You will want to read John Tierney’s piece today about the insertion of articles into the Iraqi newspapers. Some very funny examples of the best writing that the Pentagon bureaucrats can come up with. Simply the most stunningly awful tripe. Not even the loving mother’s of those mentioned would bother to wade through them.
He also offers some ideas for truly useful articles to replace them:
Go tabloid and start making money for a change:
”Osama’s Orgy: The Tape Al Jazeera Won’t Show You”
”Study: Handling I.E.D.’s Linked to Sterility”
”Drunken Zarqawi Cavorts in Vegas With Jessica Simpson”
”Iraqi Security Forces Cheer Tot With Kitten Rescue”
”Blackout Bliss: 101 Fun Things to Do When the Lights Go Out.”
”Bomber’s Report From Afterlife: No Virgins!”
Tag john tierney
Now that the Pentagon has been outed for planting articles in Iraqi
newspapers, we’re faced with one of the easiest questions of the year:
Is it proper for the government to manipulate public opinion through
self-serving, one-sided journalism?
Of
course not. In a free democratic society, biased journalism is the
responsibility of billionaires, foundations and the reporters they buy.
The private sector could have done it cheaply and discreetly,
but the Pentagon made a mess of it. It was caught not only planting
articles but also — even more humiliating — paying newspapers for the
privilege. The first rule of vanity publishing is to hide the money.
The
Pentagon may want to blame this fiasco on the Lincoln Group, the
Washington-based firm it hired to place the articles. P.R. pros are
supposed to get stuff in the paper without straight payola. But in this
case, they have an excuse.
If you’ve ever been a freelance
writer, you know that trying to get an editor in America to accept an
unsolicited article is humiliating enough. But the scribes at the
Lincoln Group had to pitch stories to editors in a foreign country, and
they weren’t even hustling their own stuff. The stories were concocted
by those masters of prose and narrative: Pentagon bureaucrats.
The
Lincoln freelancers were offering stories with headlines like ”The
Sands Are Blowing Toward a Democratic Iraq,” as Jeff Gerth reported in
The New York Times. Gerth shared with me (free of charge) a stack of
other stories flogged by the Lincoln Group, and after reading them I
have new sympathy for these freelancers.
With a couple of
exceptions — notably a piece headlined ”Iraqi Forces Capture Al Qaeda
Fighters Crawling Like Dogs” — this material is Mission Impossible.
Try getting someone to take a piece called ”Iraqi Soldiers Improve
Leadership Skills” or ”Renovated Facilities Help to Bolster Security
in Mosul.” As I read them, I kept imagining rejection letters like:
Thank you for the opportunity to
consider ”Iraqis Electing the Future.” It thoroughly differentiates
the Coalition of Independent and Nonpartisan Election Monitors (CINEM)
from the Civic Coalition for Free Elections (CCFE) and the Election
Violence Education and Resolution project (EVER). Unfortunately,
though, it’s not quite right for our target audience.
Or:
We
were intrigued by the headline of ”An Iraqi Success Story.” But we
found the opening rather slow — ”Telecommunications is arguably the
sector most affected by the 2003 liberation of Iraq” — and then got
bogged down in the key paragraph:
”And while there were
initial disputes over the process that awarded Egypt-based Orascom
Telecommunications (Iraqna), Kuwait-based MTC Atheer and Kurdish-owned
Asiacell the first 24-month Iraqi cellphone licenses in December 2003,
their growth can only be cited as an Iraqi success story.”
Perhaps a rewrite could
”punch up” the story to suit our needs, but we fear it still might
not work. Have you considered a specialized business publication?
Or:
There
is much to admire in your article on the Iraqi Security Forces. You
memorably describe them ”moving across the desert sands like the
wind.” But you do not introduce us to any of these ”heroic” figures
or describe their activities beyond a list of the weapons they seized.
You
write that these soldiers ”fight for freedom, wherever there is
trouble,” a revelation that would indeed be newsworthy to our readers
across Iraq, not to mention the American military advisers. But our
readers would remain skeptical unless you could provide more evidence.
After a few of these letters, any freelancer would look for a new strategy. Pentagon payola would be the only
way to maintain your self-respect.
I
hope the Pentagon is getting out of the news business. But if the
would-be journalists can’t help themselves, they should at least do a
good job of propaganda. No more stories headlined ”Border Security Is
in Full Swing on All Levels.”
Go tabloid and start making money for a change:
”Osama’s Orgy: The Tape Al Jazeera Won’t Show You”
”Study: Handling I.E.D.’s Linked to Sterility”
”Drunken Zarqawi Cavorts in Vegas With Jessica Simpson”
”Iraqi Security Forces Cheer Tot With Kitten Rescue”
”Blackout Bliss: 101 Fun Things to Do When the Lights Go Out.”
”Bomber’s Report From Afterlife: No Virgins!”
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