BillHobbs.com is a frequently updated blog of original reporting and commentary by Bill Hobbs, a longtime Nashville journalist and media relations adviser. I am currently serving as communications director for the Tennessee Republican Party, a job I began on Oct. 29, 2007.
President Signed Secret Order for Fake "News" Site
I'm shocked - shocked! - that the Department of Defense has been paying freelance journalists to write news stories for informational websites set up to help our side win the war. The Los Angeles Timesreports on the secret presidential directive that resulted in the creation of the "news" site to help us win the war in, uh, Kosovo. This latest news raises questions about how George Warmonger Bush was able to lead America into war in Kosovo while he was still governor of Texas, where Halliburton is headquartered.
The two websites are run by U.S. European Command, based in Stuttgart, Germany, and maintained by Anteon Corp., a Fairfax, Va., contractor. The European Command is one of five regional U.S. military headquarters around the world and is given authority for U.S. operations in Europe and most of Africa.
The Balkans website, originally called Balkan Exchange and later renamed Southeast European Times, was a result of a secret directive signed by President Clinton in 1999. The order, called Presidential Decision Directive 68, launched an information offensive to counter Serbian propaganda during the Kosovo war.
The European Command created the Africa website in October 2004. It attempts to advance U.S. interests in a region long sympathetic to Islamic fundamentalism. The Maghreb region encompasses Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Mauritania and Morocco, countries that are in the European Command's area of responsibility.
Neither the Southeast European Times nor the African website, called Magharebia, prominently states its connection to the U.S. military, although both link to a disclaimer saying that the sites are "sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense."
The Southeast European Times aims to "offer accurate, balanced and forward-looking coverage of developments in Southeast Europe," the website reads. "Each business day, the site captures the top news from across the region as reported in local and international media. It also features analysis, interviews and commentary by paid Southeast European Times correspondents in the region."
The correspondents often are freelance reporters hired by Anteon Corp. Recent stories on the websites have highlighted a thawing of relations between Serbia and Croatia and efforts to promote female entrepreneurship in northern Africa.
Both websites feature stories culled from independent news services such as the Associated Press, UPI and Reuters. They also provide links to websites of the United Nations, the U.S. State Department, and government organizations in the Balkans and Africa.
Two other U.S. military commands - the Pacific Command, which oversees operations in Asia, and the Central Command, which is responsible for the Middle East - are developing their own versions of regional information websites.
I'm sure the anti-victory Left will be in a tizzy over that.
But, hey, if the military wants people to see all those sites, it ought to be dropping some cash to run ads on a bunch of hawkish, neo-con blogs!
Has everybody forgotten the millions that PRI (Public Radio International) was paid during the Balkan operations? Does that mean the public radio is a propaganda arm of the US military? And while on the subject of radio, what about RPI (Radio for Peace International) -- funded by the UN and, hence, us. They do exactly what these people are complaining about.
