"How We Train Our Cops to Fear Islam"

[Pete]

To my way of thinking DoD Public Affairs and Information Operations ought to be based on facts, not upon gross exaggerations or fabrications. To the extent that they have a slant it should be in the area of themes, that we're wearing the white hats and the other side is not.

Perhaps it was too long ago and in the last century for this to be of any relevance, but in 1945 my late Dad helped to write, edit, and design this pocket booklet that G.I.s could send home to their families:



That was in the days before PAO was a term -- I believe it was then called public relations. In Dad's case it was a provisional office formed under the division G-2. (To an extent the division intel officers dual-tracked the guys -- Dad was occasionally the G-2's jeep driver.) As for journalistic objectivity, they wrote stories that cast the division in a favorable light, but to my knowledge did not make things up; on the other hand if the commander of Company B of the XXX Infantry was relieved for cause they didn't write anything about it. One of Dad's stories from Occupation Japan was on how rural citizens had buried the bodies from a shot-down B-29 with the same dignity they would have shown to their own guys. The story he wrote as an E-4 was published by the New York Times and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, not too bad for a kid of 20.

[Bill Moore]

Pete,

PAO's almost present facts, and when they don' t is it is due to a bad PAO taking shortcuts (not confirming the facts), or worse intentionally lying whichis not an acceptable practice in public affairs for obvious reasons. The PAO that misrepresened Jessica Lynch's story was an incompetent clown who doesn't represent the majority of the PAOs. My reference to B.S. was not that they normally lie, but rather their articles are happy pieces devoid of critical thought and opposing views on a specific topic, which in my mind a good journalist would attempt to do.

I'll let the IO bubbas comment on IO, but if we're trying to shape the enemy's perception I don't see anything wrong with being deceptive. You may not call it AO, but setting up inflatable trucks and tanks in locations where enemy sensors will see them and shape their perception on our location and strength in a way that is to our advantage, then I'm a fan. This example doesn't necessarily fit into IO as defned, but it does fit into the intent of IO.