________________________________________________________________________________ Trouw [NL] 25 February, 2000 Military Had No Influence, Says CNN By Abe de Vries ATLANTA - The American network CNN has admitted on Wednesday to Trouw that last year five U.S. Army specialist in the use of audiovisual media in psychological operations (psyops) have worked at it's main office in Atlanta for six months. CNN rejects the view that its journalistic integrity has been endangered by the cooperation with the U.S. Army. Also, CNN does not think wrong appearances have been made, which should have been avoided. Mahoney: "These military were only involved in news production under supervision of senior CNN employees. They have not decided what CNN should report and what not. Our staff is committed to neutral, fair, accurate and responsible reporting. CNN sticks to the highest standards in journalism." According to a spokeswoman, Megan Mahoney, "five military have learned, mainly in the role of observers, about the different tasks and responsibilities in our newsrooms". CNN denies that psyops specialists could have been involved in the production of news about the war in Kosovo, as a Major of the U.S. Army Information Service said on Monday. The military worked at CNN in the period from June 7th until the end of December, each for ten weeks. This would mean that during the war they only were with CNN in the last week. Mahoney says they were internees. Two worked in a television department, two in a radio department and one in satellite communications. Before 7 June there would have been no military personnel working for CNN. A spokesman for the U.S. Special Operations Command, Walter Sokalski, said that the psyops specialist were assigned "to study the process of collecting and distribution of information at CNN, the technical side of it". Sokalski: "The American army must do more with less. They examined the logistics of a worldwide organization: how can you work on such a big scale and still be efficient?" The military unit to which the internees belonged is the Third Psychological Operations Battalion (POB), part of the airmobile Fourth Psychological Operations Group in Fort Bragg, North-Carolina. This POB is the only active unit of the American army which can print flyers, posters and newspapers and do radio and television transmissions. Most psyops personnel has a university degree in psychology or in one of the social sciences. In armed conflicts or during periods of rising tensions, troops like this are expected to disseminate "information" to influence public opinion. A second goal of psyops is to frighten opponents on the battlefield. During the war in Kosovo leaflets were spread which contained a message for the soldiers of the Yugoslav army: that they had to choose between "a certain death" or desertion. In April, anonymous "military officials" delivered one such a leaflet to a CNN-reporter. The outplacement of American psyops specialists at CNN was, according to Mahoney, a one-time affair. "It was a temporary program which will not be continued." Trouw 23 February, 2000 Specialists in 'psyops' worked for CNN By Abe de Vries WASHINGTON, ATLANTA - Last year, CNN has for a short period of time employed military specialists in "psychological operations" (psyops). This was confirmed to Trouw by a spokesman of the U.S. Army. The military could have influenced CNN's news reports about the crisis in Kosovo. "Psyops personnel, soldiers and officers, have been working in CNN's headquarters in Atlanta through our program 'Training With Industry'," said Major Thomas Collins of the U.S. Army Information Service in a telephone interview last Friday. "They worked as regular employees of CNN. Conceivably, they would have been working on stories during the Kosovo war. They've helped in the production of news." These military, a "handful" according to Collins, have stayed with CNN for at least a couple of weeks "to get to know the company and to broaden their horizons." Collins maintains "they didn't work under the control of the army." The temporary outplacement of U.S. Army psyops personnel in various sectors of society began a couple of years ago. Contract periods vary from a couple of weeks to one year. CNN is the biggest and most widely viewed news station in the world. The intimate liaisons with army psyops specialists raise serious doubts about CNN's journalistic integrity and independence. The military CNN-personnel belonged to the airmobile Fourth Psychological Operations Group, stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. One of the main tasks of this group of almost 1200 soldiers and officers is to spread "selected information." American psyops troops try with a variety of techniques to influence media and public opinion in armed conflicts in which American state interests are said to be at stake. The propaganda group was involved in the Gulf war, the Bosnian war and the crisis in Kosovo. So far CNN has not commented on the allegations. "I don't believe that we would employ military personnel, it doesn't seem like something we would normally do," said CNN-spokeswoman Megan Mahoney at first, on Friday evening. But when the U.S. Army Information Service confirmed the news, Mahoney