November
8, 2006: After more than two decades of studying Information War (and inventing
the term), the U.S. Department of Defense has finally gotten its act together.
Taking a tip from it's own combat doctrine, the Department of Defense has
formed a special unit to hunt down and correct inaccurate media reporting on
the war effort. Calling it "Setting the Record Straight," the basic
drill is to identify inaccurate news stories that are gaining some traction,
and to shoot them down with blunt corrections from the White House press
office.
The
current situation is what the military calls a "target rich environment." The
reporting, especially on the war in Iraq, has long since veered off into
fantasyland. This gets in the news from time to time when the media bothers to
ask some of the troops how it's going. In addition to getting some very
accurate information (which most mass media are not interested in releasing),
there are also comments along the lines of, "what are you (the media) talking
about?" Most of the troops have Internet access, and then they check out the
mass media coverage of the war, they have to wonder if there's another Iraq out
there, where a different situation exists.
The
Department of Defense hasn't said how they expect the media to react to this
return fire approach. Because of the growing alternative media (blogs,
especially), the mass media cannot just ignore ("bury" is the term of art) the
refutations from the Department of Defense. So all this to-and-fro may get very
interesting.
