TIME OF DECEIT (CLEAN VERSION, NO PROFANITY)
If a nation was to be subverted from within, the press would undoubtedly be the primary weapon leveraged by its adversaries. Produced by Badlands Media and edited by Adam Riva, TIME OF DECEIT showcases some of the most egregious propaganda that is destabilizing America from within and the rise of the citizen journalist in response.
TRANSCRIPT & SOURCES
As of 2017, six major conglomerates lorded over mainstream media, be it broadcast, print, internet, radio, or film—very little existed outside of their umbrellas.
The “Big Six” at that time were Time Warner, ComCast, Disney, Sony, Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp, and National Amusements (now Paramount Global).
It is a stretch to call these companies competitors, per se, as even these umbrella companies are all mutually owned by the world’s largest institutional investors, asset managers like Blackrock Inc., the Vanguard Group, State Street, and Berkshire Hathaway — whose representatives share mutual agendas and remain regular fixtures in various globalist think tanks.
Blackrock in particular exercises tremendous financial power. Through an array of social, environmental, and economic policy frameworks, Blackrock and their so-called competitors mutually enforce the will and agendas of the international think tank class onto the entirety of the corporate world.
The “Big Six” media companies, despite public perceptions, are just components of one quasi-monopolistic centralized system of systems.
At least on paper, the primary mandate of a free press is to act as a counterbalance to keep rampant establishment powers in check. However, the press in modernity is not only failing in its role of keeping the establishment in check; the press routinely and proactively defends the establishment through illusion, omission, and gaslighting.
Instead of acting as a counterbalance, today’s press has become little more than the propaganda arm of the state, and it operates hand-in-glove with the United States Intelligence apparatus. (#,#,#)
From CIA drug smuggling to the creation of ISIS to the countless US-backed regime changes worldwide, these topics are well known and discussed throughout the “developing world” yet the average American journalist or news anchor refuses to touch them.
The role of the Press in our society is crucial to the population’s discernment between truth and fiction. If a nation was to be subverted from within, the Press would undoubtedly be the primary weapon leveraged by its adversaries, and that is exactly our current predicament. As a mechanism of 5th generational warfare, news organizations and individual journalists are often tapped as assets by intelligence agencies seeking to control a narrative.
This was the case with German journalist and whistleblower Udo Ulfkotte, who claimed:
“I ended up publishing articles under my own name written by agents of the CIA and other intelligence services, especially the German secret service,”
The Central Intelligence Agency has been a significant force in US and international news media since the end of World War II, exerting considerable influence over what the public sees, hears, and reads. (#) Researchers have long pointed to Project MOCKINGBIRD as the quintessential example of collusion between Intelligence and Media.
MOCKINGBIRD emerged from the CIA forerunner, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which had established a network of journalists and psychological warfare experts by the end of WWII. (#) The State Department’s Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), led by OSS staffer Frank Wisner, continued several OSS contacts after the war, and was absorbed by the newly formed Central Intelligence Agency. (#,#)
According to author and historian Lisa Pease, the OPC:
“…became the fastest-growing unit within the nascent CIA, rising in personnel from 302 in 1949 to 2,812 in 1952, along with 3,142 overseas contract personnel. In the same period, the budget rose from $4.7 million to $82 million.” (from The Media and Assasination)
In 1948, the OPC and Office of Special Operations merged to form the CIA, absorbing OPC media assets. (#) Wisner would officially establish Mockingbird that year. At that time, Frank Wisner was in possession of the top secret “Propaganda Assets Inventory” otherwise known as Wisner’s “Mighty Wurlitzer”—a rolodex of over 800 news and information entities who were prepared to sing any tune Wisner chose. (#,#)
Wisner was a close associate of CIA Director Allen Foster Dulles. Together, they recruited Philip Graham (#,#) husband of Washington Post owner Katherine Graham, to run the Mockingbird operation within the industry.
The Washington Post would develop into one of the most influential news organizations in the United States thanks in part to its ties with the CIA. An unofficial biography on Graham’s wife titled Katharine, the Great asserts that:
“By the early 1950s, Wisner ‘owned’ respected members of The New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communications vehicles.”
