Here’s an interesting little downstream outcome of the NYT article last Sunday about the Pentagon’s covert program to use retired military officers who represent “military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants” as propaganda mouthpieces. To sell the Iraq war, for example. To foster the myth of wonderful progress in the Iraq war. Stuff like that. “Peddling falsehoods to the American public” covers it nicely.

Huffington Post reports:

While most TV news organizations have refused to report or even comment on the bombshell Times article exposing a secret Pentagon propaganda campaign to sell Iraq policy, PBS just aired an important segment on the controversy. PBS‘ Judy Woodruff kicked off the debate with a disturbing summary of the current media blackout:

And for the record, we invited Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC and NBC to participate, but they declined our offer or did not respond.

It’s almost like they are deeply embarrassed.

Now, of course, as befitting such an act of skulduggery, central to the whole misguided enterprise was the notion of secrecy: the puppet lobbyist-contractor-analysts were instructed that nobody on the outside was to know that they had been suborned and co-opted by the Pentagon. And once these retired military officers gave their word of honor, they kept it, of course. Most of them never told their networks whose hand was moving their limbs and whose voice was issuing from their mouths.

So why would the networks now be hanging their heads in shame? Maybe because these professional military analysts all had such obvious and self-evident ties to the military contractor gravy train? The fact that they were “lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants” for military contractors was essentially public knowledge. And for years and years and years, the networks blithely sold these people to the public as independent analysts. It’s dishonest journalism at its shoddiest, isn’t it?

And far be it from the CNNs and the NBCs of the world to own up to what they did.

Fox News, though, is just in a class of its own. They continue to employ one of these puppet lobbyist-contractor-analysts:

Since The New York Times published an exposé on the hidden ties between media military analysts and the Pentagon on April 20, Fox News’ Special Report has aired quotes from retired Maj. Gen. Robert H. Scales, a Fox News military analyst, in two separate reports without mentioning that Scales was named in the Times article and addressing Scales’ relationship with the Defense Department and defense contractors. Indeed, as Media Matters for America has documented, Special Report has yet to mention the Times piece at all.

What’s the opposite of hanging your head in shame?