Some officers who voiced too much skepticism about the Iraq war were not invited back to the special briefings, the Times reported, and other analysts echoed the talking points "even when they suspected the information was false or inflated."
The Pentagon announced about a week after the article's publication that it would suspend the private briefings pending an internal review, which is continuing.
Representatives of NBC, CBS and ABC said Thursday that they were confident their analysts had not been improperly influenced. Fox News and CNN did not respond to requests for comment.
Nancy Snow, a professor of communications at Cal State Fullerton who studies propaganda, said the public had become largely inured to revelations that the government had tried to skew debate.
"When I tell audiences that the U.S. government is prohibited from propagandizing the American people, they just guffaw," she said.
But Snow said she believed that public interest, and outrage, would be piqued if new details were reported.
Particularly galling, she said, would be evidence that analysts tilted opinions to favor military contractors who paid their salaries.
"The public will really become upset if these analysts appear to be profiteering from this military war machine," said Snow, who once worked for the State Department's U.S. Information Agency. "It always comes back to the pocketbook."
james.rainey@latimes.com
