The myth of the free press in America

[Guest guest]

http://dogskinreport.com/press_housebroken.htm

 

The myth of the free press in America

 

Perhaps no greater barrier stands in the way of the

American public’s understanding of deep politics than

the near-religious belief that the US has a free

press. Do we really have a “free press?” Let’s take a

look at the evidence.

According to Steve Brouwer’s Sharing the Pie,

which looked at media ownership, in 1981, 46 media

corporations controlled most of the book, magazine,

newspaper, movie and television industries. By 1986,

this number had shrunk to 29, and by 1989, it was

reduced to 25. In the 1990’s, the process of media

conglomeration further accelerated. Disney bought ABC,

Westinghouse bought CBS, and General Electric took

over NBC. A new network, Fox, was able to supply some

competition, but only because it was part of a huge

global newspaper, book, and TV empire belonging to

Rupert Murdoch. Time/Warner not only controlled

magazines, movies, and books, but had also taken over

Turner Broadcasting, CNN, and a wide swath of the

cable TV distribution network.

By 1997, just seven companies laid claim to

virtually the entire combined US media market. The

Magnificent Seven were:

 

1. AOL/Time/Warner (CNN, Time magazine)

2. Disney (ABC)

3. Viacom (CBS)

4. News Corporation – Ruppert Murdoch (Fox TV)

5. Bertelsmann (a German firm that controls the

publication of one out of ten adult trade books in the

world)

6. General Electric (NBC)

7. Sony (the former CBS records and Columbia

Pictures)

 

Newspaper monopolies such as Gannett and Knight-Ridder

keep enlarging their chains at the expense of the last

independent city papers. And what of companies like

the Washington Post Company? Their holdings include

the Washington Post, Newsweek magazine, several

television stations and even 11 military newspapers.

The New York Times Company is similar.

Indeed, when one digs into the ownership of the

major US media, be it major television networks, cable

companies or newspapers and magazines, you find

control in a tiny number of hands. To investigate this

further, see Who Owns What? from the Columbia

Journalism Review.

Catcalls directed at Whistleblowers

 

Those hardy journalists who are brave enough to take

on the military/industrial/intelligence complex rarely

take from the experience an optimism regarding the

future of the nation, for they have felt firsthand the

bite of the powers-that-be.

A common tactic from attackers is to paint

whistleblowers as attention-seeking conspiracy whackos

who are mentally several screws short. For those who

take the time to look into the background of the

whistleblowers, this becomes comical, for almost

invariably they are sober Americans who have often

been closely associated with the most conservative

branches of government service, including the FBI,

military, DEA, etc.

Attacks on whistleblowers scrupulously avoid a

discussion of the actual charges made. Instead, they

attempt to deflect attention with labels like

communist, conspiracy nut, leftist, etc. In the case

where the whistleblower has previous involvement in

intelligence activities, they dredge up cover legends

where the subject committed crimes. Indeed, this is

one of the major mechanisms used to control covert

operatives.

If any further evidence is needed, one need only

look at the treatment doled out to Minneapolis FBI

agent Coleen Rowley, who blew the whistle on

higher-ups in the FBI’s bureaucracy.

Just seven months ago she was heralded as a

national hero for daring to testify that top-level FBI

officials had stymied efforts by Minneapolis agents to

search records of Zacarias Moussaoui before the Sept.

11 terrorist attacks.

When Rowley appeared before congressional

committees in Washington, there were concerns being

expressed that she might pay a price for her courage.

As the late Sen. Paul Wellstone said at the time:

" The real question is not what happens today or

tomorrow. It's what happens in the next year or two,

or after that. That's always the case with

whistle-blowers. It's going to be important for us to

remain vigilant in her case. "

Unfortunately, Wellstone is no longer available

to provide that vigilance, having been killed in a

suspicious plane crash. And at a quiet little ceremony

in December 2002, Marion (Spike) Bowman was one of

nine people in the bureau to receive an award for

" exceptional performance. " The award carries with it a

cash bonus of 20 to 35 percent of the recipient's

salary and a framed certificate signed by the

president.

What does this have to do with Rowley?

Bowman heads the FBI's National Security Law Unit.

That's the unit that blocked Minneapolis agents from

pursuing their suspicions about Moussaoui.

Bowman received the big pats on the back (and

cash) a few days before the House and Senate

Intelligence committees turned in their reports of

pre-Sept. 11 intelligence failures. The committees

said that Minneapolis agents deserved honors for their

work and that those who performed poorly should be

disciplined. The National Security Law Unit was

singled out by Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., for inept

performance.

