That Time a Military Psyop Unit Worked at CNN

2017
US Government propaganda against US Persons was illegal until Barack Obama officially legitimized it in the 2012 NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act)

In 2012, a Freedom of Information Act request revealed that the US Army’s “Training with Industry” program has been placing soldiers from the 4th Psychological Operations Group as interns at several local US television stations since “at least” 2001 (a year after the story broke in the Dutch newspaper and in the LA Times about the “Personnel, soldiers and officers” helping “In the production of some news stories”). The Army openly admitted to the “Training with Industry” program, after this 2012 FOIA request became public.

The stated purpose of the program is to train the soldiers to “…influence the emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately, the behavior of foreign audiences.” The Army additionally reported that other branches of the military have sought to manage the perceptions of US audiences, citing a post on Yahoo’s News blog, TheUpshot about how the US Marine Corps placed Public Affairs officers at the Chicago Tribune “For several years…in order to better understand how to influence and work with the news media.”