Media Manipulation News Stories

Excerpts of Key Media Manipulation News Stories in Major Media

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Note: This comprehensive list of news stories is usually updated once a week. Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.

[March 22] HAMMER: A Charlie Sheen shocker. Tonight, the actor`s stunning statements on 9/11. Maybe the airplanes did not take down the Twin Towers. And maybe the government is covering it all up. SHEEN: The more you look at stuff, especially specific incidents, specific events in and around the fateful day, it just -- it just raises a lot of questions. HAMMER: Charlie Sheen, star of CBS`s successful sitcom, "Two and a Half Men", says point blank, 9/11, the Pentagon, the World Trade Center, this is all a cover up. [March 23] It's been pretty hard to believe the response we got today to the incredible story Showbiz Tonight broke last night, after Charlie Sheens' startling claims that the government may be covering up what really happened on 9/11. So many emails coming in...we've been really overwhelmed today. Between the emails, the blogs, the websites -- everybody is writing and talking about it. [March 27] HAMMER: Over the weekend I had the opportunity to sit down with Sharon stone. She commended Charlie Sheen for having the guts to speak his mind. SHARON STONE: I think you have to be brave enough to say how you feel and stand in the face of authority and say it. That`s why we have freedom of speech. HAMMER: Responses at SHOWBIZ TONIGHT absolutely overwhelming. The e-mails continue to flood in. They were coming in all weekend long. We were asking the question; do you agree there is a government cover-up of 9/11? More than 53,000 of you voted in our online poll. Eighty-three percent of you agreed and said yes; 17 percent of you said no.

It was about 10 seconds long and showed gondoliers rowing in the canals of Venice, Italy, while a Latin-sounding man's voice said: "Your heart is where your treasure is, and you must find your treasure in order to make sense of everything." And then more words appeared on the screen: "Everyday grace: MTV." In late January, MTV, the arbiter of all things hip, quietly launched a campaign of 24 of these little films. They call the campaign "Spiritual Windows." "We wanted to create little, short moments, almost breaths of peace, for the channel," Kevin Mackall, the...senior vice president of on-air promos for MTV explained. "There's a genuine appetite for spirituality these days." According to a little-known poll...53 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds said "religion" was "extremely important" or "very important" to their daily lives. Only 14 percent said religion wasn't important to them at all. One spot, with the tag line "Consume mindfully," shows a Tibetan nun hauling two plastic garbage bags to the curb in front of her Buddhist temple. Then there's "Everyone," with a Chinese dragon dancing...accompanied by a voice-over that says, "We need other human beings to be human." And one of the longer spots...shows the sun setting over a pyramid in Egypt as the Brazilian magical realist author Paulo Coelho's voice announces, "The desert will give you an understanding of the world. How do I immerse myself in the desert? Listen to your heart." Mackall...insists the "Spiritual Windows" are no gimmick. "It really, truly is answering a call from our audience," he said. "Hopefully it's a first step into some other content like this."

For the ninth consecutive year, certain material weaknesses in internal control and in selected accounting and financial reporting practices resulted in conditions that continued to prevent GAO from being able to provide the Congress and American people an opinion as to whether the consolidated financial statements of the U.S. government are fairly stated in conformity with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles. Until the problems discussed in GAO's audit report on the U.S. government's consolidated financial statements are adequately addressed, they will...hinder the federal government from having reliable financial information to operate in an economical, efficient, and effective manner. The cost to operate the federal government--increased to $760 billion in fiscal year 2005 from $616 billion in fiscal year 2004. This represents an increase of about $144 billion or 23 percent. The federal government's gross debt was about $8 trillion as of September 30, 2005. The federal government's fiscal exposures now total more than $46 trillion, representing close to four times gross domestic product (GDP) in fiscal year 2005 and up from about $20 trillion...in 2000.

Note: For the full 20-page GAO report on the sad state of U.S. government finances, click here. For the text-only version, click here. The GAO is one of the few branches of government which works hard to prevent corruption. Why didn't this devastating report get any press coverage? Why does the media fail to inform the public that the Pentagon cannot account for literally trillions of dollars? (see CBS article on this) For possible answers, see our highly informative mass media summary.

