FrankRep
05-02-2011, 09:20 PM
http://www.shopjbs.org/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/5e06319eda06f020e43594a9c230972d/S/h/Shadows_of_Power_web.jpg (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0882791346/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=libert0f-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399349&creativeASIN=0882791346)
The Shadows of Power: The Council on Foreign Relations and the American Decline (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0882791346/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=libert0f-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399349&creativeASIN=0882791346)
- James Perloff, 1988
Chapter 12: The Media Blackout
Establishment Control of the Media
All of the American history we have just finished reviewing is factual. Yet it is far from the traditional version. So the question naturally arises: Why do the media avoid the various circumstances shown in this account, or at best downplay them? Why don’t investigative news shows like Sixty Minutes, perceived as gutsy and no-holds-barred, tackle the Pearl Harbor cover-up, American financing of questionable projects behind the Iron Curtain, or the Trilateralist CFR hold on our government? Surely such material would have sufficient audience appeal.
The answer is almost self-evident. The mass media are subject to the same “power behind the throne” as Washington. For the Establishment to induce public cooperation with its program, it has always been expedient to manipulate the information industry that is so responsible for what people think about current events. A prime mover in this process was J. P. Morgan — the original force behind the CFR.
In 1917, Congressman Oscar Callaway inserted the following statement in the Congressional Record:
In March, 1915, the J. P. Morgan interests, the steel, shipbuilding, and powder interests, and their subsidiary organizations, got together 12 men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the most influential newspapers in the United States and sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of the daily press of the United States.
These 12 men worked the problem out by selecting 179 newspapers, and then began, by an elimination process, to retain only those necessary for the purpose of controlling the general policy of the daily press throughout the country. They found it was only necessary to purchase the control of 25 of the greatest papers. The 25 papers were agreed upon; emissaries were sent to purchase the policy, national and international, of these papers; an agreement was reached; the policy of the papers was bought, to be paid for by the month; an editor was furnished for each paper to properly supervise and edit information regarding the questions of preparedness, militarism, financial policies, and other things of national and international nature considered vital to the interests of the purchasers....
This policy also included the suppression of everything in opposition to the wishes of the interests served.1
The press, thus controlled, was very successful in persuading Americans to support our entry into World War I. However, in subsequent years, a number of books appeared that challenged the justification of our involvement, the merits of the Allied cause, and the wisdom of Colonel House and his colleagues in devising the Versailles Treaty. These books included Harry Elmer Barnes’ Genesis of the World War (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0403001404/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=libert0f-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399349&creativeASIN=0403001404) (1926), Sidney Fay’s Origins of the World War (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/092389134X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=libert0f-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399349&creativeASIN=092389134X) (1928), and many others.
After World War II, however, the Establishment moved to preclude such investigation. The eminent historian Charles Beard, former president of the American Historical Association, stated in a Saturday Evening Post editorial in 1947:
The Rockefeller Foundation and Council on Foreign Relations ... intend to prevent, if they can, a repetition of what they call in the vernacular “the debunking journalistic campaign following World War I.” Translated into precise English, this means that the foundation and the council do not want journalists or any other persons to examine too closely and criticize too freely the official propaganda and official statements relative to “our basic aims and activities” during World War II. In short, they hope that, among other things, the policies and measures of Franklin D. Roosevelt will escape in coming years the critical analysis, evaluation and exposition that befell the policies and measures of President Woodrow Wilson and the Entente Allies after World War I.2
Dr. Beard noted that the Rockefeller Foundation had granted $139,000 to the CFR, which in turn hired Harvard professor William Langer to author a three-volume chronicle of the war.
Historians whose writings concurred with the “authorized” versions of events, such as Langer, Samuel Morison, Herbert Feis, Henry Steele Commager, and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., were generally guaranteed exclusive interviews, access to government documents and statesmen’s diaries, sure publication, and glowing appraisals in the front of the New York Times Book Review. Most of these men had served in the administrations they wrote about.
On the other hand, historians who dared question foreign policy under Roosevelt and Truman, such as Beard, Harry Elmer Barnes, Charles Tansill, John T. Flynn, and William Henry Chamberlin, suddenly found themselves blacklisted by the publishing world that, had previously welcomed their works. Beard succeeded in issuing two volumes critical of the Roosevelt administration only because he had a devoted friend at Yale University Press. Before his death in 1948, he was smeared in the media as senile.
In 1953, Barnes described how the censorship process worked:
The methods followed by the various groups interested in blacking out the truth about world affairs since 1932 are numerous and ingenious, but, aside from subterranean persecution of individuals, they fall mainly into the following patterns or categories: (1) excluding scholars suspected of revisionist views from access to public documents which are freely opened to “court historians” and other apologists for the foreign policy of President Roosevelt; (2) intimidating publishers of books and periodicals, so that even those who might wish to publish books and articles setting forth the revisionist point of view do not dare to do so; (3) ignoring or obscuring published material which embodies revisionist facts and arguments; and (4) smearing revisionist authors and their books....
