Auditing the NEWS - MEDIA CRITICISM:

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Auditing the NEWS
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 14:05:41 -0800
From: Fred Cederholm asklet@rochelle.net
To: apfn@apfn.org

http://baltimorechronicle.com/011105Cederholm.shtml

MEDIA CRITICISM:
Let's Apply Auditing Principles to Our Assessment of 'News'
by Fred Cederholm

I’ve been thinking about auditing in the context of the accounting profession’s terms of art: "sufficient competent evidential matter," "fair presentation," "independence," and "professional skepticism," but I am not applying them here to financial statements. Instead, I'm applying those standards and concepts to the news and the mega-media’s reporting of it.

I’ve been a news junkie since high school days. I’ve been a groupie of "60 Minutes" (CBS), "Nightline" (ABC), "Dateline" (NBC), and "The McLaughlin Group" (PBS) from their very beginnings.

Since my business school days, I’ve "audited" the news. When I am struck by a particular news story, I compare to see how other "sources" presented it. I sometimes even research the facts and numbers behind it. What began for me as an act of desire for further knowledge has become a personal quest of necessity. You see, I am not one bit pleased with how reporting/journalism has digressed (and not progressed) regarding its sacred mandate "to inform the public" since my boyhood days of watching Morrow, Cronkite, and Huntley and Brinkley.

In the year since I began writing for newspapers, I’ve learned so very much. I’m not a journalist; my training is that of an historian, an economist, and an accountant (I certainly learned plenty in 21 semesters of college). The evening news and major newspapers may provide the WHO, the WHAT, the WHEN, the WHERE and the HOW of happenings, but rarely (if ever) do they lay the foundations for their respective audiences of the WHY! It is left for their "audience" to ask "WHY is the media presenting THIS, at this time, and in this manner?"

Mega-media journalism/reporting now seems concerned with agendas, with ratings, with market share, and with cross selling/marketing. The way I see it, we’ve gone far beyond the "if it bleeds, it leads." The comic Orwellian media circus of the Peter Finch/Faye Dunaway movie "Network" is here. Who gives a damn if the story is correct, true, or fairly presented? They have to scoop the competition--they can always apologize in the closing credits next week or print a retraction on page 11 in the Saturday Edition. But... when you’ve been slammed in primetime or crucified on page one, where can you really go to get your reputation back? The damage is done.

The network evening news broadcasts have become a half-hour of generic pabulum. If you don’t believe me, channel surf between them. They generally lead-in with the same story, have the same midsections, and end on the same highlight focus--all in 60-second bites. The talking heads are all beautifully dressed, perfectly made up, and impeccably coiffured--and I’m talking about the guys here, too, okay? Sure, every now and again the anchors get out in the trenches and produce a piece of "original" journalism, usually as an in-depth reporting on one of their network’s news magazine shows to prove (to themselves) that they still have "it."

Dan Rather did one such offering on "60 minutes" about President Bush’s National Guard service record in light of newly "found" documents. While that segment lasted only a few minutes, the storm resulting from questioning the veracity of the "documents" has outlasted Hurricanes Charlie, Frances and Ivan.

Rather has been hounded by his fellow media in much the same manner he used in making his own career--back when he smelled blood and doggedly pursued Nixon after Watergate. In 1981, CBS chose to fill Cronkite’s shoes with Rather’s boots. Cronkite always ended his nightly reporting with "and that’s the way it is!" Because of Dan’s recent "evidential matter" disaster, his audience now adds--"Or, is it?"

Yep, I’ve been thinking about this. You should be thinking, too.
Copyright 2005 Fred Cederholm. All rights reserved. Fred Cederholm is a CPA/CFE, a forensic accountant, and writer who contributes the column "TH*NK*NG" to The Weekly Observer in Creston, (Ogle County) Illinois. He is a graduate of the University of Illinois (B.A., M.A. and M.A.S.). He can be reached at asklet@rochelle.net.

Copyright © 2005 The Baltimore Chronicle. All rights reserved.

Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent.

This story was published on January 11, 2005.

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MOCKINGBIRD - The Subversion Of The Free Press By The CIA
... Cronkite was lured to CBS by Operation MOCKINGBIRD's Phil Graham, according to Deborah
Davis. ... This scandal was known by its code name Operation MOCKINGBIRD. ...
LINKS:

Business as Usual at the Pentagon
ProgressiveTrail.org, OR - Dec 16, 2004
... For well over fifty years, the CIA has planted false and misleading stories in the corporate media. It was called Operation Mockingbird. Mary Louise writes: ...
http://progressivetrail.org/articles/041216asUsualatthePentagon.shtml

Business as Usual at the Pentagon

by Kurt Nimmo

published by Another Day in the Empire

Business as Usual at the Pentagon

It�s ironic the following news item appeared in the New York Times:

"The Pentagon is engaged in bitter, high-level debate over how far it can and should go in managing or manipulating information to influence opinion abroad, senior Defense Department civilians and military officers say.

"Such missions, if approved, could take the deceptive techniques endorsed for use on the battlefield to confuse an adversary and adopt them for covert propaganda campaigns aimed at neutral and even allied nations.

"Critics of the proposals say such deceptive missions could shatter the Pentagon�s credibility, leaving the American public and a world audience skeptical of anything the Defense Department and military say�a repeat of the credibility gap that roiled America during the Vietnam War."

