Марк Дайс - The True Story of Fake News - How Mainstream Media Manipulates Millions

For example, they didn’t even question any of the journalists or executives who were working for the CIA. Why wouldn’t they want to get major media executives and reporters on the witness stand to testify under oath about what they were doing? This should have been a key part of the investigation, but it wasn’t. Why? Because they didn’t want to dig that deep. They didn’t want the extent of the program, and who was involved, to be known. The committee was compromised and limited their investigation to prevent the magnitude of what was happening from being made public.

Carl Bernstein wrote that the CIA “were able to convince key members of the committee that full inquiry or even limited public disclosure of the dimensions of the activities would do irreparable damage to the nation’s intelligence‑gathering apparatus, as well as to the reputations of hundreds of individuals.” 298

At the time of the Senate investigation George Bush senior was the director of the CIA and pressured members of the committee, and successfully persuaded them to essentially whitewash the investigation. The CIA refused to turn over documents about which journalists were working for them, and only gave the Committee rewritten summaries of documents, all of which had the names of journalists and media executives removed. Most of the documents they did turn over were about foreign journalists on foreign soil, giving the false impression that such thing wasn’t happening in America.

Speaking of the Church Committee’s final report, Senator Gary Hart said, “It hardly reflects what we found. There was a prolonged and elaborate negotiation [with the CIA] over what would be said.” 299In other words, it was a whitewash◦— just another limited hangout with some damning information, but as usual, the full truth would remain hidden. Most people are completely unaware of the Church Committee today, and if they were told about Operation Mockingbird, would just think it’s a conspiracy theory, but as one unnamed Senator quoted in Carl Bernstein’s Rolling Stone story says, “From the CIA point of view this was the highest, most sensitive covert program of all…. It was a much larger part of the operational system than has been indicated.”

The same reporters who are supposed to function as watchdogs over the White House are wined and dined every spring at the luxurious red carpet White House Press Correspondents’ Dinner where they rub elbows and share some laughs with the very people they’re supposed to be holding accountable for their actions. The name of the event implies that it would consist of reporters and media executives, but each year A-list Hollywood celebrities are among the most popular guests. Why would movie stars and sitcom actors be key fixtures at a dinner that’s supposed to be for serious journalists covering the White House?

The event includes a professional comedian who cracks jokes about the current administration and the media’s coverage of them, and also involves a scripted stand up routine by the current president who makes jabs at the press, and himself, as those in attendance appear to laugh at the fact that most politicians are liars and fail to deliver on the promises they made during their campaigns.

In 2004, just one year after the War in Iraq started, George W. Bush made some tasteless jokes about not finding the weapons of mass destruction that he and his administration had falsely claimed were there. While at the podium, a slide show of photos were put up on screen showing him bending over and looking under his desk in the oval office to which he then commented, “Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be here somewhere,” earning him laughter and applause from the audience. “Nope, no weapons over there.” Another photo was put up on the screen of him strangely looking at another part of his office as he said, “Maybe under here.” 300The audience loved it, laughing and applauding which is so bizarre because he was literally joking about the lies that led us to war. What happened to journalists being watchdogs and keeping those in power in check?

Senator John Kerry, who ran against Bush in the 2004 election, commented, “If George Bush thinks his deceptive rationale for going to war is a laughing matter, then he’s even more out of touch than we thought. Unfortunately for the president, this is not a joke. 585 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq in the last year, 3,354 have been wounded and there’s no end in sight. George Bush sold us on going to war with Iraq based on the threat of weapons of mass destruction. But we still haven’t found them, and now he thinks that’s funny?” 301

At the 2010 dinner Barack Obama joked about killing people with drones which had become a controversial new topic since the technology was now being used to kill people with the remote control aircraft. 302While much of the audience laughed, others who are not part of the elite White House press corps didn’t think it was so funny. Alex Pareene at Salon wrote, “It’s funny, because Predator drone strikes in Pakistan have killed literally hundreds of completely innocent civilians, and now the president is evincing a casual disregard for those lives he is responsible for ending by making a lighthearted joke.” 303

After the 2007 dinner, New York Times columnist Frank Rich claimed that the paper would stop attending the event, saying it is, “a crystallization of the press’s failures in the post-9/11 era,” and that it “illustrates how easily a propaganda-driven White House can enlist the Washington news media in its shows.” 304

The New York Times Washington bureau chief Dean Baquet later confirmed they would stop going, saying, “We came to the conclusion that it had evolved into a very odd, celebrity-driven event that made it look like the press and government all shuck their adversarial roles for one night of the year, sing together (literally, by the way) and have a grand old time cracking jokes. It just feels like it sends the wrong signal to our readers and viewers, like we are all in it together and it is all a game. It feels uncomfortable.” 305

While working for Rolling Stone magazine, Michael Hastings revealed that many journalists write “puff pieces” in order to cozy up with government officials hoping to gain or maintain access to them. 306A column in The Guardian denouncing the White House Correspondents Dinner stated that “Journalism’s job is to speak truth to power◦— not refill its glass and laugh at its jokes,” and highlighted that in their view, “The celebrities sitting at almost every table of the Washington Hilton gave the distinct impression that both journalism and politics are now wholly beholden to the whims of the entertainment-industrial complex.” 307

In 2013 New York Times Magazine’s Chief National Correspondent Mark Leibovich said that journalists in Washington D.C. have become a “celebrity class.” 308When asked why his paper doesn’t have reporters attend the dinner, he said, “There’s a level of self-congratulation and self-celebration and so forth that can be very, you know, somewhat at odds with the mood of the country and how people view the media. It did not feel like the right message to be sending to our readers to really be, you know, in such a chummy in sort of festive setting with the people we’re covering.” 309

BuzzFeed, the clickbait bottom feeders of the Internet, whose articles mostly consist of a few lines of text accompanied by animated Gifs, were granted press credentials and a table at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, to give you an idea of how low the standards are for who they consider to be ‘journalists.’ The Huffington Post is also a member of the White House Press Corps and are granted access to the presidential daily briefings where they are allowed to ask the president or his press secretary direct questions.