In one of the previous threads on the influence of the CIA on the media, someone mentioned that there was a documentary about this. It's called "On Company Business (1980)" and it features interviews with former CIA directors and various officers and also with lots of critics [1]. I managed to find a copy of it on YouTube and it's absolutely amazing and can't recommend it enough if you want to hear about the creation of the CIA and their work from principal actors [2]. Among many other things they discuss, it details how the CIA infiltrated the media.
It seems to me that the only difference between 40 years ago and today is that some TV networks and media companies are not even hiding their association with the CIA and hire former CIA officers in the open as "analysts" so they can push their agenda.
If we take Bernstein at his word (and there's no reason not to), basically all the US media has secretly cooperated with the CIA. Is there any reason to think this isn't going on right now? I mean, google "ken dilanian cia" for a good time. Then think: Dilanian is still a working journalist.
How is this congruent with a free press? Surely this willingness to cooperate with a spy agency that has done some very bad things over the years spills over to other areas. Am I supposed to believe that all these media cover current politics objectively, if they've enthusiastically cooperated with the CIA in the past?
On Bernstein's reliability here: in December 1977--January 1976, the House Intelligence Committee held hearings on this subject which strongly support Bernstein's claims through direct testimony of CIA officials and officers involved. Those were published in 1978, and are now available at the Internet Archive:
The New York Times ran a six-part series by John Crewdson concurrent with the hearings, based in large part on them though also independent research and interviews by the Times. I've compiled that series here:
TechnoTimeStop You're shadowbanned, and from what I can tell, with reason. I suggest you read the site guidelines and appeal to hn@ycombinator.com if you think you can abide.
The world of espionage is obviously extralegal as it operates in international space. The conflict between intelligence-agency activities, what it is willing to publicly admit, and spillover, is high. I'm not a fan of having my own activities, communications, and information surveilled or influenced. I'm a sufficient realist to accept that that's likely the case, whether by US agencies, its Five Eyes (and other) allies, hostile state and non-state actors, and/or third parties.
US journalism still has a fairly high (note, that is not a synonym for "perfect" or "spotless") reputation throughout the world. It has its faults, but is generally credible and independent. Journalists are not typically accused of, or at risk of being take for, intelligence agencts. (Some are, some have paid with their lives. Again, we're discussing the general case.)
Global US adversaries which have made heavy use of open-channels propaganda, including Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and other states, typically authoritarian, do not have this benefit. Their press and journalism are inherently suspect, if not openly mocked. Even if information isn't taken to be directly false, it is considered slanted, censored, unduly inflammetory, and/or distraction. (And yes, these labels can all be applied to a degree elsewhere, the question is one of degree specifically.)
We've had specific information that long-term disinformational campaigns are a key role of other intelligence agencies. See especially Yuri Benzemov's comments here regarding KGB disinformation and moreale efforts: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=bX3EZCVj2XA
(The most effective way for any intelligence agency to have a grasp on information is for it to create it in the first place.)
I'm all but certain that there are elements within the US intelligence apparatus which would like to have a direct line on influencing global public discourse. One view is that doing so covertly has greater harm in the long run than operating openly (e.g., "a CIA source says..."), or indirectly --- there may be planted evidence, but it isn't chalnneled through specific journalists or publications directly controlled as assets. I have a suspicion that the PR industry, however, may have something to answer for (on top of what it already does, of course). Though it is inherently suspect already.
>If we take Bernstein at his word (and there's no reason not to), basically all the US media has secretly cooperated with the CIA. Is there any reason to think this isn't going on right now?
There is a reason. Controversy which began in 1973 and spurred Congressional investigations and this very article led to the CIA to sign a 1977 directive that prohibited them from recruiting or impersonating journalists, peace corps, and the clergy.
There was a loophole discovered in 1996 that allows the agency to waiver that directive in extreme circumstances and must notify the president, and a couple others (cant remember).
This prompted a clause in the 1997 authorization act which codified into law that the CIA must notify both the house and senate intelligence committees and get a written sign-off with reasoning why its necessary from either the President or CIA director before impersonating or recruiting a journalist.
> There is a reason. Controversy which began in 1973 and spurred Congressional investigations and this very article led to the CIA to sign a 1977 directive that prohibited them from recruiting or impersonating journalists, peace corps, and the clergy.
That doesn't mean they don't influence the media. The next time there are a sequence of articles on a particular country - you can think about when it plays up.
I'm not trying to go to bat for The Company but all sources of information "influence the media" and it's the job of a good journalist to get info from every source available to them, including intelligence agencies.
The wording of "influence" is just too vague - prohibitions need to be specific. The CIA saying they'll deport your undocumented housekeeper if you don't print XYZ is one thing, them feeding information with "spin" on it to a journalist is another entirely.
Spin is merely interpretation and framing. /You/ can de-spin anything you read when that's all it is and you should. Read stuff from biased sources that have a very different outlook to yours. Al-Jazeera, the BBC, NPR, PBS, even disasters like MSNBC and Fox are worth some attention despite their unbelievable amounts of spin.
Lies are lies. It's not framing. It's not interpretation. It's "Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction."[1]
Spin that as we must go to war. Frame it as a global crisis. You can have a subtly or radically different viewpoint. When the majority of the country believe the deliberately planted lie, /spin/ is basically irrelevant.
Influence the media is more about publishing deliberately fabricated lies designed for a given purpose and treating them as fact. It can get a country engage its army to kill when it otherwise would not want to do that. Doesn't get much more serious and less like /spin/, imho.
