The NewsHour interviewed retired military brass for their expertise, as NPR, The World and other news operations did, but the PBS show disclosed connections and paired them with contrasting commentators, Getler found. Pictured: NewsHour guests McCaffrey (left), Meigs and Maginnis.
Newsrooms review booking of war ‘experts’
Newsroom execs in pubcasting — and elsewhere — are revising booking policies and looking again at archived programs since learning that the Bush administration had groomed sympathetic military analysts to assess its war performance on news broadcasts.
Reporter David Barstow’s lengthy April 20 New York Times article revealed that Pentagon and White House officials have given hundreds of briefings for dozens of retired military officers. Beginning before the Iraq War, the campaign aimed to seed network news shows with military leaders the administration had briefed repeatedly and taken on tours of Iraq and the prison at Guantanamo Bay, according to the Times.
The analysts appeared most often on TV networks including Fox, CNN, NBC, ABC and CBS. But internal reviews at NPR, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and other news organs found that several of the officers named in the Times article also discussed the Iraq War and military matters on public radio and TV.
Some analysts told Barstow that they felt manipulated and hoodwinked by the Pentagon, which they say presented an overly sunny view of progress in Iraq that conflicted with later reports. Others defended themselves as independent and pointed out that they had at times criticized the war effort in their appearances. A Pentagon spokesman defended the campaign as “an earnest attempt to inform the American people.”
The Times report also noted that many of the analysts were involved with defense contractors that profit from the war, raising concerns about conflicts of interest.
Ombudsmen for NPR and PBS concluded that, for the most part, the networks’ journalists carefully vetted the analysts and avoided coached cheerleading for the Bush administration’s handling of the war. In some cases, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer took care to mention that a retired officer had been briefed by the Pentagon.
But the ombuds and some news execs also conceded that shows should have disclosed more about the analysts, their ties to defense contractors and their dealings with the Pentagon.
“The Times piece, for everyone and us included, was a good wake-up call,” says Brian Duffy, managing editor of NPR News. NPR has updated its guidelines for booking guests and is revising an agreement that it requires commentators to sign.
At stake is the networks’ claim to objective, independent journalism. The Times article prompted intense criticism of the press, as well as the Bush administration, including an outcry from liberal watchdog groups such as Free Press and Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting. Members of Congress denounced the program and asked the Pentagon to investigate.
The Pentagon announced April 25 that it would suspend the briefings.
Testing for Kool-Aid content
Public radio and TV networks and shows that have used analysts mentioned in the Times article include NPR, Public Radio International’s The World, The Diane Rehm Show and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.
Of these, only NPR was singled out in the Times report. Maj. Gen. Robert Scales appeared as an analyst on NPR as well as Fox News, the report said. The radio network hired Scales in February 2003, according to Alicia Shepard, NPR’s ombudsman.
NPR paid Scales $100 an hour and installed a high-quality phone line in his home for broadcasts. He appeared on NPR 36 times in 2003, the year the war began, and 67 times since his hiring, Shepard said. Another military expert, retired Lt. Gen Thomas G. Rhame, was also paid to discuss the war.
Execs at NPR and with the NewsHour say they pay analysts to secure their services during wartime, when they are in high demand and are called on frequently. The major TV news networks also paid experts for appearances, the Times reported.
In the Times article and Shepard’s column, Scales said he kept his independence. “When I think things are going well, I’ll say that,” Scales told Shepard. “When they are going badly, I’ll say that. If NPR’s audience is concerned about me being under the influence of contractors or the administration, they are wrong. Frankly, I was lumped together with a whole bunch of people who were cited in this article and the inference was somehow I was a shill for the administration. I’m not.”
In the Times, Scales said that “none of us drink the Kool-Aid.”
NPR reporter Tom Gjelten recommended Scales as an analyst and told Shepard that he believes the general did not parrot administration views. Duffy agrees. “Gen. Scales conducted himself admirably,” he told Current. “There was nothing to show that he was doing anything inappropriate as a result of his participation in the Pentagon program.”
