THE PEACOCK REPORT (TPR)

Details of U.S.-Funded Pakistan Media Plan Revealed

Details of a plan to blanket Pakistani media with U.S. government-supplied messages were discovered this past week, when the U.S. Agency for Internatonal Development (USAID) stepped up its search for a contractor capable of carrying out a propaganda mission on its behalf. USAID on Thursday (June 19) released a formal Request for Proposals/Statement of Work containing specifics of the public-perception endeavor. The document asserted that, despite annually providing about a half-billion dollars in "developmental" aid to Pakistan, U.S. assistance does not receive adequate recognition." It did not, however, refer to military and technical assistance that the U.S. provides to that nation. Rather, the agency pointed out that:

A September 2007 survey by the U.S. Institute of Peace indicates that a remarkably high 86 percent of urban Pakistanis agreed that it was a U.S. goal to "weaken and divide the Islamic world," and that view is growing. The survey also highlights the urban Pakistani view that the United States is an untrustworthy superpower. A 64 percent majority expressed doubt that the United States could be trusted "to act responsibly in the world.

The U.S. Secretary of State has made the showcasing of America’s development work a priority foreign policy goal. To support this goal and to alter anti-American perceptions, the USAID Mission will launch an intensive public awareness campaign designed to reach the greatest number of Pakistanis (urban and rural) via newspaper, billboard, radio and television communication. These messages will communicate how USAID-assisted programs make Pakistan a healthier, better educated and more prosperous country.

The Peacock Report recently broke the story on this project, which formally is known as the "USAID/Pakistan Outreach Campaign" (TPR, 6/08). The initiative, though ambitious in scope, is modest in financial terms. The estimated value of the contract -- which could be awarded by summer's end -- is $600,000.

Media Coverage of Obamas' 'Fist Bump' is a Disgrace

The meaningless, publicly displayed 'fist bump' between Mr. and Mrs. Barack Obama has been elevated to the level of "the gesture everyone's talking about," according to Yahoo! News and other media outlets. The Peacock Report only has this to say about media coverage of this non-issue: you should all be ashamed of wasting readers' time. It is no wonder so many people don't bother reading the so-called "news." Please cease such moronic coverage. The U.S. is embroiled in a deadly, costly war in Iraq and Afghanistan, millions are people are losing their homes and/or their jobs here in the U.S., the federal government is robbing the American people blind via massive corporate-welfare and wasteful Nanny State social-welfare programs, and the media is center-columning and jumping all over a playful 'fist bump' between a politician and his wife?!?! Truly a sad state of affairs.

Afghanistan Media Adviser Document Missing

The Peacock Report (TPR) last year broke the story about USAID's planned deployment of a so-called "cognizant technical officer"  to Afghanistan, where this private contractor purportedly would be tasked with fostering the growth of independent media. An accompanying planning document, which TPR had uploaded to this site via the piece USAID Recruiting Independent Media Consultant for Afghanistan, has mysteriously disappeared.

Adding to this mystery is the fact that the document similarly has been relegated to the Orwellian memory hole of FedBizOpps, the U.S. government contracting-opportunities database. Though FedBizOpps typically places such documents in a searchable database of archived material, a search today of the system produced no such document or related literature. TPR is looking into this matter, and will report any developments as soon as possible.

Chauncey Bailey, Career Journalist, R.I.P.

What more can be said about the highly publicized assassination of Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey? Simply put, Bailey had the guts to investigate and seek to expose the alleged criminality of a Black Muslim group in Oakland. A suspect now is in custody. May justice be served.

Pentagon Seeks Contractors for Media Analysis "Research"

The Dept. of Defense (DoD) is soliciting bids from private firms capable of providing U.S. military leadership with "media analysis" services, according to a contracting document that The Peacock Report recently located. The office of the Asst. Defense Secy. for Public Affairs intends to award a contract of unknown value to a firm that will scour the media "to gather data, assess the information, interpret the results, and write a variety of reports for senior leaders" at DoD. The selected contractor will perform the work at the Pentagon, the document said.

USAID Recruiting Independent Media Consultant for Afghanistan

A privately contracted "media and communications specialist" is being recruited by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for deployment to Afghanistan, where the contractor will be tasked with sparking the growth of that nation’s independent media. The specialist will likewise serve under the title of "Cognitive Technical Officer," or CTO, of the Internews Independent Media Program-Afghanistan. The "overall goal" of the USAID- and private-donor-funded program is to support Afghanistan independent media’s "move toward sustainability, with a focus on improved business skills, management, journalism, and production skills, and reinforcement of an enabling regulatory environment," according to a planning document that The Peacock Report recently obtained.

