Here is when the CIA took control of our media

[NNN0LHI]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird

Church Committee investigations

Further details of Operation Mockingbird were revealed as a result of the Frank Church investigations (Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities) in 1975. According to the Congress report published in 1976:

"The CIA currently maintains a network of several hundred foreign individuals around the world who provide intelligence for the CIA and at times attempt to influence opinion through the use of covert propaganda. These individuals provide the CIA with direct access to a large number of newspapers and periodicals, scores of press services and news agencies, radio and television stations, commercial book publishers, and other foreign media outlets."

Church argued that misinforming the world cost American taxpayers an estimated $265 million a year.

In February 1976, George H. W. Bush, the recently appointed Director of the CIA announced a new policy: "Effective immediately, the CIA will not enter into any paid or contract relationship with any full-time or part-time news correspondent accredited by any U.S. news service, newspaper, periodical, radio or television network or station." However, he added that the CIA would continue to "welcome" the voluntary, unpaid cooperation of journalists.

[Syrinx]

1. I've heard that Capital Cities was a CIA front company

They purchased ABC in the mid-eighties, I believe.

Then Cap Cities was acquired by Disney in the mid-nineties.

[pretzel4gore]

6. AOL...

whether this is true or not, i dunno. But AOL was founded by cia ops, in Langley, which sorta rang a bell, so they created a 'crawford' out of the blue, a town named 'dulles' (after a psycho racist wasp family that has worked to destroy the country that nurtured it- the bush family want to be dulles)
apparently, AOL owns CNN...
http://sianews.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2725

[formercia]

11. One of the owners of CCC was CIA Director Casey

CCC has been a front for the boys all along.

[Syrinx]

2. .

But not only has the government tried to control people's minds, they've copped to controlling the media, too. Operation Mockingbird, the CIA's plan to infiltrate America's newsrooms, was such a success that former CIA director William Colby boasted, "the Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any major significance in the major media." Carl Bernstein substantiated this, revealing that hundreds of journalists and news organizations were involved in this subversion.

http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/2002/09/05_Stepford.html

[meegbear]

3. I guess that explains how F*R*I*E*N*D*S got on the air

[Perry Logan]

4. Talk about waterboarding!

[JohnyCanuck]

5. "You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl, for a couple hundred dollars a month,"

"You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl, for a couple hundred dollars a month." - CIA operative discussing with Philip Graham, editor Washington Post, on the availability and prices of journalists willing to peddle CIA propaganda and cover stories. "Katherine The Great," by Deborah Davis (New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1991)

Operation Mockingbird: CIA Media Manipulation

SNIP

Starting in the early days of the Cold War (late 40's), the CIA began a secret project called Operation Mockingbird, with the intent of buying influence behind the scenes at major media outlets and putting reporters on the CIA payroll, which has proven to be a stunning ongoing success. The CIA effort to recruit American news organizations and journalists to become spies and disseminators of propaganda, was headed up by Frank Wisner, Allen Dulles, Richard Helms, and Philip Graham (publisher of The Washington Post). Wisner had taken Graham under his wing to direct the program code-named Operation Mockingbird and both have presumably committed suicide.

Media assets will eventually include ABC, NBC, CBS, Time, Newsweek, Associated Press, United Press International (UPI), Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps-Howard, Copley News Service, etc. and 400 journalists, who have secretly carried out assignments according to documents on file at CIA headquarters, from intelligence-gathering to serving as go-betweens. The CIA had infiltrated the nation's businesses, media, and universities with tens of thousands of on-call operatives by the 1950's. CIA Director Dulles had staffed the CIA almost exclusively with Ivy League graduates, especially from Yale with figures like George Herbert Walker Bush from the "Skull and Crossbones" Society.

Many Americans still insist or persist in believing that we have a free press, while getting most of their news from state-controlled television, under the misconception that reporters are meant to serve the public. Reporters are paid employees and serve the media owners, who usually cower when challenged by advertisers or major government figures. Robert Parry reported the first breaking stories about Iran-Contra for Associated Press that were largely ignored by the press and congress, then moving to Newsweek he witnessed a retraction of a true story for political reasons. In 'Fooling America: A Talk by Robert Parry' he said, "The people who succeeded and did well were those who didn't stand up, who didn't write the big stories, who looked the other way when history was happening in front of them, and went along either consciously or just by cowardice with the deception of the American people."