[1] Or Russia pays bounties to kill American troops in Afghanistan and the President does not care. Exactly when the president is trying to execute policy (rightly or wrongly) on Afghanistan. It's not spin when it's a lie, treated as truth to mobilize public opinion where it otherwise probably would not go. Rightly or wrongly the American public overwhelmingly support the withdrawal from Afghanistan and did so under both Biden and Trump. For those who supported remaining in Afghanistan this should be a concern that such happens and seems not to have direct consequences when exposed. One indirect consequence is the increasing total mistrust of factual news reporting which is something of an issue in a democracy.
What is interpretation? What is spin? What is framing? There is such a thing as an incorrect interpretation. Calling my flooded basement a "global crisis" is simply wrong. If I know it isn't a global crisis and yet continue to claim it is, then I am indeed lying.
Spin involves deliberately misleading people in a way that suits your ends which is also characteristic of lying, or at the very least, it characteristic indifference to the truth (bullshitting) and concern for producing a certain desired result. Whether this qualifies under a strict definition of lying or not, it is nonetheless in the same general vicinity. Both involve the abuse of language by using it as an instrument of power wielded over another.
> must notify both the house and senate intelligence committees and get a written sign-off
This is an interesting legal artifact but it doesn’t speak to appraisal of whether or not this is currently occurring or has occurred. In other words, they could simply have pressed this loophole with another loophole, or those committed could have simply signed off. Absence of evidence remains not evidence of absence.
>> must notify both the house and senate intelligence committees and get a written sign-off
Further, didn't James Clapper lie, in public, under oath in an oversight committee hearing then admit that he had done so when caught out and face exactly zero legal or career consequences for that flagrantly illegal act?
"Must" seems to be open to interpretation meaning something very different to its dictionary definition when this is one, well known and obvious example of how the law is not applied when breached. Is there any real oversight? How would we know?
That act was to stop foreign governments from jailing journalists for spying, but since more journalists are jailed now than ever before, it doesn't seem to have worked.
I’m glad people are finally catching on to this. The CIA has their tentacles in pretty much all aspects of society, and it has been that way for years. They have even admitted this openly:
> CIA officers work as scientists, support staff, engineers, economists, linguists, mathematicians, secretaries, accountants, inventors, cartographers, architects, psychologists, police officers, editors, graphic designers, auto mechanics, historians, museum curators, & more!
That tweet isn't an admission of the type you are claiming. (it's a list of things people on the overt CIA payroll do as their overt jobs at CIA, not a list of industries into which CIA employees work surreptitiously or in which the CIA recruits assets.)
Or maybe it is a mixture of both? Are you sure they don’t have covert people in all the very same positions? Does the CIA have its own internal museums, mapmaking companies, architecture firms? What buildings do their architects design?
Employing an internal economist might be able to give you an idea of financial things going on in the world, but employing an economist who writes for a prominent media company or is on TV allows you to shape how the public THINKS about economics and financial markets which is much more powerful.
Perhaps the tweet is not an open admission of this, but it doesn’t take a lot of effort to connect the dots.
> Are you sure they don’t have covert people in all the very same positions?
I’m sure they have covert assets in a much wider array of positions, but I know what “officer” means in the intelligence context, and even of I didn't have that preexisting knowledge there is only one thing that tweet can mean on the context of the thread, and it's not an admission of anything outside of the overt employment opportunities at CIA.
> Does the CIA have its own internal museums, mapmaking companies, architecture firms?
It has its own museum; the cartographers and architects it employs don't work in internal “companies” or “firms”, the same way software developers working for (say) the Department of Health and Human Services don't work for an internal software company.
> What buildings do their architects design?
They don't, they analyze information about the design of buildings on which the CIA has information (public plans, photographs, etc.) to help determine what is or may be true about them that isn't directly revealed by that information to non-experts. There’s a very wide range of experts the CIA employs for the purpose of analyzing intelligence, open-source and otherwise.
> Employing an internal economist
Which the CIA does, and not just one.
> might be able to give you an idea of financial things going on in the world
Which is more than a little important.
> but employing an economist who writes for a prominent media company or is on TV allows you to shape how the public THINKS about economics and financial markets which is much more powerful.
Sure, but that's a pretty unlikely role for a CIA officer; if the CIA was doing something outside like that (which would be absolutely unsurprising; in fact that it has in the past done so is well known [0]) it would be through outside assets.
> Perhaps the tweet is not an open admission of this
Its not, and it takes a total failure of reading comprehension to think it might be.
> but it doesn’t take a lot of effort to connect the dots.
There are literally no dots to connect.
[0] Look up the “Propaganda Assets Inventory”, aka Wisner’s Wurlitzer.
The Clandestine Service has had prohibitions against working under journalistic cover in the past. This is because it's thought that free access by journalists to trouble spots beats the possibility of tainting the profession in the eyes of the world (in other words: press access is a bigger net win).
It has been violated from time to time, but at least it's talked about. To my knowledge, the only absolute bar is anything at all to do with the Peace Corps. It would be a Very Bad Thing if people start to think those nice kids digging wells and handing out rice might be intelligence officers.
This logic didn't stop them from running a fake vaccination program in Pakistan to try to find Osama. It directly led to a significant rise in vaccine refusal in the region.
Not sure why this is a surprise? They're in the business of understanding information from all over the world, in all languages... and are undoubtedly interested in things like "this accent means this person came from this part of the country" too.
It could be a surprise because they always blame translation difficulties whenever they fail to predict important events e.g. fall of USSR, 9/11, no WMDs, 12-hour Taliban flash-takeover of Afghanistan, etc. One almost suspects that they don't particularly care to get "intelligence" right since they have other priorities.
