And now, a story that shows how incestuous, compromised and internally conflicted the world of defense information is – including this very blog.

The Brookings Institution's Peter Singer recently wrote a meditation about the troubled nexus of journalism and defense think tanks. To condense a subtle piece, Singer is justifiably concerned that outside observers don't clearly understand that the experts quoted in their favorite newspapers, magazines and blogs are dependent for their daily bread on a host of defense-industry benefactors. Yes, any particular think-tank product is more than just the sum of its donations, but let's not be naive: it can't be "a just sheer coincidence that places funded solely by defense firms always conclude that the defense budget should be expanded, while places solely funded by peacenik foundations think the Pentagon budget should be cut," he writes.

What touched this all off is a Politico piece Jen DiMascio wrote about Loren Thompson, a ubiquitously-quoted defense expert with the Lexington Institute. Pretty much every Beltway defense reporter, myself included, quotes Thompson from time to time, or goes to him for tips. But the Lexington Institute gets cash from "defense giants Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman and others" and Thomson himself runs a defense-consulting business. Singer doesn't really go after Thompson, but he registers his disapproval for "individual think tank analysts taking personal payment from the very same companies whose work they comment upon."

We should pause here for a disclosure of our own. The program Singer runs at Brookings puts money into the pocket of our own Noah Shachtman, my boss, so that means that this post cites someone my boss considers one of his bosses. (Remember how I said this would get incestuous?) But now I'm going to act against interest and criticize Singer somewhat.

Singer's basic answer is disclosure, something everyone favors. While think-tankers lack a "universal code of ethics," he writes, it stands to reason that they should disclose their professional financial ties to the public, and journalists who rely on them should disclose those affiliations to their readers. Hard to disagree with.

Only it may not get at the heart of the problem. No story that you read is just a product of the sources whose words appear between quotation marks or are linked through hypertext. There's all the background conversations, IMs, emails and breeze-shooting between various sources and colleagues to help formulate stories or just frame someone's understanding of an issue. At the risk of sounding against disclosure – I'm totally for it – not every source's agenda can be presented to a reader, for reasons both practical (how meta do you want every post to be?) and professional. On the defense beat, very few people are going to talk to you if you're not willing to let them talk candidly from time to time without being cited in some way.

Then there's another problem: think-tankers, journalists and others rarely consider themselves compromised by the phenomenon Singer identifies. Tom Ricks is surely sincere when he writes that he doesn't even know what his agenda's supposed to be at the Center for a New American Security. Nathan Hodge wrote a controversial and insightful Danger Room post a year ago lamenting the "susceptibility to groupthink" of major think tanks – yes, he included CNAS in there – that can be a more subtle influence than cash-in-hand. It's not just money that can skew someone's analysis, it's peer pressure and positive reinforcement.

People seek think tank jobs because of certain baseline similarities, compounding the echo-chamber worry. They generally agree with the positions the institution propounds. They want to enter government service – another huge, rarely-disclosed influence on the people you see quoted. And they have a commitment to the subjects they study. Getting paid for that study can reinforce those tendencies, or it can cut against them, skewing someone's research. And it doesn't shed any light on a subject for a reporter to ask an expert, "How do your industry ties influence your work?" since the think-tanker will just plead innocence. (As Thompson did.) It's up to journalists to present everyone we cite in the fullest context, something that goes beyond disclosing a source's financial ties to a subject.

There are good professional ways to mitigate all these problems. If I'm writing about, say, a weapons program, I should be able to attribute information to someone in a way that conveys a source's financial, professional or political stake in the issue. Those presentations should center around the most important sources listed in a story. But we also need to not make everyone we write about and cite seem like a compromised villain. Sometimes people take money from defense-sector sources and are really knowledgeable about what they're talking about – sometimes because of those ties.

In fact, here's one suggestion: Wiki-journalism. If we need to track influence peddling, then it might make sense to put together a Wiki where defense wonks' ties to industries, think tanks, professional histories, pet projects, track record of advocacy and disclosed sources of funding are listed. Plug in the news organizations and journalists who frequently quote a given wonk. Those of us who work in online journalism can link to a source's Wiki-entry as a way of contextualizing that source in an economic way. It can't solve every problem Singer identifies – what about anonymous sources? What about someone who doesn't disclose all his/her professional ties? – but at least it gets more disclosure into a piece.

What do you think? Would you help us compile something like that? Can we keep it from getting ad hominem or judgmental? Tell us in the comments.

Photo: Flickr/mattwi1s0n

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