Media Are In Bed With The Government

There is no free media choice

May 01, 2024

Back in 1977, former Washington Post journalist Carl Bernstein, who had left the company, spent six months investigating the ties between journalism outlets and the US government’s CIA (Central Intelligence Agency).

Back when sources actually meant something, he found the following media outlets were wholly compromised; some of which still exist today:

New York Times Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS)
Time magazine
Newsweek magazine
Washington Post
Louisville Courier‑Journal
American Broadcasting Company (ABC)
National Broadcasting Company (NBC)
The Copley Press and subsidiary the Copley News Service; including San Diego Union and Evening Tribune
New York Herald-Tribune
Saturday-Evening Post
Scripps Howard Newspapers
Hearst Newspapers
Associated Press
United Press International (UPI)
Mutual Broadcasting System (MBS)
Reuters
Miami Herald
Washington Star
“And that's just a small part of the list”

Outlets like the Washington Post still share ties with the CIA, even to this day.

What Bernstein had uncovered was part of the CIA’s Project Mockingbird (often referred to by the public as Operation Mockingbird). Project Mockingbird was painted as merely being a telephone tap on journalists by the CIA, according to the Gerald Ford Presidential Library.

However the reality is the CIA had, as Bernstein found, been successfully recruiting journalists and even entire media outlets. It is likely the telephone wiretaps served the purpose of both intelligence gathering on the journalists, and quite possibly blackmail material.

In 1975, 2 years prior to Bernstein’s digging, the Church Committee had gone over Project Mockingbird, with the suspicion it was used to alter the public’s perception of the John F Kennedy assassination, however, as with all government investigations into itself, it was ultimately fruitless.

Similarly would be mentioned against in another Senate Select hearing in 1996, titled “CIA's Use of Journalists and Clergy in intelligence operations”.

You would be forgiven for thinking that simply because the public had become aware, that such unethical operations to control free speech had come to a halt, but nowhere was it reported Project Mockingbird — or the intentions behind it — had stopped at any point.

In-fact, most of the media these days are still clearly in bed with various governments.

Aspen Institute

Nowhere is this more evident than the so-called ‘think tank’ Aspen Institute.

One of the people who chaired the Aspen Institute was Walter Isaacson.

He was both the former editor of Time magazine — the same one on Bernstein’s list above — and the former chairman of CNN. The Aspen Institute has so many financial donors that the list is too long to reasonably include in this article, and it includes all of the usual corrupt suspects, as well as various inter-media financing.

Walter Isaacson, even back at Time magazine, already knew the likes of Bill Gates and Henry Kissinger.

Here’s a few highlights — including government financing. Such as Johnson & Johnson, Gates Foundation, and Bloomberg (all vaccine pushers):

Pfizer, of mRNA poison shot fame, various Rockefeller associations, and Dawn Sinclair Shapiro:

Dawn is another media element. They have worked as a Producer, Associate Producer, Writer, Online Editor/Writer for Tribune Broadcasting, CNBC, MSNBC, Dateline NBC and Chicago Public Radio. Note that public radio is also government funded.

Another Aspen Institute donor is the so-called CDC Foundation, which is yet another money laundering proxy for the CDC (Centers for Disease Control), and Disney, who own a very large chunk of media services, including the previously mentioned ABC news on Bernstein’s list.

CDC Foundation is financed directly by Congress.

We also have other government related groups:

And the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), is actually part of the Canadian government, which declares financing is all about “driving global change” (read: globalist agenda).

IDRC “established by an Act of Canada’s Parliament in 1970 with a mandate”.

Clearly the Aspen Institute is a money laundering operation that allows governments and corporations to buy influence over media organisations without the perception of direct influence.

Media Outlets Don’t Like Being Exposed As Financed By Government

Other media outlets clearly have government financial interests, and hate having them publicly exposed. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation threw a hissy fit when Twitter correctly labelled them as a government financed operation.

Their tantrum got Twitter to remove the factually correct label.

This is despite the fact CBC gets their finances from the Canadian government, something CBC themselves report:

They even admit it accounts for 70% of their own financing sources:

They even have a breakdown table showing what a massive chunk the financing consists of:

Or put differently, $1,394,300,000 (over $1.3 billion)

To suggest they aren’t government funded is patently dishonest. Without over billion in government funds CBC would collapse overnight.

