Congressional Record: JP Morgan & Co purchased all major media for propaganda: 1917. And now…?

Congressman Oscar Callaway lost his Congressional election for opposing US entry into WW 1. Before he left office, he demanded investigation into JP Morgan & Co for purchasing control over America’s leading 25 newspapers in order to propagandize US public opinion in favor of his corporate and banking interests, including profits from US participation in the war. Mr. Callaway alleged he had the evidence to prove Morgan associates were working as editors to select and edit articles, with the press receiving monthly payments for their allegiance to Morgan.

One of the leading papers, The New York Times, printed the story of Congressman Callaway's call for investigation from Washington, D.C., but the editor chose a curious and dis-informing headline for the story:

FOR PRESS INVESTIGATION

Moore Asks Inquiry Into Charges
on Preparedness Campaign.

The US eventually followed “opinion leaders” into the war, despite no national security risk from the sinking of a British ship carrying over four million rounds of ammunition to kill Germans (Lusitania), and Germany’s offer to Mexico to attack the US with an empty promise of German help if, and only if, the US declared war on Germany first (Zimmermann telegram; Mexico rejected the offer immediately as a military impossibility and a ploy for Americans to busy themselves killing Mexicans instead of Germans).

Both my grandfathers risked their lives in the American Expeditionary Force from political/media war propaganda, as did your relatives.

Congressman Callaway joined Congressman Abraham Lincoln in being deposed from Congress for challenging lying war rhetoric and being branded as “unpatriotic.”

I found no follow-up report of Mr. Callaway’s request for investigation. However, we have abundant evidence that US corporate media is controlled for propaganda in our world of the present. From my series, “Open proposal to US higher education”:

We have verified history of official government propaganda having infiltrated corporate media. The Church Senate Committee hearings had the cooperation of CIA Director William Colby’s testimony that over 400 CIA operatives were controlling US corporate media reporting on specific issues of national interest in what they called Operation Mockingbird. This stunning testimony was then confirmed by Pulitzer Prize reporter Carl Bernstein’s research and reporting. Of course, corporate media refused to publish Bernstein’s article and it became the cover-story for Rolling Stone. Bernstein provides additional information of CIA control in the Senate report and corporate media subsequent reporting:

“Pages 191 to 201 were entitled “Covert Relationships with the United States Media.” “It hardly reflects what we found,” stated Senator Gary Hart. “There was a prolonged and elaborate negotiation [with the CIA] over what would be said.”

Obscuring the facts was relatively simple. No mention was made of the 400 summaries or what they showed. Instead the report noted blandly that some fifty recent contacts with journalists had been studied by the committee staff—thus conveying the impression that the Agency’s dealings with the press had been limited to those instances. The Agency files, the report noted, contained little evidence that the editorial content of American news reports had been affected by the CIA’s dealings with journalists. Colby’s misleading public statements about the use of journalists were repeated without serious contradiction or elaboration. The role of cooperating news executives was given short shrift. The fact that the Agency had concentrated its relationships in the most prominent sectors of the press went unmentioned. That the CIA continued to regard the press as up for grabs was not even suggested.”

Let’s consider the specific case of corporate media collusion with official government rhetoric to lie about Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s October 2005 speech and contrive a non-existent physical threat to Israel. First: for the US political leaders and corporate media to accuse the president of Iran with threatening to destroy Israel, that’s the most serious of accusations. A threat of national destruction is the most vicious statement a head of state can make. For corporate media to not be in collusion to “report” this proven lie would have to mean that everyone involved in the story never read the speech in question, never consulted with Persian experts, and disregarded all people like me who informed them of their egregious error. Again, here’s my link of corporate media’s “reporting” in print and television allowing US political leaders to lie and repeating the lie themselves.

Of course, you have to verify the speech in order to not interpret the facts as a mistranslation or possible translation. This is appropriately analogous to checking the instant replay of the pitch at the Red Sox game to make sure it really was so outrageously outside the strike-zone that an “official” call that the pitch was a strike is stating a known lie. If it was an immediate error, it could and should have been corrected. That five years has passed and corporate media doesn’t inform Americans of the actual content and context of the speech is absolute evidence of an official propaganda arm of the same oligarchy spinning for unlawful war against Iran.

I’ve written articles providing evidence for obvious war propaganda to attack Iran identical to what we witnessed before the US attacked Iraq. From my article on CNN’s “reporting”:

When we now know that all claims for war with Iraq were known lies as they were told (and verbally explained here), and CNN provides similar innuendo from that war by an unsourced alleged report with concerns of what might occur in the future allegedly stated by an unnamed US source reporting on an unnamed foreign source, this is propaganda and not news.

For another specific example, Mike Wallace of the famed television show 60 Minutes won an Emmy for a contrived interview with President Ahmadinejad in 2006, where Mr. Ahmadinejad’s comments encouraging democracy for Palestinians was edited to appear that he was hostile to Israel. You can verify this “emperor has no clothes” obvious lies and propaganda by watching the brief 5-minute clip for yourself in this article.

Just as only one in five Americans report trust and satisfaction with their government, Americans also perceive corporate media disinformation and are rejecting their “reporting.” According to a 2007 poll by the Pew Research Center, the majority of the American public see the US major media news organizations as politically biased, inaccurate, and uncaring. Among those who use the Internet, two-thirds report that major media news do not care about the people they report on, 59% say the news is inaccurate, 64% see bias, and 53% summarize their view on major media news as, “failing to stand up for America.” In their latest poll, “just 29% of Americans say that news organizations generally get the facts straight, while 63% say that news stories are often inaccurate.

You, the reader and citizen, have to draw your own conclusions. However, the facts are clear that Americans are being lied to in Orwellian degree. My comprehensive documentation of these lies of omission and commission from political/corporate media collusion is here.