SNIP

Ralph McGehee was a CIA agent for 25 years, mainly in South-East Asia where he witnessed bombing and napalming of villages, which caused him to examine closely what the CIA was really all about. He has written about Vietnam's Phoenix Program www.vwip.org/articles/m/McGeheeRalph_VietnamsPhoenixProgram.htm and after a long battle with CIA censors, he published the book "Deadly Deceits" in 1983. Ralph has been harassed by the CIA and FBI, involving bodily injury, and his CIABASE website was shut down on Spring of 2000. He copied some reports that can be found at http://serendipity.magnet.ch/cia/ciabase_report_1.htm (and 2.htm), http://serendipity.magnet.ch/cia/death_squads.htm, (these serendipity links no longer work /jc) and www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA/Deadly_Deceits.html . He concluded that the CIA is not now nor has it ever been a central intelligence agency but rather the covert action arm of the President's foreign policy advisors, of which disinformation is a large part of its responsibility and the American people are the primary target of its lies.


http://www.apfn.org/APFN/cia-media.htm

Who rules the corporate media? OPERATION MOCKINGBIRD,CIA,state media since 1940s

author: Alex Constantine

It is beginning to dawn on a growing number of armchair ombudsmen that the public print reports news from a parallel universe - one that has never heard of politically-motivated assassinations, CIA-Mafia banking thefts, mind control, death squads or even federal agencies with secret budgets fattened by cocaine sales - a place overrun by lone gunmen, where the CIA and Mafia are usually on their best behavior. In this idyllic land, the most serious infraction an official can commit--is a the employment of a domestic servant with (shudder) no residency status.This unlikely land of enchantment is the creation of Operation MOCKINGBIRD

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/03/284155.shtml

[L. Coyote]

7. US LIES: Iraqi Media Project = $96M Propaganda Project = Control of ALL Media

Before you believe ANYTHING AT ALL in the way of Iraq news, read "Assault on Reason" and these:
INSTALLING DEMOCRACY NOW! USG-seized IRAQ media run by defense contractor.

US Journalist Quit Pentagon Iraqi Media Project = $96M Propaganda Project
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=980430&mesg_id=981323

======================
Wednesday, January 14th, 2004
U.S. Journalist Quits Pentagon Iraqi Media Project Calling it U.S. Propaganda
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/01/14/155

Listen LINK

We talk to a longtime TV producer about the massive problems he saw in the new U.S.-funded Iraqi Media Network, which he said became an "irrelevant mouthpiece for Coalition Provisional Authority propaganda, managed news and mediocre programs." The U.S. has awarded a $96 million contract to a U.S. producer of communications equipment, Harris Corp., to create a U.S.-funded national media network in Iraq.

According to the head of Harris Corp, the Iraqi Media Network will have 30 TV and radio transmitters, three broadcast studios, and 12 bureaus around Iraq.

After U.S.-led troops ousted Saddam Hussein's regime in April, the state-run broadcasters were seized. Since then, they have been run by a U.S. defense contractor, Science Applications International Corporation. .........

TRANSCRIPT w/ Amy Goodman ........ longtime TV producer, Don North, about the problems he saw ...

==========================
Your tax $$$ purchased media outlets in Iraq, and bought reporters too
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x980363#980750

We have to ask,
"To what extent is this happening today and everywhere?"
"To what extent is this happening with other issues too?"

I have been told by major news announcers, "We just read it."
And, worse still, they do not even know who writes it for them!

We have to ask,
"To what extent is news just propaganda and BUSH LIES?"

==========================
Pentagon pays Iraqi papers to print its 'good news' stories
Jamie Wilson in Washington
Thursday December 1, 2005 - The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1654661,00.html

Faced with suicide bombings, claims of Iraqi death squads, and kidnappings, the Pentagon has come up with an innovative solution to solving the problems in Iraq: buying good news. Using defence contractors or intermediaries posing as freelance reporters, the military has been paying Iraqi newspapers to publish stories written by a military propaganda unit lauding the US mission.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the articles are translated into Arabic and placed in Baghdad newspapers where they are often presented as unbiased accounts by independent journalists. Records obtained by the newspaper indicate the US has paid to publish dozens of articles since the operation began this year, with headlines such as "Iraqis insist on living despite terrorism" and "more money goes to Iraq's development".

One military official told the LA Times the military has also bought an Iraqi newspaper and taken control of a radio station, ...........

==========================
Pentagon OK's Propaganda for Iraq (and Possibly Elsewhere) - http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x980363#981355
Source: Los Angeles Times, March 4, 2006 - http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-inf
http://www.prwatch.org/node/4517

Declaring it "within our authorities and responsibilities," the top U.S. general in Iraq, George Casey, announced that the Lincoln Group program that covertly places stories written by U.S. troops in Iraqi newspapers will continue. Navy Admiral Scott Van Buskirk is also reviewing the Iraq propaganda program. His review was previously described as finished but not public .....

===========================
The Sword Employs the Pen = "the military's practice of paying journalists"

Center for Media and Democracy » Spin of the Day » Feb 07, 2005

The Sword Employs the Pen - http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x980363#981426
http://www.prwatch.org/node/3260

The Pentagon is investigating "the military's practice of paying journalists to write articles and commentary ... and also looking more broadly at Pentagon activities that might involve inappropriate payments to journalists," writes Associated Press. CNN reported on Pentagon involvement with two news websites, Southeast European Times (focused on the Balkans) and Magharebia (focused on North Africa). Some 50 journalists were paid by the Pentagon through a private contractor, Anteon Corporation, ..........

