A piece from Sunday's New York Times details how the Pentagon used a large number of retired generals as a propaganda machine to combat criticism of Donald Rumsfeld in 2005.

Called "Military Analysts" by the "news" stations on which they appeared, and "message force multipliers" by the Pentagon officials who gave them their marching orders, the generals would parrot administration talking points on TV in exchange for access to classified information. Check out the top right-hand screenshot above: one of these stooges even sneaked onto PBS!

Evidently investigative journalism has survived into the present, if only to occasionally expose the sham journalism that's running rampant. See the article here and the slideshow here.