Unfortunately, Philip Graham later committed suicide at the age of 48.(#) His son, Wiliam Graham, followed suit 50 years later.(#)
By the late 1950s, to reduce criticisms leveled against its domestic influence operations, the Agency aimed to avoid judicial intervention or congressional monitoring by:
“…infiltrat[ing] the groves of academia, the missionary corps, the editorial boards of influential journal and book publishers, and any other quarters where public attitudes could be effectively influenced.” [source]
Carl Bernstein, one of the journalists who broke the Watergate scandal, in his landmark article “The CIA and the Media”, asserted that the CIA had continued its furtive relationship with the press from the 1950s into the late 70s.
In this article, Bernstein claimed that there were well known columnists and broadcast commentators whose:
“[…]relationships with the CIA go far beyond those normally maintained between reporters and their sources… they are referred to at the Agency as ‘known assets’ and can be counted on to perform a variety of undercover tasks; they are considered receptive to the Agency’s point of view on various subjects.” [source]
In 1977, Rolling Stone magazine alleged that one of the most important journalists under the control of Operation Mockingbird was Joseph Alsop, whose articles appeared in over 300 different newspapers. (#,#) However, the CIA’s involvement with the media did not remain limited to print.
In 1999, the CIA established a venture capital arm called In-Q-Tel which sought to “identify and invest in companies developing cutting-edge information technologies that serve United States national security interests.” (#,#) The firm has established financial relationships with Google and Facebook, among many other internet platforms.
“While IQT originally catered largely to the needs of the CIA, today the firm supports many of the 17 agencies within the U.S. intelligence community, including the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate.”(#)
In 2012, at an In-Q-Tel meeting, then CIA director David Petraeus stated that the rapidly-developing “internet of things” and “smart home” appliances would provide the CIA with the ability to spy on any US citizen should they become a “person of interest’ to the spy community,”
The CIA has been caught not only persuading the media to avoid certain stories, but thoroughly discrediting — and potentially even assassinating — anyone who attempted to air the agency’s dirty laundry.
From the late 1960s through the 1980s, mainstream news outlets completely ignored Operation Gladio, the well-documented cooperation between NATO and Western spy agencies, including the CIA, that involved coordinated terrorist attacks and bombings of civilian targets throughout Europe. Despite being well documented in Europe, only four articles mentioning Gladio ever appeared in US publications. (source)
One can also look to the late Gary Webb , whose writings brought the CIA’s involvement in drug trafficking to a much larger audience. His series in the San Jose Mercury News titled Dark Alliance would enrage black communities, prompt Congressional hearings, and become one of the first major national security stories in history to blow up on the internet. (#)
Webb’s series would reveal that, in addition to waging a proxy war for the U.S. government against Nicaragua’s revolutionary Sandinista government in the 1980s, elements of the CIA-backed Contra rebels were also involved in trafficking cocaine to the U.S. to fund their counter-revolutionary campaigns. Webb reported that the illicit circulation of funds and narcotics was directly related to the subsequent crack cocaine epidemic that ravaged the most impoverished black communities in the country. Webb is still celebrated by journalists today despite the aggressive, coordinated smear campaign in the mainstream media that would cost him his career and eventually his life.
Webb was found dead in his Carmichael home on December 10, 2004, with two gunshot wounds to the head. His death was ruled a suicide. (#)
Today, much less effort is spent trying to hide the connections between the Intelligence community and the Media. This is perhaps a symptom of America’s late-stage subversion.
Former CIA director John Brennan (#), one of the primary players in the multipronged campaign against Donald Trump, would sign on with NBC News as “senior national security and intelligence analyst.”(#) CNN employs former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former FBI Deputy Director and acting Director Andrew McCabe, and CIA Director Micheal Hayden.
There has always been a subset of Americans who put little faith in legacy media, but in the late 2010s, American trust in mass media began to plummet.
At the tail end of his administration, Barack Obama signed the Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act of 2016, and established the Global Engagement Center to:
“To direct, lead, synchronize, integrate, and coordinate U.S. Federal Government efforts to recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining or influencing the policies, security, or stability of the United States, its allies, and partner nations.”