"Recent years have seen a prolific growth of media, including independent and government magazines and newspapers, independent radio stations, and private television stations," the document points out. "Although this growth has been encouraging as an indicator of freedom of expression and public participation in social and political life, the media sector is still in its early stages... Afghan media and media rights organizations also need continued support for policy and advocacy in the pursuit of assured freedom of expression and the legal underpinnings of an open media."

Impeding the development of open media, for instance, are a list of restrictions that the Afghan National Security Directorate imposed upon journalists last year. Human Rights Watch decried the restrictive list as a "blatant intrusion on the freedom of Afghanistan’s fledgling media. These directives are an insult to the hard work and personal sacrifice of Afghan journalists who try to get the truth out to the public."

The targeted outcome of the project appear to comport with the findings of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which last year reported that "the Afghan media environment appears to have embarked on an upward trend... But ensuring a healthy, professional, and independent media will require the Afghan public and its officials to draw lessons from the past and evaluate the country’s nascent media law."

Similarly, USAID’s recruitment of the media and communications specialist follows last month’s "Media is Development" conference in Kabul, where the Afghan media event affirmed the "constitutional right of the people to be informed, and inform," InterPressService (IPS) News Agency reported.

"There is no alternative to free flow of information and ideas in a democracy because this is the basis for informed dialogue for participation and ownership of development," the conference concluded, according to IPS.

Group Cites TPR For Breaking Story on Soldier Healthcare

The Center for Media & Democracy's PR Watch, a public relations industry-monitoring group, has credited The Peacock Report (TPR) for exposing a spin campaign that the Pentagon launched in response to the soldier healthcare crisis at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and elsewhere. PR Watch gave TPR top billing last week in the group's Spin of the Day feature, which highlights on a daily basis one of the most outlandish examples of public relations activity in commerce and in government. Many thanks to PR Watch for its March 29 feature, Treating Injured Military Personnel With PR.

It also should be noted that O'Dwyer's, a Madison Avenue PR publication, and the UK-based PR Week.com helped to fill in the blanks about the project -- several days after TPR first broke the story Pentagon Hires P.R. Firm to Put Spin on Soldier Healthcare Debacle. Hmmm.

Those details include the fact that (1) The Pentagon' sole-source contract for the professional spinmeister services is valued at $100,000. (2) The recipient of the award, of which TPR was the first to identify as LMW Strategies, LLC, is operated by Lorraine McHugh-Wytkind, former communications director for Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.).

Iraq 'Spinmeister' Links Restored

Access to contracting documents governing the deployment of a U.S. Development Outreach & Communication Officer -- a private-sector public relations expert, in other words -- have been restored here at The Peacock Report (TPR).  Back in September, TPR broke the story on this endeavor (see USAID-Iraq Spinmeister Will Attempt To Feed Media 'Appropriate' Content).

It has come to our attention that a recent TPR visitor tried accessing the document, which we previously had located via the FedBIzOpps database, but the link was inoperable.

TPR attempts to keep such links up-to-date, but the federal government, as a matter of database maintenance, routinely changes the document URL as part of its archival process.

Molly Ivins, R.I.P. (1944-2007)

The world of journalism lost a great asset this week with the passing of author and columnist Molly Ivins, who died of cancer. The Texas Observer offers a fitting tribute to her career.

Likewise, don't forget to check out her final column, Enough is Enough, in which she exhorts the American public to step up its efforts to demand an end to U.S. involvement in Iraq.

Federal Education Dept. Seeks to Bolster Media-Spin Capabilities

Commentary

The U.S. Dept. of Education (DOE) by all appearances is gearing up for a nationwide public-policy-perception battle. Still stinging from last year’s humiliating revelations that it bribed pseudo-journalist Armstrong Williams to advocate the purportedly finer points of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, the department is taking a softer approach to media manipulation.

Aware that its "pay for play" propaganda-distribution tactics are illegal and unethical, it instead will hire Sacramento, California-based State Net to track media coverage and legislative developments of interest to federal education policymakers. Nothing inherently wrong with that. However, this non-competitive, sole-source contract remains worthy of recognition because of its sophisticated, anticipatory approach to putting the spin on public opinion and state-level legislation – views and legislative changes, it is safe to speculate, that DOE deems worthy of altering or even quashing.

The growing nationwide backlash against NCLB comes to mind upon reading that the State Net service will be "custom-screened and tailored to the Department's time-sensitive outreach and communication requirements," according to a contracting document that TPR has located via a routine search of the FedBizOpps database. "That unique capability allows the Department to anticipate responses to state-level economic, regulatory, and legislative trends, rather than merely responding to them retroactively."

DOE decided not to open a competitive bidding process because "While other vendors researched offered limited services, none were able to meet the overall customized needs of the Department," the document said.

In a case of vague, Orwellian doublespeak, the sole-source contract, for which the contract value has not yet been disclosed, is furthered justified because it "also allows the Department to devise informed longitudinal approaches" to legislative and perception-management developments.