William Colby: "the CIA owns everyone..."

[FourthBase]

Cannot be literally everyone. Impossible.
Most likely: Just enough. A "satisficient" number.
At worst: A good deal more than just enough, for redundancy's sake.
For example: Ben Swann. Do them own him? Are you sure? No?
What about the WBZ investigative team that exposed PTech?

People, look to the local media, that's the prime place to look for good authentic uncorrupted reporters, the prime place where any who've resisted the seduction of power would reside, work. Those who get promoted to the national level, probably not so much. But, still, possible there, too. Certain, in fact. (And you know how carefully I guard my statements from certainty!) There are certainly journalists at the national level and especially the local level who are not owned, who might even be stubbornly unownable.

[Canadian_watcher]

oh ma gawd.

[Simulist]

The William Colby quote being inquired about in this thread was this:

"The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media."

I can't say if that's true or not of course (although the sheer hubris of the claim begs for caution), but it wouldn't surprise me at all if former CIA Director William Colby had been possessed by enough conceit to have made such a claim.

[wordspeak2]

So why was Colby killed? Something to do with the Franklin cover-up?

[Hunter]

Cannot be literally everyone. Impossible.
Most likely: Just enough. A "satisficient" number.
At worst: A good deal more than just enough, for redundancy's sake.
For example: Ben Swann. Do them own him? Are you sure? No?
What about the WBZ investigative team that exposed PTech?

People, look to the local media, that's the prime place to look for good authentic uncorrupted reporters, the prime place where any who've resisted the seduction of power would reside, work. Those who get promoted to the national level, probably not so much. But, still, possible there, too. Certain, in fact. (And you know how carefully I guard my statements from certainty!) There are certainly journalists at the national level and especially the local level who are not owned, who might even be stubbornly unownable.

I think they worry less about journalists and more about the folks who make the final decision what gets printed or aired on the TV, those at the editorial level and above.

This is why you see more and more investigative journalists going independent on blogs because they are tired of seeing their legit hard hitting stuff laying on the cutting room floor.

[Wombaticus Rex]

Highly recommend Into the Buzzsaw for an omnibus of well-written, factual firsthand accounts from honest journalists being spit out by precisely the machine Alchemy outlines above.

Highly doubt much has changed or improved since that book was published, too. The open feeding frenzy of bloggery is an interesting new development and I have high hopes for decentralized media having long-ass flashes of emergent greatness in the future.

[Hunter]

Correct, there is no reason to try and control 1000 journalists when you can just control the 5-10 executive positions that make the decisions what information makes the final cut that will be presented to the public. It is really probably very simple and easy to control the information flow in the media.

The blogesphere certainly presents a new challenge for them in dealing with those who go off reservation and report the facts unedited and uncontrolled, I suspect that is the ultimate purpose of CISPA and similar laws, it very likely will not be as simple as paying 20 bucks to get a domain name and start a blog to write whatever you want, in the future.

[smiths]

once the agenda is set you'd hardly need anyone,
the journalists understand the limits of reporting and the correct tone to take
the same argument is made for organizations like News Ltd, you don't need someone telling the journos what to write, they know what to write to make the big man happy and secure their advancement

you only need people in place in periods of upheaval and transition, like the 1950s and 1960s

[MinM]

@whowhatwhy

20 yrs ago today, body of former #CIA Dir. William Colby found washed up on a MD riverbank. http://bit.ly/1T4RqhI

[Harvey]

[elfismiles]

[elfismiles]

Highly recommend Into the Buzzsaw for an omnibus of well-written, factual firsthand accounts from honest journalists being spit out by precisely the machine Alchemy outlines above.

Highly doubt much has changed or improved since that book was published, too. The open feeding frenzy of bloggery is an interesting new development and I have high hopes for decentralized media having long-ass flashes of emergent greatness in the future.

http://www.prometheusbooks.com/index.ph ... ts_id=1781

[elfismiles]

So have RI folks been looking back at past posts lately in a "On this Day in RI History" kinda way ... have just noticed several old posts being resurrected that get bumped around the date of the last post from years previous.

I like it!

[JackRiddler]

How refined the game of maintaining control over Americans' minds once was, back in the days of Katherine Graham and William Colby, James Reston and Allen Dulles! How informed and well-intentioned the old mandarins must have been, how conscientious they must have felt themselves as they lied and omitted with a higher cause in mind. Where oh where have the Mockingbirds gone?

Top Obama advisor Ben Rhodes told the New York Times Magazine what we have known is true about the American press for the last 20 years already. "They call us to explain to them what's happening," says the White House national security team member. Twenty-seven-year old news writers whose "only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns."



http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/magaz ... .html?_r=2

[Harvey]

Elfi, that was really funny but it wasn't my intention. Addressing the 'internal policeman,' if you will, was the entire point of that scene in the film and the point of my post.