Since in general you'd never know that the New York Times recently wrote this article, I thought I'd point it out.  Seems that in the spin-up to the Iraq war and the early days of the war itself, many of those "independent"  military experts you were seeing on TV were being paid by contractors to represent viewpoints that the Pentagon fed them in briefings. That's right, we were getting much of our "news" from paid employees of military suppliers, many of whom now represent major corporations in the military environment. 

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon
information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to
generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime
performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.