As a matter of fact, only two small publishing houses in the United States — the Henry Regnery Company and the Devin-Adair Company — have shown any consistent willingness to publish books which frankly aim to tell the truth with respect to the causes and issues of the second World War. Leading members of two of the largest publishing houses in the country have told me that, whatever their personal wishes in the circumstances, they would not feel it ethical to endanger their business and the property rights of their stockholders by publishing critical books relative to American foreign policy since 1933. And there is good reason for this hesitancy. The book clubs and the main sales outlets for books are controlled by powerful pressure groups which are opposed to truth on such matters. These outlets not only refuse to market critical books in this field but also threaten to boycott other books by those publishers who defy their blackout ultimatum.3
The historical suppression described by Dr. Barnes thirty-five years ago still operates today. It could be pointed out — quite rightfully, of course — that in more recent years American policy and policy makers have occasionally been savaged (as with Vietnam, Watergate, and the Iran-Contra affair). However, such episodes did not bruise the Council on Foreign Relations or its allies; instead they stigmatized those people whom the Establishment disliked, and those very policies it had always opposed (nationalism and anti-Communism).
What we have operating in America is an Establishment media. As erstwhile New York Times editor John Swinton once said: “There is no such thing as an independent press in America, if we except that of little country towns.”
The Times itself was bought in 1896 by Alfred Ochs, with backing from J. P. Morgan, Rothschild agent August Belmont, and Jacob Schiff of Kuhn, Loeb. It was subsequently passed on to Ochs’ son-in-law Arthur Hays Sulzberger (CFR), then to Orville E. Dryfoos (CFR), and finally to the present publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger (CFR). The Times has had a number of CFR members in its stable of reporters, including Herbert L. Matthews, Harrison Salisbury, and Lester Markel. Currently, executive editor Max Frankel, editorial page editor Jack Rosenthal, deputy editorial page editor Leslie Gelb, and assistant managing editors James L. Greenfield, Warren Hoge, and John M. Lee are all in the Council.
The Times’ friendly rival, the Washington Post, was bought by Eugene Meyer in 1933. Meyer, a partner of Bernard Baruch and Federal Reserve Board governor, had joined the CFR in 1929. Meyer began his reign at the Post by firing its editor for refusing to support U.S. recognition of the Soviet Union.4
Today the Post is run by Meyer’s daughter, Katharine Graham (CFR). Managing editor Leonard Downie, Jr., editorial page editor Meg Greenfield, and deputy editorial page editor Stephen S. Rosenfeld are all Council members.
The Washington Post Company owns Newsweek, which is a descendant of the weekly magazine Today, founded by Averell Harriman, among others, to support the New Deal and business interests. Newsweek’s editor-in-chief Richard M. Smith and editor Maynard Parker both belong to the CFR, as have a number of its contributors. Both Newsweek and the Post have donated money to the Council.
Time magazine maintains the same kind of rivalry with Newsweek as the New York Times does with the Post: they compete for readers, not in viewpoint. Time was founded by Henry Luce (CFR-IPR-Atlantic Union), who rose as a publisher with loans from such individuals as Dwight Morrow and Thomas Lamont (both Morgan partners and CFR members), Harvey Firestone (CFR), and E. Roland Harriman (CFR).
Time’s longtime editor-in-chief was Hedley Donovan (Trilateral Commission member, CFR Director, trustee of the Ford Foundation and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and eventually Special Assistant to President Jimmy Carter). The current editor-in-chief, Henry Grunwald, is in the CFR, along with managing editor Henry Muller. Time, Inc., which also publishes People, Life, Fortune, Money, and Sports Illustrated, has several Council members on its board of directors.
The CFR also has interlocks with the major TV networks. William S. Paley, chairman of the board at CBS for many years, belonged to the Council on Foreign Relations, as does the chairman today, Thomas H. Wyman, and eleven of the fourteen board members listed for 1987. CBS news anchor Dan Rather is in the CFR. CBS helped finance the Trilateral Commission, and the CBS Foundation has contributed funds to the Council.
NBC is a subsidiary of RCA, which was formerly headed by David Sarnoff (CFR). Sarnoff had financial backing from Kuhn, Loeb and other Rothschild-linked banking firms. He was succeeded by his son Robert, who married Felicia Schiff Warburg, daughter of Paul Warburg and great granddaughter of Jacob Schiff. RCA’s chairman of the board now, Thornton Bradshaw, is a CFR man, as are several other board members. The Council has had a number of NBC newsmen on its roster over the years, including Marvin Kalb, John Chancellor, Garick Utley, and Irving R. Levine.
