The mainstream corporate media lead us away from the truth.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete
when everything the American public believes is false."
William Casey, Ronald Reagan's CIA Director, 1981
The corporate media manufacture a world that reflects the views of established power, and serves the agenda of a global oligarchy, offering an endless stream of propaganda, disinformation and lies, misinforming people and preventing them from understanding how the world really works.
The false narrative that this oligarchy constructs through their control of most major media institutions worldwide, although western in origin and primarily based in the united states, is global in scope, with the hegemony of western financial, corporate, dynastic and political elites as its goal.
This is an attempt to pierce the veil of secrecy and expose the institutions and individuals who use the popular media - from which we get almost all of our information about the world - to deceive us and prevent us from seeing the world as it really is.
"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds our molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized."
Edward Bernays in his 1928 book "Propaganda"
HOW DO WE BECOME INFORMED
ABOUT THE WORLD AROUND US?
In our daily lives, we have first-hand information only about things we experience personally - things we see with our own eyes, hear with our own ears and touch with our own hands. We know some other things because they are passed on to us by parents, teachers, friends and individuals and institutions with whom we have personal contact. But, the vast majority of the things we know about our country and about the world are transmitted to us by the media.
Without the popular media, we would have litle awareness of what goes on beyond our personal experience. The media - the mainstream, corporate, establishment, social media - provide us, almost without exception, with our understanding of the world.
What is this entity - the media - that has so much control over our understanding of the world around us? Who are the institutions and individuals who have this power? How did they get this authority and for what purposes do they use it? How do they decide what is newsworthy and what is not? How do they choose what we should know and not know? How objective are they, do they have biases, and if they do have biases, how do these biases impact our ideas, of almost everything?
If we do not understand how we gain our knowledge of the world, we are remiss. For, how can we function as citizens of a so-called representative democracy, if we have no idea where the information upon which we base our decisions comes from, or if it is accurate?
This is an attempt to answer the question:
Should we continue to trust the mainstream corporate media, and if not, are there more honest, truthful alternatives?
WHAT IS DISINFORMATION?
DISINFORMATION has been defined as:
1 - Deliberately misleading or biased information.
2 - False information intended to deceive or mislead.
3 - Information deliberately spread in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth.
4 - Propaganda.
"Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information - misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information - information that creates the illusion of knowing something, but which in fact leads one away from knowing."
Neil Postman, 1985
"The media want to maintain their intimate relation to state power. To do that, you've got to play the game, and playing the game means telling their lies, serving as their disinformation apparatus. "
Noam Chomsky, 1986
"We are not idiots. We are cowed by disinformation from the media, a skewed view of the world."
Gore Vidal
"Carl Bernstein's 1977 article in Rolling Stone entitled "The CIA and the Media" exposed that more than 400 American journalists had secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file at CIA headquarters. [1950-1977]. Some of these journalists' relationships with the Agency were tacit; some were explicit. Reporters shared their notebooks with the CIA. Editors shared their staffs. Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, Most were less exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association with the Agency helped their work. The CIA's use of the American news media has been much more extensive than Agency officials have acknowledged publicly or in closed sessions with members of Congress."
Michel Chossudovsky, 2010
"Once an enemy is demonized the media display a form of hysteria that helps mobilize the public in support of whatever forms of violence the government wishes to carry out. They become a virtual propaganda arm of the government, joining with it in the common fight against "another Hitler." Under these conditions remarkable structures of disinformation can be built, institutionalized, and remain parts of historic memory even in the face of ex post confutations, which are kept out of sight."
Edward s Herman, 2001
"Media corporations function like giant magnifying glasses that roam the world, highlighting facts that benefit corporate-friendly parties, leaders, allied states and voices. They also magnify facts that undermine and harm corporate-unfriendly parties, leaders, groups and voices."
Eric Zuesse, 2018
"A few alternative media outlets have begun to question whether or not certain mainstream media outlets are actually connected to the Deep State, most notably the CIA. An unimaginable scale of disinformation is being released and promoted throughout mainstream media channels on a daily basis, all propagandizing the public to go along with the desired direction of the American establishment."
Brandon Turbeville, 2017
"The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses."
Malcolm X
"Print and broadcast media outside the US play their role in contributing to a wave of disinformation, omissions and lies in the interests of US propaganda."
Federico Pieraccini, 2019
"The foulest damage to our political life comes not from the 'secrets' which they hide from us, but from the little bits of half-truth and disinformation which they do tell us."
P. Thompson, British historian
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you to commit atrocities."
Voltaire
"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of."
Edward Bernays, the father of American propaganda
"We tell the people what they need to know."
Frank Sesno, CNN "News"
"You can either be informed and be your own rulers, or you can be ignorant and have someone else, who is not ignorant, rule over you."
Julian Assange
"The most powerful component of any fear and disinformation campaign rests with the CIA, which secretly subsidizes authors, journalists and media critics, through a web of private foundations and CIA-sponsored front organizations.
