Controlling the News
August 24, 2013

Washington, D.C.: When I worked in the White House, during the Bush administration, I was known as the Voice of the White House. But I soon grew tired of the utter right wing loonies and the Jesus freaks that packed the offices so I resigned and went to work in the Washington media. I had worked in the print media before but re-entering the field was a revelation. Americans who think that we have a free press in this country are sadly in error. We do not. While small town papers with their stories about local marriages, loose cattle on Main Street and defective traffic lights are not of any interest to the Power Elite, the mainstream media content certainly is. It is well known in the trade that the New York Times is 'strongly influenced' by the desires of the CIA. If something occurs that the CIA does not like to talk about, the NY Times never talks about it or, if it does, gives it a small paragraph back in the truss ads. If Americans want to read the actual news, I suggest the Guardian and RIA Novosti. The former is loathed by the Obama people but has immense courage, and the business sense, to push the Snowden matter to the point where Obama leaves messes on the Oval Office floor. He has no intention of stopping a massive and all-inclusive domestic surveillance program, which he fully supported, and still does. The recent attack by the authorities on the Guardian's computers was the result of many calls by the State Department to the British Prime Minister's office. And the controlled media cannot totally ignore such debasing stories as the Snowden papers but they always manage to point to something less interesting. This is like a mother, trying to keep her children from looking at a squashed kitty on the highway by saying: 'Oh, children, look over there at the pretty donkey! See him running around the field? My, isn't he pretty?' When Obama gets tired of news about Snowden, the press start talking about bird flu or a cute kitty trapped in a tree in Buffalo. My advice to the reading public who are interested in accurate and valuable reporting is to read the foreign press.