The blogs of war
Blogs have become yet another arrow in the Pentagons quiver. Main points:
The main interest is to drive their readers to our site,” Army Reserve Maj. Richard J. McNorton said. McNorton is CENTCOM’s chief of engagement operations.
Anyone who wants a virtual voice can create a blog and share information with the online world. The ease with which bloggers spread information is what public affairs officials at CENTCOM saw when they created the blog team.
McNorton said the team contacts bloggers to inform the writers about any given topic that may have been posted on their site. This outreach effort enables the team to offer complete information to bloggers by inviting them to visit CENTCOM’s Web site for news releases, data or imagery.
The team engages bloggers who are posting inaccurate or untrue information, as well as bloggers who are posting incomplete information. They extend a friendly invitation to all bloggers to visit the command’s Web site.
Many bloggers appreciate the team’s contact, blog team officials said, and most post CENTCOM’s Web site as a link on their blog sites. This, McNorton said, has a “viral effect” that drives Internet news consumers to CENTCOM’s Web site.
It’s a smart move on their part to be doing this as openly as they can rather than in a sneaky underhanded way which would no doubt backfire.
Most blogs ordinarily have a feature that enables readers to contact the writer or allows readers to post comments. When the team “reaches out” to a blogger, the team members do not conceal their identity. They fully disclose that they are public affairs personnel and identify themselves accordingly. And, McNorton said, they are there to correct information, no more.
Of course blogs can also be a double-edged sword when it comes to the rather sensitive matter of operational security
Many military personnel have also become bloggers during their deployments as a way to keep friends and family informed on their activities in the war. Here too, the team members don’t police content, but if they do discover an operational security violation, they contact the blogger’s command to point out the security violation.