Media Notes Pentagon Clip Service's Clips Clipped
By Howard Kurtz Washington Post Staff Writer
Senior Pentagon managers have repeatedly ordered the department's widely read clipping service to exclude articles critical of the military and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, according to officials familiar with the practice.
Staffers at the Early Bird, whose service is devoured by Pentagon brass, lawmakers, journalists and military personnel around the world, were told to eliminate all newsmagazine articles last October -- four days after the publication of a Newsweek cover story on Iraq that included "Rummy's New Headaches" and a Time piece titled "Is Rumsfeld Losing His Mojo?"
"It comes down to the fact that they don't like these magazine articles," said a Pentagon official who declined to be identified and believes the Early Bird should not "censor" what is reported by major news organizations. The argument made against the offending articles, the official said, is that they are dated or inaccurate.
But the Pentagon press office, which oversees the Early Bird, has waived the magazine ban for some articles that senior managers deem positive. These have included the Time package on the American soldier as Person of the Year (which included a Rumsfeld interview) and two U.S. News & World Report pieces last week -- one on civilian efforts in Iraq and an officer's column defending the ban on coverage of deceased soldiers arriving at Dover Air Force Base.
Harold Heilsnis, the Pentagon's director for public inquiry, says that "we try very hard to be balanced" but that Early Bird "is intended to be a lean publication. . . . There are always some folks who think, 'Gosh, should you guys have included that?' " Heilsnis says that there is "back and forth . . . with our leadership" but that he doesn't feel pressured.
A senior Pentagon official says the Early Bird staff may occasionally "get guidance to put in pieces in which the leadership made an extra effort to get the message out to show that we've had a success. It's a clipping service for our leadership. We might say, 'Hey, make sure that gets in the Bird because we want so-and-so to see it.' "
Although the compilation is posted at 5:15 a.m. weekdays on the Pentagon's Web site, where space is not an issue, officials say they want to limit the printouts -- one of which is waiting in Rumsfeld's car each morning -- to no more than 40 pages. Excluded articles are often used in a massive, little-read supplemental report.
"If they're going to choose things that only shed a positive light, that's implementing a kind of double standard," says U.S. News Editor Brian Duffy. "I find it very odd."
"Early Bird is really important," says Time defense correspondent Mark Thompson, who has complained about the practice, "because it goes to all of our important sources, and they read it."
The first limitation order came a year ago and was directed against columns considered "gossipy" or "snarky," such as U.S. News's "Washington Whispers," says the official who criticized the effort. Last summer, the Early Bird was told not to include two Newsweek items, one of them on Iraq reconstruction.
Early Bird was ordered to exclude an Oct. 22 Washington Post profile by Thomas E. Ricks of a deputy undersecretary who manages Iraq policy. A press office e-mail before publication said, "There will likely be a number of false allegations included in this personality piece." Ricks says the Pentagon was concerned about allegations he was pursuing but that "stuff that didn't check out, I didn't print."
On Oct. 31, after the Time and Newsweek spreads on Iraq, came what some staffers call the "Halloween surprise" e-mail citing chief spokesman Lawrence Di Rita's decision to bar magazine pieces. And in December, despite staff complaints, Early Bird was ordered to run a Pentagon-written piece on a dinner party for returning veterans hosted by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz.