The Networks & the National Security State

Edited by Alex Constantine

Cable News Lies Website:

http://www.cablenewslies.com/
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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/nov2001/cnn-n06.shtml

CNN tells reporters: No propaganda, except American
By Patrick Martin
6 November 2001

In an extraordinary directive to its staff, Cable News Network has instructed reporters and anchormen to tailor their coverage of the US war against Afghanistan to downplay the toll of death and destruction caused by American bombing, for fear that such coverage will undermine popular support for the US military effort.

A memo from CNN Chairman Walter Isaacson to international correspondents for the network declares: “As we get good reports from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, we must redouble our efforts to make sure we do not seem to be simply reporting from their vantage or perspective. We must talk about how the Taliban are using civilian shields and how the Taliban have harbored the terrorists responsible for killing close to 5,000 innocent people.”

“I want to make sure we’re not used as a propaganda platform,” Isaacson declared in an interview with the Washington Post, adding that it “seems perverse to focus too much on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan.”

“We’re entering a period in which there’s a lot more reporting and video from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan,” he said. “You want to make sure people understand that when they see civilian suffering there, it’s in the context of a terrorist attack that caused enormous suffering in the United States.”

In a second memo leaked to the Post, CNN’s head of standards and practices, Rick Davis, expressed concern about reports on the bombing of Afghanistan filed by on-the-spot reporters. Davis noted that it “may be hard for the correspondent in these dangerous areas to make the points clearly” about the reasons for the US bombing. In other words, the CNN official feared that overseas correspondents might be intimidated by local opposition to the US military intervention and allow such sentiments to influence their reports.

To ensure that every CNN report always includes a justification of the war, Davis prescribed specific language for anchors to read after each account of civilian casualties and other bomb damage. He suggested three alternative formulations:

* “We must keep in mind, after seeing reports like this from Taliban-controlled areas, that these US military actions are in response to a terrorist attack that killed close to 5,000 innocent people in the US.”

* “We must keep in mind, after seeing reports like this, that the Taliban regime in Afghanistan continues to harbor terrorists who have praised the September 11 attacks that killed close to 5,000 innocent people in the US.”

* “The Pentagon has repeatedly stressed that it is trying to minimize civilian casualties in Afghanistan, even as the Taliban regime continues to harbor terrorists who are connected to the September 11 attacks that claimed thousands of innocent lives in the US.”

Davis concluded with an ultimatum to journalists concerned that they may sound like parrots for the White House: “Even though it may start sounding rote, it is important that we make this point each time.”
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The Origin of Roger Ailes

Ailes is the president of Fox News, but before that, the producer of the television version of The Rush Limbaugh Show and a Republican Party strategist. In the early 1990s, Ailes adopted a populist mantra of "Us versus Them" in his various programming initiatives (with Limbaugh, but also as president of a cable network that preceded MSNBC).

http://www.portfolioweekly.com/Pages/InfoPage.php/iID/1878

Ailes role in the media industry includes:

in 1991 persuading "a syndicator to bring Rush Limbaugh from radio to television and became executive producer of the late-night show"

In 1993 was appointed President of NBC's cable channel CNBC

introduced NBC cable channel, America's Talking in 1994

in January 1996 was appointed as chief executive officer of Fox News and the FOX News Channel and, according to his biographical note, "also serves as a senior advisor to Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and CEO of the News Corporation Limited."

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Roger_Ailes

Jolly Roger's grand plan
Oct. 16, 2005

The news czar is revamping Rupe's station group, and your local newscast will never be the same

By MICHAEL LEARMONTH

Two months after Lachlan Murdoch's abrupt resignation as News Corp. deputy chief operations officer, cable news impresario Roger Ailes is wasting no time bringing the conglom's network of 35 TV stations into the Fox News fold. ... Ailes added CBS exec Dennis Swanson to a group of Fox News Channel hands to run the group, including CEO Jack Abernethy and senior veep of news operations Sharri Berg in what amounts to a grafting of the Fox cable news operation onto its network of 35 local stations.