I reported on eight of the [Downing Street] memos while working at the Daily Telegraph in September 2004. I then moved to the Sunday Times, where I obtained the other two memos. Why did the US newspapers take so long to pick up on the story? The memos were so momentous in what they told us about how Bush and Blair went to war...that they surely had to be reported. They were not only “the smoking gun” that proved all the lies; they also proved the lack of planning for the aftermath; the fraudulent use of the UN to make the war legal; and...the way in which the allies began the war...months before they went to the UN or Congress to get backing for war. The memo actually says...that the Prime Minister agreed at Crawford in April 2002 to go to war, so the British needed to "create the conditions" which would make the war legal under international law. In the wake of 9/11, the US media were initially prevented from any criticism of the administration. Then when the need to criticize became unavoidable, they were cowed by administration claims that it helped the terrorists. There is something grotesque about Bush saying that his administration is setting “a forward strategy for freedom” around the world while it is attempting at the same time to bully the US press back into submission at home. I don’t for one moment believe it will succeed. But none of us can afford to be complacent.

Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. of Maryland did not violate the First Amendment rights of two Baltimore Sun reporters by prohibiting state employees from talking to them, a unanimous three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., ruled yesterday. In November 2004, the governor's press office issued a directive instructing every employee of the state's executive branch not to speak to David Nitkin, a political reporter at The Sun, or Michael Olesker, a columnist who has since left the paper. "Do not return calls or comply with any requests," the directive said. The reason for the ban, it explained, was that the two reporters "are failing to objectively report on any issue dealing with" the governor's administration. In a radio appearance, Mr. Ehrlich, a Republican, said the ban was "meant to have a chilling effect" on the reporters.

Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed a tabletop accelerator that produces nuclear fusion at room temperature, providing confirmation of an earlier experiment conducted at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). The device, which uses two opposing crystals to generate a powerful electric field, could potentially lead to a portable, battery-operated neutron generator for a variety of applications, from non-destructive testing to detecting explosives and scanning luggage at airports. The device is essentially a tabletop particle accelerator. At its heart are two opposing “pyroelectric” crystals that create a strong electric field when heated or cooled. The device is filled with deuterium gas — a more massive cousin of hydrogen with an extra neutron in its nucleus. The electric field rips electrons from the gas, creating deuterium ions and accelerating them into a deuterium target on one of the crystals. When the particles smash into the target, neutrons are emitted, which is the telltale sign that nuclear fusion has occurred. The new study also verified the fundamental physics behind the original experiment. This suggests that pyroelectric crystals are in fact a viable means of producing nuclear fusion, and that commercial applications may be closer than originally thought.

Note: Why was this fascinating news not reported in the major media? For more, see our New Energy Information Center at http://www.WantToKnow.info/newenergyinformation

They have always had their critics, but corporations are having an especially hard time making friends of late. Scandals at Enron and WorldCom destroyed thousands of employees' livelihoods, raised hackles about bosses' pay and cast doubt on the reliability of companies' accounts. Big companies such as McDonald's and Wal-Mart have found themselves the targets of scathing films. Labour groups and environmental activists are finding new ways to co-ordinate their attacks on business. But those are just the enemies that companies can see. Even more troubling for many managers is dealing with their critics online -- because, in the ether, they have little idea who the attackers are. One of the main reasons that executives find bloggers so very challenging is because, unlike other 'stakeholders', they rarely belong to well-organised groups. That makes them harder to identify, appease and control. When a company is dealing directly with a labour union or an environmental outfit, its top brass often take the easy route, by co-opting the leaders or paying some sort of Danegeld. Until a couple of decades ago, that meant doling out generous union contracts and sticking shareholders, taxpayers or consumers with the bill. Increasingly, companies are learning that the best defence against these attacks is to take blogs seriously and fix rapidly whatever problems they turn up.

