Rear Adm. Scott Van Buskirk conducted the review, ordered last November after the Los Angeles Times reported on the military’s involvement with the Washington-based Lincoln Group, a Pentagon contractor that was planting articles written by American soldiers in Iraqi publications without citation and paying Iraqi reporters for positive coverage.
While several officials — including Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, senior military spokesman in Iraq and William Dixon, a spokesman for the Lincoln Group — declined to comment, others in the Pentagon told the Times this week the payoffs were still happening.
The report also mentions the Baghdad Press Club, which paid Iraqi journalists to cover American reconstruction efforts: “Direct oversight of an apparently independent news organization and remuneration for articles that are published will undoubtedly raise questions focused on ‘truth and credibility,’ that will be difficult to deflect, regardless of the intensions and purpose of the remuneration.”

Source: The New York Times