Eric Zuesse (originally published abridged by Strategic Culture Foundation)
The means by which the vast majority of Americans are deceived to believe fake ‘news’ that’s based on fake ‘history’, will be described here, so as to enable America to be understood correctly, as a fake ‘democracy’, the perpetual-war-for-perpetual-peace nation that the entire world considers to be by far the most dangerous nation, the biggest threat to world peace, anywhere on this planet. The system of mass-deceit in America, will be the subject, and examples will be cited here as embodiments displaying this system of mass-deceit — the mass-deceit that enables the U.S. Government to be the world’s most aggressive, most destructive, not only in Iraq, and in Yemen, but shamelessly, and repeatedly, destroying worldwide, with no respect for international laws that this Government blatantly violates, and is never held accountable for having violated. How is this mass-deceit, and total impunity, to be understood correctly, truthfully? That’s the question addressed here.
TIME magazine’s cover-story, “VOICES FROM THE RUBBLE: Syrians on living in the line of fire”, issue-date 12 March 2018, was co-authored by Wendy Pearlman, who recently published a book of narratives from many Syrian-war victims who blame Bashar al-Assad (whom the U.S. Government wants to overthrow) for the miseries they’ve suffered since the “Arab Spring” started in 2011. Her co-authored article in TIME reads like a brief version of her sole-authored book. To read either the book or the article is to receive the impression that Assad must be a monster, and that he certainly is an extremely unpopular person in Syria. However, both impressions are demonstrably false. This isn’t necessarily to assert that Pearlman doesn’t believe what she writes, but only that there’s a great willingness on the part of U.S.-and-allied ‘news’-media to spread (i.e., to hire and publish propagandists who write such) extremely one-sided accounts that support the U.S. Government’s regime-change story-line (in today’s Syria, just the same as it was in 2003 Iraq — but then it was against Saddam Hussein), so that America’s ‘news’media might as well be controlled by the very same people who control America’s invasion-craving international corporations, like Lockheed Martin and ExxonMobil. Accounts from the other side of this war — the side that will here be documented to be the truth, namely that Bashar al-Assad is overwhelmingly popular amongst the Syrian people — have been published online-only, by terrific investigative journalists such as Vanessa Beeley, and Eva Bartlett, among others; but, none of those high-quality journalists have been accepted for publication by mainstream members of the U.S. and allied ‘news’-media. That side regarding this war, the “inconvenient” truth about it, is instead blacked-out, by the mainstream ‘news’ media — the U.S. regime’s PR mouthpieces.
Perhaps what’s even worse is that ‘alternative-news’ media in the U.S. and its allies, have, likewise, almost universally, given voice only (or, in other cases, mainly) to the anti-Assad side of this war. Are they, too, controlled by the U.S. aristocracy?
After all, in any country (such as Syria), there are people who loathe the existing government; ‘journalists’ can be guided (by media-management) to interview them; and, so, propaganda-vehicles such as TIME can select such individuals to interview, in order to stir, amongst the mass of Americans, invasion-and-occupation fever, and thus to boost the stock-market valuations of corporations such as United Technologies and Halliburton.
The example that will be examined in detail here, will be from a recent alt-news TV-and-radio program, in which Wendy Pearlman and two other anti-Assad journalists were interviewed about the Syrian War. That program was broadcast on February 22nd, as an installment of “Democracy Now!” an allegedly ‘progressive’ news-and-commentary program, which, as will be documented here, relies upon American billionaires, for its very existence as a medium that possesses the resources to be able to reach a large audience in the United States.
The following report exposes one faux-‘progressive’ war-monger and propagandist for U.S. invasions of countries that never invaded nor even threatened the U.S.: Amy Goodman, and her “Democracy Now!” ‘alternative’ ’news’ media for Democratic Party billionaires’ international operations (such as for regime-change in Syria). These propaganda-operations (just like the acknowledgedly mainstream ones, such as TIME) promote using U.S. taxpayers’ money (the U.S. military, which is the most respected institution amongst Americans and thus receives “the benefit of the doubt” regarding any atrocities it may perpetrate — such as its having poisoned Iraq with depleted uranium, for example) — using taxpayers’ money for so-called ‘humanitarian’ reasons that are actually just sales-angles for American billionaires’ bloody conquests of resistant foreign countries (in this case, Syria). This propaganda is aimed at fooling liberals, or even “peaceniks,” into supporting what are actually hidden financial benefits for these behind-the-scenes billionaires, benefits which they can win only by means of U.S. military operations that are based on lies — lies promoted by these fake-progressive, warmongering, ‘news’-media, both mainstream (like TIME) and ‘alt-news’ (like “Democracy Now!”). This isn’t to deny that almost all right-wing ‘news’ media also are neoconservative, but simply to demonstrate that most left-wing ones are neoconservative — that neoconservatism (which used to be called, instead, by the term “imperialism”) dominates America’s ‘news’-media, all the way from the “far right,” to the “far left.”