There were no FBI honors for the Minneapolis

office. There was a big honor for the lead antagonist

of the Minneapolis office.

 

What does this mean?

Does corporate ownership of virtually all of the major

American media outlets mean that everything you read

is controlled? No. The sheer size of the American

media and the number of employees involved means that

it is beyond total control. But total control is not

necessary. All that is required is that stories which

threaten the foundation of the

military-industrial-intelligence control of the US be

controlled. A series of these stories is detailed in

the important book, Into the Buzzsaw by ex-CBS

producer, Kristina Borjesson. According to AlterNet’s

Michelle Goldberg:

 

Into the Buzzsaw is a collection of essays, mostly

by serious journalists excommunicated from the media

establishment for tackling subjects like the CIA's

role in drug smuggling, lies perpetuated by the

investigators of TWA flight 800, POWs rotting in

Vietnam, a Korean war massacre, the disenfranchisement

of black voters in Bush's election, bovine growth

hormone’s dangers and a host of other unpopular

issues. Borjesson describes “the buzzsaw” as “what can

rip through you when you try to investigate or expose

anything this country’s large institutions – be they

corporate or government – want to keep under wraps.

The system fights back with official lies,

disinformation, and stonewalling. Your phone starts

acting funny. Strange people call you at strange hours

to give you strange information. The FBI calls you.

Your car is broken into and the thief takes your

computer and your reporter’s notebook and leaves

everything else behind… The sense of fear and paranoia

is, at times, overwhelming.”

 

No better example exists of the buzzsaw than that of

Gary Webb, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative

reporter. By pure chance, Webb stumbled across a

blockbuster of a story in the mid-1990’s – one which

would shake the very foundations of government. His

source detailed how, during the 1980’s, members of the

Nicaraguan Contra movement had helped finance their

resistance to the Sandinista revolution by importing

cocaine into the US. Indeed, as Webb dug deeper, he

found much evidence that Oliver North and other

members of the US intelligence communities had not

only known of Contra drug trafficking, but had

facilitated it (hundreds of references to drug

trafficking were found in North’s notebooks alone).

The kicker was that the Contra trade in cocaine had

touched off the crack cocaine explosion in Los

Angeles, an epidemic which quickly spread throughout

the land.

As with any such controversial story, Webb’s

“Dark Alliance” series for the San Jose Mercury News

was carefully vetted by the paper’s editors and

attorneys prior to publication. Indeed, after it ran,

it won accolades far and wide. But soon, the screws

were tightened. A follow-up series of articles, in

which Webb connected many of the dots between the CIA

and the Contras, went through numerous revisions

before being cancelled. Other papers such as the Los

Angeles Times, the Washington Post and the New York

Times relentlessly attacked Webb, to the point where

the Pulitzer-Prize winning Webb was eventually was

transferred to the paper’s Cupertino branch traffic

beat. He had had enough, and quit in disgust, penning

a classic book about the subject entitled Dark

Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine

Explosion.

Webb was eventually vindicated, when the CIA

issued a report which confirmed that elements of the

Contras had been involved in cocaine trafficking. As

Webb writes in Into the Buzzsaw:

 

" If we had met five years ago, you wouldn't have

found a more staunch defender of the newspaper

industry than me… I was winning awards, getting

raises, lecturing college classes, appearing on TV

shows, and judging journalism contests. So how could I

possibly agree with people like Noam Chomsky and Ben

Bagdikian, who were claiming the system didn’t work,

that it was steered by powerful special interests and

corporations, and existed to protect the power elite?

And then I wrote some stories that made me realize how

sadly misplaced my bliss had been. The reason I’d

enjoyed such smooth sailing for so long hadn’t been,

as I’d assumed, because I was careful and diligent and

good at my job… The truth was that, in all those

years, I hadn’t written anything important enough to

suppress.”

 

Further Reading on corporate control of the media

 

* The Big Ten of Media by The Nation

* Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (F.A.I.R.)

