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Title: The Four Reasons the Mainstream Media Is Worthless
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URL Source: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009 ... asons-mainstream-media-is.html
Published: Jun 21, 2009
Author: GW
Post Date: 2009-06-21 20:52:33 by Horse
Keywords: None
Views: 180
Comments: 5
1. Self-Censorship by Journalists Initially, there is tremendous self-censorship by journalists. For example, several months after 9/11, famed news anchor Dan Rather told the BBC that American reporters were practicing "a form of self-censorship": "there was a time in South Africa that people would put flaming tires around peoples' necks if they dissented. And in some ways the fear is that you will be necklaced here, you will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck. Now it is that fear that keeps journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions.... And again, I am humbled to say, I do not except myself from this criticism. "What we are talking about here - whether one wants to recognise it or not, or call it by its proper name or not - is a form of self-censorship." Keith Olbermann agreed that there is self-censorship in the American media, and that: "You can rock the boat, but you can never say that the entire ocean is in trouble .... You cannot say: By the way, there's something wrong with our .... system". As former Washington Post columnist Dan Froomkin wrote in 2006: Mainstream-media political journalism is in danger of becoming increasingly irrelevant, but not because of the Internet, or even Comedy Central. The threat comes from inside. It comes from journalists being afraid to do what journalists were put on this green earth to do. . . . There’s the intense pressure to maintain access to insider sources, even as those sources become ridiculously unrevealing and oversensitive. There’s the fear of being labeled partisan if one’s bullshit-calling isn’t meted out in precisely equal increments along the political spectrum. If mainstream-media political journalists don’t start calling bullshit more often, then we do risk losing our primacy — if not to the comedians then to the bloggers. I still believe that no one is fundamentally more capable of first-rate bullshit-calling than a well-informed beat reporter - whatever their beat. We just need to get the editors, or the corporate culture, or the self-censorship – or whatever it is – out of the way. And Air Force Colonel and key Pentagon official Karen Kwiatkowski wrote: I have been told by reporters that they will not report their own insights or contrary evaluations of the official 9/11 story, because to question the government story about 9/11 is to question the very foundations of our entire modern belief system regarding our government, our country, and our way of life. To be charged with questioning these foundations is far more serious than being labeled a disgruntled conspiracy nut or anti-government traitor, or even being sidelined or marginalized within an academic, government service, or literary career. To question the official 9/11 story is simply and fundamentally revolutionary. In this way, of course, questioning the official story is also simply and fundamentally American. (page 26). 2. Censorship by Higher-Ups If journalists do want to speak out about an issue, they also are subject to tremendous pressure by their editors or producers to kill the story. The Pulitzer prize-winning reporter who uncovered the Iraq prison torture scandal and the Mai Lai massacre in Vietnam, Seymour Hersh, said: "All of the institutions we thought would protect us -- particularly the press, but also the military, the bureaucracy, the Congress -- they have failed. The courts . . . the jury's not in yet on the courts. So all the things that we expect would normally carry us through didn't. The biggest failure, I would argue, is the press, because that's the most glaring.... Q: What can be done to fix the (media) situation? [Long pause] You'd have to fire or execute ninety percent of the editors and executives. You'd actually have to start promoting people from the newsrooms to be editors who you didn't think you could control. And they're not going to do that." In fact many journalists are warning that the true story is not being reported. See this announcement and this talk. And a series of interviews with award-winning journalists also documents censorship of certain stories by media editors and owners (and see these samples). There are many reasons for censorship by media higher-ups. One is money. The media has a strong monetary interest to avoid controversial topics in general. It has always been true that advertisers discourage stories which challenge corporate power. Indeed, a 2003 survey reveals that 35% of reporters and news executives themselves admitted that journalists avoid newsworthy stories if “the story would be embarrassing or damaging to the financial interests of a news organization’s owners or parent company.” In addition, the government has allowed tremendous consolidation in ownership of the airwaves during the past decade. The large media players stand to gain billions of dollars in profits if the Obama administration continues to allow monopoly ownership of the airwaves by a handful of players. The media giants know who butters their bread. So there is a spoken or tacit agreement: if the media cover the administration in a favorable light, the MSM will continue to be the receiver of the government's goodies. 