Exposed here will be the depths that hypocrisy and psychopathy (both of which are pervasive at the very top of society, amongst the aristocrats and their retainers) plunge down to, in American ‘news’. This type of operation can be done only by taking advantage, especially, of well-intentioned Democrats, in order for billionaires to become enabled to use taxpayers’ money, to boost actually the private wealth not only of Democratic Party billionaires, but even of Republican Party billionaires — even of ‘the political opposition.’ The example that will be presented in detail here, typifies a depraved scheme for the warfare-state (not the welfare-state, which instead becomes proportionately reduced as the warfare-state becomes increased), a scheme (support of the military-industrial complex, or “MIC,” and its permanent-war-for-permanent-peace economy) which largely controls America, in order to build and maintain the public’s support for obscenely high ‘defense’ spending and billionaires’ ‘defense’ profits, which government-spending (for the welfare of those billionaires instead of the public) produces catastrophes for the victim-nations, such as Iraq 2003, Libya 2011, and Syria 2012-, all of which invasions are especially profitable for the owners of America’s ‘defense’ contractors such as General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin, which depend upon war in order to funnel money from the domestic masses, to the domestic classes, via taxes. And, of course, American resource-extraction corporations, such as oil-and-gas giants, also benefit handsomely from it, by grabbing foreign resources. Megabanks benefit, too. After all: it’s the U.S. aristocracy that’s behind this, the ultimate paymasters for these propaganda-operations (and some details of this fact of aristocratic sponsorship will be documented here).
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Goodman opened her February 23rd youtube,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yXSAYhE0sY
As Death Toll Rises in Eastern Ghouta, Has International Community Abandoned the Syrian People?
Democracy Now! 23 February 2018
“A ‘monstrous campaign of annihilation’ — that’s how the United Nations is describing the Syrian Government’s recent barrage of air strikes and artillery fire against the rebel-held enclave of Eastern Ghouta.”
and she introduced there what were actually her carefully vetted neoconservative-neoliberal three guests, to discuss why Syria’s Government is (supposedly) the enemy of the Syrian people, and thereby, also supposedly, America’s enemy (though it’s actually neither — but it is instead the enemy of American, Saudi, and Qatari, billionaires):
”On Thursday [February 22nd], we hosted an extended web-only conversation with Rawya Rageh of Amnesty International, Syrian-American journalist Alia Malek and Wendy Pearlman, author of ‘We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria’.”
The first thing that was hidden from her viewers was that all three guests are propagandists whose careers are heavily dependent upon their having won approval from U.S. billionaires and centi-millionaires, and from those individuals’ foreign colleagues.
The Wikipedia article about Raya Rageh lists the numerous employers and sponsors of her career, such as Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and Al Jazeera — the broadcast network controlled by the royal Thani family, who own gas-rich Qatar (and who want a gas-pipeline to be built through Syria into the European Union), and whose media-strategy (since they’re allies of U.S. billionaires) is to broadcast pro-jihadist propaganda inside the country that they own (Qatar), in its Arabic language, which few Westerners can understand, but to broadcast anti-jihadist propaganda in Western languages in Western and anti-jihadist countries.
Alia Malek received the 2016 Hiett Prize award from The Dallas Institute, which was founded by Margaret McDermott, the former society-page editor of the Dallas Morning News, and the widow of Geophysical Service Inc. co-founder Eugene McDermott, whose company developed technology for finding oil-and-gas deposits, such as in Qatar. Malek was a senior writer for the Thanis’ Al Jazeera America, and has also been published in New Yorker, New York Times, and The Nation. Her popularly selling 2017 book blaming Bashar al-Assad for the war in Syria, The Home That Was Our Country: A Memoir of Syria, describes the “oppression that exists in a dictatorship,” and makes no mention, at all, of the 2014 elections in Syria, which were internationally monitored since there was a war going on, and in which, Syrians, not only inside Syria but who had escaped the war and lived abroad, voted, and in which the sitting President, Assad, won 89% of the total votes cast.
Furthermore, the British polling firm Orb International’s 2014 nationwide Syrian poll found (page 10) 35% support for “The Assad Government” and only 21% support for “Political Opposition” and 14% support for “Moderate armed opposition” plus 13% support for “Violent extremist religious groups”; so, clearly, the existing Government was far preferred over the political opposition, and was even more preferred than that, above the mercenaries (the latter two categories) that the U.S. and its allies were using as boots-on-the-ground proxy fighters to overthrow Assad. This poll also found (p. 11) 20% wanting the next Government to be “Current regime” and 15% wanting it to be “Bashar Al Assad” but found (p. 12) that “Political Opposition” was preferred over “The Assad Government” in 4 of the country’s 12 regions — Daraa, Idlib, Hasakah, and Raqqa — and these were precisely the regions where the forces to overthrow Assad were strong. The U.S. Government used Al Qaeda to train the jihadist groups in Daraa, Idlib, and Hasakah, but only infrequently armed or otherwise supported ISIS, which controlled Raqqa.
