U.S. military still paying for good news?
There’s no bar at the Baghdad press club. No smoke-filled rooms. In fact, no there’s no clubhouse at all.
Instead, the Baghdad Press Club (established in 2004 by the U.S. Army’s 3rd Infantry Division) is a group of Iraqi reporters who specialize in covering, not surprisingly, the 3rd ID - and they’re paid to do it.
A U.S. army officer familiar with the program said Iraqi newspaper reporters are paid $35 for each story that’s printed, and $10 more if it runs with a picture.
Iraqi journalists say the army takes the Iraqi reporters (Press Club Members) to events that make the 3rd ID look good, such as soldiers opening schools or giving out toys and medicine.
A 3rd ID spokesman, Lt. Col. Robert Whetstone, told me today he doesn’t see any "ethical conflicts" with the program.
"We don’t tell the reporters that they only have to print positive stories," he said. "In fact, we don’t tell them what to write at all, and we do not look at stories before they go out."
He said reporters are taken to events "that involve their communities."
An Iraqi newspaper editor, who had also been approached to run stories about the military by the Lincoln Group, which had a Defense Department contract to print favorable stories about the military, said members of the Baghdad Press Club have become pariahs among their colleagues.
"We told them, we warned them, but Iraqi newspapers don’t have much money to pay their reporters, so they were tempted," he said. "And many Iraqi reporters don’t want to be seen covering American events, so I guess the Americans decided they needed an incentive to get them to go."
A U.S. military spokesman said he did not know how many articles Baghdad Press Club members have printed since the group was founded, but that they have averaged 53 a month for the past several months.
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