NPR nevertheless should have consistently disclosed Scales’ leadership of Colgen, a defense consulting firm he co-founded in 2003, Shepard wrote in her column. NPR broadcasts mentioned his connection to Colgen only once, she said. She suggested that NPR continue to use Scales for his “practical and scholarly knowledge of the Army” but to point out his contracting work in future broadcasts and to attach annotations to his archived appearances.
The Times article sparked immediate conversations within NPR, Duffy says. Not long after the Sunday paper hit the streets, news Vice President Ellen Weiss e-mailed Duffy and other colleagues. An NPR show had suggested covering the story, and news execs knew that any report would raise questions about NPR’s own policies.
“The consensus decision Sunday morning was, ‘Let’s hold our fire here for a day,’” Duffy says. Execs wanted to take time to review Scales’ appearances and discuss the matter with bookers.
Two days later, news execs met to review their policies. They decided that NPR’s agreement form for commentators needed an update, and NPR News is now working with the network’s legal department to create a “more comprehensive and more airtight” agreement, Duffy says. It will ask commentators to reveal more about their sources of income and ties to organizations that could create a real or perceived conflict of interest.
NPR is the only broadcast network that has said it will change its policies as a result of the Times investigation, according to FAIR, which has been tracking the story.
Duffy discussed the issue on NPR’s Talk of the Nation April 23. Asked by host Neal Conan if NPR had made a mistake, Duffy replied, “I’d say not really a mistake, but we could have exercised a bit more due diligence.”
When to use experts—and how
Retired Maj. Gen. William Nash, another analyst mentioned in the Times, has appeared on Public Radio International’s The World since 2001. His position as a senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations makes him a valuable source, says Bob Ferrante, e.p. of The World.
Nash’s ties to the Pentagon played less into his appearances on The World because the show was not seeking his opinion on the war, Ferrante says. “We weren’t criticizing the war — we don’t broadcast opinion,” he says. “We go to him for military issues and to explain for our listeners the subject we’re after.” For example, the show’s producers asked Nash to explain the concept of a spider hole.
Ferrante says he would still consider using retired generals as sources but would ask them whether they had been briefed by the Pentagon. The show would also use multiple sources, as it has previously, to avoid delivering government messages unchallenged.
According to PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler, the NewsHour had relied on four retired military officers included in the Times roundup: Nash, Lt. Col. Robert Maginnis, Gen. Barry McCaffrey and Gen. Montgomery Meigs. In typical NewsHour fashion, the analysts were paired with guests who shared opposing viewpoints.
The NewsHour also disclosed their connections to the Pentagon, Getler found. In 2006 Maginnis was identified as “a consultant to the Pentagon” who “receives regular briefings there.” A year earlier, viewers were told that he “visited Iraq this past October under the auspices of the Pentagon.”
Michael Mosettig, senior producer of foreign affairs and defense for the NewsHour, told Getler that none of the analysts “came to our studios armed with talking points directly from Secretary Rumsfeld and Torie Clarke (the former assistant secretary of defense for public affairs who oversaw the department’s dealing with the retired officer/analysts).”
“I thought we had the most astringent and astute commentary of anywhere on television during that first phase of the war,” Mosettig told Current.
WAMU’s Diane Rehm Show will continue to use experts but will ask whether they had received private briefings at the Pentagon, says producer Jonathan Smith. The show has featured McCaffrey as a guest on several occasions. Rehm would also challenge any guests who parroted the Bush administration line, Smith says.
“For our audience, what’s important is that they hear what the administration is trying to get out,” he says. “The audience is smart enough to know spin when they hear it.”
But FAIR’s Isabel Macdonald argues that broadcasters could take greater pains to diversify their guests’ views. “This problem of reliance on the ex-generals is also part of a large problem of over-reliance on sources that don’t express enough skepticism about proposals by the government to lead the country into war,” says Macdonald, the watchdog group’s communications director.
She says NPR, the NewsHour and other broadcasters ought to balance the analysts by including a broader range of voices critical of war efforts.
Web page posted May 15, 2008
Copyright 2008 by Current LLC