A year later, Orb polled again, and found (“Table 3”) that 47% of Syrians said that Assad had a “positive” effect on the country (this question hadn’t been asked in the year-earlier, 2014, poll); 37% said “Arab Gulf Countries” (the U.S. Government’s allies) did; 36% said “Free Syrian Army” (America’s proxies or boots-on-the-ground fighting against Assad) did; 25% said “Nusra Front” (Al Qaeda in Syria, which trained and led the Free Syrian Army) did; and 21% said “Islamic State” (ISIS or ISIL) did. 76% said ISIL had a “negative effect” on Syria. ISIL was hated; but, apparently not as much as U.S.: When asked to “explain the presence of ISIL in Iraq/Syria,” a full 82% of Syrians answered (Table 26) “ISIL is produced by the United States.”
So, Amy Goodman’s propaganda in “Democracy Now!” regarding Syria, was actually against any democracy at all, in Syria; because, clearly, democracy would retain the existing Syrian President in office. Her position was thus identical to former U.S. President Barack Obama’s position, against democracy in Syria, and for Al Qaeda in Syria. U.S. President Donald Trump continues that policy.
Moreover, even in some Western countries that are allied with the U.S. Government, the lies by U.S. ’news’media on this matter, are evidently well-recognized: The French Le Figaro headlined on 29 October 2015, “Les grandes puissances doivent-elles exiger le départ de Bachar el-Assad?” (Should the great powers demand the departure of Bashar al-Assad?) and 72% of its 21,000+ responding readers chose “Non”. But, on “Democracy Now!” there’s no real support, at all, for democracy in Syria (since that would result in continuation of the Assad Government). Instead, there’s deception by show-guests such as these, who are selected because these people actually despise the majority of Syrians.
Here is what Goodman’s guest Wendy Pearlman had written in Huffington Post, on 23 April 2014, under the headline “The Argument Against U.S. Intervention in Syria… And Why It’s Wrong”:
Jihadist groups became powerful in Syria because blood flowed for months while the opposition’s cries for assistance went ignored. Had the international community acted earlier, these extremists might never have emerged on the scene. Most Syrians view al-Qaeda as another form of tyranny. Many have risked their lives to protest agianst [against] it. It is a cruel irony that the United States, which championed the “war on terror,” now leaves besieged civilians to fight al-Qaeda on their own. …
In Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. imposed regime change from the outside. In Syria, an anti-regime struggle emerged from the grassroots. …
The reality (quite the opposite of Pearlman’s “It is a cruel irony that the United States, which championed the ‘war on terror,’ now leaves besieged civilians to fight al-Qaeda on their own”) is that ever since 2012 the U.S. regime has actually been supporting and supplying arms to Al Qaeda in Syria so as to overthrow the secular, non-sectarian, Government of Syria — which Assad heads — and to replace it by a fundamentalist-Sunni theocratic one, which will cooperate with Qatar and Saudi Arabia to allow U.S. oil-and-gas pipelines to be built through Syria. The reality is also that U.S. President Barack Obama entered office in 2009 hoping to do this, and that the entire “Arab Spring” movement was aimed at achieving the Thanis’ will throughout the region: The Thanis are the main financial supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood (which briefly took over in Egypt after the “Arab Spring”), but they also back Al Qaeda when America’s White House does (such as in Syria). And the U.S. Government had long been preparing the “Arab Spring” movement — by no means was it only the Thanis. (In fact, Obama came into office hoping for something like that; and, by 2011, his Administration was actively planning to exploit it specifically so as to overthrow Bashar al-Assad; and, by 2012, the U.S. Government became committed to Al Qaeda in Syria so as to achieve the overthrow.) On 25 February 2016, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. posted a superb article, “Syria: Another Pipeline War”, and some of it was based upon Kennedy family records. To ignore the billionaires who were behind this invasion, of Syria, by tens of thousands of foreign jihadists whom allies of the U.S. Government recruited and armed to overthrow Assad, is journalistic malfeasance, and propagandistic mastery — and that’s virtually all U.S. ‘news’-reporting about this war. That’s done so as to deceive the American public, in the way that America’s billionaires want.