There are CFR figures on ABC’s board, and in its news department, including Ted Koppel and David Brinkley.
The Council on Foreign Relations also has links to the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Associated Press wire service, PBS, and other major news sources. The Council’s annual report for 1987 notes that 262 of its members are “journalists, correspondents, and communications executives.”
What does this mean? Membership in the CFR is not by itself an indictment. However, when large numbers of Council men are clustered at the helm of a media outlet, then its editorial policy, news slant, and personnel selection are almost guaranteed to reflect the globalist, pro-socialist thinking that typifies the Council.
Media Bias
Recently, a number of studies have revealed strong prejudice in the mass media. Beyond doubt, the leader in the movement to expose and combat this bias has been Reed Irvine’s Washington based organization, Accuracy in Media (AIM).
In 1981, professors Robert Lichter (George Washington University) and Stanley Rothman (Smith College) published tabulated results of interviews they had conducted with the media elite: journalists from the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS. The survey showed the media far to the left of the public at large. Of those casting ballots for major party candidates in the 1964 election, ninety-four percent had voted for Lyndon Johnson, and only six percent for Barry Goldwater. Even in Richard Nixon’s 1972 landslide, eighty-one percent voted for George McGovern. The leftward stance of the media was also shown by their answers to questions on social and political issues. For example, ninety percent took the pro-choice position on abortion, and fifty-seven percent agreed with the Marxist thesis that the U.S. causes poverty in the Third World by exploiting it.5
The Lichter-Rothman survey was corroborated in 1985 by a Los Angeles Times poll of 3000 editors and reporters from over 600 newspapers. After comparing the results to those of readers, the Times was forced to conclude that “members of the press are predominantly liberal, considerably more liberal than the general public.” 6
But do journalists allow their attitudes to influence their reporting Research shows that they do.
One area where this shows up is national defense. News commentators are fond of reciting how many warheads the U.S. has, but they almost never mention that most of our ICBM’s, ballistic missile submarines, and strategic bombers are some twenty years old and nearing obsolescence. A study by the Institute of American Strategy determined that, on the subject of national defense, CBS News gave over sixty percent of its coverage to proponents of reducing our defenses, and only 3.5 percent to advocates of greater strength — a ratio higher than 17-1.7 One can imagine the impact of such imbalance on public opinion.
Equally pronounced is the media’s selectivity in covering foreign affairs. Although we often hear about human rights abuses by anti-Communist governments, Marxist violations are commonly ignored.
An illustration is the genocide in Cambodia, where at least a third of the population died under the Khmer Rouge. First, the American press contributed to the holocaust by demanding withdrawal of U.S. support from the government of the Republic of Cambodia. Norodom Sihanouk helped set the pace in the October 1970 Foreign Affairs,; writing that “I can only hope for the total victory of the revolution,” which, he said, “cannot but save my homeland and serve the deepest interests of the mass of the ‘little’ Khmer people.”8 Sihanouk also made the bizarre prediction that U.S.-Cambodian relations would “once again become good” as soon as Washington stopped helping the government combat the Communists.
The U.S. media echoed Sihanouk’s viewpoint. On April 13, 1975 — just four days before the fall of Phnom Penh — the New York Times ran this headline: “Indochina Without Americans: For Most a Better Life.”
By the end of 1976, more than a million Cambodians had died under the Communists’ reign of terror. Yet during that year, the New York Times carried only four stories on human rights problems in Cambodia; by contrast, it published sixty-six on abuses in Chile. The Washington Post had just nine human rights stories on Cambodia; fifty-eight about Chile. And on the network evening news in 1976, NBC never referred to the problem in Cambodia; ABC mentioned it once, and CBS twice.9
A similar blackout has occurred more recently with Afghanistan, where the Soviets have slaughtered more than one million people and turned millions more into refugees. Reed Irvine notes that, on a single evening in December 1986, network news devoted more time to the “Irangate” controversy (fifty-seven minutes) than it had to the war in Afghanistan during all of 1985 (fifty-two minutes).10 Human rights stories still get attention — but only if in selected countries. AIM surveyed the New York Times and Washington Post from May to July, 1986, and found that the two papers ran a total of 415 stories on South Africa during that stretch.11
Abdul Shams, former economic advisor to Afghanistan’s late President Hafizullah Amin, had this to say about U.S. media coverage of his homeland, in a 1985 interview with The Review of the News:
The major American news media have ignored what is happening in Afghanistan and they have also ignored Afghans like me who try to tell what is happening. But the smaller newspapers and radio and TV stations have been very cooperative....
