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The Public Diplomacy Blog is intended to stimulate dialog among scholars, researchers, practitioners and professionals from around the world in the public diplomacy sphere. The opinions represented here are the authors' own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the USC Center on Public Diplomacy at the Annenberg School.

PSY-OPS JOURNALISM: WASHINGTON’S BUDDING NEW INDUSTRY
OCT 7, 2006 - 7:20AM PDT
Posted by Alvin Snyder
All posts by this author

The war in Iraq has spawned a new industry in Washington that could be called Psy-ops Journalism. The new breed of journalists are following the money trail to the Pentagon. Some $400 million in media consulting contracts has been awarded during the past few years by the Pentagon, for the purpose of helping "to effectively communicate Iraqi government and Coalition goals with strategic audiences." Thus far both the Pentagon and its contract psy-op journalists have experienced a painful learning curve, but the most recent contract award will show how much each has learned. The outlook is not promising. A practical question is whether psy-ops journalism can work at all. It is a cross between what is accepted as the mainstream journalism of print and TV (and many journalists now blog) and what is known as psy-ops, or psychological operations, those engaged in mind control warfare, to gain military advantage by fooling the enemy. A famous psy-op of World War II is frequently recalled, when the allied army, through disinformation, conned the Nazis into believing that the D-Day invasion of Europe would come ashore at Calais, not Normandy. A less notable World War II psy-op involved the British, who dropped false military leave passes and counterfeit money over areas of axis-occupied Europe, hoping to distract the enemy. During the Vietnam war, the Australian military distributed leaflets in the countryside warning the Vietcong that spirits of their dead comrades would return to haunt them if bodies were not buried. The ruse prompted Vietcong guerillas to dig graves instead of doing battle, so the story goes, but apparently they were not distracted for very long. Even with today's technology, leaflets were dropped by airplanes during the Coalition's invasion of Iraq in March, 2003. Almost half-a-million leaflets were scattered, urging Iraqis to tune in American and British special forces broadcasts transmitted from hovering coalition aircraft. There was also an effort to influence international press coverage related to Iraq through a new Pentagon psy-ops Office of Strategic Influence, but the project was short-lived when the press got hold of the story, and the White House intervened. Next there was a failed effort to pay Iraqi newspapers for the publication of articles written by the U.S. military, which the military could have placed free-of-charge as guest editorials, without all the resulting fuss. Again, the clandestine effort fizzled out when the mainstream media got wind of it. It seems that when the U.S. military wants to get its story out to the media through a contractor, the effort turns out to be counterproductive. It is difficult to determine who is at fault. The contractor obviously wants to please the Pentagon for another, bigger deal, or may simply not know how to do it well. Or the military may be pushing too hard to get the message out, or may write the wrong thing into its contract program priorities, with which a contractor gets stuck. My hunch is the latter. In the last few years, the Pentagon has…... FULL TEXT
 
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Brian on October 13, 2006 @ 9:59 am:
Interesting post: Being a former Special Forces soldier we were taught the value of civil affairs and psychological operations as part of our effort during indirect operations on the battlefield or peace keeping operations. However I was always struck by the lack of connection with the civilian expertise, of which is still apparent today. Psychological and information operations are essential operations when one considers the fact that lives are generally saved on both sides. But until the old horses in the Pentagon start to realize the value over tanks, ship, and fight aircraft we keep seeing dense examples of government waste as you described.

stonierps@state.gov on October 23, 2006 @ 2:07 am:
Used to work for Al Snyder...remember he was a "partner" of Diane Murphy's..Interesting story.

Alan Simpson on November 9, 2006 @ 10:29 am:
A post and which should cause grave concern. The amount spent by the Pentagon to spread lies, misinformation and disinformation is many times larger than the amount spent to create the legitimate resources such as WORLDNET. With $400 million a private/public partnership could make a significant change in world opinion, using legitimate sources and material. Army boots are for kicking doors in, not selling culture!

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