Pearlman’s article blamed Syria’s allies, Iran and Russia, for the Syrian war, instead of blaming the U.S.-Qatar-Saudi-Israeli-Turkish-backed-and-armed Al-Qaeda-led invasion by imported jihadist mercenaries from all over the Sunni-Muslim world into Syria. She especially blamed Assad’s Government for the “starvation” of Syrians, and didn’t mention the all-time record 2006-2010 drought there, which greatly exacerbated the “Arab Spring” in Syria, and Assad’s having been pleading, since 2008, for help against the drought and starvation, from the U.N., and from the U.S. and other governments — pleas that Barack Obama’s Administration simply ignored. For backup on Pearlman’s claim that Assad was to blame, she linked to an article in the notorious neoconservative Democratic Party magazine The New Republic, titled “The War on Bread: How the Syrian regime is using starvation as a weapon”, which alleged (but provided no evidence) that the mass-starvation was the Assad Government’s intentional punishment against a rebelling population. Hearing Pearlman on “Democracy Now!” one didn’t know what her sources were, but in an online article, where they’re easy to identify, they turn out to be virtually all neoconservative and (as is usual for such) oblivious to crucial realities, which, obviously, she wishes to ignore — and builds a successful career on ignoring.
One good summary source about the corruptness of “Democracy Now!” as a conveyance of ‘news’, is provided by the disillusioned former Marxist David Horowitz’s site, which is funded by right-wing billionaires, and here is that summary, but it makes no reasonable sense, because it’s just Republican billionaires’ propaganda against Democratic billionaires propaganda — a spat amongst agents for contending mutually opposed U.S. aristocratic factions — and the only reason I even link to it here is that nothing in that article is false; so, it’s not the deceptive, pernicious, type of propaganda that is encountered at, for example, “Democracy Now!” itself. That summary-article about “Democracy Now!” at Horowitz’s site, was called by Sibel Edmonds a “well-documented and sourced information on Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez, and the stage called Democracy Now!” but Edmonds admitted there, that “If you are one of those confused readers don’t be hard on yourself, the story is designed to confuse and not make any sense. You are not alone.” The title of her confusing article was “BFP Exposé: CIA-Obama-George Soros Coordinated Misinformation Campaign Targets Russia”. She seems unfortunately not to have read Bob Feldman’s articles about “Democracy Now!”
Feldman is the great investigative historian of American billionaires’ control over America’s Democratic Party ‘news’ media — the so-called ‘liberal’ news media in the United States. He has done many articles about most of the mainstream, and also of the major ‘alternative news’, U.S. ‘news’ media, including “Democracy Now!” These articles un-confuse readers, about what’s behind “Democracy Now!” and about how it works. Here are links to, and excerpts from, several he’s done recently, about “Democracy Now!”:
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http://wherechangeobama.blogspot.com/2018/02/in-pay-of-foundations-how-us-power.html
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2018
In The Pay of Foundations: How U.S. power elite foundations fund a ‘parallel left’ media network—Part 1
[photo] Carnegie Corp. of NY President Gregorian, Afghan President Karzai, James Billington in Jan. 2013 with then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2013
In The Pay of Foundations
How U.S. power elite and liberal establishment foundations fund a “parallel left” media network of left media journalists and gatekeepers.
If you check out many of the left alternative media radio/tv shows, publications, websites or blogs that receive grants from the U.S. power elite’s liberal foundations, you’ll notice that they rarely provide their listeners, viewers or readers with much critical news reporting or unflattering historical information about their foundation funders; and they generally also block U.S. left-wing grassroots anti-war activist viewpoints that are not within the parameters approved by the establishment liberal board members and program managers of their foundation funders from being heard on their shows, printed in their publications or featured on their websites or blogs very often.
Yet as long ago as 1915, a Colorado miners’ representative, John R. Lawson, in a statement before the U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations, noted that a “skillful attempt” was “being made to substitute Philanthropy for Justice” and there was “not one of these foundations, now spreading their millions over the world in showy generosity, that does not draw these millions from some form of industrial injustice,” since their millions represented “the withheld wages of the…working-class.” …
By 1995, billionaire speculator George Soros’ Open Society Institute foundation had given the Pacifica Foundation’s KPFA radio station in Berkeley, California a $40,000 [equivalent to over $64,000 in 2018] grant. And in 1996, the Carnegie Corporation of New York foundation gave Pacifica a $25,000 [equivalent to over $40,000 in 2018] grant to launch a daily radio news show, Democracy Now!, hosted and produced by long-time WBAI Evening News producer Amy Goodman, that was initially broadcast from Pacifica’s New York City area WBAI radio station in Manhattan on February 19, 1996.
Sitting on the board of trustees of the Carnegie Corporation of New York (whose assets had increased to $3.3 billion by 2017) in 1996, when it provided Democracy Now! with its initial foundation funding, were U.S. power elite-connected Establishment folks like then-Chevron board member and future Bush II administration National Security Advisor and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the managing editor of the Time Warner mainstream media conglomerate’s Time magazine, Henry Muller, and the multi-millionaire wife of then-U.S. Senator and future 2004 Democratic presidential candidate and Obama administration Secretary of State John Kerry, Teresa Heinz.