> Am I supposed to believe that all these media cover current politics objectively, if they've enthusiastically cooperated with the CIA in the past?
Yes, that would be the point. Maybe more to the point: if you don't believe, you should believe the CIA has the power to make belief in other people. Moreover if you express non-belief you will be labeled a conspiracy theorist by society and shunned.
Yeah, me too, really. The media have a fairly conservative bias, despite all the Republican claims of "liberal bias". I thought this conservative bias came from media trying to keep Republicans from claiming "liberal bias", but now I'm wondering if the CIA has something to do with it.
On balance, NY Times leans neither conservative nor progressive.
But they are wholly committed defenders of the status quo. And if the status quo is Liberal, Neoliberal, War on Terror, or whatever, then so is NY Times.
Most other medias fall within the Overton Window (boundaries for acceptible discourse) as defined by NY Times. Including explicitly partisan outlets like GOP.tv, OANN, breitbart, etc.
--
Social media, on the other hand, has a troll bias. And given the quirks of human psyche, a bias towards fear and outrage, social media is best exploited by right wing actors.
Not that left wing actors don't try. It's just not as effective, so left wing story lines have terrible traction.
Assuming you consider the antiwar stance "liberal," the clearest example of this I've seen is a study of the media stories leading up to the Iraq War. 71% of US sources were pro-war, 26% "neutral," and 3% antiwar. When "both sides" were presented, it was pro-war vs pro preparing more for the war.
My mistake. Nobody was discussing the media having a bias towards any political party, they were discussing the media having a conservative bias despite Republican's claim of a liberal bias. Like when the antiwar position gets 3% of the media coverage.
Who are not conservative. It's just a misleading label. It has liberal roots. The Trotskyite past of its founders and prominent figures is interesting to note as well (e.g. Irving Kristol).
As an example, Anderson Cooper of CNN proudly admits that he worked as an intern at the CIA. Do with that what you will. There's a prejudice to pejoratively dismiss these things out of hand as conspiracy theory. One could easily push back asking about naivete, but it isn't worth it.
>"As a college student, I had a number of summer jobs and internships, including working at the CIA."
>"Oh, yeah, in case you're interested, after I graduated college, I briefly worked as a waiter, but I decided not to make a career out of that job either."
The CIA works through a network of contractors and assets they cultivate over many years and through many layers of intermediaries. There are many levels of involvement beyond directly working for the agency.
And Princeton valedictorian and current professor of mathematics at Duke Lilian Pierce interned at the National Security Agency. Don't read too much into Cooper's very brief time at the CIA.
Don't know anything about the specific guy, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were 3-letter involvement in higher ed at some level.
But the broader answer to your point is to consider the stakes and possible outcomes of clandestine influence of US media and of the Duke math department. It would probably very often come in handy to get favorable coverage, spike stories, influence hiring, etc. at major outlets, and not so often to do the same in the Duke math department.
It's the difference between believing that the CIA is the one who knocked my mailbox over last night and believing that they were involved in the JFK assassination. Before considering evidence, we can provide many plausible reasons that the CIA may have wanted to assassinate JFK and few that they wanted to knock over my mailbox.
Interestingly enough, I did google for fun and I also DuckDuckGo’d. interesting differences. All the google results were articles from 2014 when the intercept broke the news. DuckDuckGo has much more current info, including the yahoo link I found.
> If we take Bernstein at his word (and there's no reason not to), basically all the US media has secretly cooperated with the CIA. Is there any reason to think this isn't going on right now? I mean, google "ken dilanian cia" for a good time. Then think: Dilanian is still a working journalist.
Look at the number of former CIA, NSA and FBI directors / agents working as journalists or as advisors or make regular appearance to CNN alone.
There's a whole rabbit hole you can go down. I recommend "The Plot Against the President" if you want a good insight as to how the news / government collaborate.
See also "A Manhattan Project for Online Identity" (2011), by Alex Howard of O'Reilly Media, on the NSTIC (National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace)
The NOC structure gives the CIA a lot of flexibility internationally. You also have to realize that international anarchy is not just a buzzword, but is reality. When operating in weak states, cooperation with the CIA or taking NOC status is the cheapest source of security that you can get.
The CIA also benefits from workarounds to its statutory limitations established by the CIA Act of 1949. It can do this through intermediaries. It can also grant individuals NOC status who are working internationally for a US corporation. As you might imagine, this provides a ton of flexibility. Most NOCs are not necessarily doing James Bond things, but they are forking over reports and other information to the CIA to help that agency to generate reports.
The 'free press' is actually even worse than what you think, because so much of foreign reporting is just framed directly by the State Department's wires, press releases, and coverage. You don't even need to have Johnny N.Y. Times as an agent: just naturally they are ideologically sympathetic to what the State Department wants everyone to think by education, socialization, and active consumption of State Department propaganda. Johnny NYT then reads lots of State Department material, adds his own literary flair when he goes to report abroad, and then distributes it to the American retail news consumer market. This conveniently evades all the statutory limitations on domestic government propaganda.
Journalists are already automatically suspected of being foreign spies, so they don't really make the best spies. An investor, attorney, or consultant is a much better informant because their information is going to be a lot better and much more relevant for US government purposes. You already have the entire press by default, so why bother putting them on the payroll? They will already do it for free and without being told what they have to do. Even then most know that if they are of particular service to the USG, they can get a sinecure later off of their servility while in the private sector.
So now and again you'll hear a story about an anonymous source at some national security agency says this or that. That's actually a planted story authorized by said agency. You can tell because any time there is an unauthorized leak, you get a reaction like you did with Assange, Winner or Snowden.
