“Most trusted man in America” pushed globalist agenda

In this Aug. 25, 1998 file photo, President Clinton waves as he sails with wife Hillary and daughter Chelsea aboard a sailboat skippered by former CBS Anchor Walter Cronkite near Edgartown, Mass. Famed CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite, known as the ‘most trusted man in America’ has died, Friday, July 17, 2009. He was 92.AP Photo

Meet the real Walter Cronkite

‘Most trusted’ newsman pushed radical agenda

WorldNetDaily | Jul 18, 2009

By Joseph Farah

WASHINGTON – Walter Cronkite is dead at 92 – but most Americans, many of whom considered him “the most trusted man” in the country during his reign as CBS News anchor – still don’t know what motivated him and how he secured such an influential and lofty position.

He was like a grandfatherly institution in the early days of TV. People believed him. Uncle Walter wouldn’t lie, America believed.

Thus, when he gave his opinions, they had impact. One example was his report on the Tet offensive in Vietnam, which is credited with swinging the tide of opinion against the war.

Even in his death, however, nobody has addressed how and why an otherwise obscure figure at the time was elevated to become the most prominent anchorman on television.

The story was told publicly in the July 10, 2000, edition of the Nation, a Marxist-oriented journal, in a report on death of Blair Clark, who served as editor of the Nation from 1976 through 1978: “Whether it was calling on Philip Roth to recommend a Nation literary editor or persuading CBS News president Richard Salant to make Walter Cronkite anchor of CBS Evening News, Blair had a gift for the recognition and recruitment of excellence.”

Clark was not only the editor of the Nation, he was also heir to the Clark thread fortune, a Harvard classmate and friend of John F. Kennedy, a buddy of Washington Post Editor Ben Bradlee and the manager of Eugene McCarthy’s 1968 campaign for the Democratic Party presidential nomination.

He veered back and forth between politics and journalism seamlessly as an associate publisher of the New York Post, a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, vice president and general manager of CBS News and yet remained a fixture in Democratic Party politics throughout his career.

Clark wasn’t the kind of man who would promote Walter Cronkite for the most visible job in journalism because of his press accomplishments alone – and his press accomplishments were noticeably meager.

Cronkite never graduated from college. He had entered the University of Texas at Austin, but left to take a part-time job reporting for the Houston Post. In 1939, he got a job at United Press and covered World War II.

While working for UP, Cronkite was offered a job at CBS by Edward R. Murrow – and turned it down. He finally accepted a second offer in 1950, and stepped into the new medium of television.

He became the host of “You Are There” in which key moments of history were recreated by actors. Cronkite was depicted on camera interviewing “Joan of Arc” or “Sigmund Freud.” But somehow, he managed to make it believable. From that entertainment series, he went on to be named host of “The Morning Show” on CBS, where he was paired with a partner: a puppet named Charlemagne. In 1961, CBS named him the anchor of the “CBS Evening News” – a 15-minute news summary anchored for several years by Douglas Edwards, thanks to prodding from a socialist activist who edited The Nation.

Just a few years later, his commentaries on the Vietnam War were credited with turning the tide of American opinion against that conflict.

“But Walter was always more than just an anchor,” said Barack Obama upon his death. “He was someone we could trust to guide us through the most important issues of the day; a voice of certainty in an uncertain world. He was family. He invited us to believe in him, and he never let us down. This country has lost an icon and a dear friend, and he will be truly missed.”

After leaving his position with CBS, Cronkite’s political activism and offbeat ideas had no restraints.

In 1989, Cronkite spoke to a dinner organized by People for the American Way, a group founded by Norman Lear. His candid politics surprised even that audience.

“I know liberalism isn’t dead in this country,” he said. “It simply has, temporarily we hope, lost its voice.”

“About the Democratic loss in this election … it was not just a campaign strategy built on a defensive philosophy. It was not just an opposition that conducted one of the most sophisticated and cynical campaigns ever. … It was the fault of too many who found their voices stilled by subtle ideological intimidation.”

“We know that unilateral action in Grenada and Tripoli was wrong. We know that Star Wars means uncontrollable escalation of the arms race. We know that the real threat to democracy is half a nation in poverty. … We know that religious beliefs cannot define patriotism. … God Almighty, we’ve got to shout these truths in which we believe from the housetops. Like that scene in the movie ‘Network,’ we’ve got to throw open our windows and shout these truths to the streets and the heavens. And I bet we’ll find more windows are thrown open to join the chorus than we’d ever dreamed possible.”

In 1999, he appeared at the United Nations to accept the Norman Cousins Global Governance Award from the World Federalists Association. He told those assembled, including Hillary Rodham Clinton, that the first step toward achieving a one-world government – his personal dream – is to strengthen the United Nations.

“It seems to many of us that if we are to avoid the eventual catastrophic world conflict we must strengthen the United Nations as a first step toward a world government patterned after our own government with a legislature, executive and judiciary, and police to enforce its international laws and keep the peace,” he said. “To do that, of course, we Americans will have to yield up some of our sovereignty. That would be a bitter pill. It would take a lot of courage, a lot of faith in the new order.”

In his acceptance speech, Cronkite added, “Pat Robertson has written in a book a few years ago that we should have a world government, but only when the Messiah arrives. He wrote, literally, any attempt to achieve world order before that time must be the work of the devil. Well, join me. I’m glad to sit here at the right hand of Satan.”

Later, in an interview with the BBC, Cronkite described this new order as something that sounded like a militaristic world dictatorship.

“I wouldn’t give up on the U.N. yet,” he said. “I think we are realizing that we are going to have to have an international rule of law. We need not only an executive to make international law, but we need the military forces to enforce that law and the judicial system to bring the criminals to justice before they have the opportunity to build military forces that use these horrid weapons that rogue nations and movements can get hold of – germs and atomic weapons.”

He spoke openly about the need for America to give up its national sovereignty.

“American people are going to begin to realize they are going to have to yield some sovereignty to an international body to enforce world law, and I think that’s going to come to other people as well,” he said. “It’s a fair distance to get there, but we are not ever going to get there unless we keep trying to push ourselves onto the road.”

The other day I came across this statement Cronkite said in accepting the 1999 Norman Cousins Global Governance Award at the ceremony at the United Nations:

“It seems to many of us that if we are to avoid the eventual catastrophic world conflict we must strengthen the United Nations as a first step toward a world government [emphasis mine] patterned after our own government with a legislature, executive and judiciary, and police to enforce its international laws and keep the peace. To do that, of course, we Americans will have to yield up some of our sovereignty. That would be a bitter pill. It would take a lot of courage, a lot of faith in the new order. But the American colonies did it once and brought forth one of the most nearly perfect unions the world has ever seen.”

Panic and hype have reached pandemic levels

Daily Iowan | May 5, 2009

BY DI EDITORIAL BOARD

People with runny noses, congestion, or a bad cough can be a common sight in spring. Along with sunnier days, the occasional rainy day, and warmer temperatures, spring allergies are a rite of passage — oddly, a sign of good things to come. Unfortunately, allergies aren’t the only things giving people runny noses this spring.

A couple of weeks ago, reports of a “new, exotic” disease infecting people in Mexico caught the world’s attention as if it were a baby in a well or a party girl gone missing in Aruba. The Mexican government initially reported around 150 deaths from the dreaded “swine flu,” as well as thousands more infected. It even prompted the government to shut down most of Mexico City until officials could control the contagion. Soon, other countries reported outbreaks. As of Monday, the World Health Organization listed on its website 21 countries with confirmed cases of influenza A (H1N1) — the scientific name for the flu. Worldwide, there are 1,085 officially reported cases, prompting the WHO to raise its pandemic level from level four to five. Its scale tops out at six.

Governments’ responses have varied around the globe, with some countries taking drastic steps in dealing with the virus. The French government recommended an EU-wide travel ban to and from the Americas. A hotel in Hong Kong is under full quarantine when authorities learned occupants were infected with the new flu after leaving Mexico. The Egyptian government has ordered farmers to exterminate the entire pig population. The Russian and Chinese governments imposed trade restrictions on pork imports from the Americas.

This is a severe overreaction, given the scope and danger the H1N1 virus (which was originally called swine flu) presents to the world. Yes it is alarming that the flu was able to infect as many areas as it has, but the degree of infection is so slight that such drastic actions as culling entire pig populations or imposing trade restrictions on pork or quarantine people arriving from Mexico do more harm than good.

The WHO has confirmed only 26 deaths, 25 of them in Mexico. One of the reasons the initial fatalities coming out of Mexico were so high could be from misdiagnosis. Seasonal flu reaches Mexico about this time, and it is a much more lethal strain. In the United States alone, the seasonal flu may kill between 30,000 and 35,000 people in a year. The symptoms are similar, so it is understandable that Mexican officials misreported fatalities from the “new” flu.

Culling pig herds and imposing trade restrictions on pork products is not only an overreaction but a futile attempt. According to both the WHO and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it’s impossible to contract “swine” flu from eating pork products and nearly impossible to contract the flu directly from pigs. It’s even a misnomer to label it “swine” flu. This particular strain of H1N1 is really what scientists call a chimera — a combination of three strains of the flu: swine, human, and avian. At this point, it’s unknown how much of the virus is made up of swine flu as opposed to the avian and human flu. It is quite common for viruses such as the flu to naturally mutate and even combine with other viruses. That is how they jump from one species to another. “Swine” flu wouldn’t be able to infect humans if it didn’t contain genetic material from human flu.

It seems foolish, in a light of these numbers and facts, to react as many have. While potential pandemics shouldn’t be taken lightly, there is no need to panic. We encourage Americans to follow flu updates closely but not to pay too much attention the hype and panic which has become commonplace on television and in newspapers over the past few weeks.

Beijing’s Propaganda Goes Global

Shouldn’t we be blocking Chinese state media in the U.S.?

Forbes | May 6, 2009

by Gordon G. Chang

On April 30, China’s State Council banned “foreign financial information providers” from undertaking “news gathering activities” inside the country. The new measure appears inconsistent with Beijing’s agreement, reached last November with Canada, the European Union and the U.S., to withdraw rules that severely restricted the activities of foreign news organizations. The withdrawn rules were clearly in violation of China’s World Trade Organization obligations.

While Beijing was further restricting foreign media in China, the country’s Communist Party was launching its English-language Global Times newspaper. This publication, which joins an existing Chinese-language tabloid of the same name, is a product of Beijing’s latest initiative to create international media giants.

The primary beneficiaries of Beijing’s media-building efforts, first revealed this January by Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post,will be state broadcaster China Central Television, better known as CCTV; the Communist Party’s flagship publication, People’s Daily, and state-run Xinhua News Agency.