And in 2017, the Carnegie Corporation of New York board of trustees included former New Jersey Governor and 9/11 Commission Report Chair Thomas Kean, former New York Times Company CEO and president Janet Robinson, PBS NewsHour Co-Anchor/Managing Editor and Duke Endowment Chairperson Judy Woodruff and the former Commander of U.S. Central Command [CENTCOM) from 2013 to 2016, (Ret.) Genaral Lloyd Austin III, who “was responsible for military strategy and joint operations throughout the Middle East and Central and South Asia” during the Obama administration, according to the Carnegie Corporation website. The same website also noted that Carnegie Corporation of New York trustee Austin helped “to spearhead the 2003 invasion of Iraq as the assistant division commander for the 3rd Infantry Division” and in 2008 “returned to Iraq as the commanding general of the Multi-National Corps-Iraq during the period when the surge forces were drawing down under Operation Iraqi Freedom.”
But the Democracy Now! Productions show, not surprisingly, has apparently never been very eager to provide its viewers, listeners or website readers with much news reporting that examines how the Carnegie Corporation of New York which initially funded it has, historically and currently, been controlled by members of the U.S. power elite, undemocratically concentrates institutional economic power and accumulates wealth from an economic system that exploits workers and middle-class consumers, and works to perpetuate a militaristic, plutocratic, politically undemocratic society in the United States. (end of part 1)
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http://wherechangeobama.blogspot.com/2018/02/in-pay-of-foundations-how-us-power_10.html
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2018
In The Pay of Foundations: How U.S. power elite foundations fund a ‘parallel left’ media network—Part 2
In The Pay of Foundations—Part 2
How U.S. power elite and liberal establishment foundations fund a “parallel left” media network of left media journalists and gatekeepers.
Within New Left Movement anti-war activist circles in New York City prior to the 1980s, it was considered morally and politically contradictory and hypocritical for individuals on the U.S. left, who claimed to be working to build a grassroots-based U.S. left anti-war movement in political opposition to the U.S. power elite, to rely on grant money from foundations—like the Carnegie Corporation and the Ford Foundation—of this same U.S. power elite to fund their “Movement” [allegedly grassroots] work projects. In addition, individuals on the U.S. left who were into middle-class professional “Movement careerism,” left celebrity/”Movement media super-star” status-seeking, individual monopolization of radio-tv media and left-wing microphone access, censorship or exclusion of dissident grassroots anti-war New Left viewpoints or individual “Movement empire-building” entrepreneurial work projects and “Movement profiteering, were generally seen as acting in an undemocratic and politically contradictory way. As the radical feminist journal Women In Revolution reported in its Summer 1970 issue, the Class Workshop was formed “as a reaction to the oppression working-class women experienced in the Movement” and proposed a radical feminist media strategy “in the interests of most women, not in the interests of the privileged few who want to make it on our backs.” Among the media strategy proposals made by the Class Workshop in 1970, for example were the following:
“Anyone who appears in the media is to be drawn by lot from her group. No one is to participate in the media alone…No member of a group can appear as an independent feminist…No individual or group can earn a living by writing or speaking about women’s liberation…Anyone who wants to write should write for the Movement.”
Yet for over 20 years, Democracy Now! accepted foundation money from U.S. power elite foundations and was mainly hosted and produced by just two professional upper middle-class journalists: Amy Goodman and a columnist of the New York Daily News mainstream newspaper (and formerPhiladelphia Daily News mainstream newspaper columnist), Juan Gonzalez. …
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http://wherechangeobama.blogspot.com/2018/02/in-pay-of-foundations-how-us-power_12.html
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2018
In The Pay of Foundations: How U.S. power elite foundations fund a ‘parallel left’ media network—Part 3
In The Pay of Foundations—Part 3
How U.S. power elite and liberal establishment foundations fund a “parallel left” media network of left media journalists and gatekeepers.
In its 1991 edition, Louis Rukeyser’s Business Almanac estimated that “the duPonts are the wealthiest and most powerful dynasty in the United States.” As Gerard Colby also observed in the 1984 edition of his DuPont Dynasty: Behind The Nylon Curtain book:
“No family in America has been richer longer than duPonts…The family has developed many ruses for avoiding any public control over its wealth. Besides their 11 personal trusts, the duPonts have established 37 tax-free foundations…Most of the duPonts, plus the first line of their in-laws and a few of the second line, make up the 250 ‘big’ duPonts…These are the duPonts who comprise the richest family in the world…These are the duPonts who own more estates, more thoroughbred horses, more yachts, more servants than the Queen of England and the royal family…It has been precisely by ‘hard bargaining,’ by exploitation of labor at home and abroad, by fat government contracts, that the duPonts amassed their $10 billion [equivalent to over $23.7 billion in 2018 dollars] fortune.”
Yet since the 1996, Democracy Now! has not seemed eager to produce many radio or tv news show segments that critically examine how the super-rich duPont dynasty members specifically obtained their wealth, historically, and have, specifically, retained their individual wealth since 1996. One reason might be because a Columbia University School of Journalism-administered program funded by the Alfred I. duPont Awards Foundation gave the Pacifica Foundation’s WBAI station a “silver baton” Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award in Broadcast Journalism, for the MacArthur foundation grant-subsidized 1991 “radio documentary on East Timor” that Democracy Now! Productions president Goodman produced; which she personally accepted, at a Jan. 27, 1994 ceremony in Columbia’s Low Library, from corporate media journalist Mike Wallace of CBS News, who was the event’s MC.