Considering that the former Director of National Intelligence, who committed perjury before congress, is a regular CNN contributor and go-to guy for commentary, I think the answer is pretty clear.
Or we can refer to Wikipedia in which Clapper’s excuse is (paraphrases) “I forgot” and “they weren’t supposed to ask about something classified” to which Wyden replied “he got the questions in advance so he could tell us not to ask about classified stuff.”
Wyden then asked Clapper, "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" He responded, "No, sir." Wyden asked, "It does not?" and Clapper said, "Not wittingly. There are cases where they could inadvertently, perhaps, collect, but not wittingly."
[…]
In Clapper's 2018 memoir, he provides a fuller explanation of the incident:
...because the NSA program under Section 215 was highly classified, Senator Wyden wouldn't or shouldn't have been asking questions that required classified answers on camera....my error had been forgetting about Section 215, but even if I had remembered it, there still would have been no acceptable, unclassified way for me to answer the question in an open hearing. Even my saying, "We'll have to wait for the closed, classified session to discuss this," would have given something away. ...I ought to have sent a classified letter to Senator Wyden explaining my thoughts when I'd answered and that I misunderstood what he was actually asking me about. Yes, I made a mistake – a big one – when I responded, but I did not lie. I answered with truth in what I understood the context of the question to be.
On June 11, U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) accused Clapper of not giving a "straight answer," noting that Clapper's office had been provided with the question a day in advance of the hearing and was given the opportunity following Clapper's testimony to amend his response.
> I answered with truth in what I understood the context of the question to be.
I love this quote. I can listen to someone ask me a question, discard what was asked and pretend I was asked another question, then reply to my own imagination.
Clapper wasn't asked a vague question and he didn't answer ambiguously. There is no room for "how incredibly different human perceptions can be". Clapper was asked a direct question in sworn testimony before Congress and brazenly lied. Repeatedly.
That Clapper faced no real consequences for his perjury and his part in violating the Constitution and the rights and privacy of all Americans simply shows how little power Congress and the American people have over the villains and criminals in the intelligence services.
Michael Flynn plead guilty to the charges. He signed the statement of offense[0] with his personal lawyer. Simply because Mr Flynn chose to write a book of fiction afterwards does not change the fact that he admitted his guilt to the courts under penalty of perjury.
"The preceding statement is a summary, made for the purpose of providing the Court with a factual basis for my guilty plea to the charge against me. It does not include all of the facts known to me regarding this offense. I make this statement knowingly and voluntarily and because I am, in fact, guilty of the crime charged. No threats have been made to me nor am I under the influence of anything that could impede my ability to understand this Statement of the Offense fully.
I have read every word of this Statement of the Offense, or have had it read to me. Pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 11, after consulting with my attorneys, I agree and stipulate to this Statement of the Offense, and declare under penalty of perjury that it is true and correct."
Most of the things you said were either things he didn't got indicted for or not even crimes to begin with. I get it that you do not like Flynn, that's fine, but the politicization of the FBI and the DOJ is something that should worry anyone that cares about rule of law and not wanting to live under a despotic regime.
The actions of the judge are also very problematic in itself. Fighting a motion to dismiss using ex parte material? Common.
He was arrested due to an informal FBI meeting, without any lawyer, based on very technical questions that he tried to answer (because the meeting appeared to be work related) the best he could without the documents the FBI was referring to.
When it comes to the Flynn case, the evil really is in the details. Click-bait titles and angry tweets are not good source of information when it comes to complicated judicial sagas.
>Most of the things you said were either things he didn't got indicted for or not even crimes to begin with.
I can't tell if you're kidding with that "defense". It's bordering on satire.
He's consistently displayed an astonishing lack of judgment, including directly by video and live on-stage. He's been consistently among compromised associates and in compromising positions, including admitted interactions with hostile regimes that he actively attempted to conceal. He was fired by a previous administration for his temperament and reckless behavior, then fired again. And, he's also confessed.
Tell me: on what planet would any nation's competent intelligence services NOT be investigating him?
Yet, you and the parent commenter want us to believe he's a perfectly reasonable guy patriot who's being unfairly targeted by "politicized" intelligence agencies. The parent then offers as "proof" a ranting YouTube video.
It's absurd.
>I get it that you do not like Flynn
Has nothing to do with how I feel about Flynn. Everything to do with his behavior.
>the politicization of the FBI and the DOJ is something that should worry anyone...
Yeah, your grand political conspiracy is the actual unproven thing here. Yet, anytime someone on that team is caught red-handed, it's a "deep state" conspiracy. It's even the deep state's fault when Flynn lies.
Under that framing our intelligence agencies should just be disbanded.
>...that cares about rule of law and not wanting to live under a despotic regime
Is that a joke? He's the former NSA and he specifically aligned himself with despotic regimes (Turkey, Russia), as well plotted in contravention of U.S. policy. He's called for a coup on American soil and he's implicated himself in a cult.
So, what team are you on? Doesn't sound like Team America.
>When it comes to the Flynn case, the evil really is in the details.
Please don't make false claims. You can argue that he should have lied (for whatever reason) under oath, but you cannot argue that he didn't lie under oath.
"No perjury was committed." is true if you believe he was bound to lie under the circumstances. Is there a law that says so, or that says such a lie does not constitute perjury?
Well what does the law says if someone under oath gets asked for classified information they aren't allowed to disclose, and saying that it's classified would itself disclose a secret? Maybe there just wasn't a clearly good answer.
Social media is a medium, not the source. Following the work of independent journalists, in whatever medium you choose to consume, is the best approach atm.
