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The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media.

geni said:
<ref>{{cite book |title=Flat Earth news: an award-winning reporter exposes falsehood, distortion and propaganda in the global media |last=Nick |first= Davies |year= 2008 |publisher= Chatto & Windus |isbn=0701181451}}</ref>
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Flat Earth News by Nick Davies.

He writes for the Guardian.

Thanks for the heads up; this is exactly the sort of thing I'm looking for.

If anyone here has any reason why Nick Davies is not a credible source, let them speak now, or whenever they get the chance.

geni said:
[re: digg, reddit] Neither of those are really media.
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Semantics. I'd argue that determining headlines people see is even more relevant than the content of their articles.
 
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zaphod2016 said:
Semantics. I'd argue that determining headlines people see is even more relevant than the content of their articles.
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But by the time it gets there the decision has already been made. Georgia's well developed PR engine means that the headline is "poor little Georgia attacked by russia" rather than "Georgia provokes war with russia then screams like a little girl" or "totaly awesome war breaks out in georgia sit back and watch all that soviet heavy kit you never though would get used going head to head".
 
geni said:
But by the time it gets there the decision has already been made. Georgia's well developed PR engine means that the headline is "poor little Georgia attacked by russia" rather than "Georgia provokes war with russia then screams like a little girl" or "totaly awesome war breaks out in georgia sit back and watch all that soviet heavy kit you never though would get used going head to head".
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Well here's how the Georgia thing worked and I'm not sure you could say it was CIA but it was lobbying firms. Georgia had some good lobbying going on in America and there were influential politicians who were involved in either abetting that lobbying or were targetted by the lobbying and rendered sympathetic. So when they were asked for their comments by a media that needs something to be said by a politician first before they'll report it it was likely the stories being run would be sympathetic and partial to Georgia and that's what happened.

I mean, maybe the CIA had a hand in some of this lobbying at some point in the chain but you could also see it almost as a foreign nation spending large sums of money on getting people on side and doing so successfully.
 
Georgia has no money to pay these lobbyists/PR companies. It were eighter private donors or US "foreign aid" that sponsored it.

I agreee on the CIA btw, today the journalists are "owned" by the mother cooperations, that's more than "good" enough.

A relevant documentary is "Orwell rolls in his Grave" from 2004. It's Bush aera stuff but witnessing the completely crazy talking heads FOX puts up these days and manages to confuse the viewers so much that "tens of thousands" (*cough*) are protesting imaginary problems in DC, it isn't outdated at all. Interview with the author.

Google Video This video is not hosted by the ISF, the ISF can not be held responsible for the suitability or legality of this material. By clicking the link below you agree to view content from an external website.
I AGREE
 
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Childlike Empress said:
A relevant documentary is "Orwell rolls in his Grave" from 2004. It's Bush aera stuff but witnessing the completely crazy talking heads FOX puts up these days and manages to confuse the viewers so much that "tens of thousands" (*cough*) are protesting imaginary problems in DC, it isn't outdated at all. Interview with the author.

Google Video This video is not hosted by the ISF, the ISF can not be held responsible for the suitability or legality of this material. By clicking the link below you agree to view content from an external website.
I AGREE
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Thank you for sharing that; more good stuff.

re: Georgia, I understand how PR shaped the story put out to the world. However, unless reddit put it right under my nose, I'd likely have never seen it. I argue that computerized aggregation sites, like Google News and Digg are among the most powerful of the "new media". YouTube is another good example of what I mean. Most of the stuff on YouTube is either a) crap or b) pulled directly from TV, and all the same spin doctors we love to hate. YouTube's value-add is getting that content in front of my face, despite my ongoing efforts to avoid cable news.

Shaping the story, deciding which stories to cover; these issues have affected media for a long time. The new media, and especially its socially-driven aspects, present new challenges and opportunities. It is easier than ever for the "little guy" to be heard; on the other hand, just because a link is popular, doesn't make it true.
 
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Childlike Empress said:
I agreee on the CIA btw, today the journalists are "owned" by the mother cooperations, that's more than "good" enough.
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That's an "interesting" theory.

Is there anything concrete to suggest that either General Electric, News Corporation, Disney, or Viacom are controlled or influenced by the Central Intelligence Agency?
 
I don't think so. What i was trying to say is that it is not necessary these days for intelligence agencies to directly pressure journalists on a large scale, because the self-censoring mechanisms that are in place and the simple threat of losing your job, or don't getting the job in the first place, are powerful enough to maintain orthodoxy in corporate media.

Parenti has a little bonmot that goes something like this (paraphrasing): "I tell journalists who complain about my analysis and say that their bosses never prevented them from saying what they believe, that they are only in the position they're in because their bosses like what they believe".
 
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Yeah, Parenti, a apologist for Milosvic and somebody who feels that the crimes of Joseph Stalin have been greatly "exaggerated" is a real reliable source.
 
Hey dudalb! Long time no see, i felt kind of neglected by you. He explains his stance on those issues and the direction those "critiques" are usually coming from quite well in the video i've posted.
 