DuPont Awards Foundation “silver baton” awards were also distributed to the news departments and professional journalists of mainstream corporate media organizations like ABC, NBC, CNN and PBS-affiliated television stations at this same ceremony, which was broadcast nationally by PBS-affiliated stations. According to the Jan. 28, 1994 issue of Columbia Daily Spectator, “hundreds of radio and television news professionals” from the U.S. mainstream corporate media world “gathered in the rotunda of Low Library” for this annual self-promotional event to celebrate the reporting of mainly Establishment media journalists.
Created in the early 1940s by Jessie Ball duPont in memory of her deceased husband, Alfred I. DuPont, the Alfred I. duPont – Columbia University Awards in Broadcast Journalism, which Columbia University’s School of Journalism has administered since 1968, is funded by the Alfred I. DuPont Awards Foundation that, in turn, receives grants from the Jessie Ball duPont Fund. For example, between July 1, 2013 and June 30, 2016, the Alfred I. duPont Awards Foundation gave Columbia University’s School of Journalism 3 grants, totalling $1,220,000, to fund the duPont awards program; and the Jessie Ball duPont Fund, whose assets exceeded $291 million in 2013, in turn, gave 3 grants, totalling $807,000, to the Alfred I. duPont Awards Foundation. And one year before Goodman was presented with her “silver baton” duPont-Columbia award, Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, itself, was directly given a $1.25 million gift in January 1993 by the Jessie Ball duPont Fund, to continue the Alfred I. duPont Columbia University Awards and other duPont awards program-related activities at Columbia. …
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http://wherechangeobama.blogspot.com/2018/02/in-pay-of-foundations-how-us-power_13.html
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2018
In The Pay of Foundations: How U.S. power elite foundations fund a ‘parallel left’ media network—Part 4
[photo] LBJ with 1992 duPont-Columbia award winner Bill Moyers in White House in late 1963.
In The Pay of Foundations—Part 4
How U.S. power elite and liberal establishment foundations fund a “parallel left” media network of left media journalists and gatekeepers.
Between 1984 and the year before the future Democracy Now! co-host, Amy Goodman, accepted her duPont-Columbia “silver baton” award at the 1994 Low Library ceremony on Columbia University’s campus, the former president of the CBS News corporate media organization, Bill Leonard, was the director of the Alfred I duPont—Columbia University Awards in Broadcasting Journalism program.
A CBS News radio and television show producer during the McCarthy era, Leonard apparently participated in the blacklisting and exclusion from the radio airwaves and tv screens of anti-war leftist U.S. citizens in the 1950s by the CBS mass media conglomerate, on whose board of directors sat former Columbia University trustees William Paley and William A.M. Burden. As the former Alfred I. duPont—Columbia University Awards in Broadcasting Journalism director recalled in his 1987 autobiography In The Storm of the Eye: A Lifetime At CBS:
“…We were all asked to sign what amounted to—hell, what was—a loyalty oath. CBS was the only network to require such an oath…The paper did not say one would be fired for not signing. But…I signed…There was not only the loyalty oath but a system whereby every guest on my several programs had to be cleared in advance through an appointed CBS executive to make sure he or she was not on a blacklist…”
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http://wherechangeobama.blogspot.com/2018/02/in-pay-of-foundations-how-us-power_18.html
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2018
In The Pay of Foundations: How U.S. power elite foundations fund a ‘parallel left’ media network—Part 6
Owned Philly Newspaper where Democracy Now! Co-Host worked & funded NAHJ
In The Pay of Foundations—Part 6
How U.S. power elite and liberal establishment foundations fund a “parallel left” media network of left media journalists and gatekeepers.
Democracy Now! part-time co-host Juan Gonzalez’s career as a professional journalist in the corporate media world began in 1979 after his journalism course instructor at Temple University, who was a moonlighting editor at the Philadelphia Daily News evening newspaper of the Knight-Ridder corporate media firm, that also owned the Philadelphia Inquirer morning daily newspaper, encouraged Gonzalez to apply for a clerical job at the Philadelphia Daily News in late 1978; and he was soon promoted to be a full-time reporter for the newspaper by early 1979.
Prior to merging with the super-rich Ridder dynasty’s newspaper chain in 1974, to create a newspaper chain of 35 daily and 25 Sunday newspapers that made Knight-Ridder the largest U.S. corporate newspaper chain at that time, the super-rich Knight dynasty had purchased its two Philadelphia newspapers from the super-rich Walter Annenberg’s corporate media conglomerate for $55 million [equivalent to over $369 million in 2018] in 1969. When Gonzalez began working for the Knight-Ridder corporate media firm’s Philadelphia Daily News in 1979, John “Jack” Knight and James “Jim” Knight owned 30 percent of Knight-Ridder’s stock, three Ridder dynasty members owned 7 percent of Knight-Ridder’s stock, and the Knight-Ridder board of directors included John Knight, James Knight and the three Ridder dynasty members.