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
Tl;dr
Through subtle mechanisms, gov can promote preferred media outlets by giving them better/direct/scoops informations - resulting in better sales - resulting in better deals for ads - resulting in bigger profits.
In turn, people in those media outlets are incentivised to shush descending voices/opinions by 'promoting' those into sport section or horoscope section.
Manufacturing Consent is such an interesting book. The framework of analysis Herman and Chomsky present is general enough that it, while approaching almost 40 years old, still very accurately seems to describe the current media landscape.
Chomsky is a famous left-leaning anarchist, and I find it interesting that his analysis isn't "the media is too right-wing" or "the media is too left-wing". Instead, his analysis is primarily about how power begets power -- even at the level of the local paper.
This[0] short 3-minute video does a fine job of letting him explain his position on media bias while not really going into the nitty gritty details. His books, however, do go into the nitty gritty details while still being relatively easy to read.
For anyone interested in Chomsky I highly recommend "Understanding Power"[1] as the intro to his views on the world. It's not as detailed in every topic as many of his other books and is primarily conversational in style - owing to it being transcribed discussions with audience members after he has held a speech.
This is exactly what has happened in the case of The Guardian in the UK. See the previous discussion [0] on 'How the UK Security Services neutralised The Guardian'. This is such a shame because they were perhaps the only paper in the UK with enough courage and understanding to cover the Snowden leaks.
Self correcting fits, as in the feedback mechanisms are arrayed in such a way that disobedience is punished without outside pressures.
Simple loss of access to scoops cascades through the process until news company makes less money, so dissent would be swiftly taken care of.
I see no inherent issue with news agency cooperate with CIA or any other 3 letter agency, on projects for the good of the society and international community.
The issue, as you probably having in mind, is that media lost their independence in finance, political protection, etc. Those then gradually corrupted their spirit and mentality. To the point that they start to produce contents that are easily nidged and manipulated.
The first step of regaining media's strength is to rebuild a financial foundation for independent media. They should and must remain self-sufficient in support their own organization and employees.
I'll be mocked for this, but, it seems to me that only such tech right available is crypto and block chain. I see no other tech even remotely close.
Or breaking up Facebook and Google such that they aren't able to commandeer all of the advertising dollars that would be required to "rebuild," at least under the currently dominant business models (which get further entrenched with every banking restriction imposed on independent businesspeople, but I digress).
It starts in the schools. Public school teachers train the children which news sources are "authoritative". And it doesn't matter how wrong they are, how much they lie, how bloodthirsty they are about any war, people do as they are trained.
It's very common for TV news personalities to have direct ties to the intelligence community, and it's no surprise they are mouthpieces to the regime.
Here's just one list of 15 former spooks working for the "news."
> It starts in the schools. Public school teachers train the children which news sources are "authoritative".
They basically don't have a choice but to teach them this if they don't want to grade a bunch of papers about how the UK royal family actually comprises lizard people from the Hollow Earth, or the Earth is in fact flat, or that the holocaust or moon landing were faked, or any number of more mundane bits of bullshit. Yes there's more to source evaluation, but a first pass of "is this contrary-to-common-knowledge truth-bomb coming from a source generally regarded as credible?" actually is a reasonable and helpful first step.
No, but if you actually go teach a class of real children in this world of ours, today in the year 2021 when none of them have ever seen a card catalog and may literally not know how to use books ("what's an index?") and you're not unreasonable so you let them use the web because, realistically, that's what they're mostly going to use to find stuff out the rest of their lives, and they have not been taught to be wary of non-mainstream sources, I guarantee you'll get an avalanche of bullshit to read every single time you assign a research paper. 99 times out of 100 they won't find a deep-hidden truth The Man doesn't want you to know, but instead a bunch of crap. The skills to tease out the difference eludes a high percentage of adults. An 9-year-old writing their first research paper has no hope.
It'd be cool if it were possible to transmit all our knowledge and abilities into kids instantly, but it takes time, both because of how learning works and how children develop over a period of years. This is an entirely reasonable first step, without which proceeding is hardly possible except maybe with a very few exceptional kids, but schools are tasked with teaching everyone.
And, go figure, it's possible to do this and then later hand the kids Chomsky and Klein and cover propaganda and government and corporate lies and media complicity in same.
Not sure about HN but there's plenty of evidence of intelligence agencies using Reddit to craft public opinion.
Look at the demonization of the US's geopolitical rivals and the stories that get pushed. For example, questioning the Russian bounties story for a while would get you responses of "Russian bot". We know now the Russian bounties story was weak from the start: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/remember-...
I don't see them interested in nerds and in nerd-culture, to be honest, eventually maybe there are some FBI or Secret Service lurkers in here, definitely some past or present NSA employees/collaborators.
>Am I
supposed to believe that all these media cover current politics
objectively
I cannot begin to comprehend how anyone can consume the current political coverage and still believe it's objective. Also, of course not, nobody has ever suggested such a thing.
Yeah, the current political coverage really seems pro-Trump and anti-Biden. Biden's job creation is pitiful at 210K, where Trump's 200K was most excellent.