said she would have to contact CNN's senior officials. However, on Sunday evening CNN could still not issue an offical statement. CNN's coverage of the war in Kosovo, and that by other media, has attracted criticism from several sides as having been one-sided, too emotional, simplifying and too heavily based on NATO officials. On the other hand, journalists have complained about the lack of reliable information from NATO; for almost all of them it was impossible to be on the battlefield and file first-hand reports. Background story: The American army loves CNN BELGRADE - In the first two weeks of the war in Kosovo, CNN produced thirty articles for the Internet. An average CNN-article mentions seven times NATO politicians like Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, NATO spokesmen like Jamie Shea and David Wilby, and other NATO officials. Nine times words like refugees, ethnic cleansing, mass killings and expulsions are used. But it seems the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (0.2 times) and the Yugoslav civilian victims (0.3 times) never existed for CNN. Concentration on one central message is a favorite technique in audiovisual mass media, but it holds also a high place with military personnel trying to win a war using "psychological operations" (psyops). Number of viewers and the interest of the state can shake hands, provided there's a lot of simplifying and mystifying. The news that CNN employed psyops specialists leaves really only this question to be answered. Did the military learn from the television makers how to catch and hold the attention of the viewers? Or did the psyops people maybe teach CNN how the U.S. government could be assisted in gathering political support? CNN, no doubt about that, will soon declare that the military ofcourse didn't influence their news. However, this whole thing looks very bad. And appearance counts too. The commander of the Fourth Psychological Operations Group, colonel Christopher St. John, implied beginning of February on a closed military symposium on special operations, held in Arlington (Virginia), that the cooperation with CNN was a textbook example of the kind of ties the American army wants to have with the media. According to the French magazine Intelligence Newsletter, in a report in its latest edition, in particular the Kosovo experience was evaluated at this symposium. In the Kosovo crisis there was no military censorship, as was in place during the Gulf war. This time NATO tried with more subtle methods to regulate the flow of information. The U.S. Army leadership seems to have concluded that new and more agressive measures in psychological warfare are needed. Not only do the psyops people want to spread handpicked 'information' (and keep other news quiet), the army wants also to control the Internet, to wage electronic warfare against disobedient media, and to control commercial satellites. NATO's message in the Kosovo war was simple. That's how it should be in effective psyops. NATO had to confront Serbian troops who committed genocide, waged war to facilitate the return of Albanian refugees, and bombed Yugoslavia very careful, to avoid if possible 'collateral damage'. Mass media like CNN took this message at face value and didn't ask too many disturbing questions. Probably with this very soothing motto in mind: that half a truth is still far away from being a lie. The war in Kosovo was far less bloody than the one in Bosnia; many Albanians fled Kosovo from fear of bombings or on orders of the KLA; NATO killed more than 500 innocent Yugoslav civilians in 'accidents'; by using imprecise and outdated cluster bombs NATO has, according to many experts in international law, violated the Geneva Conventions - but all of that, it seems, was not, or not really, worth mentioning. Still, the psyops people in Arlington were not completely satisfied. In their opinion, too much information about the unplanned results of the bombings has come to the surface. Rear-admiral Thomas Steffens of the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) reportedly would like to have the capacity to bring down an 'informational cone of silence" over areas where special operations are in place. What that can mean in reality was shown by the bombing of the Serbian state television RTS in Belgrade. Fourteen people died. Another high-ranking officer of SOCOM, colonel Romeo Morrissey, said in his review that NATO should have taken out the Serbian radio station B-92. The B-92 coverage of the bombings did not correspond at all with the information NATO brought out on its press shows in Brussels. Journalists who regularly logged in on the internet site of B-92 had succeeded, bit by bit, in undermining NATO's message. And that is something psyops people don't like. Psyops people love CNN. # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net ________________________________________________________________________________ no copyright 2000 rolux.org - no commercial use without permission. is a moderated mailing list for the advancement of minor criticism. more information: mail to: majordomo@rolux.org, subject line: , message body: info. further questions: mail to: rolux-owner@rolux.org. archive: http://www.rolux.org