Are journalists finally starting to revolt?

[rumpel]

Let's see who will muster courage to fight for the integrity of their profession, and not be bullied into submission.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000922215

REPORTERS CHALLENGE MCCLELLAN ON SOURCES, NEWSWEEK
His sources good, their sources bad? In the wake of the Newsweek scandal, reporters at today's press briefing ask the White House spokesman how he can be so critical of single, anonymous sources when he insists reporters use them in his own backgrounders. They also ask what exactly he wants Newsweek to do now, and is the White House exerting undue pressure?
(Editor & Publisher)

and a comment from

Sid Blumenthal on Salon:

"Michael Isikoff has become the Lynddie England of the Washington press corps. For inadequately sourcing a story reporting that the Qur'an of a detainee at the Guant?namo Bay prison had been flushed in a toilet, the Bush administration has turned the Newsweek reporter into a scapegoat for the disastrous consequences of its torture policy.

"In a blurred sequence of events, the incident traveled rapidly from Afghanistan to Washington, from tragedy to farce. Relying on a single anonymous source, Newsweek had before publication dutifully passed the story along for comment by the Pentagon, which declined to refute it. Appearing as a squib in the Periscope section, it was seized upon by demagogues who exploited it to arouse bands of Islamists and other opponents of Hamid Karzai's government in Afghanistan.

"After riots in which 17 people died, the Bush administration pointed the finger of blame at Newsweek. The White House began a series of demands on the magazine, as though it were a rogue state."

www.salon.com http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2005/05/19/newsweek/index.html

[Frances]

1. Someone clue me in

It seems to me that if I were editor of Newsweek, I would not have retracted. Instead, I would have screamed that we checked with the Pentagon and they did not deny the story.

The Repubs learned long ago that the best defense is a good offense.

Is there a reason that Newsweek did not go on the attack against the Pentagon since they showed the story to 2 people there?

[redqueen]

3. Could the reason have anything to do with Operation Mockingbird? n/t

[lukasahero]

4. Ok you got me

I thought I was in the know but what is "Operation Mockingbird"? I must have missed that one.

[Horse with no Name]

6. Here is a link

http://home.att.net/~Resurgence/L-overclass.html

>>>>>snip
The wealthy have always used many methods to accumulate wealth, but it was not until the mid-1970s that these methods coalesced into a superbly organized, cohesive and efficient machine. After 1975, it became greater than the sum of its parts, a smooth flowing organization of advocacy groups, lobbyists, think tanks, conservative foundations, and PR firms that hurtled the richest 1 percent into the stratosphere.

The origins of this machine, interestingly enough, can be traced back to the CIA. This is not to say the machine is a formal CIA operation, complete with code name and signed documents. (Although such evidence may yet surface — and previously unthinkable domestic operations such as MK-ULTRA, CHAOS and MOCKINGBIRD show this to be a distinct possibility.) But what we do know already indicts the CIA strongly enough. Its principle creators were Irving Kristol, Paul Weyrich, William Simon, Richard Mellon Scaife, Frank Shakespeare, William F. Buckley, Jr., the Rockefeller family, and more. Almost all the machine's creators had CIA backgrounds.

During the 1970s, these men would take the propaganda and operational techniques they had learned in the Cold War and apply them to the Class War. Therefore it is no surprise that the American version of the machine bears an uncanny resemblance to the foreign versions designed to fight communism. The CIA's expert and comprehensive organization of the business class would succeed beyond their wildest dreams. In 1975, the richest 1 percent owned 22 percent of America’s wealth. By 1992, they would nearly double that, to 42 percent — the highest level of inequality in the 20th century.

[JohnyCanuck]

7. The Subversion Of The Free Press By The CIA

Operation Mockingbird: CIA Media Manipulation

By Mary Louise

<snip>


The "old boy network" of socializing, talking shop, and tapping each other for favors outside the halls of government made it inevitable that the CIA and Corporate America would become allies, thus the systematic infiltration and takeover of the media.

Under the guise of 'American' objectives and lack of congressional oversight, the CIA accomplish their exploits by using every trick in the book (and they know quite a few) that they actually teach in the notorious "School of the Americas", nicknamed the "School of Dictators" and "School of Assassins" by critics. The Association for Responsible Dissent estimates that 6 million people had died by 1987 as a result of CIA covert operations, called an "American Holocaust" by former State Department official William Blum. In 1948, the CIA recreated its covert action wing called the Office of Policy Coordination with Wall Street lawyer Frank Wisner as its first director. Another early elitist who served as Director of the CIA from 1953 to 1961 was Allen Dulles, a senior partner at the Wall Street firm of Sullivan and Cromwell, which represented the Rockefeller empire and other trusts, corporations, and cartels.