Every day, hundreds or thousands of my people are killed and the networks and major news media say nothing. But if one person is killed in South Africa, immediately the media start screaming ....
I have talked to many, many people here in the United States, many of them refugees from Communist countries themselves and they cannot believe the things they see in the major news media. They say that the American news media are on the other side. Much of the time I am forced to believe that they are correct.12
Disproportionate news reporting gives Americans a distorted world view — and because it may affect what they tell their representatives in Congress, it also affects world events. President Anastasio Somoza made revelations about our media’s methods and impact in his book Nicaragua Betrayed (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000J2JJJW/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=libert0f-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399349&creativeASIN=B000J2JJJW):
On Sunday afternoon, Sixty Minutes is the most watched network show in the United States....I have watched the show and I am familiar with the format. Generally speaking, the show is not complete unless someone is nailed to the cross. Also, the program will invariably sneak in a touch of propaganda. You can be sure this propaganda is slanted to the Left.
When I was advised that Sixty Minutes wanted to interview me, I certainly had misgivings ....
However, I wanted so much for the American people to understand the realities of our situation in Nicaragua and to know what the administration in Washington was doing to us, that I agreed to do the program. All arrangements were made and Dan Rather was sent down to do the program. That interview I shall always remember.
Rather tried every conceivable journalistic trick to trip me up on questions. He knew in advance the answers he wanted and come “hell or high water” he was going to find the question to fit his preconceived answer. Well, he never succeeded. From watching the show, one would never know that Dan Rather spent two and one-half hours grilling me. It’s difficult to believe, but Rather condensed that entire time to seven minutes....
I didn’t realize what the power of film editing really meant. With that power, Rather cast me in any role he chose. Everything good I said about Nicaragua was deleted. Any reference to Carter’s effort to destroy the government of Nicaragua was deleted. Every reference to the Communist activity and Cuba’s participation was deleted.
His insistence that there was torture in my government probably disturbed me the most. We would go over the subject and then we would come back to it again. He just wasn’t getting the answers he wanted. Finally he said: “May we visit the security offices of the Nicaraguan government?” He had heard that this was a torture chamber and he believed it. I replied: “Yes, Mr. Rather, you may visit those offices and you may take your camera.” Then I added: “You go right now. Take that car and go immediately so that you can’t say I rigged it.” Well, he did go, and he saw where the people worked and talked to many of them. When the show came on the air, he made no mention of the fact that he had personally visited our security offices and was free to film, talk to people, or do anything he wanted to do. He knew in advance how he wanted to portray me and his predetermined plan was followed.
When Rather left my office, I was convinced he would take me apart. I was right. The show was a disaster. Rather depicted a situation that didn’t exist in Nicaragua. That show did irreparable harm to the government of Nicaragua and to me. Such massive disinformation also does harm to the American people.13
President Somoza’s comments are a good example of “the other side of the story” that the American viewer is not allowed to see. Doubtless other recipients of Sixty Minutes interviews could give similar accounts.
Media personnel with sound ethics will report news factually and reserve their opinions for editorials. In reality, however, opinion usually mingles with the news. It is ironic that many journalists, while insisting there be no press censorship, themselves censor stories. They demand, as during the Iran-Contra hearings, that “all the facts” be told, yet do not themselves tell all the facts.
The leftist bias of the media strongly confirms that the Establishment is not conservative. If the Establishment, with its colossal wealth and links to press management, wanted news reporting with a conservative orientation, or simply with balance, we would get it.
We do not.
References:
1. Congressional Record, February 9, 1917, Volume 54, pp. 2947-48.
2. Charles Beard, “Who’s to Write the History of the War?,” Saturday Evening
Post, October 4, 1947, p. 172.
3. Harry Elmer Barnes, ea., Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace (Caldwell,
Idaho: Caxton. 1953), pp. 15-16, 18.
4. Gary Allen, “Control of the Media,” American Opinion, May 1983, p. 96.
5. S. Robert Lichter, Stanley Rothman, and Linda S. Lichter, The Media
Elite (Bethesda, Maryland: Adler & Adler, 1986), pp. 29-30.
6. Reed Irvine, “How the Media Cheat,” Conservative Digest, September
1986, p. 66.
7. Ernest W. Lefever, TV and National Defense (Boston, Va.: Institute for
American Strategy Press, 1974), p. 193.
8. Norodom Sihanouk, ‘`The Future of Cambodia,” FA, October 1970,
p. 10.
9. Interview with Reed Irvine, The Review Of The News, January 24, 1979,
p.35.
