If I work for Company A and I tell you that Company A's new product is the best thing ever you will probably discount the credibility of my statement. That is, if you are not three years old or terminally gullible. You'll do this because you'll correctly assume I have a vested interest in persuading you of the coolness of my own product, and therefore may not be giving you an entirely honest assessment. But if a credible third party, such as a well known product reviewer, tells you my new product is the best thing ever, you'll probably give her opinion a bit more credibility. If your good buddy tells you my new product is the best thing ever, you'll likely be at the store before the day is out because you trust him to be honest with you, assume he has no vested interest, and probably have a good idea of how closely his opinions and yours align.

Such are the ways in which people weigh the credibility of what we in the PR industry call "influencers": ostensibly impartial third- parties that can provide insight into a given topic. When these influencers support a point of view that we want to promote, we call them "third-party advocates". Trying to recruit the support of third-party advocates is an accepted public relationstactic. When third-party advocates can't be recruited, simulating them, such as by the creation of "advocacy groups" that are often thinly disguised industry organizations, is a more cynical approach to the same thing. When these fake advocacy groups claim to represent ordinary citizens or consumers you get "astroturfing" -- a fake grass roots campaign. (Astroturf = fake grass. Geddit?) This is why word-of-mouth is so highly valued by marketers and PR men. It's considered harder to game.

One of the roles we implicitly assign major news media is the vetting of third party voices. Our operating assumption is that when a news organization seeks third-party comment on an issue it will weigh the credentials and credibility of the commenter and assess their possible conflicts. In some cases, a news organization will assume with some justification its regular readership understands the point of view of given organization. So, for instance, The Economist, a fairly libertarian, free-trade oriented publication, doesn't normally bother to explain the provenance of the American Enterprise Institute when it is quoting one of its fellows. If you read The Economist a lot, you probably know who they are and have an inkling of their agenda.

But sometimes links that should be illuminated are not, or are illuminated only long after the fact. Readers or viewers are left to fend to for themselves, and either invest their own energy into trying to understand the motivations of infuencers or take what they see or hear at face value. Given that the formula of modern mainstream journalism demands third-party voices to lend color and gravity to reporting and analysis, this is worrying. At its most cynical, my industry is happy to take advantage of this situation, which is one reason why we have the glittering reputation that we do. This is a shame because Imagethief firmly believes that the best PR is firmly rooted in truth and telling good stories in interesting ways.

I'm reflecting on this because the New York Times has just published a long and fascinating story digging into the defense industry and Pentagon links of the retired officers who, as military analysts, provided major news organizations with so much comment on the war in Iraq:

Internal Pentagon documents repeatedly refer to the military analysts as “message force multipliers” or “surrogates” who could be counted on to deliver administration “themes and messages” to millions of Americans “in the form of their own opinions.”

***

Torie Clarke, the former public relations executive who oversaw the Pentagon’s dealings with the analysts as assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, had come to her job with distinct ideas about achieving what she called “information dominance.” In a spin-saturated news culture, she argued, opinion is swayed most by voices perceived as authoritative and utterly independent.

And so even before Sept. 11, she built a system within the Pentagon to recruit “key influentials” — movers and shakers from all walks who with the proper ministrations might be counted on to generate support for Mr. Rumsfeld’s priorities.

In the months after Sept. 11, as every network rushed to retain its own all-star squad of retired military officers, Ms. Clarke and her staff sensed a new opportunity. To Ms. Clarke’s team, the military analysts were the ultimate “key influential” — authoritative, most of them decorated war heroes, all reaching mass audiences.

The analysts, they noticed, often got more airtime than network reporters, and they were not merely explaining the capabilities of Apache helicopters. They were framing how viewers ought to interpret events. What is more, while the analysts were in the news media, they were not of the news media. They were military men, many of them ideologically in sync with the administration’s neoconservative brain trust, many of them important players in a military industry anticipating large budget increases to pay for an Iraq war.

***

The group was heavily represented by men involved in the business of helping companies win military contracts. Several held senior positions with contractors that gave them direct responsibility for winning new Pentagon business. James Marks, a retired Army general and analyst for CNN from 2004 to 2007, pursued military and intelligence contracts as a senior executive with McNeil Technologies. Still others held board positions with military firms that gave them responsibility for government business. General McInerney, the Fox analyst, for example, sits on the boards of several military contractors, including Nortel Government Solutions, a supplier of communication networks.

Fox news is cited above, and most people would pick Fox News as a likely New York Times bugaboo, but the story covers the whole range of news organizations.

So did those retired officers have an agenda? Some of them did:

[Many of the analysts] also shared with Mr. Bush’s national security team a belief that pessimistic war coverage broke the nation’s will to win in Vietnam, and there was a mutual resolve not to let that happen with this war.

This was a major theme, for example, with Paul E. Vallely, a Fox News analyst from 2001 to 2007. A retired Army general who had specialized in psychological warfare, Mr. Vallely co-authored a paper in 1980 that accused American news organizations of failing to defend the nation from “enemy” propaganda during Vietnam.

“We lost the war — not because we were outfought, but because we were out Psyoped,” he wrote. He urged a radically new approach to psychological operations in future wars — taking aim at not just foreign adversaries but domestic audiences, too. He called his approach “MindWar” — using network TV and radio to “strengthen our national will to victory.”

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In the fall and winter leading up to the invasion, the Pentagon armed its analysts with talking points portraying Iraq as an urgent threat. The basic case became a familiar mantra: Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons, was developing nuclear weapons, and might one day slip some to Al Qaeda; an invasion would be a relatively quick and inexpensive “war of liberation.”

At the Pentagon, members of Ms. Clarke’s staff marveled at the way the analysts seamlessly incorporated material from talking points and briefings as if it was their own.

“You could see that they were messaging,” Mr. Krueger said. “You could see they were taking verbatim what the secretary was saying or what the technical specialists were saying. And they were saying it over and over and over.” Some days, he added, “We were able to click on every single station and every one of our folks were up there delivering our message. You’d look at them and say, ‘This is working.’ ”

It's worth pointing out that the New York Times itself has come in for some accusations of credulity in vetting of commentators in its pre-war and war coverage. But nevertheless, in this story they've provided a fascinating look at a very powerful PR campaign built on third-party influencers. It's well worth a read.