Military recruiters are trying to place "Town Hall" meetings on your local TV station.

Military recruiters are trying to place town hall meetings on several major market local television stations. The basic outline is this, the military has contacted local stations in several markets with the intention of getting those stations to produce half hour "town hall" type meetings under the working title, "What it means to be a Soldier."

These would not officially be military or recruitment programs, and would be hosted by a local news anchor or reporter.

The forwarded email contained this snippet.

The rep told me they were just looking to "correct" some misperceptions about the military that have been caused by the Iraq war. My response was "well, let's be honest, shall we? You want to drive recruitment." The answer was yes.

These non-advertisements are tentatively scheduled to run in October. And the rumor is that a station in Miami has already signed on.

The reason I'm putting this up on the blog is not because I'm surprised, but because of the apparent deception of it. The couching of these things as non-military town-hall's created independently in a sense of patriotism and tribute seems really wrong to me.

I would guess that it's all part of the same attempt by the military recruiters to go after the "influencers." The Chicago Trib had a great article on the new "strength" ad series.

This comes second hand, but I know the source and he has since verified this to be true. (and for those of you who know me, it's, quite surprisingly, not the connection you would think.)

The email concluded.

Anyway -- this is a hell of a stretch and a serious sign of how desperate the efforts to get people to join really are.

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