Super obvious general pro-Trump bias obvious. Also, every issue is given a conservative frame, which is really weird. I think that arises from conservatives screaming "liberal bias" for 40 years, and the media bending over backwards to try to placate conservatives. Conservatives in turn, have realized that they can continue to scream "liberal bias" and get more favorable treatment. The media reinforce bad-faith claims of "fake news" or "liberal bias".
the media operates globally because distribution is important & stories come from all over. outside of any sort of conspiracy around what the CIA could use the media to do... there are obvious operational benefits to working within the media or a similarly structured and distributed organization.
the real question isn't did the CIA stop using one type of organization or did they find ways to use other types of organizations. is the CIA doing the work? are they taking advantage of all of the different organizations that oddly have some sort of social protection similar to diplomats. whether it's NGOs allowed into a country that is just kind of hard to get into... or some freelance photographers tagging along with a news crew as they report on a country ahead of an invasion. maybe it's just the adjust professor teaching abroad as a way to monitor certain foreign CS students whose parents are high value assets and all of their labs and most definitely the final is just a way to get malicious code onto devices they're going to bring home.
> Is there any reason to think this isn't going on right now?
The alliance between the corporate media and the intelligence community could not be any clearer.
Looking past the endless barrage of yellow journalism in the traditional press, let's take a close look at Twitter.
Last year, Twitter manually added tags to accounts deemed "foreign state media". Mysteriously, accounts like Radio Free Asia and Radio Free Europe, which are CIA cutouts directly funded by the US government, do not get such tags [1]. Look up RT, CGTN, etc for examples of this tag in action.
Also last year, independent journalists dropped a bombshell report [2] on leaked documents detailing an anti-Russian disinformation operation that involves Reuters, BBC, and other "independent" news media groups.
If you try to post [2] on Twitter, your post will be permanently marked with a visual warning banner about "hacked materials". AFAIK it is currently the only link that generates this response from Twitter. Ironically, this virtually guarantees its credibility, rather than simply dismissing it to the trash heap of crazy Qanon theories, etc.
Finally, over the past few years Twitter has been officially releasing information on "disinformation" operations that occur on Twitter. Most recently, Twitter endorsed a report from the """independent""" (read: entirely funded by weapons manufacturers and Western governments) think tank ASPI which alleged to uncover a massive Chinese disinformation operation. I won't comment on the veracity of that report and encourage you to read it yourself and judge the quality of their "scientific" method. Regardless, it shows a clear alliance between Twitter and these special interests in the intelligence community.
The related blog post from Twitter [3] is more worrying, because it suggests that your account can be removed if it engages at all with what is deemed to be a "disinformation campaign". Which might include liking or retweeting an apolitical tweet from an account marked "foreign state media", etc.
In 2019, the Twitter executive for the Middle East, Gordon MacMillan, was unmasked as an active duty officer in the British Army’s online psychological operations unit [1]. Coming at a time when foreign interference in politics and society was the primary issue in U.S. politics, the story was, astoundingly, almost completely ignored in the mainstream press [2]. Only one U.S. outlet of any note picked it up, and that journalist was forced of the profession weeks later [4,5].
"And the answer is obvious: they all serve as mouthpieces for the same propagandists and disinformation agents of the CIA, FBI and other security state agencies. In this capacity, they dutifully write down and vouch for what they are told by those agencies to publish without any investigative scrutiny or confirmation. The most amazing part of it all is that when they try to malign independent journalists for not doing "real reporting” — real reporting like these corporate outlets do — this is what they mean by real reporting: getting a call from the CIA or FBI and being told what to say. And that is why they so often mislead and deceive the public with blatant disinformation in unison."
I’m generally less worried about explicit interference like this (which mostly seems to eventually be found out) than I am about the more insidious and ingrained Propaganda Model [0] proposed by Chomsky and Herman in Manufacturing Consent. In their own words:
> Structural factors are those such as ownership and control, dependence on other major funding sources (notably, advertisers), and mutual interests and relationships between the media and those who make the news and have the power to define it and explain what it means. The propaganda model also incorporates other closely related factors such as the ability to complain about the media’s treatment of news (that is, produce “flak”), to provide “experts” to confirm the official slant on the news, and to fix the basic principles and ideologies that are taken for granted by media personnel and the elite, but are often resisted by the general population.1 In our view, the same underlying power sources that own the media and fund them as advertisers, that serve as primary definers of the news, and that produce flak and proper-thinking experts, also play a key role in fixing basic principles and the dominant ideologies. We believe that what journalists do, what they see as newsworthy, and what they take for granted as premises of their work are frequently well explained by the incentives, pressures, and constraints incorporated into such a structural analysis. These structural factors that dominate media operations are not allcontrolling and do not always produce simple and homogeneous results.
The media, despite all of its supposed diversity, is really just a dialogue between powerful entities, but it strictly avoids criticizing or even acknowledging the foundational principles of the structures that give it power.
I don't think you need to choose which of these things to "worry about". Instead, I think it's important to mention that direct CIA interference is just the most obvious part of the system of propaganda and if such interference ceased, the propaganda problem would remain.
And more broadly, the press has traditionally served US interests because it's an institution of US society and shares interests with other US institutions. The idea that there could be a purely unbiased press itself something of an American invention - historically, the press has always had a place in on political spectrum.
That not saying the propagandistic quality of the modern press isn't to worry. It's gone a bit from an argument for our side to a manipulation for our side. How bad that still depends on how bad you think the given sides are. The standard argument during the Cold War was "however bad we might act, the other side is worse, so we need to effective". Now, one can find some equivalent if you to defend the situation.
Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the Agency were Williarn Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System, Henry Luce of Tirne Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of the LouisviIle Courier‑Journal, and James Copley of the Copley News Service. Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA include the American Broadcasting Company, the National Broadcasting Company, the Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps‑Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald‑Tribune.
By far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA officials, have been with the New York Times, CBS and Time Inc.
MSNBC and CNN have the closest (visible) ties to the intelligence entities today, with a revolving door between them. Clapper and Brennan are big examples, but only two.
Weird thought, so I try not to think too hard about it.