This act provided greater ability to the US government to censor dissenting opinions or information it deems a threat and enabling them to get ahead of anything remotely dangerous to the narrative. Shortly thereafter, a mysterious group called “Prop or Not” appeared out of nowhere and issued a list of “fake” news sites, allegedly under—you guessed it — “Russian” control.
The news media machine’s psychological manipulation efforts would become more coordinated and overt than ever before. [Perfect CLIP]
As much as they hated him, Donald Trump would actually improve cable television’s dismal ratings.
First, they claimed that he mocked a disabled reporter.
They tried to convince the public that he was a racist, that he called White Supremacists “very fine people” while taking a speech out of context. [SOURCE] [Clips, #, #,] A lie they’ve relied on heavily for years and continue to propagate in the current election cycle. [#]
While the MSM was building the narrative that Trump was a dangerous white Nationalist, he was busy signing multiple bills designed to help margionalized communities.
He signed the groundbreaking First Step Act, a criminal justice bill which enacted reforms that make our justice system fairer and help former inmates successfully reintegrate into society.
He also increased funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) by more than 14%. Instead of meaningless pandering to the Gay community, he would appoint 5 openly gay ambassadors, and initiated an effort to end criminalization of homosexuality globally.
He even signed 3 bills in support of “tribal sovereignty.” One bill gave compensation to the Spokane tribe for the loss of their lands in the mid-1900s, another reauthorized funding for Native language programs and a third Bill giving federal recognition to the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians in Montana.
There was Trump’s Muslim Ban lie [the EO: # clips: #,#,#] The Infamous “Kids in Cages” lie, where they tried to blame Trump for an Obama era policy.
Congresswoman Alexandria Occasio Cortez even used the story as the backdrop for a photoshoot. But when the number of migrant children sleeping in cages dramatically spiked under Joe Biden’s watch, the media and AOC suddenly lost interest. [Clips: #,#,#, clip of Biden official hiding kids in cages: #, #]
The selective outrage and fabrications were not the result of mere incompetence, this was the mainstream media knowingly acting in bad faith.
It happened again with Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from Syria, a move decried by establishment neocons and subsequently criticized in the media.
ABC’s ‘World News Tonight’ drummed up a story about how Turkish military ruthlessly slaughtered Kurds as a direct result of Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw, using shocking footage of heavy machine gun fire [orig #] but it didn’t take long for citizen journalists in the independent media to ascertain the true source of the footage… A popular semiannual night shoot at a Kentucky gun range. (clip: #) (article: #)
The media chastised the President for suggesting that the Coronavirus originated from a lab in Wuhan China, (clips: #,#,#,) only to quietly change their position once Trump was out of office. (clips: #,#,#)
But the most famous and damaging lie from the early Trump era, was the Russia Collusion hoax, born of the infamous Steele Dossier, that dominated the airwaves for years. The Russia Collusion narrative was one of the most coordinated smears in the history of American politics. (clip) Corporate journos at the New York Times and the Washington Post were adorned in Pulitzers, and an expensive multi-year-long investigation began.
Robert Mueller was billed in the media as an old school, hardnosed FBI agent who only dealt in facts and was sure to prove, without a doubt, that Donald Trump had colluded with Russia.
Six hundred and seventy four days and $32 Million in Taxpayer dollars later (#,#) Mueller’s findings would deal a blow to the mainstream that they would never fully recover from.
Not only were they attempting to convince viewers that Trump was a racist and a criminal, they wanted the American people to see him as a traitor unto the nation.
While the cable news punditry busied itself conjuring bad press for the President, his many accomplishments would receive little to no attention on primetime. Aside from creating Space Force, the 6th branch of the military, a move that was mocked by the media, Trump’s unsung accomplishments are still largely unknown to the average legacy media consumer today.
