Breaking News | Forum | UK News | USA News | World News | Political News | Sci-Tech News | War & Terrorism News | Sports News | Multimedia | Set Homepage

Tuesday, July 31st, 2007
Discuss this report in the RINF forums >

By Ben Bold

Britain’s defence chiefs are spending millions of pounds on more than 1,000 spin doctors to improve the public image of the armed forces, but admit that they have no idea who these PRs are or whether they are having an impact.

The startling admission was made in a report called The Defence Communications Strategy, which also marks the government’s first official acknowledgement that there is little or no public support for the war in Iraq.

Simon MacDowall, the Ministry of Defence’s director general of media and communications, oversaw the report, which he described as an attempt to reduce the bureaucracy in the department’s PR operations.

One section of the report reads: “We have no clear idea of the number of people involved in defence communications work or their costs. Over 1,000 people in the MoD have a media/communications job code. This excludes many military personnel involved in communications work.”

The MoD’s so-called communications department also confesses that it does not know whether its army of PR people is having any effect.

It said: “We need to be able to measure the impact of our communications effort both internally and externally.”

Ongoing operations in Iraq were specifically mentioned, including the lack of support for the war, although Afghanistan fared better.

The report stated: “Operations in Iraq are not supported by the majority of the public and operations in Afghanistan are supported by only a narrow majority. There is a lack of public understanding of the rationale behind each mission.”

The document also readily endorses the use of “news management” or “spin” to influence public opinion.

This is best achieved, it says, by “creating a steady stream of positive stories which directly promote the MoD and forces’ reputation, but also helps to offset the inevitable bad stories”.

The MoD said yesterday that the seventh British serviceman to die in Iraq this month was killed in a mortar attack on a British base in Basra. He was named as Lance Corporal Timothy Darren Flowers of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers.

The British death toll stands at 163.

Discuss this report in the RINF forums >

Have Your Say: MoD’s PR army of spin is out of control

RSS TrackBack URL

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 31st, 2007 at 4:17 pm and is filed under War & Terrorism News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Loading ...

ADVERTISEMENTS

SITE MAPS

7/7 Afghanistan Alternative-Energy Art BBC Big-Brother Bilderberg Biometrics Bush CIA Climate-Change Cover-Up Cults Culture Database-State David-Hicks David-Ray-Griffin Democrats Demos Drugs Education EU False-Flag FBI Fraud Free-Speech Freemasons G8 Globalization Guantanamo Health-News History ID-Cards Internet Iran Iraq Israel Law Marches MI5 MI6 Microsoft Military MoD Money Music NASA Neocons NSA Oil Pakistan Podcast Police-State Propaganda RFID RINF Rumsfeld Science Secrecy Security Slavery Space Sports Spying Stephen-Lendman Technology Terrorism Tony-Blair Torture TV UK-News UN USA-News Video Voting Warfare White-House Wolfowitz World-News Yahoo
2003 - 2005 Archives | 2005 - 2007 Archives | 2007 - 2008 Archives | Current Archives | Past Version