Academics and the media have failed dismally to ask the crucial question of scientists' claims: who is paying you? In the 1990s, [Arise] was one of the world's most influential public-health groups. It described itself as "a worldwide association of eminent scientists who act as independent commentators". Its purpose ... was to show how "everyday pleasures, such as eating chocolate, smoking, drinking tea, coffee and alcohol, contribute to the quality of life". "Scientific studies show that enjoying the simple pleasures in life, without feeling guilty, can reduce stress and increase resistance to disease". Between September 1993 and March 1994 ... [Arise] generated 195 newspaper articles and radio and television interviews, in places such as the Wall Street Journal, the International Herald Tribune, the Independent, the Evening Standard, El País, La Repubblica, Rai and the BBC. In 1998 [tobacco] firms were obliged to place their internal documents in a public archive. Among them ... is a memo from ... Philip Morris - the world's largest tobacco company. The title is "Arise 1994-95 Activities and Funding". This showed that in the previous financial year Arise had received $373,400: ... over 99% - from Philip Morris, British American Tobacco, RJ Reynolds and Rothmans. The memo suggests Arise was run not by eminent scientists but by eminent tobacco companies. How much more science is being published in academic journals with undeclared interests like these? How many more media campaigns ... have been secretly funded and steered by corporations?

Note: If you want to understand how corporate interests secretly manipulate both scientific results and public perception, this excellent article is well worth reading.

A newly declassified document gives a fascinating glimpse into the US military's plans for "information operations". The declassified document is called "Information Operations Roadmap". It was obtained by the National Security Archive at George Washington University using the Freedom of Information Act. Officials in the Pentagon wrote it in 2003. The Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, signed it. The operations described in the document include a surprising range of military activities: public affairs officers who brief journalists, psychological operations troops who try to manipulate the thoughts and beliefs of an enemy, computer network attack specialists who seek to destroy enemy networks. The military's psychological operations, or Psyops, is finding its way onto the computer and television screens of ordinary Americans. "Psyops messages will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public. Strategy should be based on the premise that the Department [of Defense] will 'fight the net' as it would an enemy weapons system," it reads. The document recommends that the United States should seek the ability to "provide maximum control of the entire electromagnetic spectrum". US forces should be able to "disrupt or destroy the full spectrum of globally emerging communications systems, sensors, and weapons systems dependent on the electromagnetic spectrum". The fact that the "Information Operations Roadmap" is approved by the Secretary of Defense suggests that these plans are taken very seriously indeed in the Pentagon.

Note: For other revealing news articles on military corruption, click here. For other revealing news articles on government corruption, click here.

Project Censored specializes in covering the top news stories which were either ignored or downplayed by the mainstream media each year. Project Censored is a research team composed of nearly 200 university faculty, students, and community experts who review about 1,000 news story submissions for coverage, content, reliability of sources, and national significance. The top 25 stories selected are submitted to a panel of judges who then rank them in order of importance. The results are published each year in an excellent book available for purchase at their website, amazon.com, and most major book stores.

1. White House Erodes Open Government
2. Media Coverage on Iraq: Fallujah and the Civilian Death Toll
3. Distorted Election Coverage
4. Surveillance Society Quietly Moves In 
5. U.S. Uses Tsunami to Military Advantage in Southeast Asia
6. The Real Oil for Food Scam
7. Journalists Face Unprecedented Dangers to Life and Livelihood
8. Iraqi Farmers Threatened By US Mandates
9. Iran’s New Oil Trade System Challenges U.S. Currency
10. Mountaintop Removal Threatens Ecosystem and Economy

"Truth no longer matters in the context of politics and, sadly, in the context of cable news," said Aaron Brown, whose four-year period as anchor of CNN's NewsNight ended in November, when network executives gave his job to Anderson Cooper in a bid to push the show's ratings closer to front-runner Fox News. "Television is the most perfect democracy," Brown said. "You sit there with your remote control and vote." The remotes click to another channel when serious news airs, but when the media covers the scandals surrounding Laci Peterson, the Runaway Bride or Michael Jackson, "there are no clicks then." With the departure from the screen of the "titans" -- Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings and Dan Rather -- who "resisted the temptations of their bosses to go for the ratings grab, it will be years before an anchorman or anchorwoman will have the clout to fight these battles," he said. He's shocked "by how unkind our world has become." E-mail and talk radio appear to have given people the license to say anything, regardless of how cruel or false it may be. Many Americans on the left and the right aren't interested in the truth, but simply want news that confirms their viewpoints, he said.