I find it interesting that 2013, the year the CIA was allowed to secretly start spreading propaganda again, was about the same time the current state of vitriolic news media coverage (clearly meant to divide and turn people against each other) began at CNN. Also, CNN just so happens to have "ex" CIA agents like Anderson Cooper front and center at their news team (quotes around "ex" because he still works for the CIA obviously).
If you know of any well known CIA agents working in right-leaning media at that time, and you noticed that their show changed course at that time, it would be a pretty clear indication of what their agenda was don't you think? Anyway, name the show and the person and I'll definitely take a note of what message they are pushing.
>Also, what are your thought on the fact that Republicans held full control of Congress when the repeal was enacted?
My thoughts are exactly the same as when McCain's vote stopped the repeal of the affordable care act and all the main leaders of the Republican party on the floor cheered loudly before Mitch McConnell quickly hushed them up. The people in power see eye to eye on everything, especially the issue of control.
This is still only for the foreign stuff tho, right? For Domestic Propaganda they consult the FBI.
I can certainly see a reporter having no issue with hearing about things the government would like to know before doing a trip someplace, that they want to know might be newsworthy itself. Not disclosing the connection is where the ethical alligators lie.
Wasn't the CIA one of the groups pushing the Russia conspiracy angle? I remember John Brennan, former head of the CIA, was on MSNBC for years pushing this theory.
Sorry, not trying to flamebait, just making light of the fact that what was the biggest news story for nearly 3 years running, and is now a common cultural reference- has been memory-holed now that facts about the case are coming out. I could have phrased it better.
Some more recent academic work on the CCC recently started reading—The CIA and the Congress for Cultural Freedom in the Early Cold War: Strange Bedfellows, Routledge [2016]
Partial summary from libgen description:
>This book calls into question the conventional wisdom about one of the most controversial episodes in the Cold War, and tells the story of the CIA's backing of the Congress for Cultural Freedom.
>For nearly two decades of the early Cold War, the CIA secretly sponsored some of the world’s most feted writers, philosophers, and scientists as part of a campaign to stop Communism from regaining a foothold in western Europe and Asia. By backing the Congress for Cultural Freedom, the CIA subsidized dozens of prominent magazines, global congresses, annual seminars, and artistic festivals. When this operation―QKOPERA―became public in 1967, it ignited one of the most damaging scandals in CIA history. Ever since, the prevailing assumption has been that the CIA, as the Congress’s paymaster, manipulated a generation of intellectuals into lending their names to pro-American, anti-Communist ideas in exchange for prestigious bylines and plentiful grants. Even today, a cloud hangs over the reputations of many of the intellectuals associated with the Congress.
>This book tells the story of how a small but determined group of anti-Communist intellectuals in America and Western Europe banded together to fight the Soviet Union’s cultural offensive. They enlisted one of the CIA’s earliest recruits to their cause―and they persuaded the CIA to foot their bill with virtually no strings attached. The CIA became a bureaucratic behemoth with an outsized influence on American foreign policy, but it began as a disorganized and unconventional outfit desperate to make inroads on all fronts against a foe many believed would ignite a nuclear war by 1954. When Michael Josselson, a recruit from the CIA’s Berlin office, pitched a proposal for what became the Congress for Cultural Freedom, senior officials were thus willing to gamble $50,000 on the venture. And when the Congress proved effective in enlisting some of the twentieth century’s most prominent intellectuals, senior CIA officials championed QKOPERA as the centerpiece of the Agency’s efforts to woo the non-Communist left.
One thing I realized about the media is that there is ALWAYS forces behind to manipulate the view. In the best case when journalists are simple individuals, their view of the world still create sort of biases.
From that perspective, nothing is objective and everything is subjective. This might be an extreme view but I do believe it's a good mental antidote.
It seems like you are making two points here. That the view is manipulated by forces behind the scenes and that the view is subjective. Yes. All humans who write words down taint them with their own subjective view. This does not mean that we are powerless though. Reporting can be improved by fact checking, editing, and other means. We can also use technology to make sure that the color of chosen words does not prime the reader. This does not imply manipulation or behind the scenes manipulation.
My own opinion: Media bias is a boogeyman. If somebody needs to be flatly told what is or isn't biased or if some source is left or right leaning then they are a dimwit. Even asking for unbiased information shows stupidity- it does not exist in an absolute sense.
I agree with you that you should start from a frame of mind that the media is biased because it is. Embrace it. There seems to be a push to therefore reject all news media which is a scary thought.
The press is the only private entity specifically mentioned in the US Constitution. It is often called the 4th branch of government because of the oversight that it provides.
That's a very interesting article with a lot of relevance for today's American media world, which also seems to have a very intertwined relationship with the various intelligence agencies (16 or so) of the US government.
One case that stands out today is that of the Washington Post and its editorial/journalistic direction since it was bought by Jeff Bezos for $250 million in August 2013. This was preceded by Bezos' AWS getting a $600 million CIA web services contract in March 2013. This seems to have resulted in a rather striking shift in coverage and editorial opinion at the WaPo.
Prior to this, the Washington Post had published a striking expose of the national security state, by reporters Dana Priest and William Arkin, entitled "Top Secret America". Here's legendary nuclear weapons historian Richard Rhodes reviewing the book that came out of that effort in 2011:
> "“Top Secret America” originated in a 2010 Washington Post series of the same name that set out to enumerate how many Americans held top secret clearances — about 854,000, the Post’s investigative team found, more than the population of Washington. The book is far more ambitious than was the series, however, and makes the team’s investigations available in detail to those of us who live beyond the Beltway..."