3. Drumming Up Support for War In addition, the owners of American media companies have long actively played a part in drumming up support for war. It is painfully obvious that the large news outlets studiously avoided any real criticism of the government's claims in the run up to the Iraq war. It is painfully obvious that the large American media companies acted as lapdogs and stenographers for the government's war agenda. Veteran reporter Bill Moyers criticized the corporate media for parroting the obviously false link between 9/11 and Iraq (and the false claims that Iraq possessed WMDs) which the administration made in the run up to the Iraq war, and concluded that the false information was not challenged because: "the [mainstream] media had been cheerleaders for the White House from the beginning and were simply continuing to rally the public behind the President — no questions asked." And as NBC News' David Gregory (later promoted to host Meet the Press) said: "I think there are a lot of critics who think that . . . . if we did not stand up [in the run-up to the war] and say 'this is bogus, and you're a liar, and why are you doing this,' that we didn't do our job. I respectfully disagree. It's not our role" But this is nothing new. In fact, the large media companies have drummed up support for all previous wars. For example, Hearst helped drum up support for the Spanish-American War. And an official summary of America's overthrow of the democratically-elected president of Iran in the 1950's states, "In cooperation with the Department of State, CIA had several articles planted in major American newspapers and magazines which, when reproduced in Iran, had the desired psychological effect in Iran and contributed to the war of nerves against Mossadeq." (page x) The mainstream media also may have played footsie with the U.S. government right before Pearl Harbor. Specifically, a highly-praised historian (Bob Stineet) argues that the Army’s Chief of Staff informed the Washington bureau chiefs of the major newspapers and magazines of the impending Pearl Harbor attack BEFORE IT OCCURRED, and swore them to an oath of secrecy, which the media honored (page 361) . And the military-media alliance has continued without a break (as a highly-respected journalist says, "viewers may be taken aback to see the grotesque extent to which US presidents and American news media have jointly shouldered key propaganda chores for war launches during the last five decades.") As the mainstream British paper, the Independent, writes: There is a concerted strategy to manipulate global perception. And the mass media are operating as its compliant assistants, failing both to resist it and to expose it. The sheer ease with which this machinery has been able to do its work reflects a creeping structural weakness which now afflicts the production of our news. The article in the Independent discusses the use of "black propaganda" by the U.S. government, which is then parroted by the media without analysis; for example, the government forged a letter from al Zarqawi to the "inner circle" of al-Qa'ida's leadership, urging them to accept that the best way to beat US forces in Iraq was effectively to start a civil war, which was then publicized without question by the media.. So why has the American press has consistenly served the elites in disseminating their false justifications for war? One of of the reasons is because the large media companies are owned by those who support the militarist agenda or even directly profit from war and terror (for example, NBC is owned by General Electric, one of the largest defense contractors in the world -- which directly profits from war, terrorism and chaos). Another seems to be an unspoken rule that the media will not criticize the government's imperial war agenda. And the media support isn't just for war: it is also for various other shenanigans by the powerful. For example, a BBC documentarysdocuments: There was "a planned coup in the USA in 1933 by a group of right-wing American businessmen . . . . The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush’s Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression." Moreover, "the tycoons told the general who they asked to carry out the coup that the American people would accept the new government because they controlled all the newspapers." See also this book. Have you ever heard of this scheme before? It was certainly a very large one. And if the conspirators controlled the newspapers then, how much worse is it today with media consolidation? 