Now, with the stations and 20th Television under his wing, suddenly Ailes becomes one of the most powerful execs in television with the ability to see his vision writ large across the broadcast landscape. At the stations, some staff expressed concern that Ailes' army would politicize the news operations.

Few would deny that Ailes knows how to create compelling TV and identify charismatic news talent. What local news director wouldn't want dozens more Shepard Smiths to bloom in Orlando, Chicago or Kansas City?

News Corp. owns both a Fox and a UPN affiliate in the top three media markets --New York, Los Angeles and Chicago -- and other duopolies in six more of the top 20 markets, including Dallas, Minneapolis and Washington, D.C. News Corp. owns stations in 26 markets in all, reaching 45% of the country. ....
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Murdoch’s MySpace expands data collection/ad targeting, including on whether users say they smoke, drink, religious beliefs, etc.

August 27th, 2007

The powerful commercial forces shaping new media platforms like MySpace–so they can better reap big dollars from powerful brand advertisers– should raise user alarm bells. MySpace is going to [our italics] “leverage the data input by each MySpace user into their profile from a group of predefined menu choices (related to questions such as […]

http://www.democraticmedia.org/jcblog/?cat=21
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DOCUMENTARY FILM REVEALS THAT THE CABLE NETWORKS ALL CARRIED PENTAGON PROPAGANDA IN BUILT-UP TO IRAQ WAR

Backspin for War: The Convenience of Denial
Asset A03245 Posted By anthony

The man who ran CNN’s news operation during the invasion of Iraq is now doing damage control in response to a new documentary’s evidence that he kowtowed to the Pentagon on behalf of the cable network. His current denial says a lot about how “liberal media” outlets remain deeply embedded in the mindsets of pro-military conformity.

Days ago, the former CNN executive publicly defended himself against a portion of the War Made Easy film (based on my book of the same name) that has drawn much comment from viewers since the documentary’s release earlier this summer. As Inter Press Service reported, the movie shows “a news clip of Eason Jordan, a CNN News chief executive who, in an interview with CNN, boasts of the network’s cadre of professional ‘military experts.’ In fact, CNN’s retired military generals turned war analysts were so good, Eason said, that they had all been vetted and approved by the U.S. government.” ...

he film provides a wide range of evidence that “all of the cable networks were actively complicit in promoting the war” — the result of chronic biases rather than “journalistic laziness.” And CNN, like the rest of the cable news operations, comes in for plenty of tough scrutiny in the documentary. As the magazine Variety noted in a review of “War Made Easy” a few days ago, “Fox News is predictably bashed here, but supposedly neutral CNN gets it even harder.”

CNN is among the news outlets at the core of the myth of “the liberal media” — perpetuated, in part, by the fact that people are often overly impressed by the significance of rhetorical attacks on some media organizations by more conservative outlets. (Before his resignation from CNN in 2005, Eason Jordan was himself subjected to denunciations from the right — for allegedly skewing news coverage to curry favor with the Baghdad government during Saddam’s rule and, after the invasion, for reportedly stating that U.S. troops had targeted some journalists in Iraq.) But antipathy from right-wing pundits is hardly an indication of journalistic independence. ...

http://gnn.tv/threads/26868/Backspin_for_War_The_Convenience_of_Denial
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The Pentagon Channel

April 14, 2006
The Propaganda Channel and the Net Neutrality Debate

If you haven’t seen the “Pentagon Channel” produced by the Department of Defense, you’re missing a classic—and outrageous–propaganda effort aimed for U.S. audiences. This 24/7 “video news” network, as it calls itself, outshines even Fox News in its fealty to the official U.S. government line about Iraq. But since one of the channel’s star “talents” is Don Rumsfeld himself, it’s not surprising. What is shocking is that the U.S. is producing a channel for domestic use that is clearly propaganda—and should be taken off the many U.S. cable systems and satellite services that carry it.

