Mark Twain once said, “Its easier to fool a man than to convince him he’s been fooled“. This more true than ever in our current political atmosphere. In the United States when the word propaganda is used one often begins to think of Soviet Russia or of Nazi Germany. Both authoritarian governments with near absolute control over their respective press; But they would ignore the blatant propaganda present in our own countries’ journalism. The symbiotic relationship between the state and the media goes back throughout history. A state maintains itself through bare face tactics such as force and coercion but long run ideological criticism requires a more subtle approach.
Murray Rothbard writes “For the masses of men do not create their own ideas, or indeed think through these ideas independently; they follow passively the ideas adopted and disseminated by the body of intellectuals. The intellectuals are, therefore, the “opinion-molders” in society. And since it is precisely a molding of opinion that the State most desperately needs, the basis for age-old alliance between the State and the intellectuals becomes clear” (Rothbard, Anatomy of State).
The Warren Commission
The “opinion-molders” of today are the New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, CNN, Fox News, PBS, MSNBC, etc… all of which act as arms of the state in some regard. This is not to say that each of them follow the same political line of thinking or that each of them advocate for the same political policies but it is to say they all know who pays their bills and keeps the lights on. For instance all of these news agencies argued for the war in Iraq which shows a seemingly strange consensus of thought on a very complicated issue. The press pushed a lie as if it were the truth, and manipulated the American people into supporting the Iraq War. Simply put the State wanted to begin a new conquest in the middle east, for war is the health of the state, and the press aided and abetted the State in the commission of its war of aggression. But state propaganda in the press is not only for the purpose of oiling the war machine but also for silencing dissident voices. The word “conspiracy theory” is used to discredit or disavow any alternative telling of an event by the state. It is a pejorative used to either stain the legitimacy of one’s work or to discredit the truth of a narrative. The CIA weaponized the term “conspiracy theory” and “conspiracy theorist” in their document 1035-960 which was sent out to CIA station chiefs across the globe as well as news media in the US in January 1967. In this document they directed the recipients to discredit the countervailing narratives that were surrounding the Warren Report. This directive is especially significant because it outlines the CIA’s concern regarding “the whole reputation of the American government” vis-à-vis the Warren Commission Report. Many theories that are regarded as “conspiracy theories” contain such a preponderance of evidence that it requires a leap of faith on the behalf of those believing the “official narrative”. This is to say one must accept as true a falsehood on bad evidence if he is to place his trust in the “official narrative”.
September 24, 1964: The Warren Commission Delivers Its Final Report to President Lyndon Johnson
Rothbard writes, ” The greatest danger to the State is independent intellectual criticism; there is no better way to stifle that criticism than to attack any isolated voice, any raiser of new doubts, as a profane violator of the wisdom of his ancestors. Another potent ideological force is to deprecate the individual and exalt the collectivity of society. For since any given rule implies majority acceptance, any ideological danger to that rule can only start from one or a few independently- thinking individuals. The new idea, much less the new critical idea, must begin as a small minority opinion; therefore, the State must nip the view in the bud by ridiculing any view that defies the opinions of the masses” (Rothbard, Anatomy of State).
The Church Committee
The central finding of the Warren Commission is that Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole killer of President John F. Kennedy. Whether or not this is true is debatable but what is more important than the report itself is document 1035-960 which exposed the CIA’s ability to direct the press to discredit countervailing narratives. One of the central functions of the CIA is to disseminate propaganda. Woodward and Bernstein, two journalists for Rolling Stone who uncovered and reported on much of the Watergate scandal wrote in a less popular piece entitled The CIA and the media that, “In 1953, Joseph Alsop, then one of America’s leading syndicated columnists, went to the Philippines to cover an election. He did not go because he was asked to do so by his syndicate. He did not go because he was asked to do so by the newspapers that printed his column. He went at the request of the CIA. Alsop is one of more than 400 American journalists who in the past twenty-five years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file at CIA headquarters.” A relationship with the CIA allowed journalists access to potentially groundbreaking stories which would boost their own career but the journalist themselves could never be sure as to whether the information they were given was true or false. Bernstein writes further that, “The New York Times — The Agency’s relationship with the Times was by far its most valuable among newspapers, according to CIA officials. [It was] general Times policy … to provide assistance to the CIA whenever possible….The Columbia Broadcasting System — CBS was unquestionably the CIA’s most valuable broadcasting asset. ” Here it is made clear that the relationship between the CIA and the media is not one simply born out of coincidence. In 1975 Senator John Pastore introduced a resolution to establish a select committee to investigate federal intelligence operations and determine the extent, if any, to which illegal, improper, or unethical activities were engaged in by any agency of the Federal Government. Frank Church was named chairman of what is now known as the Church Committee. The committee decided that most of its hearings would be held in closed, executive session, in order to protect intelligence sources and methods but what was made clear was that there were serious violations of the civil liberties of Americans. Two areas that the church committee report did not make public were the Intelligence agencies influence over the media, and influence over academia.
During one of the public hearings CIA director William Colby was questioned in regards to the CIA’s presence in the media. In response he said, “We do have people who submit pieces to major American Journals” but when pressed further he said this gets into the kinds of things that should be handled during executive session. What is very interesting about his statement is that it shows that there was top-down support for certain agents to place key pieces of propaganda in the American press. The Church committee also exposed many other government practices from assassination attempts of foreign leaders, to the establishment of a national spying apparatus.
The majority of history that is taught in school today has been told through a narrative that leaves out the most important events in US history. Even confirmed events such as the Church committee are left in the crevices of American history to be only discovered by those who look with a diligent eye. But what is more disconcerting are the events that will never be confirmed or denied such as Operation Mockingbird, a large-scale secret campaign that began in the 1960s with the task of infiltrating and manipulating the media. The CIA funded operations to sway media, both domestic and foreign, to achieve ends favorable to U.S. interests. This is not to say that all of what you have learned in history classes are lies but to say that sometimes what is left out is more important than what is being told. Six major corporations own all the major media in the US and when they are all proclaiming the same message one must question the purpose of the message itself. A good rule of thumb to follow when reading news is to ask the question: who is funding this organization? While this won’t always lead to an elaborate conspiracy of lies it will often expose the reasoning behind certain messages. For instance The Washington Post, a leading news source for leftwing media, was one the first places to run stories on the Russia-gate fiasco. When you look into who is funding the Washington Post you will find the owner, Jeff Bezos, shortly after he purchased the Post received a $600 million contract from the CIA. The conflict of interest here is glaring and to say it has no impact on what is being reported is laughable.
Propaganda
So much of what is reported today in the press is clear propaganda; from stories like Russia-Gate, to many of the narratives surrounding Covid-19. The dilemma for the everyday American is to be misinformed or uninformed. As Mark Crispin Miller has said, “It’s easier to spot propaganda you disagree with than the propaganda you agree with”. For this very reason we have a divided country where one side views Fox News as fake news and the other side views CNN as fake news. The sole hope for the American press is independent journalism and principled truth tellers who follow the evidence wherever it leads. This is to say they do not make the story dictate the facts but allow the facts to dictate the story.
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