In a clumsy effort to sabotage Iran's nuclear program, the CIA in 2004 intentionally handed Tehran some top-secret bomb designs laced with a hidden flaw that U.S. officials hoped would doom any weapon made from them. But the Iranians were tipped to the scheme by the Russian defector hired by the CIA to deliver the plans and may have gleaned scientific information useful for designing a bomb, writes New York Times reporter James Risen in "State of War." Two nuclear weapons experts...added that a deliberate flaw in the plans could have been easily found by the Iranians. The New York Times delayed for a year publication of its article on the NSA's domestic spying, in part because of personal requests from the president. Critics have questioned whether the paper could have published the information before last year's presidential election if it had decided against a delay. Newspaper officials have refused to comment on reasons for the delay or on the exact timing. Top New York Times officials also refused to publish a news article about the reported CIA plot to give intentionally flawed nuclear plans to Iran, according to a person briefed on the newspaper's conversations by one of the participants. That person said the New York Times withheld publication at the request of the White House and former CIA Director George J. Tenet.

The New York Times's explanation of its decision to report, after what it said was a one-year delay, that the National Security Agency is eavesdropping domestically without court-approved warrants was woefully inadequate. And I have had unusual difficulty getting a better explanation for readers, despite the paper's repeated pledges of greater transparency. For the first time since I became public editor, the executive editor and the publisher have declined to respond to my requests for information about news-related decision-making. My queries concerned the timing of the exclusive Dec. 16 article about President Bush's secret decision in the months after 9/11 to authorize the warrantless eavesdropping on Americans in the United States. I e-mailed a list of 28 questions to Bill Keller, the executive editor [of the New York Times], on Dec. 19, three days after the article appeared. He promptly declined to respond to them. I then sent the same questions to Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher, who also declined to respond. They held out no hope for a fuller explanation in the future. The top Times people involved in the final decisions [are] refusing to talk and urging everyone else to remain silent.

President Bush has been summoning newspaper editors lately in an effort to prevent publication of stories he considers damaging to national security. The efforts have failed, but the rare White House sessions with the executive editors of The Washington Post and New York Times are an indication of how seriously the president takes the recent reporting that has raised questions about the administration's anti-terror tactics. Leonard Downie Jr., The Post's executive editor, would not confirm the meeting with Bush before publishing reporter Dana Priest's Nov. 2 article disclosing the existence of secret CIA prisons. Bill Keller, executive editor of the Times, would not confirm that he, publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and Washington bureau chief Philip Taubman had an Oval Office sit-down with the president on Dec. 5, 11 days before reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau revealed that Bush had authorized eavesdropping on Americans and others within the United States without court orders. But the meetings were confirmed by sources who have been briefed on them but are not authorized to comment because both sides had agreed to keep the sessions off the record. After Bush's meeting with the Times executives...the president assailed the paper's piece on domestic spying, calling the leak of classified information "shameful." "The decision to hold the story last year was mine," [New York Times Executive Editor] Keller says. "The decision to run the story last week was mine. I'm comfortable with both decisions."

Note: This excellent article shows why the alternative media is becoming increasingly important for those who want to know what is happening behind the scenes. It goes on to describe numerous cases where reporters were paid significant sums to write favorable articles for clients and then takes on the topic of child prostitution rings. It easily could have been three separate, information-packed articles.

