IP: British daily Guardian on U.S. Army Psy-Ops interns at CNN, NPR

[David Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

> Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2000 11:22:08 -0700
> From: Jim Warren <jwarren () well com>
>
>  NPR
> Status: U
>
> Ever wonder why the "news" seems to be getting more and more biased?
>
> --jim
>
> > Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2000 11:06:15 -0700
> > From: Williamson Evers <evers () hoover stanford edu>
> > Subject: British daily Guardian on U.S. Army Psy-Ops interns at CNN, NPR
> >
> > Guardian (Great Britain)
> >  April 12, 2000
> >
> > CNN, NPR Admit Army
> >  Psy-Ops Link
> >
> >  Two leading US news channels have admitted that they
> >  allowed psychological operations officers from the
> >  military to work as placement interns at their
> >  headquarters during the Kosovo war. Cable Network
> >  News (CNN) and National Public Radio, (NPR) denied
> >  that the "psy-ops" officers influenced news coverage
> >  and said the internships had been stopped as soon as
> >  senior managers found out.
> >
> >  CNN hosted five psy-ops officers as temporary, unpaid
> >  workers last year, while NPR took three, all from the
> >  army's 4th Psychological Operations Group, based at
> >  Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The army's psychological
> >  operations are prohibited by law from manipulating the
> >  US media.
> >
> >  After the existence of the CNN internship programme
> >  was published in the Dutch newspaper, Trouw, the
> >  network immediately cancelled it.
> >
> >  For its part, the army said the programme was only
> >  intended to give young army media specialists some
> >  experience of how the news industry functioned. The
> >  interns were restricted to mainly menial tasks such as
> >  answering phones, but the fact that military
> >  propaganda experts were even present in newsrooms
> >  as reports from the Kosovo conflict were being
> >  broadcast has triggered a storm of criticism and raised
> >  questions about the independence of these networks.