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To: lurqer who wrote (38577)	2/28/2004 11:59:30 AM
From: Mannie	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Friday, February 27, 2004 · Last updated 8:41 p.m. PT Pentagon to offer direct news service By JIM KRANE ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER KUWAIT CITY, Kuwait -- The U.S. military will launch its own news service in Iraq and Afghanistan to send military video, text and photos directly to the Internet or news outlets. The $6.3 million project, expected to begin operating in April, is one of the largest military public affairs projects in recent memory, and is intended to allow small media outlets in the United States and elsewhere to bypass what the Pentagon views as an increasingly combative press corps. U.S. officials have complained that Iraq-based media focuses on catastrophic events such as car bombs and soldiers' deaths, while giving short shrift to U.S. rebuilding efforts. The American public "currently gets a pretty slanted picture," said Army Capt. Randall Baucom, a spokesman for the Kuwait-based U.S.-led Coalition Land Forces Command. "We want them to get an opportunity to see the facts as they exist, instead of getting information from people who aren't on the scene." The project, called Digital Video and Imagery Distribution System or DVIDS, will also give the Pentagon more control of the coverage when calamities do happen. Army camera teams will be able to use their access to battle zones or military bases to film the aftermath of rebel attacks on U.S. troops - or U.S. raids on insurgent targets - and then offer free pictures to news outlets within two hours. At times civilian media are kept away from such events. "We have an unfair advantage," Baucom said. "We're going to be able to get closer to the incident and provide better spokespeople to give the right information. The important thing is that we provide the public with accurate information." But media analysts argued that the military has a vested interest in making sure its viewpoint is heard. "The Army wants to get their view across and they are using a technique as old as any public relations manuever ever devised," said Aly Colon, an ethics group leader at the Poynter Institute, the journalism research and education center in St. Petersburg, Fla. "I would view the Army's decison, in the same way that I would view OPEC creating a communications system to help the American public understand what it means when prices go up," he said. "This is the kind of news that people get in countries where the government controls the media. Why would anybody here want to buy into it?" Mac McKerral, president of the Society of Professional Journalists, told The Associated Press. The Army is in the midst of contracting to outfit five Mobile Public Affairs Detachments with a suitcase-sized reporting kit containing digital video and still cameras, a laptop computer and a Norsat NewsLink 3200 satellite broadcast terminal. Four teams will be based in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. Much of the effort is aimed at packaging and shipping locally focused stories to small and medium-sized newspapers and TV stations in the United States, said Army Col. Rick Thomas, who heads the effort. Most small U.S. media outlets can't afford to send a reporter to Iraq to cover a local military unit, Thomas said. Since the ongoing troop rotation involves several Army National Guard and Reserve units from communities across the United States, there are small media outlets who might never get news of their neighbors' work in Iraq. "The vast majority are dependent on other news organizations to get their products," Thomas said. "We think we can give them some more focused copy. We can shoot video of someone from, say, Tupelo, Miss., and they've got what looks like a very good hometown piece." The military brass was surprised and impressed with the speed and immediacy of the coverage of journalists embedded with U.S. combat units during the war, and wanted to develop the same capabilities, Thomas said. Television crews demonstrated their equipment for Army public affairs teams, and Thomas said his staff compiled a list of equipment needed to cover breaking news. The Army already has dozens of its own reporters in Iraq and Afghanistan writing for internal newsletters and magazines. Thomas said he hopes civilian media can reuse the same stories, or at least the Army's photos and video. The military's reporters will transmit their stories and video to servers at Third Army headquarters in Atlanta, and allow access to them over a password-protected Internet site, Baucom said. Accredited news organizations will be allowed to register for free access, he said. Thomas said the military also plans to use the equipment for internal video, such as beaming pictures from an aircraft's gun camera to a Pentagon briefing. The DVIDS units will also make it easier to get positive stories published, Thomas said. "There are numerous good news stories that aren't told that do provide a better balance on the overall successes we achieved in Iraq," he said. "We'll be able to provide the option for those types of stories. They're not going to lead in a major daily newspaper, but they'll play well in smaller daily papers and especially weekly papers."

To: lurqer who wrote (38577)	2/28/2004 12:03:17 PM
From: lurqer	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 89467

For those that still doubt whether we live in a corporatist society - What's in a Name? A Potful of Problems by Gary Ruskin Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn and Councilman Eric Garcetti want to sell off the city. On Tuesday, at their instigation, a City Council committee kicked around the idea of creating an official city beverage or setting up some other kind of licensing deal. From there, it's only a short step to selling off the naming rights to municipal buildings, parks or neighborhoods. Who can doubt that that's where they're heading? Yes, the city faces a $250-million deficit next year. But the idea of granting naming rights to the highest bidder is a recipe for civic humiliation. The city's participation in any marketing deal will provide an implicit or explicit endorsement of a corporation and its products. It's happened elsewhere. Snapple is the official beverage of New York City, with the company paying $166 million over five years for that designation. Coca-Cola has signed marketing deals with Huntington Beach (for $600,000 a year), and East Lansing, Mich. (for $2 million over 10 years), while PepsiCo has agreements with San Diego (up to $23.6 million over 12 years), and Fresno (for $625,000 over five years). How will citizens of Los Angeles feel about promoting big polluters, corporate welfare recipients or corporate felons? Denver's Coors Field is named after the Adolph Coors Co., which paid a $200,000 criminal fine and pleaded guilty to two criminal misdemeanor counts of contaminating groundwater and failing to report the contamination to regulatory authorities. These kinds of deals are public relations disasters waiting to happen. Today's big advertiser could be tomorrow's big perp. Some Houston residents thought the name Enron Field had a nice cash register ring to it when the company agreed in 2000 to pay $100 million over 30 years for the naming rights to the major league baseball park. Not long afterward, there were red faces all around, and the field is now known as Minute Maid Park. The rash of corporate scandals that gripped the country was part of the reason San Francisco rejected the sale of naming rights to Candlestick Park, the first professional sports stadium in the United States to return to a popular name. The change was made because of citizen protest. Then there is the ethics of endorsing products you don't believe in. There is already an epidemic of obesity in this country. The Los Angeles Unified School District has taken the courageous step of banning the sale of soda pop in all public schools. The mayor would do well to ponder this while he considers creating the city's new "official" drink. Does he want to help address such problems as obesity? Or does he want to serve as official enabler for the advertising that helps make them worse? These marketing deals are sure to create messy conflicts of interest, too. When the Bigbucks Corp. comes to testify at a municipal building named after itself, will there not be a lingering suspicion that some voices count more than others in this particular venue? Could judges and juries really be impartial when listening to lawyers argue cases in a court building named after their law firm? Los Angeles residents already slog through a daily hailstorm of advertising — pop-ups, pop- unders, telemarketing, billboards, spam, TV commercials, product placements, junk mail, junk faxes and all the rest. And once you put the city on the auction block, where will it end? When a 100-foot Coke bottle is dangled over City Hall? When kids pledge allegiance to a Nike banner along with the American flag? Some things just shouldn't be for sale. The city of Los Angeles is one of them. commondreams.org lurqer