The International Federation of Journalists and United States journalists' groups have welcomed a decision by the US army to abandon vetting of journalists covering the Afghanistan conflict to see if they are sympathetic to the American cause.
Reuters has reported that the US army is cancelling a contract with a public relations firm after coming under criticism for using the company to provide profiles of journalists and rating their reporting on the Afghanistan war according to whether it was "positive", "neutral" or "negative". The IFJ and its affiliates in the United States, the American Federation of Radio and Television Artists (AFTRA) and The Newspaper Guild-CWA(TNG), had criticised a $1.5 million contract for The Rendon Group, a public relations firm, hired to screen journalists applying to be embedded with US troops in Afghanistan.
Now the contract first revealed last week in the military's own Pentagon-funded but editorially independent newspaper, Stars and Stripes, is to be scrapped. The paper said the profiles included suggestions on how to "neutralise" negative stories and generate favourable coverage.
Via IFJ website
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