PressEthic

About one year ago, the Pentagon launched a television channel. Yesterday, CNN ran a story about it, questioning its objectivity. According the people interviewed in the story, the Pentagon Channel may violate a law that forbids government propaganda within the United States.

According to CNN, the 1948 law “stops the government from controlling the news sent to domestic audiences. A law inspired by abuses in Nazi Germany.”

Many videos from this channel are available online. All the anchors and correspondents are in uniform. Most of the programming is composed of official briefings from the Pentagon. The news broadcasts provide mostly information about new equipments, career perspectives in the military or soldiers receiving awards.

The channel aims only at “serving those who serve,” that is to say the 2.6 million members of the U.S. Armed Forces. Those people are probably educated enough to know that what is shown on this channel is just the U.S. version of the facts.

Therefore, the Pentagon Channel does not seem to be aimed at spreading biased news to the general public. Any company has communications tools to inform its employees, like intranet or company’s papers. And any army in the world uses ways to keep the moral of soldiers up.