Will They Draft Their Paid Trolls?

Caught via the farmer from a Kos diary by georgia10:

Your tax dollars at work [Note: .mil site. Visit only with Firefox and purge your computers of the spyware cookies afterwards]:

[Army Reserve Maj. Richard J. McNorton, CENTCOM's chief of engagement operations] 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.

The team also has as its mission to spread "good stories":

"Now (online readers) have the opportunity to read positive stories. At least the public can go there and see the whole story. The public wants to hear these good stories," he said, adding that the news stories the military generates are "very factual." [...]

The team's motto is "Engage," and Flowers and others work with more than 250 bloggers to try to disseminate news about the good work being done by U.S. forces in the global war on terror. The effort, officials here said, has reached more than 17 million online readers.

The contacted bloggers, the press release states, are surprised that the info CENTCOM feeds them isn't presented in the "mainstream media" (CENTCOM's term, not mine). This newest effort, I think, should be viewed in the context of the military's PR blitz. Almost two months ago, the Army hired a PR firm to funnel "exclusive editorial content" to selected bloggers (diaried here).

Very factualoid truthiness and Good News from the Department of Defense.

This has been going on awhile throughout the blogsphere.

That they're publically reaching out like this is only part of their new push for more informants.