==============================
Pentagon Paid Reporters for Stories Overseas
February 06, 2005 9:00 AM ET
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000789872

WASHINGTON (AP) The Pentagon’s chief investigator is looking into the military’s practice of paying journalists to write articles and commentary for a Web site aimed at influencing public opinion in the Balkans, officials said Friday.

At the request of Larry Di Rita, chief spokesman for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the Pentagon’s inspector general, Joseph Schmitz, is reviewing that case and also looking more broadly at Pentagon activities that might involve inappropriate payments to journalists. ...............

==============================
Covert propaganda >> Instances of covert propaganda - http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Covert_propaganda

==============================
Journalists: U.S. media censorship is ‘rampant’
By IPS/GIN - Jul 17, 2003
http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_896.shtml

OSLO, Norway ..... self-censorship in the media has risen, not just since the Iraq war, but also since 9/11, agreed Robert Fisk of The Independent newspaper in Britain and John Pilger, an Australian broadcaster and film-maker.

..... "Propaganda is not found just in totalitarian states," Mr. Pilger says. "There, at least they know they are being lied to. We tend to assume it is the truth. In the U.S., censorship is rampant."

Self-censorship, that is. This kind of self-censorship is an increasing problem, and leads to one-dimensional coverage that journalists must learn to transcend, Mr. Pilger says.

"The most important soldiers in the Iraq war were not the troops, but the journalists and the broadcasters," he says. "Lies were transformed into themes for public debate. ......

==============================
MORE: Next STOP Iran? More BUSH LIES and Surging Toward War With Iran
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x980363

[madokie]

8. The controlling of the message is what will doom America

maybe that should read, the controlling of the message is what is dooming America, they both work for me

The only way anyone anywhere can have freedom is if they have facts, otherwise it's all a form of slavery

[hootinholler]

9. If ya can't buy them, shoot them!

It is very unsafe to be a journalist in Iraq if you aren't embedded.

-Hoot

[L. Coyote]

10. Why do journalists commit suicide by two gunshots?

So the other journalist know how to commit suicide too!

[JohnyCanuck]

12. kick n/t

[leftist_not_liberal]

13. THE CIA AND THE MEDIA

"We live in a dirty and dangerous world. There are some things that the general public does not need to know and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows." -- Katharine Graham, in a 1988 speech before CIA officials at Langley, Virginia

Journalism is a perfect cover for CIA agents. People talk freely to journalists, and few think suspiciously of a journalist aggressively searching for information. Journalists also have power, influence and clout. Not surprisingly, the CIA began a mission in the late 1940s to recruit American journalists on a wide scale, a mission it dubbed Operation MOCKINGBIRD. The agency wanted these journalists not only to relay any sensitive information they discovered, but also to write anti-communist, pro-capitalist propaganda when needed.The instigators of MOCKINGBIRD were Frank Wisner, Allan Dulles, Richard Helms and Philip Graham. Graham was the husband of Katherine Graham, today's publisher of the Washington Post. In fact, it was the Post's ties to the CIA that allowed it to grow so quickly after the war, both in readership and influence.

In February, 1976, George Bush, the recently appointed Director of the CIA announced a new policy: "Effective immediately, the CIA will not enter into any paid or contract relationship with any full-time or part-time news correspondent accredited by any U.S. news service, newspaper, periodical, radio or television network or station." However, he added that the CIA would continue to "welcome" the voluntary, unpaid cooperation of journalists.

Carl Bernstein, who had worked with Bob Woodward in the investigation of Watergate, provided further information about Operation Mockingbird in an article in Rolling Stone in October, 1977. Bernstein claimed that over a 25 year period over 400 American journalists secretly carried out assignments for the CIA: "Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters who considered themselves ambassadors-without-portfolio for their country. Most were less exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association with the Agency helped their work; stringers and freelancers who were as interested it the derring-do of the spy business as in filing articles, and, the smallest category, full-time CIA employees masquerading as journalists abroad."

THE CIA AND THE MEDIA

Originally published in Rolling Stone, October 20, 1977.

How Americas Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up

BY CARL BERNSTEIN
http://tmh.floonet.net/articles/cia_press.html

[L. Coyote]

14. thanks for this post

[formercia]

15. Kick.

for the Morning crowd.

[OzarkDem]

16. It's their patriotic duty

to lie and spread propaganda to their readers. At some point, however, they began to demand payment, hence media "reform" and consolidation.

Thanks for the quote, how did you ever find it?

[annabanana]

17. And we ALL believe Herbert Walker B., now don't we...

There's still lotsa birdies in the trees.