Harper’s took a shot at the WWS and others on Friday in the context of a piece about the Pentagon’s “Blogger Outreach” program. Author Ken Silverstein writes that the program
The funny thing is, Silverstein took a while to arrive at this uninformed conclusion–this was a follow-up web piece to an equally half-cocked piece that appeared two days earlier. That first piece on the Pentagon’s “new spin unit” revealed the administration’s dastardly plan “to bypass the traditional media and work directly with talk radio and bloggers, mostly those with a heavily conservative tilt.” Making the whole thing sound even more scandalous, Silverstein adds that he hasn’t “been able to learn which blogs and individuals the unit has been working with, but urge[s] anyone with such information to contact me via email.” But even the most cursory Google search for “Pentagon blogger call” turns up dozens of hits from the participants. We invariably include “Blogger’s Roundtable” or “Blogger Call” in the titles of our posts, and as he concedes in his second piece,
Not only are we clear about who our sources are, we are not always kind to them–I wrote at the time that Liotta’s rationale for keeping Gitmo open wasn’t “terribly compelling.” Posts from other bloggers participating in the calls have been downright hostile–David Axe responded to one call with a post titled “Lies My Leaders Told Me.” The entire program consists of providing an opportunity for new media to speak directly with senior officers in Iraq and policy makers at the Pentagon. As Blackfive’s Grim, a frequent participant on the calls, points out in his own response to the piece,
Our readers are quite capable of drawing their own conclusions, I wonder if Silverstein would trust his to do the same. One thing is for sure, reader’s of Harper’s would be well served by exposure to what this country’s military officers have to say about the war–it isn’t always positive, and, in fact, the calls typically include frank discussion of the significant challenges the military faces in Iraq. I’d suggest Silverstein interrupt his busy writing schedule to do just a little bit of reporting and join us for a call (anyone ‘who needs such information’ can contact me via email). He might be surprised to learn what actually goes on: bloggers putting hard questions to commanders in the field and writing up the answers without spin. Scandalous! There’s more on this from Charlie Quidnunc at the Wizbang blog as well.
