Writers and Propaganda

"Richard Lance Keeble in "Hacks and Spooks" writes about the close ties between British and American intelligence agencies and the mass media. The media has always closely cooperated with intelligence agencies in both countries, sharing the same political outlook and goals. The CIA, M15 and M16 have used the mass media to plant stories.

For instance, from 1948-77 M16 operated the information Research Department Office (IRD) where it ran dozens of Fleet Street journalists and news agencies across the globe. The IRD, set up by the Labor government in 1948, spread " white" (true), "grey" (partially true) and "black" (false) propaganda about the former socialist countries of central Europe as well as "planting smears, lies, false rumors and forged official reports about the Soviet threat in the media"

The CIA ran its own propaganda unit modeled on the IRD during the 1960s called the Forum World Features to feed false information to the public. The Senate's Church Committee and the House of Representative's Pike Committee revealed in the 1970s that the CIA had invested large resources in propaganda operations. For instance, the CIA had a secret agreement with the New York Times to employ at least 10 agents as reporters or clerks in foreign bureaus. Feminist writer Gloria Steinem was revealed to be an agent. "The Pike Committee found that 29 per cent of the CIA's covert operations was directed at 'media and propaganda,' meaning that in 1978 the agency had spent in this area as much as the combined budgets of the world's biggest news agencies (AP, Reuters and UPI) put together" SOURCE

The media serving the power should not be a surprise. The, so called, "news" industry, has always been a target of intelligence agencies, and for obvious reasons: we are the screen generation, consuming everything directed at us. That the media is a willing participant in these propaganda wars might be surprising to some, particularly to the hopeless FOX audience. But it is not only the TV that messes with our perception of the world. Print, including books, are a part of the battlefield. With the slow demise of paper books, that tangible expression of our thought, some worry that the digital books are too prone to manipulation, to changes at will, the 1984-come-true. Hence the growing number voices calling for the preservation of the printed word.

Would you like to know how the power reaches you on every level, from conscious, to unconscious? Read Propaganada.

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