In addition to the new Global Times, Beijing’s media initiative contemplates that Xinhua will almost double the number of its bureaus so that it will have offices in almost every country; CCTV will add Russian and Arabic channels to its Chinese and other language broadcasting and Xinhua will begin a worldwide 24-hour news channel on the model of Al Jazeera.

The new Global Times, in an editorial issued on its launch date, stated that it would “strive to reveal a complete and true picture of China” and that it is “dedicated to conveying the original voices of Chinese people,” but it is almost impossible for a Communist Party publication to do any of this. What the paper really meant is what Beijing said in January: Its goal is to “better convey a good image of China to the world.” That’s a difficult task for Beijing. Unfortunately for the one-party state, many of its messages sound off-key or, worse, belligerent.

So it’s no surprise that Beijing’s publications often appear propagandistic. Even when they don’t, they look bland, especially the official China Daily, which just launched a U.S. edition this February. Due to these disadvantages, if the Chinese people had a real choice, state media would be commercially unviable in China. And, despite recent improvements in presentation and content, some of it already is.

So how will the Communist Party’s media survive outside the Chinese homeland? To overcome the handicap, the Ministry of Finance will be supporting Beijing’s January plan to the tune of 45 billion yuan–about $6.6 billion–in grants and subsidies. Undoubtedly, the Chinese central government will be providing more assistance when this initial funding runs out.

The subsidies inevitably raise a trade issue. Xinhua, CCTV and People’s Daily all will be competing with privately owned media that is not supported by government grants. Moreover, there is an even more important trade question. The Chinese central government blocks Voice of America and Radio Free Asia and severely restricts CNN and other privately owned networks, of course. Yet at the same time, CCTV is allowed to distribute widely its English and Chinese programming on cable in the U.S. So should we allow any Chinese media–TV programming, books, newspapers or magazines–here? The buzz word is “reciprocity,” and we should be demanding it.

For far too long, however, the U.S. has not protected its own businesses from Chinese restrictions. In a series of agreements–especially the 1999 deal paving the way for China’s WTO membership–Washington has accepted less access to the Chinese market than China has to the American one. Worse, successive administrations have failed to hold Beijing to its trade promises–enforcement has almost always been lackadaisical–and neglected to take full advantage of the trade benefits previously negotiated.

At one time, not requiring reciprocity may have made sense, but in past years, China’s trading relationship with the U.S. has become unbalanced and unsustainable. The Chinese have run a trade surplus against the United States for every year since 1983. And the problem is getting worse: Beijing’s surplus with America was $232.6 billion in 2006, $256.2 billion in 2007 and $266.3 billion last year. The trade deficit with China was just $304 million in 1983.

Beijing’s “go global” media initiative raises more than just trade issues, of course. The U.S. is an open society, protected by the First Amendment, the core of American civil liberties. We have operated under the principle that a vigorous public debate is essential to a free society. Yet now an authoritarian state is seeking to influence that debate by spreading what it calls “external propaganda.”

Should we permit China to do that? Whether we wish to acknowledge it or not, the Chinese government views the U.S. as an adversary in much the same way the Soviet Union once did. Although Beijing’s acts are more subtle than those of Cold War-era Moscow, its tactics–like the covert spread of nuclear weapons technology to dangerous regimes–are often just as disruptive.

So, it is time to begin thinking about the national security implications of China’s trade practices. The first thing we can do is impose the same prohibitions on Chinese media in the American market that Beijing imposes on American media in China. We can do that within the framework of both WTO rules and our constitutional principles. After all, this is a trade issue, and the Chinese government does not have a First Amendment right to disseminate propaganda in the United States. As the Supreme Court has noted, “The Constitution is not a suicide pact.”

Tom Braden dies at 92; former CIA operative became columnist and talk show co-host

“The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media.”

- Former CIA Director William Colby

Tom and Joan Braden with their eight children in an undated photograph. The family’s misadventures provided amusing grist for many of Braden’s newspaper columns and led to the ABC comedy-drama “Eight Is Enough,” which aired from 1977 to 1981.

He also wrote ‘Eight Is Enough,’ a 1975 memoir that spawned the popular TV series.

LA Times | Apr 4, 2009

By Elaine Woo

Tom Braden, a former CIA operative who became a syndicated newspaper columnist, liberal co-host of the CNN talk show “Crossfire” and author of “Eight Is Enough,” a 1975 memoir that spawned the popular television series, died of natural causes Friday at his Denver home, his family said. He was 92.

Braden was the father of eight children whose misadventures provided amusing grist for many of his newspaper columns and led to the ABC comedy-drama “Eight Is Enough,” which aired from 1977 to 1981 and starred Dick Van Patten as Tom Bradford, a Sacramento columnist with a brood of children ages 8 to 23.

But Braden was also prominent as one of the original co-hosts of “Crossfire,” the topical show that made its debut in 1982 and pitted him against former Nixon aide and political commentator Pat Buchanan.

His varied careers also included a Cold War-era stint with the CIA’s International Organizations Division, which secretly funded anti-communist front groups and promoted American culture in Europe by sponsoring visits of American symphonies and publishing Encounter magazine. He defended the covert operations in a controversial 1967 article in the Saturday Evening Post titled “Why I’m Glad the CIA Is Immoral.”

Braden was born in Greene, Iowa, on Feb. 22, 1917. His father worked a variety of jobs, including at a tie store and a bank. His mother was a writer for American Mercury, the magazine founded by H.L. Mencken and drama critic George Jean Nathan.

