News Story of the Week

Comments on “U.S. Military Covertly Pays to Run Stories in Iraqi Press” by Mark Mazzetti and Borzou Daragahi for the Los Angeles Times November 30, 2005.

This story uncovers how the U.S. Military has been paying Iraqi newspapers to run stories written by the U.S. Military, which favor their efforts in Iraqi. The stories make it to the papers with the help of a private contractor, the Lincoln Group. The authors use a combination of anonymous sources, documents, and sources in Iraq for this story. While there is a good amount of information in this story, this is clearly just an introduction to what appears to be an even bigger story. Hopefully, publishing this story will prompt a response from our government rather than no comment. The authors also brought up that the U.S. Military, while feeding these stories to the Iraqi press, has also been training the Iraqi press in Western media ethics. What I liked about this story was that the authors used a variety of sources for their story. However, a lengthier investigation is also needed.