http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgGUG3hzV6g
It covers the first section of the war against Iraq, from Bush's war announcement to the move CENTCOM to Baghdad. The footage for this production was done by a couple of Egyptian grad students. They approached Josh Rushing when he was a media liason for the Marines.
When the movie was released when he was still a Marine. What the documentary shows is the literalness of controling the news, how it is done. The central conflict is between the US version and the Aljazeera version. It is very interesting to watch the AJ guy try to convince Rushing, he is not reporting the news, but spinning it. One of the older AJ producers opens the story with the idea that the first priority for a military command is managing the propaganda war. So this isn't about spinning. It is about creating propaganda.
The control room depicted here has to be much like its cousins in BP HQ in Louisiana, and of course still on going in Iraq and Afganistan.
These are not new developments. I remember having to relie on kpfa during the local events in the waay back. Also sometimes the Daily Cal, or some really off the wall newspapers Berkeley Free Press and so forth. At the very early days of Vietnam, some grad students put together a background history of French, US, Vietnamese history. It was a bit off the wall, but at least it was something.
So its always been part of the story. But it seems to me to have instensified quite alot in recent years. Certainly since 9/11.
CG