10. AIM Report, December-B, 1986.
11. AIM Report, October-A, 1986.
12. The Review Of The News, July 31, 1985, pp. 37, 39.
13. Anastasio Somoza, with Jack Cox, Nicaragua Betrayed (Belmont, Mass.: Western Islands, 1980), pp. 205-7.
The Shadows of Power: The Council on Foreign Relations and the American Decline (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0882791346/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=libert0f-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399349&creativeASIN=0882791346)
- James Perloff, 1988
Chapter 12: The Media Blackout
Establishment Control of the Media
All of the American history we have just finished reviewing is factual. Yet it is far from the traditional version. So the question naturally arises: Why do the media avoid the various circumstances shown in this account, or at best downplay them? Why don’t investigative news shows like Sixty Minutes, perceived as gutsy and no-holds-barred, tackle the Pearl Harbor cover-up, American financing of questionable projects behind the Iron Curtain, or the Trilateralist CFR hold on our government? Surely such material would have sufficient audience appeal.
The answer is almost self-evident. The mass media are subject to the same “power behind the throne” as Washington. For the Establishment to induce public cooperation with its program, it has always been expedient to manipulate the information industry that is so responsible for what people think about current events. A prime mover in this process was J. P. Morgan — the original force behind the CFR.
In 1917, Congressman Oscar Callaway inserted the following statement in the Congressional Record:
In March, 1915, the J. P. Morgan interests, the steel, shipbuilding, and powder interests, and their subsidiary organizations, got together 12 men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the most influential newspapers in the United States and sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of the daily press of the United States.
These 12 men worked the problem out by selecting 179 newspapers, and then began, by an elimination process, to retain only those necessary for the purpose of controlling the general policy of the daily press throughout the country. They found it was only necessary to purchase the control of 25 of the greatest papers. The 25 papers were agreed upon; emissaries were sent to purchase the policy, national and international, of these papers; an agreement was reached; the policy of the papers was bought, to be paid for by the month; an editor was furnished for each paper to properly supervise and edit information regarding the questions of preparedness, militarism, financial policies, and other things of national and international nature considered vital to the interests of the purchasers....
This policy also included the suppression of everything in opposition to the wishes of the interests served.1
The press, thus controlled, was very successful in persuading Americans to support our entry into World War I. However, in subsequent years, a number of books appeared that challenged the justification of our involvement, the merits of the Allied cause, and the wisdom of Colonel House and his colleagues in devising the Versailles Treaty. These books included Harry Elmer Barnes’ Genesis of the World War (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0403001404/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=libert0f-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399349&creativeASIN=0403001404) (1926), Sidney Fay’s Origins of the World War (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/092389134X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=libert0f-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399349&creativeASIN=092389134X) (1928), and many others.
After World War II, however, the Establishment moved to preclude such investigation. The eminent historian Charles Beard, former president of the American Historical Association, stated in a Saturday Evening Post editorial in 1947:
The Rockefeller Foundation and Council on Foreign Relations ... intend to prevent, if they can, a repetition of what they call in the vernacular “the debunking journalistic campaign following World War I.” Translated into precise English, this means that the foundation and the council do not want journalists or any other persons to examine too closely and criticize too freely the official propaganda and official statements relative to “our basic aims and activities” during World War II. In short, they hope that, among other things, the policies and measures of Franklin D. Roosevelt will escape in coming years the critical analysis, evaluation and exposition that befell the policies and measures of President Woodrow Wilson and the Entente Allies after World War I.2
Dr. Beard noted that the Rockefeller Foundation had granted $139,000 to the CFR, which in turn hired Harvard professor William Langer to author a three-volume chronicle of the war.
Historians whose writings concurred with the “authorized” versions of events, such as Langer, Samuel Morison, Herbert Feis, Henry Steele Commager, and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., were generally guaranteed exclusive interviews, access to government documents and statesmen’s diaries, sure publication, and glowing appraisals in the front of the New York Times Book Review. Most of these men had served in the administrations they wrote about.
On the other hand, historians who dared question foreign policy under Roosevelt and Truman, such as Beard, Harry Elmer Barnes, Charles Tansill, John T. Flynn, and William Henry Chamberlin, suddenly found themselves blacklisted by the publishing world that, had previously welcomed their works. Beard succeeded in issuing two volumes critical of the Roosevelt administration only because he had a devoted friend at Yale University Press. Before his death in 1948, he was smeared in the media as senile.
In 1953, Barnes described how the censorship process worked:
The methods followed by the various groups interested in blacking out the truth about world affairs since 1932 are numerous and ingenious, but, aside from subterranean persecution of individuals, they fall mainly into the following patterns or categories: (1) excluding scholars suspected of revisionist views from access to public documents which are freely opened to “court historians” and other apologists for the foreign policy of President Roosevelt; (2) intimidating publishers of books and periodicals, so that even those who might wish to publish books and articles setting forth the revisionist point of view do not dare to do so; (3) ignoring or obscuring published material which embodies revisionist facts and arguments; and (4) smearing revisionist authors and their books....