U.S. military officials in Iraq were fully aware that a Pentagon contractor regularly paid Iraqi newspapers to publish positive stories about the war, and made it clear that none of the stories should be traced to the United States, according to several current and former employees of Lincoln Group, the Washington-based contractor. In contrast to assertions by military officials in Baghdad and Washington, interviews and Lincoln Group documents show that the information campaign waged over the last year was designed to cloak any connection to the U.S. military. "In clandestine parlance, Lincoln Group was a 'cutout' -- a third party -- that would provide the military with plausible deniability," said a former Lincoln Group employee. A number of workers who carried out Lincoln Group's offensive, including a $20-million two-month contract to influence public opinion in Iraq...describe a campaign that was unnecessarily costly, poorly run and largely ineffective at improving America's image in Iraq. Lincoln Group...had little public relations or communications experience when it won its first psychological operations contract last year. Yet it has become one of the biggest beneficiaries of the information war, and now has 20 Pentagon contracts.

The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting. Some information that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists has been omitted. While many details about the program remain secret, officials familiar with it said the N.S.A. eavesdropped without warrants on up to 500 people in the United States at any given time.

Note: The above quote is from page two of a ten-page article on the Times website. Isn't it interesting that the White House can keep vital news from being reported? See Media Information Center for more.

A $300 million Pentagon psychological warfare operation includes plans for placing pro-American messages in foreign media outlets without disclosing the U.S. government as the source, one of the military officials in charge of the program says. Run by psychological warfare experts at the U.S. Special Operations Command, the media campaign is being designed to counter terrorist ideology and sway foreign audiences to support American policies. The program will operate throughout the world, including in allied nations and in countries where the United States is not involved in armed conflict. The three companies handling the campaign include the Lincoln Group, the company being investigated by the Pentagon for paying Iraqi newspapers to run pro-U.S. stories. (Related story: Contracts for pro-U.S. propaganda) It's legal for the government to plant propaganda in other countries but not in the USA.

The media center in Fayetteville, N.C., would be the envy of any global communications company. The center is not part of a news organization, but a military operation, and [its] writers and producers are soldiers. The 1,200-strong psychological operations unit based at Fort Bragg turns out what its officers call "truthful messages" to support the United States government's objectives, though its commander acknowledges that those stories are one-sided and their American sponsorship is hidden. Army psychological operations units sometimes pay to deliver their message, offering television stations money to run unattributed segments. The United States does not ban the distribution of government propaganda overseas, as it does domestically. Typically, Lincoln [a company under government contractor] paid newspapers from $40 to $2,000 to run the articles as news articles or advertisements. More than 1,000 articles appeared in 12 to 15 Iraqi and Arab newspapers, according to Pentagon documents. The publications did not disclose that the articles were generated by the military.

Note: For an abundance of reliable information on major cover-ups around war, visit our War Information Center at http://www.WantToKnow.info/warinformation

The Attorney-General was accused last night of using the Official Secrets Act “big stick” to gag newspapers in an attempt to save President Bush from further embarrassment over Iraq. Lord Goldsmith threatened newspapers on Tuesday with prosecution under the Act if they published details from a record of a conversation between Mr Bush and Tony Blair from April last year, when the President is alleged to have suggested bombing al-Jazeera, the Arabic television network. A record of the conversation was leaked by a Cabinet Office official to the researcher of an MP, and details appeared in a newspaper this week.

In the early days of September, as military helicopters plucked desperate New Orleanians from rooftops and Red Cross shelters swelled with the displaced, nearly 400,000 packaged meals landed on a tarmac at Little Rock Air Force Base and were whisked by tractor-trailer to Louisiana. But most of the $5.3 million worth of food never reached the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Instead, because of fears about mad cow disease and a long-standing ban on British beef, the rations routinely consumed by British soldiers have sat stacked in an Arkansas warehouse. Now, with some of the food set to expire in early 2006 and U.S. taxpayers spending $16,000 a month to store the meals, the State Department is quietly looking for a needy country to take them. No fewer than six federal agencies or departments had a role in accepting, distributing and rejecting the food.

Note: This unbelievable news was first reported by the London Times and WantToKnow.info a month prior to this recent article. Why didn't the US press report it back then?

Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.