Military sidesteps media

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I can understand why the Pentagon is doing this. While I see the pro's and con's of this kind of endeavor, I think it'll be a good thing since other media outlets are still able to operate freely. In the article, the president of some journalist society says it's the "kind of news that people get in countries where the government controls the media," but he doesn't acknowledge that such controlled news is exclusively what people in those countries receive. It sounds to me like the Pentagon has caught on to the fact that the internet is where the future of news coverage lies. Granted, it could be a very useful propaganda tool, but it could also let us know things that the media at large fail to report (like good news) or spin to fit their preconceptions and agendas (like bad news). Here's part of the article:

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KUWAIT CITY â?? The U.S. military will launch its own news service in Iraq and Afghanistan to send military video, text and photos directly to the Internet or news outlets.

The $6.3 million project, expected to begin operating this month, is one of the largest military public affairs projects in recent memory, and is intended to allow small media outlets in the United States and elsewhere to bypass what the Pentagon views as an increasingly combative press corps.

U.S. officials have complained that Iraq-based media focus on catastrophic events such as car bombs and soldiers' deaths, while giving short shrift to U.S. rebuilding efforts.

The American public "currently gets a pretty slanted picture," said Army Capt. Randall Baucom, a spokesman for the Kuwait-based U.S.-led Coalition Land Forces Command. "We want them to get an opportunity to see the facts as they exist, instead of getting information from people who aren't on the scene."

The project, called Digital Video and Imagery Distribution System or DVIDS, will also give the Pentagon more control of the coverage when calamities do happen.

Army camera teams will be able to use their access to battle zones or military bases to film the aftermath of rebel attacks on U.S. troops â?? or U.S. raids on insurgent targets â?? and then offer free pictures to news outlets within two hours.

At times civilian media are kept away from such events.

"We have an unfair advantage," Baucom said. "We're going to be able to get closer to the incident and provide better spokespeople to give the right information. The important thing is that we provide the public with accurate information."
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[woodchip]

I would be all for it, if only because we the public would have another source to compare notes on and make a more informed opinion on a particular situation.

[Will Robinson]

Yea, let the mainstream media try to rebutt it instead of just fail to report it.
Let them do their f$%#ing job for a change and show us it's not true if they think that's the case!

[De Rigueur]

Let's see. Who is more/less trustworthy, the media or the military?

May as well have both, I guess.

[roid]

provide better spokespeople to give the right information.

heh

[bash]

I'm a relatively new explorer of the blogosphere and even as a journalist (by degree, not currently by trade) I have to admit the wealth of information found in personal diaries and links to news outlets off the beaten path is substantial. Nowadays I've reversed my surfing habits. Whereas once I visited most of the major mainstream news outlets and then some of my favorite blogs, now I visit the blogs first. Granted, blogs have alot of loopy folks with a lot of strange theories but if you trust yourself to keep a critical mind on what you're reading you will definitely come away with a differemt, and in my estimation, a more complete picture of what is happening behind the day's headlines.

More specific to the topic, it's clear that alot of good and bad occurs in Iraq and I think the CPA/CentCom.mil does a good job of allowing access to both types of news. The mainstream press, however, invariably picks up the bad and buries the good. Intentional? I believe it is. Now, with the US government giving it's news directly to the Internet rather than to the journalists and leaving it up to them what to amplify and what to attenuate, blogs can present for themselves what news their readers want to know about without the usual negative spin.