With a program line-up that includes the daily “Freedom Journal Iraq” and “Around the Services” (from the Pentagon “NewsCenter-daily…military news from top Defense officials”) to “Inside Afghanistan,” and the “Stallion Report” ( “a bi-weekly news program from Mosul, Iraq”), the Pentagon Channel airs the official view. We are all fighting for “freedom.” We are winning the “hearts and minds” of the Iraq people, says one reporter for “Freedom Journal Iraq.” Scenes of “hunting bad guys,” and “missions of good will” are shown (including pictures of renovated schools displaying posters of Disney characters).

Major cable, satellite and telephone companies have given the U.S. government channel free carriage, including Comcast, Time Warner, Verizon, Cox, and Echostar. The channel reaches about 12 million cable and satellite viewers; it’s also distributed in the U.S. and around the world on military bases. The channel is working to expand its distribution, including going after space reserved for public access channels (which were created to promote free speech—not governmental PR). This week the channel launched itself as a video and audio podcast via the Internet. Secretary of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld declared that he was “…pleased that we are using video casting and other increasingly important technologies to reach our global audience…”

The Voice of America is prohibited from airing its service in the U.S. The Pentagon Channel should also be similarly banned. We hope the Pentagon Channel will be scrutinized by more media critics and policymakers. Having a taxpayer-backed channel that promotes itself as “news” when it’s really about pushing an Administration’s political agenda should clearly be unacceptable policy.

But—now for the connection with network neutrality. In a world where the big cable and phone companies can dominate the U.S. broadband and TV market—expect more favorable treatment for such official government PR efforts. Whether it’s giving the Department of Defense a helping hand with its propaganda channel or turning over to the NSA and other agencies our personal communications—the big cable/telco broadband monopoly will strive to please officials. That’s where the quid pro quo deal making—let’s us control the network and we will treat you `right,’ is likely to occur. You can be sure that when Ed Whitacre of AT&T charges a Google for using what it considers its “pipes,” it will give the official view–such as the Pentagon Channel–a free, high-speed broadband ride.
http://www.democraticmedia.org/jcblog/?p=27
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FRANK CARLUCCI, THE LUMUMBA ASSASSINATION & AN INSTANCE OF HBO CENSORSHIP

"Carlucci" bleeped from HBO version of Lumumba
Ex-CIA official threatened lawsuit
By Joanne Laurier
15 March 2002

Home Box Office (HBO), the US cable television network, is currently broadcasting a censored version of Lumumba, the award-winning film about Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of independent Congo, assassinated by imperialist agents in January 1961.

Haitian-born director Raoul Peck’s work fictionally reconstructs Lumumba’s coming to power in 1960 and the intrigues which led to his brutal murder. The film shown on HBO is a version of the French-language original dubbed into English, which bleeps out the name of Frank Carlucci, a future deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and secretary of defense, in the dialogue and masks his name in the credits. At the time of Lumumba’s death, Carlucci was the second secretary at the US embassy in the Congo and, covertly, a CIA agent.

This attempt to keep Carlucci’s role in the Congo from television audiences follows the release of US government documents revealing that President Dwight Eisenhower ordered the CIA to murder Lumumba. Minutes of an August 1960 National Security Council meeting confirm that Eisenhower told CIA chief Allen Dulles to “eliminate” the Congolese leader. The official note taker, Robert H. Johnson, testified to this before the Senate Intelligence Committee in 1975, but no documentary evidence had been previously available to back up his claim.

Carlucci’s lawyers threatened Peck and distribution company Zeitgeist Films with legal action if the name of the former US official was not bleeped out of a scene that shows American Ambassador Clare Timberlake and Carlucci, along with Belgian and Congolese officials, plotting Lumumba’s assassination. Carlucci insisted that only the altered version of the film, with his name missing, could be used for mass market venues, such as television, video and DVD, allowing the original track to remain intact for theater showings. Zeitgeist officials said they were too small and weak financially to fight a case in court.