After John “Jack” Knight died two years later, much of the $200 million [equivalent to over $542 million in 2018] worth of Knight-Ridder/Philadelphia Daily News stock which he owned in 1981 was left to the “non-profit” Knight Foundation, to avoid payment of heavy estate taxes. As the Knight Foundation’s 1995 Annual Report noted:
“When John S. Knight died in 1981, he left to the Foundation most of his holdings in Knight-Ridder…James L. Knight succeeded his brother as chairman, and Lee Hills, former Knight-Ridder chief executive officer, was put in charge of planning the transition from a small foundation to one of the largest in the United States…The number of trustees was increased to 13, including two of James Knight’s daughters…”
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http://wherechangeobama.blogspot.com/2018/02/in-pay-of-foundations-how-us-power_25.html
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2018
In The Pay of Foundations: How the U.S. power elite funds a ‘parallel left’ media network—Part 8
Gave Pacifica $23,000 To Help Fund Democracy Now! in 1990s
In The Pay of Foundations—Part 8
How U.S. power elite and liberal establishment foundations fund a “parallel left” media network of left media journalists and gatekeepers.
After the then-NY Daily News owner who employed one of the Democracy Now! show’s co-hosts for over two decades expressed his support, in a late 2008 television interview, for using public funds to bail out the Wall Street banks, whose involvement in unethical subprime mortgage lending helped trigger the Great Recession of 2008, Wayne Barrett noted, in a Nov. 25, 2008 Village Voice article, that “when Zuckerman isn’t running his media properties…he’s the chairman of Boston Properties, the largest office real estate company in the country;” and “that Citigroup rents more than a million square feet from Zuckerman’s company — trailing only the federal government and Lockheed Martin on its list of top 20 tenants.” So one reason Mort Zuckerman argued on television that “we cannot allow a major institution like” Citigroup “to collapse,” and his NY Daily News newspaper argued in an a November 2008 editorial that the U.S. government should “prevent major banking houses like Citigroup from collapsing,” was apparently because the commercial rental income that Zuckerman’s real estate dealmaking firm gained from its Citigroup tenant would be lost if Citigroup, despite having made $300 billion in unethical “toxic” subprime mortgage-related loans, was allowed to collapse, according to Barrett’s Voice article.
When Zuckerman had purchased his NY Daily News newspaper in 1993 for $36.3 million [equal to over $64 million in 2018], his personal worth was then $265 million [equal to over $468 million in 2018]. And during the 20 years that the weekly salary of the part-time co-host of the “parallel left” Democracy Now! show was being provided by Zuckeman’s tabloid corporate newspaper, Zuckerman’s personal wealth increased to around $2.8 billion by early 2018. But, not surprisingly, not many news segments examining how Zuckerman, who also sat on the board of trustees of both NYU and New York City’s WNET-TV affiliate of PBS during these two decades, was accumulating more personal wealth through his commercial real estate dealmaking firm while the gentrification of the Big Apple intensified, were apparently aired or broadcast on a sustained, regular basis by the Democracy Now! producers during these two decades. Yet in just the one year alone of 1999, the gross profits of the NY Daily News owner’s Boston Properties’ firm jumped by 50 percent.
After moving into his NY Daily News office in early 1993, Zuckerman immediately “fired 180 out of 540 members of the Newspaper Guild” at the NY Daily News, “axed two-thirds of the African-American reporters, including all Black males,” and “dismissed [the now-deceased] veteran reporter Dave Hardy, who was one of the Black journalists who won a racial discrimination suit against the newspaper in 1987” when it was still owned by the Tribune media conglomerate, according to the Daily News Workers Campaign for Justice. So, not surprisingly, the Daily News Workers Campaign for Justice then urged people in New York City to boycott Zuckerman’s NY Daily News in 1993. Yet one of the “parallel left” Democracy Now! show’s co-hosts continued to work as a columnist for Zuckerman’s newspaper until 2016; in the year before Zuckerman, a Canadian immigrant, who didn’t become a U.S. citizen until he reached the age of 40 in 1977, finally sold the NY Daily News in September 2017, while still continuing to own his U.S. News & World Report corporate media outlet.
A year after the Carnegie Corporation of New York gave Pacifica the $25,000 grant in 1996 to launch the Democracy Now! show, the J.M. Kaplan Fund foundation, in 1997, gave Pacifica a $13,000 [equal to over $20,000 in 2018] to “support Democracy Now! show;” and in 1998 an additional $10,000 [equal to over $15,000 in 2018] grant to help fund Democracy Now! was given to Pacifica by the J.M. Kaplan Fund foundation. And, not surprisingly, few radio or cable tv segments examining either how the J.M. Kaplan Fund’s founder obtained the money he needed to establish his foundation or how the J.M. Kaplan Fund historically acted as a conduit for the Central Intelligence Agency [C.I.A.] during the Cold War era were aired by Democracy Now! during the last two decades.
