September 11, 2009
Posted by Stevie Converse

The Pentagon has been compiling secret background profiles of journalists seeking to embed with the military, the newspaper Stars & Stripes reported last month.

Stars & Stripes, a Washington, D.C.-based paper published for U.S. service members, has been investigating the Pentagon’s embedded journalist program. Late last month, after initially denying the paper's accusations that it was using a public relations firm to profile the journalists, a Pentagon official acknowledged the Media Analyst program and terminated the contract it had with the PR firm, The Rendon Group.

You can hear Stars & Stripes reporter Kevin Baron talk about the Media Analyst program in the Sept. 11 edition of Media Minutes. (Or you can read the transcript.)

Kevin Baron

The Rendon Group has been involved in several controversial programs at the Department of Defense and the CIA. Baron says the group has at least a dozen contracts with the U.S. government right now.

Kevin Baron on the Rendon Group

The investigation represents a new direction for Stars & Stripes, which the paper's Senior Managing Editor Howard Witt called "tame" and "boring" in a recent interview at Forbes.com. Witt, a long-time journalist with the Chicago Tribune, started at Stars & Stripes in June. He says his boss, Terry Leonard, a veteran Associated Press reporter, got a mandate to make Stars & Stripes “a more aggressive, serious newspaper.”

"We deeply honor the audience that we're serving. It's a sacred mission because, in many cases, we're their only source of news. But you don't do that by feeding the troops pablum and feel-good stories. Reporters at Stars and Stripes are now blossoming and doing amazing stories they never did before. It's all about making this newspaper aggressive. We won't be ignored anymore."

As for Kevin Baron, he intends to keep investigating the embedded journalist program.

Kevin Baron on Continuing the Embedded Journalist Program Investigation