Braden dropped out of high school during the Depression and worked briefly for a printing press in New York. He wanted to go to college and applied to Dartmouth, which was one of the few schools that accepted students without a high school degree. He was interested in journalism and became editor of the campus newspaper. He graduated in 1940.

In 1941, he went to England and was among a small group of Americans who enlisted in the King’s Royal Rifle Corps in the British Army to fight in World War II. He later joined the U.S. Army and shifted to intelligence work for the Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor of the CIA.

With Stewart Alsop, the columnist and political analyst who had also fought with the British Army and joined the OSS, Braden wrote the book “Sub Rosa: The OSS and American Espionage” (1946).

After the war, he taught for a few years at Dartmouth, where he met poet Robert Frost, who encouraged him to pursue journalism. But in 1950 he joined the CIA and worked for Allen Dulles, who became CIA director in 1953. One of Braden’s duties was to funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars to anti-communist elements in labor unions such as the AFL-CIO.

He also helped the agency wage a propaganda war by sponsoring cultural events, including a European tour of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and placing agents in various organizations, including Encounter magazine. Braden himself was a covert cultural agent who worked as executive secretary at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

After leaving the CIA in 1954, he moved with his family to California, where he became involved in politics. During most of the 1960s, he was president of the state Board of Education, where he often feuded with Max Rafferty, the conservative superintendent of public instruction. In 1966, he ran unsuccessfully for lieutenant governor against Democratic incumbent Glenn M. Anderson.

For 13 years, he also published an Oceanside newspaper, the now-defunct Blade-Tribune, which he had purchased in 1954 with a $100,000 loan from Nelson Rockefeller, the industrialist who became New York governor. He repaid Rockefeller when he sold the paper for more than $1 million in 1968.

After selling the newspaper, he moved with his wife, Joan, and their large family to Washington, D.C., where he became a columnist.

He started to tangle with Buchanan after a writing a column critical of the Nixon special assistant in 1973. Buchanan fired back with an angry letter.

Four years later, Braden was tapped to replace Frank Mankiewicz, a former Robert Kennedy campaign aide, on a nationally syndicated radio program called “Confrontation” on which Buchanan provided the opposing viewpoint. In 1982, they took their bruising debates to CNN, launching “Crossfire.” Braden argued from the left for seven years, until he was replaced by Michael Kinsley in 1989.

As a columnist, Braden often struggled to find material. “When he was desperate for a column, he wrote about us,” his daughter Susan Braden said in an interview Friday.

He turned the pieces about his children into a book after a Washington colleague, columnist Joseph Alsop, told him that his best writing involved his family’s ups and downs.

The book didn’t sell well at first, despite the many entertaining tales Braden told, such as when one son was arrested on marijuana charges and when a daughter’s pet boa constrictor went missing. He also told of the time the family’s lamb nuzzled up against a famous dinner guest, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.

Braden’s wife died in 1999. His son Tommy, the seventh of his eight children, died in 1994. His surviving children are David Braden of Taipei, Taiwan; Mary Poole of Alexandria, Va.; Susan Braden of Takoma Park, Md.; Joannie Braden, Nancy Basta and Elizabeth Braden, all of Denver; and Nicholas Braden of Washington, D.C. He also leaves 12 grandchildren.

_______

Related

Operation Mockingbird: CIA Media Manipulation
Mockingbird was an immense financial undertaking with funds flowing from the CIA largely through the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) founded by Tom Braden with Pat Buchanon of CNN’s Crossfire.

Congressman Larry McDonald on Crossfire – 1983
May 1983 Broadcast of Crossfire in which Congressman Larry McDonald takes on Pat Buchanan and Tom Braden. They wrangle over the John Birch Society, the CFR, the CIA and the NWO.

Operation Mockingbird
In May 1967 Thomas Braden responded to this by publishing an article entitled, I’m Glad the CIA is Immoral, in the Saturday Evening Post, where he defended the activities of the International Organizations Division unit of the CIA. Braden also confessed that the activities of the CIA had to be kept secret from Congress.

Pentagon Spending Billions on PR to Sway World Opinion

Associated Press finds that over the past five years, the money the military spends on winning hearts and minds at home and abroad has grown by 63 percent, to at least $4.7 billion this year

The fastest-growing part of the military media is “psychological operations,” where spending has doubled since 2003.

AP | Feb 5, 2009

WASHINGTON– As it fights two wars, the Pentagon is steadily and dramatically increasing the money it spends to win what it calls “the human terrain” of world public opinion. In the process, it is raising concerns of spreading propaganda at home in violation of federal law.

An Associated Press investigation found that over the past five years, the money the military spends on winning hearts and minds at home and abroad has grown by 63 percent, to at least $4.7 billion this year, according to Department of Defense budgets and other documents. That’s almost as much as it spent on body armor for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2004 and 2006.

This year, the Pentagon will employ 27,000 people just for recruitment, advertising and public relations — almost as many as the total 30,000-person work force in the State Department.

“We have such a massive apparatus selling the military to us, it has become hard to ask questions about whether this is too much money or if it’s bloated,” says Sheldon Rampton, research director for the Committee on Media and Democracy, which tracks the military’s media operations. “As the war has become less popular, they have felt they need to respond to that more.”

