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“The very word ‘secrecy’ is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it … there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it.
And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment.”
It should come as no surprise that those words were spoken by our late president John F. Kennedy. That pivotal speech before the Newspaper Publishers Association on April 27, 1961 was just another nail in JFK’s coffin as far as his enemies were concerned.
He was assassinated two and a half years later.
Fast forward to 2013. Over the summer, the shocking revelations of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden dominated headlines across the country — but for all the wrong reasons. The American media’s lock-step condemnation of Snowden as a traitor simply confirmed the sorry state of what passes for journalism in this country today. More importantly, it exposed the extent to which our supposedly free press is actually controlled by the corporate state.
The Obama administration has declared open war on press freedom in this country. The Snowden case finally unmasked the mainstream media (MSM)’s massive crusade against independent journalists and whistleblowers.
The major American news outlets confirmed their status as the propaganda arm of the U.S. government. Rather than discuss the scope of Snowden’s earth-shattering revelations related to the NSA’s global spying program — called PRISM — the American media has conspired to portray Snowden as an enemy of the state who must be punished.
Conspicuously, it’s primarily the MSM in America which is obsessed with bringing Snowden to justice; the rest of the world’s news organizations are understandably far more concerned with the actual facts surrounding the leaks, and the scale of the PRISM program itself.
This journalistic “failure” is really part of a concerted and coordinated effort to misinform and distract the American public from questioning the ominous implications of the NSA’s global surveillance capabilities.
Because of media consolidation, editors and programmers have been forced to pursue higher ratings by emphasizing the sordid and sensational over actual news. Local TV news coverage is a prime example.
The media has played an essential role in keeping Americans ignorant of the crimes committed on their behalf. Our state propaganda has demonized both Edward Snowden and legitimate investigative reporters like Glenn Greenwald, who broke the story to the public.
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When confronted with irrefutable evidence of a war against independent journalism by the government, the American MSM instead suggests that whistleblowers and journalists who have the guts to expose these crimes are the real villains.
Pathetic!
But it’s not just the skewed coverage of the Snowden case which reflects the narrative demanded by the plutocracy. How else does one explain the saturation coverage of the race-baiting George Zimmerman trial carried live on every major network at the expense of what was arguably the most important trial in U.S. history, the court martial of Pfc. Bradley Manning?
The implications for our First Amendment rights in Manning’s case are far more serious than a simple hate crime.
I find it ironic that many of the same pundits who proclaim such a deep mistrust of “big government,” the same ones who are so viscerally opposed to simple background checks for gun buyers as “too intrusive,” can find absolutely nothing wrong with a clandestine spying network set up to monitor and record global communications on a daily basis.
We must question the motives of these people.
The major U.S. news organizations are controlled by the same entities implicated in the recent spying scandals. The military-industrial complex has a vested interest in keeping the American public in the dark about the illegal acts committed by the government.
A quote from former CIA director William Colby is instructive: “The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media.”
In “The CIA and The Media,” Carl Bernstein quotes William Bader, a former CIA official, in a briefing to the Senate Intelligence Committee: “There is quite an incredible spread of relationships. You don’t need to manipulate Time magazine, for example, because there are Agency people (CIA) at the management level.”
Later in the book, Bernstein writes, “The Agency’s relationship with (The NY) Times was by far its most valuable among newspapers, according to CIA officials. (It is) general Times policy … to provide assistance to the CIA whenever possible.”
America’s MSM has proven to be little more than state-sponsored propaganda.
