December 13, 2004

Pentagon said to be engaged in bitter, high-level debates over how far it can and should go in managing or manipulating information to influence opinion abroad; missions, if approved, could take deceptive techniques endorsed for use on battlefield to confuse adversary and adopt them for covert propaganda campaigns aimed at neutral and even allied nations; critics say such program would shatter Pentagon's credibility; question is whether Pentagon and military should undertake official program that uses disinformation to shape perceptions abroad; efforts under consideration risk blurring traditional lines between public affairs programs in Pentagon--whose charter calls for giving truthful information to media and public--and world of combat information campaigns or psychological operations; critics see proposal as Pentagon's effort to resurrect its Office of Strategic Influence, short-lived operation to provide news items, including false ones, to foreign journalists in effort to influence overseas opinion; office was closed by Defense Sec Donald H Rumsfeld under intense criticism (M)

Article on unusual but increasingly common move by HBO to kill off a main character in hit crime series The Wire; actor Idris Elba, whose drug-dealer character Stringer Bell was gunned down, and series creator David Simon comment; photo (M)

Michiko Kakutani reviews book State of Fear by Michael Crichton; photo (M)

Article on Steve Mumford, New York painter embedded with military units in Iraq who posts dispatches on Web magazine Artnet accompanied by drawings and paintings, some made on the spot; his 16th and final entry, to be posted this week, chronicles attempts by Third Brigade to quell insurgents in Baghdad; photos (M)

Dividing up revenues generated by soaring sales of DVD's becomes contentious issue in negotiations over new three-year film and television contract between producers, represented by Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, and combined bargaining teams of Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Radio and Television Artists; dispute has raised possibility of actors' strike; consumers, who in 1996 spent $6 billion buying VHS tapes and $9.2 billion renting them, will spend $24.5 billion buying and renting DVD's and VHS tapes in 2004, and nearly 80 percent of that will go to studios through their home entertainment division; studios have refused to change home video residual formula for creative talent guilds, which puts only fraction of pennies of each DVD sale into hands of most actors, writers and directors; infighting arises in Screen Actors Guild over Robert Pisano, its chief negotiator and national executive director, because he also sits on board and is shareholder of online DVD rental company Netflix; photo; graph (M)