4. Censorship by the Government Finally, as if the media's own interest in promoting war is not strong enough, the government has exerted tremendous pressure on the media to report things a certain way. Indeed, at times the government has thrown media owners and reporters in jail if they've been too critical. The media companies have felt great pressure from the government to kill any real questioning of the endless wars. For example, Dan Rather said, regarding American media, "What you have is a miniature version of what you have in totalitarian states". Tom Brokaw said "all wars are based on propaganda. And the head of CNN said: "there was 'almost a patriotism police' after 9/11 and when the network showed [things critical of the administration's policies] it would get phone calls from advertisers and the administration and "big people in corporations were calling up and saying, 'You're being anti-American here.'" Indeed, former military analyst and famed Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg said that the government has ordered the media not to cover 9/11: Ellsberg seemed hardly surprised that today's American mainstream broadcast media has so far failed to take [former FBI translator and 9/11 whistleblower Sibel] Edmonds up on her offer, despite the blockbuster nature of her allegations [which Ellsberg calls "far more explosive than the Pentagon Papers"]. As Edmonds has also alluded, Ellsberg pointed to the New York Times, who "sat on the NSA spying story for over a year" when they "could have put it out before the 2004 election, which might have changed the outcome." "There will be phone calls going out to the media saying 'don't even think of touching it, you will be prosecuted for violating national security,'" he told us. * * * "I am confident that there is conversation inside the Government as to 'How do we deal with Sibel?'" contends Ellsberg. "The first line of defense is to ensure that she doesn't get into the media. I think any outlet that thought of using her materials would go to to the government and they would be told 'don't touch this . . . .'" Of course, if the stick approach doesn't work, the government can always just pay off reporters to spread disinformation. Indeed, an expert on propaganda testified under oath during trial that the CIA employs THOUSANDS of reporters and OWNS its own media organizations (the expert has an impressive background). And famed Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein says the CIA has already bought and paid for many successful journalists. See also this New York Times piece, this essay by the Independent, this speech by one of the premier writers on journalism, and this and this roundup. Indeed, in the final analysis, the main reason today that the media giants will not cover the real stories or question the government's actions or policies in any meaningful way is that we live in a country that is not all that free (see point number 6). Mussolini said that fascism is the blending of the government and corporate interests, and the American government and mainstream media have in fact been blended together to an unprecedented degree. See this book and the following 5-part interview for further information on 9/11 and the media: (Part 1 • Part 2 • Part 3 • Part 4 • Part 5 Can We Win the Battle Against Censorship? We cannot just leave governance to our "leaders", as "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance" (Jefferson). Similarly, we cannot leave news to the corporate media. We need to "be the media" ourselves. "To stand in silence when they should be protesting makes cowards out of men." - Abraham Lincoln "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. "Powerlessness and silence go together. We...should use our privileged positions not as a shelter from the world's reality, but as a platform from which to speak. A voice is a gift. It should be cherished and used." – Margaret Atwood "There is no act too small, no act too bold. The history of social change is the history of millions of actions, small and large, coming together at points in history and creating a power that [nothing] cannot suppress." - Howard Zinn (historian) "All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent" - Thomas Jefferson
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#1. To: Horse (#0)
Operation Mockingbird Posted by TSRN on April 11th, 2009 | Categorized as Breaking News, Need To Know | Tagged as Operation Mockingbird In 1948 Frank Wisner was appointed director of the Office of Special Projects. Soon afterwards it was renamed the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC). This became the espionage and counter-intelligence branch of the Central Intelligence Agency. Wisner was told to create an organization that concentrated on “propaganda, economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance groups, and support of indigenous anti-Communist elements in threatened countries of the free world.” Later that year Wisner established Mockingbird, a program to influence the domestic American media. Wisner recruited Philip Graham (Washington Post) to run the project within the industry. Graham himself recruited others who had worked for military intelligence during the war. This included James Truitt, Russell Wiggins, Phil Geyelin, John Hayes and Alan Barth. Others like Stewart Alsop, Joseph Alsop and James Reston, were recruited from within the Georgetown Set. According to Deborah Davis (Katharine the Great): “By the early 1950s, Wisner ‘owned’ respected members of the New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communications vehicles.” In 1951 Allen W. Dulles persuaded Cord Meyer to join the CIA. However, there is evidence that he was recruited several years earlier and had been spying on the liberal organizations he had been a member of in the later 1940s. According to Deborah Davis, Meyer became Mockingbird’s “principal operative”. One of the most important journalists under the control of Operation Mockingbird was Joseph Alsop, whose articles appeared in over 300 different newspapers. Other journalists willing to promote the views of the CIA included Stewart Alsop (New York Herald Tribune), Ben Bradlee (Newsweek), James Reston (New