Amazing Confession By PR Intern Working In Iraq

[Jcrowley]

In this astonishing confessional by an Oxford graduate who worked in the green zone of Baghdad, we see the perversity of the American version of a 'free press' in Iraq.

I Was A PR Intern in Iraq
By Willem Marx, Harper's. Posted September 18, 2006.

Last spring, during my final semester at Oxford, a cousin wrote to tell me that she was planning to work for an American company in Iraq over the summer. She suggested I join her. The company was called Iraqex, and it claimed on its website to have "expertise in collecting and exploiting information; structuring transactions; and mitigating risks through due diligence, legal strategies and security." Iraqex was also looking for summer media interns, my cousin pointed out, who would "interact with the local media" in Baghdad and "pitch story ideas." This was almost too good to be true.

<snip>

Jim Sutton sat me down one afternoon at the villa to talk about what he said was "the next step" in the company's operations. In line with Lincoln Group's longer-term aims, he and the established team (the half-dozen or so who had been in Iraq longer than two months) were intent on carrying out a much larger military contract. "Western Mission" would be a hugely expanded version of the current media efforts. It would be an all-out "media blitz," Jim said, and the largest contract ever of its kind. During the months of August and September alone, we were proposing to place sixteen different pro-government/anti-insurgent spots on Iraqi television stations for a fee of $16.5 million. There would be twenty radio broadcasts as well, with the military paying us around $20,000 for each. We would publish eighty half-page color advertisements and thirty-two op-ed articles, for which we would charge nearly $400,000. Blanketing Baghdad with 140,000 posters would earn us another $400,000, and we would design nine Internet news sites, at a cost of $2,500 each, and produce five DVDs, for just over $580,000. Lincoln Group's overall haul for the two months: $19 million.

We were also to create something called a Rapid Response Cell. Lincoln Group would hire Iraqi journalists and send them to the Anbar province west of Baghdad, which Jim called the "insurgency's center of gravity." Working in the violent cities of Ramadi and Fallujah, the journalists would be paid by Lincoln Group to report news that bolstered the U.S. military message. They would be on hand as well to capture breaking stories, about which they alone would be conveniently forewarned by Coalition forces, and would thus be able to "positively" portray events before the insurgency could put out its own account. Ahmed and I were told to recruit cameramen, reporters, and television stations to do this work. We were also to line up op-ed writers, so that once Western Mission was formally approved our team would be ready on August 1 to "execute." Finally, in order to show the military officers at the Al Faw palace that we were giving them more bang for their buck, I was now to pass ten stories along to Muhammad each week.

Ahmed had worked in the press office of the Coalition Provisional Authority, where he issued professional accreditations to Iraqi reporters, and also as a fixer for ABC News. (He often reverentially recounted a brief meeting he had with Peter Jennings a couple of years before the broadcaster's death.) So to find willing op-ed writers, we began by visiting Ahmed's past associates. Two of them I met several times at the Baghdad Press Center -- an office that the U.S. State Department funded to provide Iraqi reporters with equipment and to train them in journalistic ethics and professional conduct. And yet we were hiring these same Iraqi reporters to work indirectly for the U.S. military. When State Department officials at the press center asked me about my work in Iraq, I would tiptoe around an answer, saying I ran advertising campaigns in local newspapers on behalf of multinationals. (Which was effectively true.) A director in the office explained their belief that an independent media would help buttress the country's nascent democracy, and she thought it was great that my efforts were allowing local newspapers to gain commercial independence.

http://www.alternet.org/story/41479

[Atman]

1. Everything comes back to W's promise to "run America like a business."

And every business thinks that even a shitty product can be sold to a specific market if they pour enough ad dollars into it. It might work if you have a shitty product that consumers must have, either actually or perceived. Windows is great example. But a shitty product that no one wants cannot be sold to them no matter how much hype and money you throw at the problem. Look at Clear Pepsi.

Bush's promise to "run America like a business" was the biggest red flag for me way back in 1999, and it's all come true in spades. Bush running America like a business is like Billy Joel driving a limousine like a car...anyone climbing aboard oughta know they're running a high risk of ending up wrapped around a tree.

[Kagemusha]

2. Ready to execute - or be executed? In public?

Pulling this **** in Ramadi and Fallujah is taking your life in your own hands - and then handing it to the jihadists wrapped in a big red bow.

Guess the insurgents aren't the only ones who send people on suicide missions.

[hadrons]

3. great find