* Ex-DEA agent Michael Levine’s book sales

sabotaged

* The Global Media Giants: The nine firms that

dominate the world By Robert W. McChesney, FAIR,

Nov.–Dec. 1997

* Merge, Churn, Money to Burn: from the book

Sharing the Pie by Steve Brouwer

* Newspapers Run Half of Top News Sites

* Project Censored

* Propaganda’s Triumph by Robert Parry

* Shrinking Media Ownership by the Media Reform

Information Center

* Take Back the Media

* The Untold Story: How corporate takeovers make

the media less curious by Nikki Finke

* Who Owns What? by the Columbia Journalism Review

 

CIA infiltration of the media

 

* Alternative media infiltration

* The CIA and the Media

* The Greatest Vendetta on Earth Why would the

head of Ringling Bros.-Barnum & Bailey hire a former

top CIA honcho to torment a hapless freelance writer

for eight years? By Jeff Stein

* MOCKINGBIRD: The Subversion of the Free Press by

the CIA

* The Propaganda War: The CIA’s Domestic

Surveillance Operations in the United States

* A Report on CIA Infiltration and Manipulation of

the Mass Media by Ashley Overbeck

* Public Relationships: Hill & Knowlton, Robert

Gray,and the CIA

 

 

 

It couldn’t really happen here… could it?

 

“That’s the left wing of the CIA debating the

right wing of the CIA.”

 

– Timothy Leary, discussing CNN’s Crossfire, ca.

1992

 

Perhaps the most common question one hears from

conspiracy skeptics is this: “With a press that is

dying to break such stories, how could the

conspirators possibly keep it all secret?”

The answer is simple. It hasn’t been kept

secret. Over 400 books on the JFK assassination alone

have been written, most of which support a conspiracy,

and dozens detail other misdeeds (see Dog-Eared for

examples). Indeed, the vast majority of people who

take the time to personally read the different

accounts and examine the evidence come to the same

conclusion: There is no possible way for Lee Harvey

Oswald to have killed Kennedy.

But those in charge of the cover-up have one

important advantage. Americans don’t read. The vast

majority of Americans do not make political decisions

based on what they read, but instead are spoon-fed the

news from one of about six or seven sources. The

lion’s share of Americans get their news from the

three major TV networks (ABC, CBS, NBC), plus a few

more cable networks (CNN, MSNBC and Fox). Thus to

control the news, it is only necessary to control a

handful of people at a handful of news sources. With

all of the above news organs being owned or controlled

by large corporate interests, who have a vested

interest in providing a specific slant to the news,

this is really far simpler than it seems.

Numerous accounts of CIA infiltration of the

American media exist. For more on media control, see

the following chapter from Richard E. Sprague’s The

Taking of America 1-2-3. See also The CIA and the

Media and Sheep Dipped for well-known examples.

Presidential puppy

adoptions and the “liberal media”

 

2001 was the year Bill Clinton pardoned Marc

Rich and Carlos Vignali, a convicted cocaine

trafficker and son of a major campaign donor.

 

1992 was the year that George H.W. Bush

pardoned…

o Aslan Adam, a Pakistani convicted of

importing $1.5 million worth of heroin

 

The American public was treated to endless

howling about the Rich and Vignali pardons by the

so-called “liberal media,” but we heard not one peep

about the Bush pardons. Indeed, according to FAIR,

while Vignali’s commutation received heavy coverage –

66 mentions in the New York Times, L.A. Times and

Washington Post, and another 13 reports on the nightly

network news – Adam's clemency got exactly one story

in any of these outlets at the time (Washington Post,

1/22/93), and that report failed to mention how much

heroin he had brought in.

In addition to Adam, Bush also pardoned…

o A terrorist accused of blowing up a

civilian airliner, killing 73

o Five men linked to Iran-Contra. These

included:

+ Clair George, No. 3 man at the CIA

+ Elliot Abrams

+ Casper Weinberger.

 

In the case of Weinberger and the other

Iran-Contra figures, had they been threatened with

time in the dog pound, they might have decided to

shorten their sentences by implicating none other

than… George H.W. Bush.

 

1977 was the year that Jimmy Carter pardoned

Vietnam War draft evaders

 

1975 was the year that Ford pardoned Nixon

 

When Carter pardoned the Vietnam War draft

evaders, we were treated to a similar outcry, but that

same press refused to condemn Ford’s pardon of Nixon.

When Clinton ran for president, he was repeatedly

referred to as a “draft dodger,” but we heard little

from the “liberal media” about similar draft

deferments given to Trent Lott, Tom Delay, Newt

Gingrich, Jack Kemp, Pat Buchanan, Dick Cheney, etc.

Indeed. George W. Bush was given entry

into the National Guard just 12 days before his

student deferment would have expired. And his service

records seem to have been filed in the same place as

those associated with JFK’s assassination, for so many

of them are missing.

 

Do you think that “liberal media” might

not really be that liberal? Naw… couldn’t be… could

it?

 

 

 

 

dog end

© 2002–2004 Dog Skin Report. All rights reserved.