Starting in the early days of the Cold War (late 40's), the CIA began a secret project called Operation Mockingbird, with the intent of buying influence behind the scenes at major media outlets and putting reporters on the CIA payroll, which has proven to be a stunning ongoing success. The CIA effort to recruit American news organizations and journalists to become spies and disseminators of propaganda, was headed up by Frank Wisner, Allen Dulles, Richard Helms, and Philip Graham (publisher of The Washington Post). Wisner had taken Graham under his wing to direct the program code-named Operation Mockingbird and both have presumably committed suicide.

Media assets will eventually include ABC, NBC, CBS, Time, Newsweek, Associated Press, United Press International (UPI), Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps-Howard, Copley News Service, etc. and 400 journalists, who have secretly carried out assignments according to documents on file at CIA headquarters, from intelligence-gathering to serving as go-betweens. The CIA had infiltrated the nation's businesses, media, and universities with tens of thousands of on-call operatives by the 1950's. CIA Director Dulles had staffed the CIA almost exclusively with Ivy League graduates, especially from Yale with figures like George Herbert Walker Bush from the "Skull and Crossbones" Society.

More:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/analysis_louise_01_03_03_mockingbird.html

"You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl, for a couple hundred dollars a month." - CIA operative discussing with Philip Graham, editor Washington Post, on the availability and prices of journalists willing to peddle CIA propaganda and cover stories. "Katherine The Great," by Deborah Davis (New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1991)

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/MOCK/mockingbird.html

[redqueen]

8. Operation Mockingbird - CIA control of the media

Much better source with more links:

http://www.answers.com/topic/operation-mockingbird

Further details of Operation Mockingbird was revealed as a result of the Frank Church investigations (Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities) in 1975. According to the Congress report published in 1976: "The CIA currently maintains a network of several hundred foreign individuals around the world who provide intelligence for the CIA and at times attempt to influence opinion through the use of covert propaganda. These individuals provide the CIA with direct access to a large number of newspapers and periodicals, scores of press services and news agencies, radio and television stations, commercial book publishers, and other foreign media outlets." Church argued that the cost of misinforming the world cost American taxpayers an estimated $265 million a year.

In February, 1976, George Bush, the recently appointed Director of the CIA announced a new policy: “Effective immediately, the CIA will not enter into any paid or contract relationship with any full-time or part-time news correspondent accredited by any U.S. news service, newspaper, periodical, radio or television network or station.” However, he added that the CIA would continue to “welcome” the voluntary, unpaid cooperation of journalists.

...

According to researchers such as Steve Kangas, Angus Mackenzie and Alex Constantine, Operation Mockingbird was not closed down by the CIA in 1976. For example, in 1998 Kangas argued that CIA asset Richard Mellon Scaife ran "Forum World Features, a foreign news service used as a front to disseminate CIA propaganda around the world."

On 8th February, 1999, Kangas was found dead in the bathroom of the Pittsburgh offices of Richard Mellon Scaife. He had been shot in the head. Officially he had committed suicide but some people believe he was murdered. In an article in Salon Magazine, (19th March, 1999) Andrew Leonard asked: "Why did the police report say the gun wound was to the left of his head, while the autopsy reported a wound on the roof of his mouth? Why had the hard drive on his computer been erased shortly after his death? Why had Scaife assigned his No. 1 private detective, Rex Armistead, to look into Kangas' past?"

[loudsue]

5. I think it's partly because the journalist is Michael Isikoff

Michael Isikoff is a true investigative journalist...you know, the kind that tells the truth too often for the comfort of criminals in high places. Isikoff is actually pretty well known, and highly respected, among those with more than 2 brain cells to rub together.

Newsweek is an old-time, blue-blood, conservative publication, but they still let the truth be told, every now and then.

I wish our side would BLAST the newsweek editors with e-mails, telling them to quit trying to take the blame for the article. The destruction of the Koran during torture/interrogation has been reported by other agencies, including the Red Cross. If it wasn't for the fact that THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION is allowing torture, Newsweek WOULDN'T HAVE HAD ANYTHING TO REPORT!!

My mom always said "the best way to avoid blame is to always make sure you're doing the right thing, and stay a good distance away from any trouble."

If bush doesn't want to be blamed for ANY torture (including desecration of the Holy Koran), he should be keeping his military house in order! After all, HE'S THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF, and a fish stinks from the head, down. That just ISN'T the fault of Newsweek, or thier star truth-telling reporter!

:kick::kick::kick:

[asjr]

2. As far as the media go, I would say those in it who do not

have the shadow of the sword over their necks would be the patriotic ones. When I say patriotic I mean the ones who love America and are not in the wallets of the RW. With few exceptions the media in the US is just another branch of a right wing government. Keep them in the dark is their motto.