Yet the money spent on media and outreach still comes to only 1 percent of the Pentagon budget, and the military argues it is well-spent on recruitment and the education of foreign and American audiences. Military leaders say that at a time when extremist groups run Web sites and distribute video, information is as important a weapon as tanks and guns.

“We have got to be involved in getting our case out there, telling our side of the story, because believe me, al-Qaida and all of those folks … that’s what they are doing on the Internet and everywhere else,” says Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., who chairs the Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee. “Every time a bomb goes off, they have a story out almost before it explodes, saying that it killed 15 innocent civilians.”

——

On an abandoned Air Force base in San Antonio, Texas, editors for the Joint Hometown News Service point proudly to a dozen clippings on a table as examples of success in getting stories into newspapers.

What readers are not told: Each of these glowing stories was written by Pentagon staff. Under the free service, stories go out with authors’ names but not their titles, and do not mention Hometown News anywhere. In 2009, Hometown News plans to put out 5,400 press releases, 3,000 television releases and 1,600 radio interviews, among other work — 50 percent more than in 2007.

The service is just a tiny piece of the Pentagon’s rapidly expanding media empire, which is now bigger in size, money and power than many media companies.

In a yearlong investigation, The Associated Press interviewed more than 100 people and scoured more than 100,000 pages of documents in several budgets to tally the money spent to inform, educate and influence the public in the U.S. and abroad. The AP included contracts found through the private FedSources database and requests made under the Freedom of Information Act. Actual spending figures are higher because of money in classified budgets.

The biggest chunk of funds — about $1.6 billion — goes into recruitment and advertising. Another $547 million goes into public affairs, which reaches American audiences. And about $489 million more goes into what is known as psychological operations, which targets foreign audiences.

Staffing across all these areas costs about $2.1 billion, as calculated by the number of full-time employees and the military’s average cost per service member. That’s double the staffing costs for 2003.

Recruitment and advertising are the only two areas where Congress has authorized the military to influence the American public. Far more controversial is public affairs, because of the prohibition on propaganda to the American public.

“It’s not up to the Pentagon to sell policy to the American people,” says Rep. Paul Hodes, D-N.H., who sponsored legislation in Congress last year reinforcing the ban.

Spending on public affairs has more than doubled since 2003. Robert Hastings, acting director of Pentagon public affairs, says the growth reflects changes in the information market, along with the fact that the U.S. is now fighting two wars.

“The role of public affairs is to provide you the information so that you can make an informed decision yourself,” Hastings says. “There is no place for spin at the Department of Defense.”

But on Dec. 12, the Pentagon’s inspector general released an audit finding that the public affairs office may have crossed the line into propaganda. The audit found the Department of Defense “may appear to merge inappropriately” its public affairs with operations that try to influence audiences abroad. It also found that while only 89 positions were authorized for public affairs, 126 government employees and 31 contractors worked there.

In a written response, Hastings concurred and, without acknowledging wrongdoing, ordered a reorganization of the department by early 2009.

Another audit, also in December, concluded that a public affairs program called “America Supports You” was conducted “in a questionable and unregulated manner” with funds meant for the military’s Stars and Stripes newspaper.

The program was set up to keep U.S. troops informed about volunteer donations to the military. But the military awarded $11.8 million in contracts to a public relations firm to raise donations for the troops and then advertise those donations to the public. So the program became a way to drum up support for the military at a time when public opinion was turning against the Iraq war.

The audit also found that the offer to place corporate logos on the Pentagon Web site in return for donations was against regulations. A military spokesman said the program has been completely overhauled to meet Pentagon regulations.

“They very explicitly identify American public opinion as an important battlefield,” says Marc Lynch, a professor at George Washington University. “In today’s information environment, even if they were well-intentioned and didn’t want to influence American public opinion, they couldn’t help it.”

In 2003, for example, initial accounts from the military about the rescue of Pvt. Jessica Lynch from Iraqi forces were faked to rally public support. And in 2005, a Marine Corps spokesman during the siege of the Iraqi city of Fallujah told the U.S. news media that U.S. troops were attacking. In fact, the information was a ruse by U.S. commanders to fool insurgents into revealing their positions.

——

The fastest-growing part of the military media is “psychological operations,” where spending has doubled since 2003.

Psychological operations aim at foreign audiences, and spin is welcome. The only caveats are that messages must be truthful and must never try to influence an American audience.

In Afghanistan, for example, a video of a soldier joining the national army shown on Afghan television is not attributed to the U.S. And in Iraq, American teams built and equipped media outlets and trained Iraqis to staff them without making public the connection to the military.

Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, director of strategic communications for the U.S. Central Command, says psychological operations must be secret to be effective. He says that in the 21st century, it is probably not possible to win the information battle with insurgents without exposing American citizens to secret U.S. propaganda.

“We have to be pragmatic and realistic about the game that we play in terms of information, and that game is very complex,” he says.

The danger of psychological operations reaching a U.S. audience became clear when an American TV anchor asked Gen. David Petraeus about the mood in Iraq. The general held up a glossy photo of the Iraqi national soccer team to show the country united in victory.

Behind the camera, his staff was cringing. It was U.S. psychological operations that had quietly distributed tens of thousands of the soccer posters in July 2007 to encourage Iraqi nationalism.

With a new administration in power, it is not clear what changes may be made. Obama administration officials have said they intend to go through the Department of Defense budget closely to trim bloated spending.

