What propaganda? Not US

I guess propaganda has always worked well in the US because it serves up what the wider public wants to hear. It does little, however, for the reputation of a free and fearless media in that country.
Oddly, Rupert Murdoch’s Australian flagship newspaper; The AUSTRALIAN ran this story, which surely must mock his US media outlets:
US media drive to undercut Zarqawi

THE US military is conducting a propaganda campaign to magnify the threat posed by al-Qa'ida leader in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in an effort to turn Iraqis against the Jordanian-born terrorist.

The Washington Post reported yesterday that the propaganda effort may have overstated Zarqawi's importance to the Iraq insurgency and helped the Bush administration tie the war to the terror network responsible for the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Good old Rupert, he always was adept at playing both ends against the middle, that’s how he built his media empire. But he also faces stiff competition in Australia, where other outlets would sniff out attempts at propaganda and throw it in his face.
Well let’s be fair here, The Washington Post did just that in the States. It was WaPo who broke the story:
Military documents show that for the past two years US military leaders have been using Iraqi media and other outlets in Baghdad to publicise Zarqawi's role in the insurgency.

The documents explicitly list the "US home audience" as one of the targets of a broader propaganda campaign, the Post said. According to the newspaper, Colonel Derek Harvey, who served as a military intelligence officer in Iraq, told a US Army meeting at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas: "Our own focus on Zarqawi has enlarged his caricature, if you will - made him more important than he really is, in some ways.

The report said that a "selective leak" about Zarqawi was made to Dexter Filkins, a reporter for The New York Times, based in Baghdad. Filkins's resulting article, about a letter supposedly written by Zarqawi and boasting of suicide attacks in Iraq, ran on the Times front page on February 9, 2004.

The Post said leaks to reporters from US officials in Iraq were common but official evidence of a propaganda operation using an American reporter was rare.

US military chief spokesman Mark Kimmitt told The Post that "there was no attempt to manipulate the press".
"We trusted Dexter to write an accurate story, and we gave him a good scoop," General Kimmitt said.

Well, there you have it; if you trust the professional propagandists and a compliant media, you can all sleep well under the protection of ‘Homeland Security’ and the military.
All is well, just flick on The Simpson’s and kick back. Rupert and co will take care of the difficult stuff for you.