINGTON, Va. – The Defense Department has temporarily stopped feeding information to retired military officers pending a review of the issue, said Robert Hastings, principal deputy assistant secretary of Defense for public affairs. …

Hastings said he is concerned about allegations that the Defense Department’s relationship with the retired military analysts was improper.

That they needed all week to muster this much of a response might be because Hastings has only been on the job since last month. I’d be interested to know how that change in department heads affected the timing or even availability of reporter David Barstow’s gleanings, if it did.

Anyhow, Hastings tells S&S that he knew nothing of the scam before Barstow’s reporting, didn’t run his decision by Gates ahead of time, and can’t predict how long his review will take. “I need a little time to kind of digest that and figure out what the path forward is,” he said.

Thursday, House Armed Services Committee chair Ike Skelton (D-MO) said in a speech that he finds “nothing inherently wrong with providing information to the public and the press. But there is a problem if the Pentagon is providing special access to retired officers and then basically using them as pawns to spout the administration’s talking points of the day. It hurts me to my core to think that there are those from the ranks of our retired officers who have decided to cash in and essentially prostitute themselves on the basis of their previous positions within the Department of Defense.”

Meanwhile back at NYT, reporter Barstow’s victory lap includes word that Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro (D-CT) this week wrote the heads of the five major TV networks, inquiring about how they vet and hire military analysts. "When you put analysts on the air without fully disclosing their business interests, as well as relationships with high-level officials within the government, the public trust is betrayed, " her letter said. If they quaked while reading it, I imagine ’twas in mirth, not respect or shame.

Yesterday, NYT ran some reader-letters on the story. Two in particular speak for me:

Fran Sampson of Oak Park, IL, writes,

… Thomas Jefferson once said that if he had to choose between government and a free press he would choose the latter. I’m certain he would not consider a press to be free if it got its talking points from the government and employed those who profit from war to analyze it.

Ed Murphy of Minneapolis marvels that anyone might be surprised to find (a) self-interested talking heads on TV or (b) Bush’s Pentagon manipulating the truth. “The real culprits,” as far as he’s concerned,

are the lazy, ratings-obsessed TV networks that once again let the public down. Instead of hiring more professional journalists who ostensibly hold ethical allegiance to the truth, they simply pay unscrutinized administration surrogates to feed a confused public Pentagon talking points presented as unbiased expert opinion.

In the most important issue of our times, once again the networks have failed us, and for a rightly cynical public the truth is ever harder to find.

“Ostensibly” is the key word there. As you know, I gave up on teevy news some time ago, so I have to inquire of y’all: Have any of these hos showed their faces all week, or has any network or cable outlet even mentioned this news? Bet I can guess the answers . . .