York Times), C. D. Jackson (Time Magazine), Walter Pincus (Washington Post), William C. Baggs (Miami News), Herb Gold (Miami News) and Charles Bartlett (Chattanooga Times). According to Nina Burleigh (A Very Private Woman) these journalists sometimes wrote articles that were commissioned by Frank Wisner. The CIA also provided them with classified information to help them with their work. After 1953 the network was overseen by Allen W. Dulles, director of the Central Intelligence Agency. By this time Operation Mockingbird had a major influence over 25 newspapers and wire agencies. These organizations were run by people with well-known right-wing views such as William Paley (CBS), Henry Luce (Time Magazine and Life Magazine), Arthur Hays Sulzberger (New York Times), Alfred Friendly (managing editor of the Washington Post), Jerry O’Leary (Washington Star), Hal Hendrix (Miami News), Barry Bingham Sr., (Louisville Courier-Journal), James Copley (Copley News Services) and Joseph Harrison (Christian Science Monitor). The Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) was funded by siphoning of funds intended for the Marshall Plan. Some of this money was used to bribe journalists and publishers. Frank Wisner was constantly looked for ways to help convince the public of the dangers of communism. In 1954 Wisner arranged for the funding the Hollywood production of Animal Farm, the animated allegory based on the book written by George Orwell. According to Alex Constantine (Mockingbird: The Subversion Of The Free Press By The CIA), in the 1950s, “some 3,000 salaried and contract CIA employees were eventually engaged in propaganda efforts”. Wisner was also able to restrict newspapers from reporting about certain events. For example, the CIA plots to overthrow the governments of Iran and Guatemala. Thomas Braden, head of the of International Organizations Division (IOD), played an important role in Operation Mockingbird. Many years later he revealed his role in these events: “If the director of CIA wanted to extend a present, say, to someone in Europe - a Labour leader - suppose he just thought, This man can use fifty thousand dollars, he’s working well and doing a good job - he could hand it to him and never have to account to anybody… There was simply no limit to the money it could spend and no limit to the people it could hire and no limit to the activities it could decide were necessary to conduct the war - the secret war…. It was a multinational. Maybe it was one of the first. Journalists were a target, labor unions a particular target - that was one of the activities in which the communists spent the most money.” In August, 1952, the Office of Policy Coordination and the Office of Special Operations (the espionage division) were merged to form the Directorate of Plans (DPP). Frank Wisner became head of this new organization and Richard Helms became his chief of operations. Mockingbird was now the responsibility of the DPP. J. Edgar Hoover became jealous of the CIA’s growing power. He described the OPC as “Wisner’s gang of weirdos” and began carrying out investigations into their past. It did not take him long to discover that some of them had been active in left-wing politics in the 1930s. This information was passed to who started making attacks on members of the OPC. Hoover also gave McCarthy details of an affair that Frank Wisner had with Princess Caradja in Romania during the war. Hoover, claimed that Caradja was a Soviet agent. Joseph McCarthy also began accusing other senior members of the CIA as being security risks. McCarthy claimed that the CIA was a “sinkhole of communists” and claimed he intended to root out a hundred of them. One of his first targets was Cord Meyer, who was still working for Operation Mockingbird. In August, 1953, Richard Helms, Wisner’s deputy at the OPC, told Meyer that Joseph McCarthy had accused him of being a communist. The Federal Bureau of Investigation added to the smear by announcing it was unwilling to give Meyer “security clearance”. However, the FBI refused to explain what evidence they had against Meyer. Allen W. Dulles and both came to his defence and refused to permit a FBI interrogation of Meyer. Joseph McCarthy did not realise what he was taking on. Wisner unleashed Mockingbird on McCarthy. Drew Pearson, Joe Alsop, Jack Anderson, Walter Lippmann and Ed Murrow all went into attack mode and McCarthy was permanently damaged by the press coverage orchestrated by Wisner. Mockingbird was very active during the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala. People like Henry Luce was able to censor stories that appeared too sympathetic towards the plight of Arbenz. Allen W. Dulles was even able to keep left-wing journalists from travelling to Guatemala. This including Sydney Gruson of the New York Times. Frank Wisner was also interested in influencing Hollywood. As Hugh Wilford points out in The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America (2008): “Fortunately for the CIA, two factors predisposed the major Hollywood studios that dominated the industry to take a responsible position in the cultural Cold War. One was a strong tendency toward self-censorship, the result of many years’ experience avoiding the commercially disastrous effects of giving offense to either domestic pressure groups like the American Legion or foreign audiences. The other was the fact that the men who ran the studios were intensely patriotic and