As a matter of fact, only two small publishing houses in the United States — the Henry Regnery Company and the Devin-Adair Company — have shown any consistent willingness to publish books which frankly aim to tell the truth with respect to the causes and issues of the second World War. Leading members of two of the largest publishing houses in the country have told me that, whatever their personal wishes in the circumstances, they would not feel it ethical to endanger their business and the property rights of their stockholders by publishing critical books relative to American foreign policy since 1933. And there is good reason for this hesitancy. The book clubs and the main sales outlets for books are controlled by powerful pressure groups which are opposed to truth on such matters. These outlets not only refuse to market critical books in this field but also threaten to boycott other books by those publishers who defy their blackout ultimatum.3
The historical suppression described by Dr. Barnes thirty-five years ago still operates today. It could be pointed out — quite rightfully, of course — that in more recent years American policy and policy makers have occasionally been savaged (as with Vietnam, Watergate, and the Iran-Contra affair). However, such episodes did not bruise the Council on Foreign Relations or its allies; instead they stigmatized those people whom the Establishment disliked, and those very policies it had always opposed (nationalism and anti-Communism).
What we have operating in America is an Establishment media. As erstwhile New York Times editor John Swinton once said: “There is no such thing as an independent press in America, if we except that of little country towns.”
The Times itself was bought in 1896 by Alfred Ochs, with backing from J. P. Morgan, Rothschild agent August Belmont, and Jacob Schiff of Kuhn, Loeb. It was subsequently passed on to Ochs’ son-in-law Arthur Hays Sulzberger (CFR), then to Orville E. Dryfoos (CFR), and finally to the present publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger (CFR). The Times has had a number of CFR members in its stable of reporters, including Herbert L. Matthews, Harrison Salisbury, and Lester Markel. Currently, executive editor Max Frankel, editorial page editor Jack Rosenthal, deputy editorial page editor Leslie Gelb, and assistant managing editors James L. Greenfield, Warren Hoge, and John M. Lee are all in the Council.
The Times’ friendly rival, the Washington Post, was bought by Eugene Meyer in 1933. Meyer, a partner of Bernard Baruch and Federal Reserve Board governor, had joined the CFR in 1929. Meyer began his reign at the Post by firing its editor for refusing to support U.S. recognition of the Soviet Union.4
Today the Post is run by Meyer’s daughter, Katharine Graham (CFR). Managing editor Leonard Downie, Jr., editorial page editor Meg Greenfield, and deputy editorial page editor Stephen S. Rosenfeld are all Council members.
The Washington Post Company owns Newsweek, which is a descendant of the weekly magazine Today, founded by Averell Harriman, among others, to support the New Deal and business interests. Newsweek’s editor-in-chief Richard M. Smith and editor Maynard Parker both belong to the CFR, as have a number of its contributors. Both Newsweek and the Post have donated money to the Council.
Time magazine maintains the same kind of rivalry with Newsweek as the New York Times does with the Post: they compete for readers, not in viewpoint. Time was founded by Henry Luce (CFR-IPR-Atlantic Union), who rose as a publisher with loans from such individuals as Dwight Morrow and Thomas Lamont (both Morgan partners and CFR members), Harvey Firestone (CFR), and E. Roland Harriman (CFR).
Time’s longtime editor-in-chief was Hedley Donovan (Trilateral Commission member, CFR Director, trustee of the Ford Foundation and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and eventually Special Assistant to President Jimmy Carter). The current editor-in-chief, Henry Grunwald, is in the CFR, along with managing editor Henry Muller. Time, Inc., which also publishes People, Life, Fortune, Money, and Sports Illustrated, has several Council members on its board of directors.
The CFR also has interlocks with the major TV networks. William S. Paley, chairman of the board at CBS for many years, belonged to the Council on Foreign Relations, as does the chairman today, Thomas H. Wyman, and eleven of the fourteen board members listed for 1987. CBS news anchor Dan Rather is in the CFR. CBS helped finance the Trilateral Commission, and the CBS Foundation has contributed funds to the Council.
NBC is a subsidiary of RCA, which was formerly headed by David Sarnoff (CFR). Sarnoff had financial backing from Kuhn, Loeb and other Rothschild-linked banking firms. He was succeeded by his son Robert, who married Felicia Schiff Warburg, daughter of Paul Warburg and great granddaughter of Jacob Schiff. RCA’s chairman of the board now, Thornton Bradshaw, is a CFR man, as are several other board members. The Council has had a number of NBC newsmen on its roster over the years, including Marvin Kalb, John Chancellor, Garick Utley, and Irving R. Levine.
