CNN let army staff into newsroom

[link to www. (secure)] theguardian. com/world/2000/apr/12/julianborger

CNN let army staff into newsroom

Two leading US news channels have admitted that they allowed psychological operations officers from the military to work as placement interns at their headquarters during the Kosovo war.
Cable Network News (CNN) and National Public Radio, (NPR) denied that the "psy-ops" officers influenced news coverage and said the internships had been stopped as soon as senior managers found out . For its part, the army said the programme was only intended to give young army media specialists some experience of how the news industry functioned.

The interns were restricted to mainly menial tasks such as answering phones, but the fact that military propaganda experts were even present in newsrooms as reports from the Kosovo conflict were being broadcast has triggered a storm of criticism and raised questions about the independence of these networks.