Conflicts of interest

The New York Times has run a story about military analysts and put forward a damning case that they have manipulated the coverage of the war on behalf of the Pentagon and Team Bush. On the one hand, this has brought on the usual shock and outrage by the media and denials by the analysts (former military generals) themselves. And on the other, the response may just as easily "well duh." They're still former generals. Those apples don't fall very far from the tree.

But what hasn't been noted is the real disconnect between these two cultures, how they are trained to see the world and how their values fit into that world. What they share in common is a desire to support and defend the republic. They sharply diverge after that. The Pentagon sees the media as an extension of its battlespace. It's fighting the new wars on what it perceives to be the new front: 24-hour media and the Internet. This is referred to as Information Operations. It includes strategically deployed mis- and disinformation to ensure that the enemy only has the information the Pentagon wants it to have in order to possess strategic and tactical advantage. And like many other industries in the U.S., it perceives that its enemies have an advantage because the media industries in foreign countries are government run and information can be more strictly controlled. China is a case in point. Edwin L. Armistead gives a good overview of the mindset of military strategists in this field. Even one of the analysts interviewed in the Times story noted that this has "amounted to a sophisticated information operation."

Journalists, on the other hand, are in the business of liberating information. For journalists the phrase "all information wants to be free" is a bit more than just a cliche. While journalists are not in the business of hazarding the republic in time of war, there are truths that have to be reported that may not exactly help our cause, like reporting on conditions at GITMO. Journalists open up information so citizens can make informed decisions on the war. The Pentagon constricts, regulates and monitors information flows to fight the war. These are almost mutually exclusive points of view.

It's easy to be "shocked, shocked" that the administration has been manipulating the public on the subject of the war. It is doubtful that anything Team Bush does could surprise anyone anymore. But there are other issues to consider in a case like this as well. The conflicts between these two highly defensive cultures and the extent to which they misunderstand and mistrust each other's methods and motives will always remain in the equation.