... Disinformation is routinely "planted" by CIA operatives in the newsroom of major dailies, magazines and TV channels. Outside public relations firms are often used to create "fake stories"."
Michel Chossudovsky, 2005
"Media manipulation in the U.S. today is more efficient than it was in Nazi Germany, because here we have the pretense that we are getting all the information we want. That misconception prevents people from even looking for the truth."
Mark Crispin Miller
"For the first time in human history, there is a concerted strategy to manipulate global perception. And the mass media are operating as its compliant assistants, failing both to resist it and to expose it.
The sheer ease with which this machinery has been able to do its work reflects a creeping structural weakness which now afflicts the production of our news."
Nick Davies, British investigative journalist, 2017
"Disinformation is a large part of the CIA's covert action responsibility, and the American people are the primary target of its lies."
Ralph McGehee, former CIA officer
"Most of the Mainstream Western Media (MWM) works tirelessly and slavishly to protect the financial and corporate elite by creating a propaganda bubble for all of us to suffocate in. Only by escaping this stifling Western disinformation fog machine can we discover the true reality of the world."
Jeff J. Brown, 2016
"The CIA's relationship to the US media is amply documented. The New York Times continues to entertain a close relationship not only with US intelligence, but also with the Pentagon and more recently with the Department of Homeland Security.
"Operation Mocking Bird" was an initiative of the CIA's Office of Special Projects (OSP), established in the early 1950s. Its objective was to exert influence on both the US as well as the foreign media. From the 1950s, members of the US media were routinely enlisted by the CIA."
Michel Chossudovsky, 2010
"The media are not conduits for news and views; they are global systems designed and evolved to highlight a certain type of news to impose a certain kind of view."
Eric Zuesse, 2018
"The U.S. propaganda system is at the peak of its powers in the early years of the 21st century, riding the wave of capitalism's triumph, U.S. global hegemony, and the effective service of the increasingly concentrated and commercialized mainstream media. In such times its ability to ignore inconvenient facts, swallow disinformation, and work the public over with propaganda can easily compete with - even surpass - anything found in totalitarian systems."
Edward S. Herman, 2001
"The Israeli intelligence agency - Mossad - has a skillful disinformation service. The amount of disinformation it feeds to the American "market" is embarrassing, but even more embarrassing is how America swallows hook, line and sinker such propaganda."
John Coleman, 2006
"The CIA owns numerous news organizations, publishing houses, and wire services abroad, which produce disinformation that makes its way back to the states."
Michael Parenti, 2007
"In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Operation Mockingbird was a secret CIA effort to influence and control the American media and, thus, to influence and control the information received by the American people.
... Contrary to the notion that the CIA insidiously infiltrated the journalistic community, there is ample evidence that America's leading publishers and news executives allowed themselves and their organizations to become handmaidens to the intelligence services.
... Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the CIA were William Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System, Henry Luce of Time Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of the Louisville 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."
Brandon Turbeville, 2017
"Counterterrorism and war propaganda are intertwined. The propaganda apparatus feeds disinformation into the news chain. The terror warnings must appear to be "genuine" The objective is to present the terror groups as "enemies of America'.
One of the main objectives of war propaganda is to fabricate an enemy."
Michel Chossudovsky, 2005
"Those who don't read newspapers are uninformed, those who read newspapers are misinformed."
Mark Twain
"The New York Times itself, both as a media institution and the product that is delivered in its name on a daily basis, is built and thrives on structures of disinformation and selective information that constitute Big Lies."
Edward S Herman
"With the help of the media, the military determine the public perception and use it for their plans. They manage to stir expectations and spread scenarios and deceptions. In this new kind of war, the PR strategists of the US administration fulfill a similar function as the bomber pilots. The special departments for public relations in the Pentagon and in the secret services have become combatants in the information war.
The US military specifically uses the lack of transparency in media coverage for their deception maneuvers. The way they spread information, which is then picked up and distributed by newspapers and broadcasters, makes it impossible for readers, listeners or viewers to trace the original source. Thus, the audience will fail to recognize the actual intention of the military."
Ulrich Tilgner, a veteran Middle East correspondent for German and Swiss television, 2003
"We hear about the occasions when there are differences between the mainstream media and the government. What we don't hear about are the 95 percent of occasions where the mainstream media faithfully propagate disinformation stories which are often planted by the CIA."
Michael Parenti, 1988
"Unfortunately, we get only disinformation from the New York Times and other official places. Americans have no idea of the extent of their government's mischief."
Gore Vidal
"Media disinformation has become institutionalized. The lies and fabrications have become increasingly blatant when compared to the 1970s. The US media has become the mouthpiece of US foreign policy. Disinformation is routinely "planted" by CIA operatives in the newsroom of major dailies, magazines and TV channels."
Michel Chossudovsky, 2010
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Also see: Mediaganda