The emphasis on influence operations started with former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. In 2002, Rumsfeld established an Office of Strategic Influence that brought together public affairs and psychological operations. Critics accused him of setting up a propaganda arm, and Congress demanded that the office be shut down.

Rumsfeld has declined to speak to the press since leaving office, but while defense secretary he spoke bluntly about his desire to revamp the Pentagon’s media operations.

“I went down that next day and said, ‘Fine, if you want to savage this thing, fine, I’ll give you the corpse,”‘ Rumsfeld said on Nov. 18, 2002, according to Defense Department transcripts of a speech he delivered. “‘There’s the name. You can have the name, but I’m gonna keep doing every single thing that needs to be done and I have.”‘

In 2003, Rumsfeld issued a secret Information Operations Roadmap setting out a plan for public affairs and psychological operations to work together. It noted that with a global media, the military should expect and accept that psychological operations will reach the U.S. public.

“I can tell you there wouldn’t be a single American disappointed with anything that we’ve done that might be out there, that they don’t know about,” says Col. Curtis Boyd, commander of the 4th PSYOP Group, the largest unit of its kind. “Frankly, they probably wouldn’t care because maybe they are safer as a result of it.”

In January 2008, a new report by the Defense Science Board recommended resurrecting the Office of Strategic Influence as the Office of Strategic Communications. But Congress refused to fund the program.

In February, the Army released a new eight-chapter field manual that puts information warfare on par with traditional warfare.

The title of an entire chapter, Chapter 7: “Information Superiority.”

Television coverage of world events in danger of disappearing, warns report

Television coverage of world events is in danger of disappearing from British screens within four years, a new report warns.

Telegraph | Jan 18, 2009

Research by a former BBC executive found that programme schedules will feature more shows about “freaks from Fishguard” and fewer about serious international issues unless action is taken.

The Great Global Switch-Off, by former editor of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme Phil Harding, argues that the lack of a specific strategy and clear executive responsibility has caused confusion and complacency about the delivery of international coverage by broadcasters.

It cites research from the International Broadcasting Trust, which commissioned the report with Oxfam and Polis, indicating that international factual coverage on ITV dropped by 75% in the past five years.

The channel aired just five hours of programmes on the developing world in 2007, the report said, and over the past three years a quarter of coverage of international issues was shunted off mainstream channels to sister digital platforms.

One executive producer interviewed by Mr Harding said: “Without some form of compulsion, broadcasters will commission more programmes about freaks in Fishguard than they will films like China’s Stolen Children and The Transplant Trade.”

While Channel 4 and BBC One and Two were found to be sustaining their levels of international coverage, the report claimed factual programming was dominated by European and American subjects.

Latin America and non-Anglophile countries were currently not being covered by British public service broadcasters, it said.

The report’s commissioners called on public services broadcasters, regulator Ofcom and the Government to introduce radical new measures to address this.

Mr Harding said: “Failure to translate promises about international coverage into meaningful actions means that British television is sleepwalking towards a global switch off.

“The tragedy is that no-one denies the importance of international coverage but at the same time no-one seems prepared to do something about it. This report is a wake up call to senior decision makers to act before it is too late.”

The measures he proposes include that:

:: Each broadcaster be required to introduce a strategy outlining how they will implement their responsibilities in this area.

:: A senior executive be named responsible for international content.

:: BBC World News be broadcast in the UK.

:: BBC iPlayer be expanded to show more international coverage from other channels.

Ofcom said it was currently conducting a review of how to sustain and enhance public service broadcasting in the UK.

A spokesman said: “UK and international news is a core and essential part of public service broadcasting and our review will set out a series of recommendations to the Government about how to ensure this essential content is maintained in the future.”

A Channel 4 spokesman said: “We’re the only UK broadcaster that has a deliberately international remit.

“Programmes like Unreported World focus on moving away from the mainstream news agenda and going to places like Africa, Latin American and Asia to find stories that aren’t being reported by the national media.”

China plans global media expansion

China Central Television building Beijing

AFP | Jan 14, 2009

BEIJING (AFP) — China’s Communist Party wants stepped-up international propaganda to match the nation’s rising might, a move that would include new television channels and overseas newspapers, officials said.

After setting up French and Spanish language television channels ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, China Central Television (CCTV) is also planning new channels in Russian and Arabic, station officials told AFP on Wednesday.

“We began preparing for the Arabic channel in September,” said an official with the new service who asked not to be named.

“We plan to launch in September… and will hire about 100 Arabic speaking people … we don’t need to worry about the money, CCTV has all the money.”

In a speech Monday the nation’s top official for ideology, Li Changchun, called for more overseas propaganda, which he said should focus on singing the praises of the Communist Party and China’s economic achievements.

“We must independently develop an image of a strong and new nation for the entire world to see,” the official Xinhua news agency quoted Li as saying.

“We want our people to pound their chests and say: ‘The sick man of east Asia is not China. The great Chinese people have risen among the nations of the world and China is not poor, backward and stupid.’”

The Global Times, run by Communist Party mouthpiece the People’s Daily, is also planning an English version in the near future, an editor there said.

It would be the nation’s second English-language paper after the China Daily.

Meanwhile Xinhua is also planning to open more bureaus as it expands global news gathering efforts to improve the quality of its international reports, said an editor who identified himself as Chen.

According to Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post newspaper, the Chinese government has earmarked 45 billion yuan (6.6 billion dollars) for the makeover of its media, which is all state-run.