There are CFR figures on ABC’s board, and in its news department, including Ted Koppel and David Brinkley.
The Council on Foreign Relations also has links to the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Associated Press wire service, PBS, and other major news sources. The Council’s annual report for 1987 notes that 262 of its members are “journalists, correspondents, and communications executives.”
What does this mean? Membership in the CFR is not by itself an indictment. However, when large numbers of Council men are clustered at the helm of a media outlet, then its editorial policy, news slant, and personnel selection are almost guaranteed to reflect the globalist, pro-socialist thinking that typifies the Council.
Media Bias
Recently, a number of studies have revealed strong prejudice in the mass media. Beyond doubt, the leader in the movement to expose and combat this bias has been Reed Irvine’s Washington based organization, Accuracy in Media (AIM).
In 1981, professors Robert Lichter (George Washington University) and Stanley Rothman (Smith College) published tabulated results of interviews they had conducted with the media elite: journalists from the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS. The survey showed the media far to the left of the public at large. Of those casting ballots for major party candidates in the 1964 election, ninety-four percent had voted for Lyndon Johnson, and only six percent for Barry Goldwater. Even in Richard Nixon’s 1972 landslide, eighty-one percent voted for George McGovern. The leftward stance of the media was also shown by their answers to questions on social and political issues. For example, ninety percent took the pro-choice position on abortion, and fifty-seven percent agreed with the Marxist thesis that the U.S. causes poverty in the Third World by exploiting it.5
The Lichter-Rothman survey was corroborated in 1985 by a Los Angeles Times poll of 3000 editors and reporters from over 600 newspapers. After comparing the results to those of readers, the Times was forced to conclude that “members of the press are predominantly liberal, considerably more liberal than the general public.” 6
But do journalists allow their attitudes to influence their reporting Research shows that they do.
One area where this shows up is national defense. News commentators are fond of reciting how many warheads the U.S. has, but they almost never mention that most of our ICBM’s, ballistic missile submarines, and strategic bombers are some twenty years old and nearing obsolescence. A study by the Institute of American Strategy determined that, on the subject of national defense, CBS News gave over sixty percent of its coverage to proponents of reducing our defenses, and only 3.5 percent to advocates of greater strength — a ratio higher than 17-1.7 One can imagine the impact of such imbalance on public opinion.
Equally pronounced is the media’s selectivity in covering foreign affairs. Although we often hear about human rights abuses by anti-Communist governments, Marxist violations are commonly ignored.
An illustration is the genocide in Cambodia, where at least a third of the population died under the Khmer Rouge. First, the American press contributed to the holocaust by demanding withdrawal of U.S. support from the government of the Republic of Cambodia. Norodom Sihanouk helped set the pace in the October 1970 Foreign Affairs,; writing that “I can only hope for the total victory of the revolution,” which, he said, “cannot but save my homeland and serve the deepest interests of the mass of the ‘little’ Khmer people.”8 Sihanouk also made the bizarre prediction that U.S.-Cambodian relations would “once again become good” as soon as Washington stopped helping the government combat the Communists.
The U.S. media echoed Sihanouk’s viewpoint. On April 13, 1975 — just four days before the fall of Phnom Penh — the New York Times ran this headline: “Indochina Without Americans: For Most a Better Life.”
By the end of 1976, more than a million Cambodians had died under the Communists’ reign of terror. Yet during that year, the New York Times carried only four stories on human rights problems in Cambodia; by contrast, it published sixty-six on abuses in Chile. The Washington Post had just nine human rights stories on Cambodia; fifty-eight about Chile. And on the network evening news in 1976, NBC never referred to the problem in Cambodia; ABC mentioned it once, and CBS twice.9
A similar blackout has occurred more recently with Afghanistan, where the Soviets have slaughtered more than one million people and turned millions more into refugees. Reed Irvine notes that, on a single evening in December 1986, network news devoted more time to the “Irangate” controversy (fifty-seven minutes) than it had to the war in Afghanistan during all of 1985 (fifty-two minutes).10 Human rights stories still get attention — but only if in selected countries. AIM surveyed the New York Times and Washington Post from May to July, 1986, and found that the two papers ran a total of 415 stories on South Africa during that stretch.11
Abdul Shams, former economic advisor to Afghanistan’s late President Hafizullah Amin, had this to say about U.S. media coverage of his homeland, in a 1985 interview with The Review of the News:
The major American news media have ignored what is happening in Afghanistan and they have also ignored Afghans like me who try to tell what is happening. But the smaller newspapers and radio and TV stations have been very cooperative....
Every day, hundreds or thousands of my people are killed and the networks and major news media say nothing. But if one person is killed in South Africa, immediately the media start screaming ....
