Redefining "Secret" Downwards

From The Age, possibly Australia's worst major paper:

THE US military is secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish stories written by American troops in an effort to burnish the image of the US mission in Iraq.

As reported by the Washington Post in June, and publicly listed by the Pentagon on its contracts page.

secret, adj. 1. Anything that wasn't explained to us in words of one syllable. Repeatedly.

While the articles are basically truthful, they present only one side of events and omit information that might reflect poorly on the US or Iraqi governments, officials said.

Only one side of events? The other side of truthful articles, then, would be untruthful articles? Why would we be paying for that when we have The Age to do it for free?

One slightly odd thing: When The Age picked up this story from the LA Times, they changed the expression "basically factual" to "basically truthful". Eh.

(via Protein Wisdom, additional reporting by You Big Mouth, You!
There's also some interesting commentary at Jawa Report)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:32 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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