Conrad Black asks George Bush for clemency

Conrad Black leaves the Derksen Federal Courthouse after his sentencing hearing in Chicago December 10, 2007. A U.S. judge on Monday sentenced former media mogul Conrad Black to 6-1/2 years in prison for obstructing justice and defrauding shareholders of one-time newspaper publishing giant Hollinger International Inc.

Times Online | Nov 21, 2008

Conrad Black was sentenced to six years in prison for fraud

By Suzy Jagger in New York

Conrad Black, the peer who once owned The Daily Telegraph, has asked for a pardon from President Bush as part of a last ditch attempt to get out of jail early.

While American presidents are often swamped with appeals for clemency in their last days of office, it is unlikely Lord Black will be heard as the American economy provides ample distraction for George W Bush, especially as he is faced with the perils of bailing out white collar workers from their bad investment decisions.

Under the US Constitution, the president can grant pardons and shorten sentences. But it is highly unlikely that President Bush’s successor Barack Obama would grant clemency as a Democrat, fierce about white collar crime. Mr Obama takes office on January 20.

The Canadian-born peer has been in prison since March when he began serving a six and a half year sentence for defrauding shareholders of Hollinger International, the then owner of The Daily Telegraph newspaper. He is currently serving his sentence in a prison in Florida.
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Lord Black’s lawyers recently submitted legal bills to his former publishing company, some of which referred to work done in pursuit of a clemency plea.

The push for clemency comes after a federal appeals court unanimously upheld Black’s conviction this summer.

Black and three former colleagues were accused of swindling the company — once the world’s third largest publisher of English-language newspapers — out of $6.1 million by giving themselves illegal bonuses.

Murdoch brokered secret truce between Obama and Fox News

Rupert Murdoch helped broker a “tentative truce” between Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and key News Corporation lieutenant Roger Ailes, the boss of Fox News Channel, earlier this year, according to the media mogul’s biographer.

Guardian | Sep 2, 2008

Rupert Murdoch acted as peacemaker between Barack Obama and Fox News

By Oliver Luft

Murdoch, the News Corp chairman and chief executive, was forced to court Obama after the rising star of US politics rebuffed his initial approaches, it is believed because of what he saw as the derogatory coverage of him and his wife, Michelle, on Fox News, according to Michael Wolff.

The News Corp boss also advised Wolff, his biographer, to vote for the man who eventually became the Democratic presidential candidate during the New York primary earlier this year, saying: “He’ll sell more papers.”

These revelations are reported in the October edition of Vanity Fair magazine, which details contributing editor Wolff’s interviews with Rupert Murdoch over a period of nine months for his upcoming biography of the media mogul, The Man Who Owns the News.

After initially snubbing offers of a get-together with the media tycoon, made through the Kennedy family, Obama relented and a secret courtesy meeting with Murdoch was arranged at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York, according to Wolff.

When Obama eventually met Murdoch early this summer in secret, they were joined by Ailes, who runs News Corp’s Fox News Channel.

Wolff reported in Vanity Fair that during the meeting Obama and Murdoch sat knee to knee, with the older man offering the prospective candidate advice.

“Murdoch, for his part, had a simple thought to share with Obama. He had known possibly as many heads of state as anyone living today – had met every American president from Harry Truman on – and this is what he understood: nobody got much time to make an impression. Leadership was about what you did in the first six months,” wrote Wolff.

But Wolff claimed things were different when Ailes took Murdoch’s place.

“Obama lit into Ailes. He said that he didn’t want to waste his time talking to Ailes if Fox was just going to continue to abuse him and his wife, that Fox had relentlessly portrayed him as suspicious, foreign, fearsome – just short of a terrorist,” he wrote.

“Ailes, unruffled, said it might not have been this way if Obama had more willingly come on the air instead of so often giving Fox the back of his hand.

“A tentative truce, which may or may not have vast historical significance, was at that moment agreed upon.”

In the Vanity Fair article Wolff also claimed that Murdoch advised him to vote for Obama during the democratic primaries.

“Just before the New York Democratic primary, when I found myself undecided between Clinton and Obama, I said to Murdoch (a little flirtation, like a little gossip, softens him), ‘Rupert, I don’t know who to vote for – so I’m going to give you my vote. You choose’,” he wrote.

“He paused, considered, nodded his head slowly: ‘Obama – he’ll sell more papers.’”

Murdoch courting Obama marks something of role reversal from the mid-1990s, when UK prime minister-in-waiting Tony Blair actively courted Murdoch as part of his bid for power.

“This is a leap for Murdoch. Murdoch has traditionally liked politicians to come to him. His historic shift in the 1990s to Tony Blair came after Blair made a pilgrimage to Australia,” wrote Wolff.

“Obama, on the other hand, was snubbing Murdoch. Every time he reached out (Murdoch executives tried to get the Kennedys to help smooth the way to an introduction), nothing. The Fox stain was on Murdoch.”

However, the “Fox stain”, as Wolff calls it, does not appear to be one that Murdoch is so comfortable with any more.

Wolff wrote that the influence of Murdoch’s wife Wendi and the courting of more liberal figures in the media has raised a conflict in the News Corp founder, as he would love to build on his purchase of the Wall Street Journal by taking over the New York Times.

“He is spending time now in consideration of an even more far-fetched fantasy, the New York Times: he’d really like to own it too,” Wolff added.

“Now, everybody around him continues to tell him that buying the Times is pretty much impossible. There will be regulatory problems. The Sulzberger family would never … And then there’s the opprobrium of public opinion.