Childlike Empress said:
I don't think so. What i was trying to say is that it is not necessary these days for intelligence agencies to directly pressure journalists on a large scale, because the self-censoring mechanisms that are in place and the simple threat of losing your job, or don't getting the job in the first place, are powerful enough to maintain orthodoxy in corporate media.
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If I may butt-in, the issue is access.

If I give a hardball interview, the crooks and liars will flee to other shows, with easier questions and more sympathetic hosts. I.e. Bush and Cheney were on FOX News all the time, but avoided the "liberal" media like a plague.

Jon Stewart is one of the few who seem immune from the access issue, and even then, I doubt we'll ever see Bush on his show. I doubt Cramer will be back.
 
zaphod2016 said:
Jon Stewart is one of the few who seem immune from the access issue, and even then, I doubt we'll ever see Bush on his show. I doubt Cramer will be back.
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I'm always suspicious of people who seem to be immune from the acccess issue, but i'm looking forward to the new show of Harald Schmidt, who introduced/copied the US "late night" format for german television and stuck to it for quite some time, delving into the art of celebrity non-talk during the last years - he will be back on thursday and has the opportunity to shake the republic - but i doubt he will really take it on. Otherwise, even he, a fullblown "star" and as sharp as humans get, will get burned after the first show.
 
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Rather than search for an answer to whether Colby actually made the quote, it might be more useful to accept it and see where it leads you. We'll assume that Colby was talking about the period of time when he was in the CIA, which ends in early 1976. So who were people of any significance in the major media back then?

1. Walter Cronkite, CBS News
2. David Brinkley, NBC News
3. Howard K. Smith and Harry Reasoner, ABC News
4. Arthur Sulzberger, the New York Times
5. Kate Graham, the Washington Post

Is anybody starting to see the problem here? Let's indulge the conspiracy theorists here again; in 1963 the CIA killed Kennedy because he was about to get us out of Vietnam. But in 1968, the CIA, which owned Walter Cronkite, couldn't get him not to report that the Vietnam War was mired in stalemate? They couldn't get Kate Graham in 1972 to assign those two young reporters to cover high school football games?

BTW, not often mentioned is the fact that Colby himself was a liberal politically; he joined the nuclear freeze movement after leaving the CIA.
 
Childlike Empress said:
I don't think so. What i was trying to say is that it is not necessary these days for intelligence agencies to directly pressure journalists on a large scale, because the self-censoring mechanisms that are in place and the simple threat of losing your job, or don't getting the job in the first place, are powerful enough to maintain orthodoxy in corporate media.
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I don't see the connection between intelligence agencies and these "self censoring mechanisms" you describe. The simple threat of losing your job? Concerns over getting a position in the first place? That's a concern where I work. (I do work for the media, BTW.) It's also a concern at Home Depot and McDonald's.

Can you give an example of a journalist who was threatened by the CIA with losing their job, or not getting a good job later on?

All of this stuff just reads like a bunch of theory in the complete abscence of evidence. My ears are open if you have anything that can be sourced.
 
I second zaphod's recommendation of Chomsky/Herman "Manufacturing Consent" for a start, Joey. We all agreed in this thread that the notion of the CIA singlehandedly controlling the media is, today, a myth. May have been true in the past, i don't know. The documentary "Orwell rolls in his Grave" is also serious business and not "CT stuff", regardless of its title (i watched it years ago, maybe there's some crap in it but guys like Charles Lewis and Robert McChesney are a bank).
 
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It's just that I would have attributed something of this type to the Hoover-era Federal Bureau of Investigation. Those skeletons are out in the open, as are many of the CIA's.
 
If you doubt that the mainstream media lies ON A GRAND SCALE all the time - systematically, reread the thread on the Georgia/Russia incident last year. More obvious it doesn't get. I think the title of that thread was "Russia invades Georgia" or something like that.

edit: Russia invades Georgia
 
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I don't think they lie ON A GRAND SCALE all the time. I think they get things wrong an awful lot.

Also, in the case of the U.S. Media, there aren't many news bureaus in that part of the world. There are less and less of them, as even the large media corporations are feeling the global economic crunch. They might dispatch a reporter to a certain area who will get there after hostilities have ensued. The other thing you have to consider is where the news organizations get their information from. They might be relaying what was told to them by a military staff officer or a warlord, each of whom represent an organization that would no doubt want to be perceived a certain way. Then there's the reporter's bias, and the news organization's bias. All news organizations have them, although some work harder than others at being objective.

I don't recall major Western sources devoting many resources to the conflict anyway. That's a trend that's going to continue as they literally cannot afford to maintain field offices in every far corner of the world where things may or may not happen. They'll get there after the opening salvo and the military in the respective conflict may be attempting to control as much of the information flow in and out of the combat zone as possible. This isn't as feasible anymore with an increasingly connected public even in places that would be normally thought of as "backward," but it is still an essential part of warfare.

Unless, of course, you are alleging that the mainstream media (which organization, exactly?) fabricated their coverage for some sort of political end. And I'm sorry but I can't buy that on face value.
 
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