As for NPR (National Public Radio), their stroppy fit over government ties being exposed are even more direct.

The US government passed the 1967 Public Broadcasting Act (note: it is pre-1970s Church Committee investigation), which supplies funds to a proxy shell called the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which gives the thin veneer they’re a corporation rather than a government organisation.

CPB has financed thousands of stations, both TV and radio.

NPR get their financing directly from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting — which comes with mandatory stipulations on spending, but they deliberately muddy the waters in their financial reporting by not presenting a financial breakdown.

They do this by setting the threshold arbitrarily low — $10,000 — so anyone who donates millions is hidden amongst the people who donate mere thousands, in a flimsy attempt to hide their financial conflicts of interest. Odds are their finances are majority represented by government financing.

UK Media Suffer The Same Problem

The BBC are the most obvious government financed example, with a handful of exceptions — the Gates Foundation again being one of them — the majority of the BBC’s financing comes exclusively from government sources.

The UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office is by far the BBC’s biggest financier, at approximately £774,100,000 (£774 million).

Weirdly, Ofcom — the Office of Communications, a UK regulatory agency that often censors content critical of government stances — reported out of all the news agencies, ITV (‘Independent Television’) was rated as being seen as the most impartial by the public, with their news service coming second to Channel 4.

ITV aren’t completely independent, and still receive financing from government sources (see page 37) — which, like NPR, they’ve conveniently buried with other sources in a desperate attempt to obfuscate.

They’ve also set up a ‘remaining categories’ which is larger than any of the other categories, and looks like it could be hiding serious financial conflicts of interest, E.G. pharmaceuticals. The lack of transparency is telling.

As for Channel 4, that is directly owned by the UK government.

Faux News

Perhaps the News Corp owned Fox news is outside the curve? Alas, no, they just hide their government financing differently; as ‘common stock’ rather than publishing any explicit listing of financing. This list, like Aspen Institute, is extensive and overwhelming, and includes various corporations (E.G. Blackrock).

For brevity here’s just the government ties. Amusingly California have invested into Fox news.

Phew, that’s a lot of government investments.

Poynter Institute Are Up To Their Eyeballs In It

Poynter Institute, who falsely claim to be about journalism ethics, have their own mini-Aspen Institute style shindig.

These include the US government financed ‘National Endowment for Democracy’ (or NED, previously implicated in the overthrow of Ukraine), US government financed NPR, Pinellas County School District, US government financed University of South Florida St. Petersburg (USF), and media outlet USA Today Network.

Other Poynters financing pages also reveal other government connections, including the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, NPR (again), NBC News (the same one on Bernstein’s list), Newsweek (also Bernstein’s list), Penske Media Corporation, The Washington Post (again, Bernstein’s list), and Voice of America (also financed by the US government).

Poynter Institute’s CIA-connected Washington Post ironically talk about ‘training journalists of color’ and ‘diversity’.

Except that simply isn’t true.

One contributor to Poynter Institute, rampant pro-vaccine shill Andrew Bullock, A.K.A. ‘Drew Comments’ was even racist to The Daily Beagle when questioned on acts of hypocrisy (namely, his criticising other people’s low quality Tweets). When challenged on his abusive remarks, Andrew then blocked The Daily Beagle.

When Alex Mahadevan — director of MediaWise, and contributor to Poynter — was asked about the clearly unethical behaviour of Andrew Bullock…

…Alex, who claims to help children spot misinformation, simply laughed.

We asked if this was the official response of Poynters when informed of racism?

Naturally, no response.

Alex then proceeded to complain we dare interrupt his watching of a golf tournament (even though he was active on Twitter by his own volition). Why have ethical diverse journalism when there’s golf?

This hammers home the fact Poynters is nothing more than a shill proxy organisation for US government interests, and has absolutely nothing to do with ethical journalistic reporting.

This is also just the tip of the iceberg — there are vastly more government financed media outlets out there and many fail to declare such financial interests — but it gives you an idea of the massive extent of government propaganda.

See also our article The Propagandists In Power on how repetition exerts influence.

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