By Ted Lang
June 26, 2003
American government utilized radio during WWII with Voice of America and Radio Free Europe during the Cold War. Both programs started out as justifiable, freedom-inspiring endeavors.
The innocuous beginnings of government radio have progressed to where both our government and our two-flavored single political party system selectively present information. Bill Clinton funneled taxpayer money to allow his friends in Hollywood to collect huge "advertising fees" for government sponsored TV ads in America’s "War on Drugs." And Democrats ran their despicable ads against Republicans blaming George Bush for the James Byrd truck dragging murder.
As I had pointed out previously, PBS, NPR, Children's Television Network and the Endowment for the Arts are all funded unconstitutionally by taxpayer funds. And now, the Bush administration's FCC has further empowered the unholy alliance of government and the media.
If Voice of America and Radio Free Europe were beneficial, then so was the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA, created in 1947, was an outgrowth of yet another patriotic World War II agency, the Office of Strategic Services. The CIA began taking liberties with the communication and information power of the news media as related in an article on LewRockwell.com on June 17th. The article, entitled "Neoconservatism: a CIA Front?" was offered as first appearing in 1997 in The Rothbard-Rockwell Report...
The Rothbard-Rockwell piece offers this paragraph as relevant to the government's domination of the media: "If reporters were often led to compromise their integrity at the behest of the warfare state, it was an example set at the highest levels of power in the American media. Press ownership, already concentrated to a ludicrous degree, shared a cozy relationship with the CIA from its start. Those chummy with the Company included Time-Life magnate Henry Luce, former Post owner Philip Graham and assorted New York Times owners in the Sulzberger family. Top editors of the Post and Newsweek have also served as agents, while the Post’s intelligence reporter was on the take from the CIA in the 60s. Katherine Graham, for decades owner of the Washington Post, had this to say to top CIA officials as the Berlin Wall was starting to crack. 'There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn’t. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows.'"
The Sulzberger family and the New York Times lean left-liberal Democrat and are usually anathema to Republicans. But as Rockwell has oft pointed out, "neoconservatives" are really big government tax and squander interventionist welfare-warfare statists. The Times sets the standards for network television news as well as many of the lesser newspapers in the country. The Times owns and operates the Boson Globe. In short, the "newspaper of record" controls and selects what is reported on in America and what is not.
George Washington established that government is only force. Out-of-control tyrannical government can only be stopped by the force. To ensure that government is both aware of this threat to its self-expansionist tendency towards enslaving its population, as well as to ensure that the populace is never denied this advantage, the Founders’ provided the American people with the acid test that is the Second Amendment. The First serves only to ensure that a free and independent press informs and communicates vital information to the public to allow for an honest monitoring of government. But when that government goes wrong, of what use is the First Amendment without the Second empowering the people to either threaten or use force?
Adolf Hitler's first major venture was a newspaper. The Nazi Party gained public power and momentum when it controlled all German radio. When America was focused on terrorism, rekindled by the DC Sniper Shootings, who did Times editor Howell Rains send to cover this incident of selective "rampage shootings?" Wasn’t it the Times' most creative, fraudulent propaganda and fiction writer, Jayson Blair?
We all know that Rains was fully aware of Blair’s fraud and lies. Yet, in a nation so gripped by concern for terrorism, consider the thought processes of the Times’ management. Think of the partnership of the Times’ Sulzberger family and our government’s CIA. Consider the Times' leadership of the Country’s news media relative to gun control.
