The 2009 Pulitzer prizes were announced on Monday, and the New York Times‘ David Barstow won the investigative reporting prize for his story on former military officials who were organized by the Pentagon to cheerlead for Bush administration war policies as “analysts” on cable television. Most of the “analysts”—called “message force multipliers” by the Pentagon—had ties to major defense contractors and had significant financial interests in the continuation of Bush war policies. And as Barstow reported, those relationships were rarely disclosed by the cable news networks that had the former officials on as purportedly unbiased analysts. The “message force multipliers” named in Barstow’s article appeared or were quoted some 4,500 times on ABC, ABC News Now, CBS, CBS Radio Network, NBC, CNN, CNN Headline News, Fox News, MSNBC, CNBC, and NPR between January 1, 2002 and May 13, 2008, according to a report by Media Matters for America.
The response to Barstow’s story from the cable networks that hosted the officials from the military’s propoganda team was, and continues to be, “deafening silence.” Officials from the networks even refused to appear on PBS’ award-winning News Hour with Jim Lehrer to respond to Barstow’s charges. It should be interesting to see whether the media can keep up that silence now that Barstow’s reporting has been recognized with a Pulitzer.
