Covert Action Information Bulletin: The CIA and the Media

Three years have passed since we last devoted an issue to the ties between the media and the intelligence complex. The need for such scrutiny now, we believe, is greater than ever, and this entire special issue deals with the subject.

As the U.S. government sinks deeper into an ideological morass, the watchdog role of the press becomes that much more important. Yet we see complacency rather than skepticism. The country is being run by people who lie unashamedly, yet most of the media wag their tails and accept everything. Cabinet officers who assert that Grenada is a threat to the national security of the United States should be laughed off the podium; senior military and CIA officials who fear an imminent invasion from the Peoples Republic of Mexico should be retired. Yet it seems that the administration can say almost anything and be taken seriously by a large segment of the Fourth Estate.

We do not demean the efforts of the excellent investigative journalists -- of both the print and electronic media -- who have helped to expose some of the more outrageous abuses of this government, especially the illegal war against Nicaragua. Indeed it is amazing, considering the way the deck is stacked against them, that they can expose anything. Truly, the administration holds almost all the cards. They can manipulate through selective background briefings and orchestrated leaks in a way that very few honest journalists can combat.

Most people in the media have not spoken out. When the present government seems hellbent on pouring many millions into the coffers of every fascist dictator in the world, on arming and financing regimes responsible for torture, disappearances, and thousands of deaths, on flagrantly breaking both U.S. and international law as a matter of course, the media must be intensely critical, not insufferably fawning. When someone lies outrageously, you have to say so, whether the speaker is the President or a famous foreign correspondent. May journalists who accept every foolish bureaucratic utterance should know better; some, unfortunately, do know better. Some unwittingly spread administration disinformation; some create it. In this special issue of CAIB, we study the complex problem of disinformation from a number of perspectives.  (more...)

Covert Action Information Bulletin: The CIA and the Media

Earlier efforts:

More recent happenings:

English Translation of Udo Ulfkotte’s “Bought Journalists” Suppressed?