Planted Stories and their Implications

Steve Sailer comments on the story about the U.S. planting stories in the Iraqi newspapers.

He has an interesting insight - that the Iraqis know that the newspapers are propaganda arms, so the more positive stories printed, the more oney they see that the U.S. is willing to pay people to be friendly, thus making the people friendlier to the U.S. (and presumably the rest of the coalition).

Indeed, the moral implications of trying to propagandize Iraqis are not the primary reason this story is concerning.

There are two concerns that this story actually gives me.

(1) That the military has to pay to have propaganda run suggests that the stories that the newspapers would print would not otherwise be sufficiently favorable. In other words, the fact that the government feels this is necessary suggests that things may not be to rosy in Iraq

(2) Second, this underscores that we ought to be cautious of any reports of how much Iraqis love us or of any testimonials by Iraqis of how grateful they are to the U.S. and the coalition. Such stories, testionials, etc., designed to make antiwar and antioccupation activists seem to be anti-Iraqi, should be taken with a grain of salt and this proves this.

This sort of reminds me of another "scandal" that happened two years ago, when it was discovered that some of the letters to local papers by soldiers talking about how wonderful things were going in Iraq was part of a propaganda offensive using form letters rather than the spontaneous act of soldiers themselves. In fact, there is some question as to whether in many cases, the soldiers the letter was attributed to even signed it, or when they did, whether they were free not to sign it.

Which brings me to point 3:

(3) It's one thing to propagandize Iraqis, it's another when you get the impression that some of this propaganda is designed for its effect on American audiences.

That is all.