- Trump signed a law to make cruelty to animals a federal felony (#)
- He scored four significant peace deals in the Middle East
- He signed the Farm Bill, finally making CBD and Hemp Legal (#)
- He signed a law ending the gag orders on Pharmacists that prevented them from sharing money saving information (#)
- He signed the biggest wilderness protection and conservation bill in a decade and designated 375,000 acres as protected land (#)
- He signed the Save Our Seas Act which funds $10 million per year to clean tons of plastic and garbage from the ocean (#)
- He signed the Right To Try bill, allowing terminally ill patients to try experimental treatments that are not yet approved by the FDA (#)
- He created a White House VA Hotline to help veterans and principally staffed it with veterans and direct family members of veterans
- He signed the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund into law (#)
- He signed legislation to improve the National Suicide Hotline (#)
- He signed an executive order meant to combat human trafficking and online child exploitation (#)
These are just a sample of the administration’s many accomplishments that cable news viewers likely never heard of.
Donald Trump was not alone in his mistreatment by legacy media. In the 2019 Democratic primary debates, presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard had her face digitally altered on live television. NBC motion tracked a fake blemish onto Gabbard’s face which would frequently vanish and reappear in real time.
While legacy media was torpedoing its credibility, the independent media was starting to thrive like never before. However, towards the end of his first term, came the most consequential story the Trump era – the Hunter Biden laptop scandal. The truth was so radioactive that they rolled out 51 “intelligence experts” to sign a letter officiating the claims that the Laptop had “all the earmarks of Russian Disinfo.” (#)
The contents of the laptop held grave implications, namely that one of the presidential candidates in the 2020 election was involved in various influence peddling and quid pro quo schemes with foreign interests. In short, access to the White House was available to the highest bidder. It should have been the biggest story of the year. Instead, social media platforms used the letter as a pretext to weed out anyone sharing information on the laptop, including the New York Post.
The livelihoods of countless individuals were systematically stripped away, and the nation has now endured four years of punishment under a corrupt regime, all because vital information that would have swung the election was covered up.
By the beginning of the Biden administration, YouTube was caught manipulating the like/dislike ratio including but not limited to official White House videos, in some cases by thousands of percent. This practice of deleting thousands of dislikes on videos was documented by 81M.org, a website whose namesake undermines the specious 81 million votes that Biden reportedly received as the most popular president in American history, elected in the most secure election in American history.
Donald Trump and the America First ideology stood defiantly opposed to globalism (clip, clip). Naturally, this political philosophy caught on and began to spread to other nations. Populist candidates in countries across the globe saw historic victories. An utterly panicked MSM set out to convince their captured audiences that the rising populist sentiment was only held among a fringe minority of extremists.
A free press cannot carry out its vital societal function when its executives are incentivized to parrot globalist agendas over reporting the truth – but news media is changing. Among these changes is the rise of the citizen journalist. Citizen Journalismis based upon public citizens “playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing, and disseminating news and information.”(#)
There’s nothing that the Western establishment fears more than the success of a capable and honest decentralized media. They know that a self-organizing industry of citizen journalists operating on principle would render the mainstream media obsolete. However, try as they may, the death of the media as we know it is an inevitability.
Outside of a few media giants, such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, most of the liberal corporate media is in full scale collapse. Widely recognized media organizations, such as the Los Angeles Times, Time Magazine, NBC News, Sports Illustrated, National Geographic, and Business Insider, have either experienced significant workforce reductions or have been forced to the verge of extinction. Buzzfeed, the outlet responsible for breaking the Steele Dossier, completely abolished its news division in 2023. Last month the L.A. Times laid off 25% of its already decimated newsroom in just one day.
On the contrary, independent media has only continued to grow with no end in sight, and has become an existential threat to corporate media. This threat has led to the creation of an entire industry whose sole purpose is to cripple independent media and snuff out all dissent. This industry is now popularly referred to as the Censorship Industrial Complex (CIC).
Many journalists in the independent media space not only have better track records, but often predicts events months – if not years – ahead of legacy media.
We have arrived at one of the great inflection points in history. Billions of humans are now increasingly misled about the state and trajectory of civilization. The information with which we construct our worldviews is largely distorted if not completely inverted.
As many are now realizing that the stability of society is contingent on the veracity of information consumed by the masses, a decentralization of power in the news media space seems warranted as independent media can help us unify around truth while exposing anyone seeking to suppress it.
As legacy media hemorrhaged viewership, (#,#,#,#) the burgeoning independent media space passed an inflection point in becoming an existential threat to the powers that be.
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