Fighting the Information War
Patterico (H/T: Michelle)
I spent much of the weekend chasing down a story about the L.A. Times’s misreporting of an incident in Iraq. As part of my investigation, I corresponded with the press folks at CENTCOM. We ended up exchanging a few e-mails, as I tried to obtain a clear and unambiguous statement that I could use. (You’ll likely be reading more about this in the next 2-3 days.)
The final e-mail I received began this way:
Sir –
Thank you for your support for the troops; we appreciate your attempts to set the record straight on your blog; which by the way is very impressive and does have quite a following. However, this forum is reserved for credentialed media outlets. If we stop to answer every blogger in world who has a question we will be inundated. Our first priority is getting the credentialed media the correct information as quickly as possible so that they can present a balanced story. That in itself is quite a challenge, as you can imagine, in the fog of war and with intricacies of this mission. I hope that you will not take offense and understand, but please refrain from contacting the Press Desk unless you can provide media credentials.
Translation: “Let me say this politely. You are just a blogger and we have real media to deal with.” ...
