Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2000 11:06:15 -0700
From: Williamson Evers
Subject: British daily Guardian on U.S. Army Psy-Ops interns at CNN, NPR
Guardian (Great Britain)
April 12, 2000
CNN, NPR Admit Army Psy-Ops Link
Two leading US news channels have admitted that they
allowed psychological operations officers from the
military to work as placement interns at their
headquarters during the Kosovo war. Cable Network
News (CNN) and National Public Radio, (NPR) denied
that the "psy-ops" officers influenced news coverage
and said the internships had been stopped as soon as
senior managers found out.
CNN hosted five psy-ops officers as temporary, unpaid
workers last year, while NPR took three, all from the
army's 4th Psychological Operations Group, based at
Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The army's psychological
operations are prohibited by law from manipulating the
US media.
After the existence of the CNN internship programme
was published in the Dutch newspaper, Trouw, the
network immediately cancelled it.
For its part, the army said the programme was only
intended to give young army media specialists some
experience of how the news industry functioned. The
interns were restricted to mainly menial tasks such as
answering phones, but the fact that military
propaganda experts were even present in newsrooms
as reports from the Kosovo conflict were being
broadcast has triggered a storm of criticism and raised
questions about the independence of these networks.
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