I have talked to many, many people here in the United States, many of them refugees from Communist countries themselves and they cannot believe the things they see in the major news media. They say that the American news media are on the other side. Much of the time I am forced to believe that they are correct.12
Disproportionate news reporting gives Americans a distorted world view — and because it may affect what they tell their representatives in Congress, it also affects world events. President Anastasio Somoza made revelations about our media’s methods and impact in his book Nicaragua Betrayed (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000J2JJJW/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=libert0f-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399349&creativeASIN=B000J2JJJW):
On Sunday afternoon, Sixty Minutes is the most watched network show in the United States....I have watched the show and I am familiar with the format. Generally speaking, the show is not complete unless someone is nailed to the cross. Also, the program will invariably sneak in a touch of propaganda. You can be sure this propaganda is slanted to the Left.
When I was advised that Sixty Minutes wanted to interview me, I certainly had misgivings ....
However, I wanted so much for the American people to understand the realities of our situation in Nicaragua and to know what the administration in Washington was doing to us, that I agreed to do the program. All arrangements were made and Dan Rather was sent down to do the program. That interview I shall always remember.
Rather tried every conceivable journalistic trick to trip me up on questions. He knew in advance the answers he wanted and come “hell or high water” he was going to find the question to fit his preconceived answer. Well, he never succeeded. From watching the show, one would never know that Dan Rather spent two and one-half hours grilling me. It’s difficult to believe, but Rather condensed that entire time to seven minutes....
I didn’t realize what the power of film editing really meant. With that power, Rather cast me in any role he chose. Everything good I said about Nicaragua was deleted. Any reference to Carter’s effort to destroy the government of Nicaragua was deleted. Every reference to the Communist activity and Cuba’s participation was deleted.
His insistence that there was torture in my government probably disturbed me the most. We would go over the subject and then we would come back to it again. He just wasn’t getting the answers he wanted. Finally he said: “May we visit the security offices of the Nicaraguan government?” He had heard that this was a torture chamber and he believed it. I replied: “Yes, Mr. Rather, you may visit those offices and you may take your camera.” Then I added: “You go right now. Take that car and go immediately so that you can’t say I rigged it.” Well, he did go, and he saw where the people worked and talked to many of them. When the show came on the air, he made no mention of the fact that he had personally visited our security offices and was free to film, talk to people, or do anything he wanted to do. He knew in advance how he wanted to portray me and his predetermined plan was followed.
When Rather left my office, I was convinced he would take me apart. I was right. The show was a disaster. Rather depicted a situation that didn’t exist in Nicaragua. That show did irreparable harm to the government of Nicaragua and to me. Such massive disinformation also does harm to the American people.13
President Somoza’s comments are a good example of “the other side of the story” that the American viewer is not allowed to see. Doubtless other recipients of Sixty Minutes interviews could give similar accounts.
Media personnel with sound ethics will report news factually and reserve their opinions for editorials. In reality, however, opinion usually mingles with the news. It is ironic that many journalists, while insisting there be no press censorship, themselves censor stories. They demand, as during the Iran-Contra hearings, that “all the facts” be told, yet do not themselves tell all the facts.
The leftist bias of the media strongly confirms that the Establishment is not conservative. If the Establishment, with its colossal wealth and links to press management, wanted news reporting with a conservative orientation, or simply with balance, we would get it.
We do not.
References:
1. Congressional Record, February 9, 1917, Volume 54, pp. 2947-48.
2. Charles Beard, “Who’s to Write the History of the War?,” Saturday Evening
Post, October 4, 1947, p. 172.
3. Harry Elmer Barnes, ea., Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace (Caldwell,
Idaho: Caxton. 1953), pp. 15-16, 18.
4. Gary Allen, “Control of the Media,” American Opinion, May 1983, p. 96.
5. S. Robert Lichter, Stanley Rothman, and Linda S. Lichter, The Media
Elite (Bethesda, Maryland: Adler & Adler, 1986), pp. 29-30.
6. Reed Irvine, “How the Media Cheat,” Conservative Digest, September
1986, p. 66.
7. Ernest W. Lefever, TV and National Defense (Boston, Va.: Institute for
American Strategy Press, 1974), p. 193.
8. Norodom Sihanouk, ‘`The Future of Cambodia,” FA, October 1970,
p. 10.
9. Interview with Reed Irvine, The Review Of The News, January 24, 1979,
p.35.
10. AIM Report, December-B, 1986.
11. AIM Report, October-A, 1986.
12. The Review Of The News, July 31, 1985, pp. 37, 39.
13. Anastasio Somoza, with Jack Cox, Nicaragua Betrayed (Belmont, Mass.: Western Islands, 1980), pp. 205-7.