“But it’s obviously irresistible to him. I’ve watched him go through the numbers, plot out a merger with the Journal’s backroom operations, and fantasise about the staff’s quitting en masse as soon as he entered the sacred temple.”

This increasing desire to move for titles away from his traditional right-of-centre political power base is mirrored by a cooling toward Fox News Channel, according to Wolff.

“It’s life with Wendi versus life with Fox. (And, too, it’s the Wall Street Journal – and maybe the New York Times – versus Fox),” he wrote in Vanity Fair.

“Fox has been his alter ego. For a long time he was in love with the Fox chief, Roger Ailes, because he was even more Murdoch than Murdoch. And yet now the embarrassment can’t be missed – he mumbles even more than usual when called on to justify it; he barely pretends to hide the way he feels about [Fox presenter] Bill O’Reilly.

“And while it is not possible that he would give Fox up – because the money is the money; success trumps all – in the larger sense of who he is, he seems to want to hedge his bets.”

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Putin Opponents Digitally Erased From TV

In a still frame from video, the incomplete digital erasure of a Putin critic named Mikhail G. Delyagin from an episode of the program “The People Want to Know” can be seen. Mr. Delyagin’s leg and hand remain visible, to the right of the man holding the microphone.

NY Times | Jun 3, 2008

It Isn’t Magic: Putin Opponents Vanish From TV

By CLIFFORD J. LEVY

MOSCOW — On a talk show last fall, a prominent political analyst named Mikhail G. Delyagin had some tart words about Vladimir V. Putin. When the program was later televised, Mr. Delyagin was not.

Not only were his remarks cut — he was also digitally erased from the show, like a disgraced comrade airbrushed from an old Soviet photo. (The technicians may have worked a bit hastily, leaving his disembodied legs in one shot.)

Mr. Delyagin, it turned out, has for some time resided on the so-called stop list, a roster of political opponents and other critics of the government who have been barred from TV news and political talk shows by the Kremlin.

The stop list is, as Mr. Delyagin put it, “an excellent way to stifle dissent.”

It is also a striking indication of how Mr. Putin has increasingly relied on the Kremlin-controlled TV networks to consolidate power, especially in recent elections.

Opponents who were on TV a year or two ago all but vanished during the campaigns, as Mr. Putin won a parliamentary landslide for his party and then installed his protégé, Dmitri A. Medvedev, as his successor. Mr. Putin is now prime minister, but is still widely considered Russia’s leader.

Onetime Putin allies like Mikhail M. Kasyanov, his former prime minister, and Andrei N. Illarionov, his former chief economic adviser, disappeared from view. Garry K. Kasparov, the former chess champion and leader of the Other Russia opposition coalition, was banned, as were members of liberal parties.

Even the Communist Party, the only remaining opposition party in Parliament, has said that its leaders are kept off TV.

And it is not just politicians. Televizor, a rock group whose name means TV set, had its booking on a St. Petersburg station canceled in April, after its members took part in an Other Russia demonstration.

When some actors cracked a few mild jokes about Mr. Putin and Mr. Medvedev at Russia’s equivalent of the Academy Awards in March, they were expunged from the telecast.

Indeed, political humor in general has been exiled from TV. One of the nation’s most popular satirists, Viktor A. Shenderovich, once had a show that featured puppet caricatures of Russian leaders, including Mr. Putin. It was canceled in Mr. Putin’s first term, and Mr. Shenderovich has been all but barred from TV.

Senior government officials deny the existence of a stop list, saying that people hostile to the Kremlin do not appear on TV simply because their views are not newsworthy.

In interviews, journalists said that they did not believe the Kremlin kept an official master stop list, but that the networks kept their own, and that they all operated under an informal stop list — an understanding of the Kremlin’s likes and dislikes.

Vladimir V. Pozner, host of “Times,” a political talk show on the top national network, Channel One, said the pressure to conform to Kremlin dictates had intensified over the last year, and had not eased even after the campaign.

“The elections have led to almost a paranoia on the part of the Kremlin administration about who is on television,” said Mr. Pozner, who is president of the Russian Academy of Television.

In practice, Mr. Pozner said, he tells Channel One executives whom he wants to invite on the show, and they weed out anyone they think is persona non grata.

“They will say, ‘Well, you know we can’t do that, it’s not possible, please, don’t put us in this situation. You can’t invite so and so’ — whether it be Kasparov or Kasyanov or someone else,” Mr. Pozner said.

He added: “The thing that nobody wants to talk about is that we do not have freedom of the press when it comes to the television networks.”

Vladimir R. Solovyov, another political talk show host, said Mr. Pozner was complaining only because his ratings were down and he was looking for someone to blame if his program was canceled. Mr. Solovyov, a vocal supporter of Mr. Putin, said he had never been bullied by the Kremlin.

Yet last year, his show, “Throw Down the Gauntlet,” regularly featured members of opposition parties. This year, the only politicians to appear have been leaders of Mr. Putin’s party, United Russia, and an allied party.

Asked why he had not invited opposition leaders lately, Mr. Solovyov said: “No one supports them. They have nothing to say.”

Vladimir A. Ryzhkov, a liberal and former member of Parliament who used to appear on the show, said Mr. Solovyov was covering up for the Kremlin.

“He lies, of course,” Mr. Ryzhkov said. “My programs with him were among the highest rated programs of any in the history of his show.”

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