If the Pentagon had any credibility, it was shot on the day the Strausscons set up the Office of Special Plans and began cranking out all manner of dissimulation and lies in the run-up to Bush�s invasion of Iraq. Now Bush and Crew want to do this again in preparation for an invasion�or shock and awe bombing raid�against Iran and, down the road, other targets on the �axis of evil� roster.

Curiously, the New York Times seems a little squeamish about this, although they should feel right at home, considering the role they played as a propaganda conduit last time around. For some reason they believe �deception� is not really a problem, so long as it remains a �psychological operation� used �abroad� and not in America. �The question is whether the Pentagon and military should undertake an official program that uses disinformation to shape perceptions abroad. But in a modern world wired by satellite television and the Internet, any misleading information and falsehoods could easily be repeated by American news outlets.�

Left unsaid is the fact that �American news outlets� and ultimately the American people is the intended target of such bamboozlement. This should be obvious, but then the New York Times has a reputation to protect�a reputation as an obsequious propaganda mill.

"Pentagon and military officials directly involved in the debate say that such a secret propaganda program, for example, could include planting news stories in the foreign press or creating false documents and Web sites translated into Arabic as an effort to discredit and undermine the influence of mosques and religious schools that preach anti-American principles."

It�s as if the New York Times and the Pentagon think we were born yesterday�and intellectually a whole lot of us, or Americans at any rate, were born yesterday. For well over fifty years, the CIA has planted false and misleading stories in the corporate media. It was called Operation Mockingbird. Mary Louise writes:

"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."

�The agency wanted these journalists not only to relay any sensitive information they discovered, but also to write anti-communist, pro-capitalist propaganda when needed,� notes Steve Kangas. But it was not enough to simply co-opt news organizations and journalists�the CIA even created its own news organizations from the ground up. Kangas explains:

�The CIA also secretly bought or created its own media companies. It owned 40 percent of the Rome Daily American at a time when communists were threatening to win the Italian elections. Worse, the CIA has bought many domestic media companies. A prime example is Capital Cities, created in 1954 by CIA businessman William J. Casey (who would later become Ronald Reagan�s CIA director). Another founder was Lowell Thomas, a close friend and business contact with CIA Director Allen Dulles. Another founder was CIA businessman Thomas Dewey. By 1985, Capital Cities had grown so powerful that it was able to buy an entire TV network: ABC.�

In fact, as David Guyatt explains, the New York Times was a cherished CIA asset. �Sources told [Carl] Bernstein that the New York Times, America�s most respected newspaper at the time, was one of the CIA�s closest media collaborators. Seeking to spread the blame [after a story about CIA media subversion appeared in Rolling Stone], the New York Times published an article in December 1977, revealing that �more than eight hundred news and public information organizations and individuals,� had participated in the CIA�s covert subversion of the media.�

I have said for months that the Pentagon and the CIA are exploiting the Internet as a vehicle for their disinformation and �psychological war� campaign against Islam, a fact now more or less confirmed by the New York Times. After suggesting that the Nick Berg beheading video was a rather transparent military psy-war op, bloggers and alternative media web sites were accused of belonging to the tinfoil hat brigade. Now that the New York Times has admitted the Pentagon is engaged in �information campaigns or psychological operations,� is it unreasonable to conclude that much of what is going on in Iraq�including kidnapping and suicide bombings�may be attributed to the Strausscons and the Department of Defense�s Special Operations Command?

The New York Times would have us believe such operations are under consideration and have yet to be �endorsed,� when in fact Donald Rumsfeld told us they were afoot a couple years ago. �United Press International has exclusively obtained documents summarizing [a Pentagon report issued by] the Defense Science Board, which will be publicly released in late October [2002], after it has been presented to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.�

"The counter-terror operations group alone would require 100 people and at least $100 million a year. Rather than simply trying to find and foil terrorists� plans�the approach that characterizes the current strategy � the �Proactive Pre-emptive Operations Group� �known as P2OG�would devise ways to stimulate terrorists into responding or moving operations, possibly by stealing their money or tricking them with fake communications, according to the report."

Or engaging in �warfare/deception operations� and attributing these to �terrorists,� for instance the Iraqi resistance.

Our faithful lapdog corporate media would have us believe the CIA is behind the curve on all of this, but as the Los Angeles Times noted in October, 2002, less than a month after 9/11, �a myriad of new organizations are proposed to assume the current duties of older units and post-9/11 anti-terror organizations. It probably is the manner in which the press has summarized the lengthy [DSB P2OG] report, but a first reaction to the obviously necessary expansion and better coordination of US anti-terror measures being postulated in the report is that a formidable bureaucracy is to accompany the improvements (sic).�

The New York Times would have us believe that this �formidable bureaucracy� (created remarkably in non-bureaucratic fashion within weeks of 9/11) is doing little more than countering �falsehoods� broadcast �over mass media outlets like the Arab news satellite channel Al Jazeera,� when in fact they are, and have admitted to, creating their own version of reality as a pretext to unleashed chaos and destruction on the Islamic world.

None of this is new or particularly surprising. Some of us out there in Tinfoil Hat Land have said the government�especially a government under the sway of the masters of deception and covert disinformation, the Israelis, who are the prime movers in the �war� against Islam�has engaged in this behavior for a long time and 9/11 served as an excuse (or was an engineered pretext) for the Pentagon's Brave New World.