Since the change of ownership at the WaPo, with the new owner probably interested in the perpetual renewal of that AWS CIA contract and expanding such services to all the other intel agencies, I can't think of anything even remotely similar being published at the Post. Note this doesn't mean WaPo employees have gone back to being CIA agents, rather that the editorial board has realized that publishing any more such exposes are probably not going to help with their future careers at the Post.
Another Church Committee with the power to subpoena all the relevant parties under oath about this situation might be a good idea, but don't hold your breath.
As someone else linked above, it is also very interesting that 2013, the year this happened, was the same year that the government repealed the propaganda ban, allowing the CIA to once again legally allowed to secretly spread propaganda via news media organizations https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-...
Fair enough, that'll just be a necessary evil at least until market/ownership restrictions land in the online video space. There's plenty of uncompetitive Amazon behaviors even without that.
The intelligence agencies exist to advance some view of what our civilization should be.
If you are not an anarchist or some other form of misguided extremist, then you probably agree with the goal or intentions of the state's IC apparratus even if you find a given mission or action of the IC to be strange when looked at and analyzed out of context.
What I mean to say here is that there is a grand strategy at play, but you may, in your lives and in your careers, encounter a single out-of-context action of such agencies and you will be left feeling their actions were odd, but your feelings on the matter are a result of lacking context and that context is, unfortunately, only disclosed on a need-to-know basis.
So, to those not involved in a goven operation, yes, the agencies will seem to be distorting reality all of the time... Use your brain and ask yourself the motive -- there is definitely a context in all scenarios that explains things pretty well and your elected leaders have signed off on that context after hearing the sales pitch of some analyst turned manager in the agency.
TL;DR have faith in the actions of our nation's clandestine services. They are working to our benefit and their lives are on the line.
What does 'faith' in clandestine services mean? The CIA is so powerful (above the law) and secretive that we just have to trust them? With a undisclosed black budget of $50B? more?
“ There is a higher power in the form of civillian elected government that manage the framework within which the IC members are allowed to operate.”
they sell illegal drugs to fund operations they could never fund legally. remember iran contra? they also grow opium in afghanistan which becomes heroin. they also are involved in sex trafficking of children (epstein “belonged to intelligence”)
There has probably been little oversight or no oversight of the CIA since the Church committee in 70s.
Fumbling the 911 attacks, selling war to the public in 2003, decades long direct foreign intervention in 20th century, etc. They are ineffective at best, and downright criminal at worst.
The interventions in the time from 2003-2021 were interesting and seemed to have some effect on changing the cultures of the middle east. It is still too early to tell.
American elected officials are who started the war, the intelligence agencies are just one of their many tools.
The 911 attacks were a foreign attack on our soil. The intelligence agencies helped us track down and ultimately bring justice to the individual most responsible. Hoorah.
It is very clear, i think, to anyone that has been paying attention, that the purpose of the intelligence agencies meddling in home affairs has always been to destroy any populist movements and to push for elitist control over society (left and right means nothing to these people). This goes back to Hoover at the FBI (and maybe further).
If you know anything about the last 200 years or so of history, you know that there is some merit to this as just about every evil and murderous regime to exist used populist paths to power. However, any reading of history also makes it clear that once in power these same murderous and corrupt regime used these exact same clandestine powers to crush populism and ensure their continued power.
I find in very hard to take it on faith that intelligence agencies are trying to do the right thing rather than just protecting the corruption that has enabled the ill gotten power and wealth of themselves and the political class which they serve.
Consider me just a well-traveled, well-informed, well-meaning individual of reasonable intelligence who cares about my family and civilization.
You should be worrying about the foreign agents and the incredibly sophisticated plans they are executing on our soil and on social media.
If you care about your family or your civilization, you should be doing your part to help the big picture in what ever way you can. It matters. Help your community members live healthier, more meaningful lives. Help people stay away from social media and focused on making themselves and the world better with micro improvements, day by day.
Who do you think made TOR? or SE Linux? or uncovers plots to import fentanyl to our shores and lace it into simple products to harm our citizens? Or leverages the dark web and social media platforms to monitor and disrupt foreign networks?
Stay off of social media is my suggestion. Social media is basically a weapon.
> to import fentanyl to our shores and lace it into simple products to harm our citizens?
If you need yo bring this up, then you are just in effective at your job
Go do an stuxnet type attack on the installations of the sackler family or shut up, these few companies have killed more of your own nationals than Russia, Iran, and China put together, you and your people clearly have got no scruples when it comes to breaking your own laws of operating in mainland US, yet instead of fixing the homeland problems, you go searching doe foreign dragons to slay, incompetent, simply incompetent
I agree with the prescription to stay off weaponized social propaganda platforms and focus on your local community, but I don't see how you can ask people to blindly trust the CIA. Too many misdeeds to count.
- Fabricating justification for war (Vietnam, Iraq)
- Fabricating evidence of treason by a sitting President (Trump-Russia)
- Overthrowing democratically elected governments (e.g. Iran)
- Starting civil wars (e.g. Nicaragua)
- Assassinating thousands of people, often with collateral killing of innocents
- And drugs drugs drugs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_CIA_drug_traffi...
Ultimately, do we live in a better world thanks to the CIA? From where I sit, I'd need a lot of convincing to believe that.
they grow opium in afghanistan which becomes heroin which kills people in the us. they do this to fund operations they could never fund legally. literally everyone knows this
It seems to me that the only difference between 40 years ago and today is that some TV networks and media companies are not even hiding their association with the CIA and hire former CIA officers in the open as "analysts" so they can push their agenda.
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093265/
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYrznlDTE_M