anticommunist - they saw it as their duty to help their government defeat the Soviet threat.” Read the rest here http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKmockingbird.htm ============================= The first book review of Rush to Judgment was never printed in any newspaper or journal, at least not in the form in which the review originally appeared. The book was published in mid-August 1966. Before I saw the printer's proofs, the CIA had obtained a copy. On August 2, 1966, the CIA published a document entitled "Review of Book - Rush to Judgment by Mark Lane." I did not learn the existence of that document for almost a decade. The review centered upon statements I had written about Oswald in Mexico City: "On pages 351 and 352, Lane discusses the photograph of the unknown individual which was taken by the CIA in Mexico City. The photograph was furnished by this Agency to the FBI after the assassination of President Kennedy. The FBI then showed it to Mrs. Marguerite Oswald who later claimed the photograph to be that of lack Ruby. A discussion of the incident, the photograph itself, and related affidavits, all appear in the Commission's Report (Vol. XI, p. 469; Vol. XVI, p. 638). Lane asserts that the photograph was evidently taken in front of the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City on 27 September 1963, and that it was furnished to the FBI on the morning of 22 November." http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKmockingbird.htm SEE VIDEO: Mark Dice explains Operation Mockingbird and the CIA's control of the media http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=912132237224261694
"and our way of life" It sure a heck is not protecting MY way of life.
"Satan / Cheney in "08" Without media self censorship journalists would be out of a job or face tougher censorship laws in an era when the survival of an influential special interest group depends on the predominance of its propaganda. There's no better illustration of the predicament Western journalists face than Philip Greenspan's observation: "Many years ago, in 1946, when the New York Times still provided reliable news coverage, the paper of record disliked and opposed the coercive tactics of the Zionists. This most powerful news source was hit, even before the existence AIPAC, with an advertiser boycott that swung the paper from an anti-Zionist to a pro-Zionist position." http://www.swans.com/library/art12/pgreen87.html Add to that Organized Jewry's ownership of MSM and the dominance of duals working for it and you have a perfect propaganda setup. The biggest and most scandalous story going unreported in America today is the overwhelming control Organized Jewry has gotten over the national government by arranging manpower and money to have pro-Israel candidates in the Democratic and Republic parties elected to Congress. This control enables the Israeli lobby to get Congress to fund the Afghan and Iraq wars to ensure Israel's security, to staff congressional offices and key administrative positions with pro-Israeli duals, to impose trade sanctions on anti-Israel states like Iran and the Hamas government in Palestine, and Americans who do business with them, And finally, to get Congress to make an annual $3-billion unconditional grant to Israel, an amount many times more than Organized Jewry spends on funding the election campaigns; all of this at the expense of now four thousand plus lives of Americans, more than a trillion dollars in aid and war-spending, and the loss of goodwill abroad. If the Supreme legislative body of the world's ostensible super power has to take policy direction from agents of a foreign power what chance does the lowly American reporter have in exposing to his readership/audience the subversive antics of the Zionist menace whose agents control the media he works for through ownership or advertising? Besides most reporters are so immersed in the minutia of their daily routines they have no hope of figuring out what's going on in the grand scheme of things. Also, without self-censorship Organized Jewry would most likely find ways of making it illegal to expose Zionist duplicity as it has done with the Holohoax in Europe and with anti-Semitism laws with which they hounded a Canadian native chief and war vet for saying Jews were responsible for WWII, information he likely picked up in Germany and for which honest scholars can make a case. MSM is only "worthless" as a basis for informed policy discussion. It does more than an adequate job to sell things (to keep the economy going) and to entertain and give people a relaxing break from their daily routines.
I have a degree in journalism and was a reporter and editor. Get rid of journalism degrees, MBAs who run papers, and go back to cub reporters. The old Superman TV program from the '50s is a pretty good representation of what is should be like.
If You Get Your News
#2. To: Itistoolate (#1)
I have been told by reporters that they will not report their own insights or contrary evaluations of the official 9/11 story, because to question the government story about 9/11 is to question the very foundations of our entire modern belief system regarding our government, our country, and our way of life
#3. To: Horse (#0)
#4. To: Horse (#0)
Dancing Turtles...that's Turtle Island.
#5. To: tom007, HORSE (#2)
From the Corporate Media:
Just Shut Up and Listen!!!
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