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Here’s a gold-mine of earlier findings, by this great historian, Feldman:
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http://web.archive.org/web/20050209102308/http://www.questionsquestions.net/gatekeepers.html
ALTERNATIVE MEDIA CENSORSHIP:
SPONSORED BY CIA’s FORD FOUNDATION?
by bob feldman
The mass-circulation weekly TEMPO accused Ford of having once played, at the urging of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, a covert role in Indonesian political affairs by consciously supporting the work of individuals who were deemed to be sympathetic to the anti-communist aims of American foreign policy.
— Chronicle of Philanthropy, 12/13/01
The Ford Foundation’s history of collaboration and interlock with the CIA in pursuit of U.S. world hegemony is now a well-documented fact…The Ford Foundation has in some ways refined their style of collaboration with Washington’s attempt to produce world cultural domination, but retained the substance of that policy…The ties between the top officials of the Ford Foundation and the U.S. government are explicit and continuing.
—James Petras in “The Ford Foundation and the CIA: A documented case of philanthropic collaboration with the Secret Police” on 12/15/2001
The multi-billion dollar Ford Foundation’s historic relationship to the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] is rarely mentioned on Pacifica’s DEMOCRACY NOW / Deep Dish TV show, on FAIR’s COUNTERSPIN show, on the WORKING ASSETS RADIO show, on The Nation Institute’s RADIO NATION show, on David Barsamian’s ALTERNATIVE RADIO show or in the pages of PROGRESSIVE, MOTHER JONES and Z magazine. One reason may be because the Ford Foundation and other Establishment foundations subsidize the Establishment Left’s alternative media gatekeepers / censors.
http://web.archive.org/web/20030202072116/http://www.questionsquestions.net/feldman/soros.html
Time For Ford Foundation & CFR To Divest?
THE NATION’s NED Connection — part 1 / part 2
The Nation magazine’s not-so-progressive connections to the National Endowment for Democracy and other private agencies with elite ties to the US foreign policy establishment.
Part 1: PACIFICA / DEMOCRACY NOW / DEEP DISH TV
Part 2: FAIR / COUNTERSPIN / INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC ACCURACY / WORKING ASSETS RADIO
Part 3: THE NATION INSTITUTE / RADIO NATION / THE NATION MAGAZINE
Part 4: ALTERNATIVE RADIO / Z MAGAZINE / SOUTH END PRESS
Part 5: MOTHER JONES / FOUNDATION FOR NATIONAL PROGRESS
Part 6: PROGRESSIVE
Part 7: FORD FOUNDATION, THE CIA & U.S. ESTABLISHMENT CONSPIRACY — part 1
Part 8: FORD FOUNDATION, THE CIA & U.S. ESTABLISHMENT CONSPIRACY — part 2
Part 9: FORD FOUNDATION, THE CIA & U.S. ESTABLISHMENT CONSPIRACY — part 3
Part 10: POLITICAL RESEARCH ASSOCIATES’ EDELMAN-BUNDY CONNECTION
The Ford Foundation’s Skull and Bones Link
“Alternative” media paymasters: Carlyle, Alcoa, Xerox, Coca Cola…? (Brian Salter, 29 Sep 2002)
A look at some connections of the Ford Foundation Board of Trustees. …
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So: “Democracy Now!” represents not only the propaganda-entrepreneurs who founded and run it, but virtually the entirety of America’s Democratic Party aristocracy; it represents the neoliberal-neoconservative viewpoint, including its many lies (historical and otherwise); and, in this regard, it’s basically the same as other liberal — or neoliberal-neoconservative — ‘news’-media, such as TIME, CNN and Washington Post. That’s some ‘alternative’ ‘news’, for gullible well-intentioned Americans, who think they live in a democracy.
And this isn’t to say that the ‘news’-media of the Republican Party’s billionaires are any better; if anything, they’re even worse, because they deny so much that’s well-established in science.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
Most of my regular readers – indeed, all of them – know one thing by now: if you’ve come here for the usual bullshit, rah-rah for Our Team conventional wisdom, you’re bound to be disappointed. There are plenty of other places to go for that: I won’t name them, but you get the idea. Here I try to challenge my readers – and myself – and examine the underlying assumptions we’re all supposed to accept. Of course, it would be easy for me to go along with the conventional wisdom and not make any waves: but actually, it would bore me to death. And I guess it would do the same to my readers (at least, I hope it would).
Schild & Vrienden activists took action when they heard open-border activists and marxists were planning to occupy the Gravensteen castle in Ghent.