Carlucci is an immensely wealthy individual, with connections at the highest levels of the US government. Deputy chief of the CIA under Jimmy Carter and secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan, Carlucci is now chairman of the Carlyle Group, a private equity investment group with billions of dollars of assets in the defense industry. The company employs prominent ex-officeholders, such as former president George Bush, former British prime minister John Major and former president of the Philippines Fidel Ramos. Carlucci has the closest financial, political and personal ties to the Bush family. Other figures involved in Carlyle Group operations include former secretary of state James Baker, who headed up George W. Bush’s effort to block vote recounts in Florida in 2000 and hijack the presidential election. Carlucci has a long-term political relationship with his former classmate and wrestling buddy from Princeton, the present secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld.

At a January 24 screening of the film in New York held at the Council on Foreign Relations (CRF), publisher of Foreign Affairs magazine, Peck confirmed that the film had been changed in response to Carlucci’s legal threats. Despite considerable media presence at the event, during which Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, for one, raised a question about Carlucci’s name being removed, virtually nothing has appeared in the mainstream media about the issue.

The WSWS spoke with freelance journalist Lucy Komisar, who attended the screening and wrote an article about Carlucci’s action for the Pacific News Service. She commented: “This is censorship. This is a story that he [Carlucci] does not want to talk about. Although he was not in charge [of the CIA’s Congo activities in 1960], he was involved in what was going on. It is a part of his history. The honorable thing to do would have been to acknowledge that the Americans helped in doing away with a man who could have helped that region—that they supported Mobutu, who for decades led a brutal dictatorship which caused enormous suffering. I think the incident shows the extremes to which people like Carlucci will go to cover up actions they know were wrong—even to censoring a movie.”

The panel at the CFR screening included Brian Urquhart, chief assistant to Ralph Bunche, who headed up the United Nations (UN) mission in Congo during the Lumumba crisis. According to Urquhart’s own account of the affair recently published in the New York Review of Books, he was in touch with Lumumba on nearly a daily basis until the latter broke off relations with Bunche. Urquhart’s article, as his statements at the film screening, depicted the UN as an independent, neutral force that was, albeit reluctantly, helping Lumumba.

Contrary to Urquhart’s version of events, Peck’s film depicts the UN as an instrument of the US and Belgium and an accessory to the campaign of subversion mounted by the imperialist powers against Lumumba and the newly indepdendent Congolese government. Lumumba invited in the UN “peacekeepers,” but broke contact with them when their role became clear. UN officials and troops, in turn, refused to take any action to prevent his murder.

Carlucci’s attack on the film dates back at least to last summer. At a July 25 screening of Lumumba in Washington, DC, he was a panelist along with Howard Wolpe, the former congressman and chairman of the House subcommittee on Africa. Carlucci called the subsequently censored scene in the movie “a cheap shot.” He did make a mild—and thoroughly cynical—criticism of the US role. “Did [the United States] handle him [Lumumba] right?” Carlucci asked. “It’s clear we were too strident,” he replied.

In an interview with Komisar, Carlucci claimed that the US had “no role whatsoever” in plotting Lumumba’s death. He referred to Madeleine Kalb’s book, The Congo Cables, and asserted, “You’ll find no references to me.” As Komisar notes, “Carlucci has a bad memory.” Not only does Kalb’s book refer to Carlucci, it describes “the efforts by the US Embassy and the CIA to topple Lumumba.” The book, she writes, “contains documents by [US ambassador] Timberlake and CIA chief Lawrence Devlin talking about their desire and efforts to stop Lumumba, and even Devlin’s unhappiness [about] one leader’s refusal to commit murder. The State Department’s official ‘Analytical Chronology of the Congo Crisis’ talks about a plan ‘to bring about the overthrow of Lumumba and install a pro-western government...Operations under this plan were gradually put into effect by the CIA.’”

In a letter to Peck, Belgian Ludo De Witte—author of the recent book, The Assassination of Lumumba —also made clear that Timberlake, Devlin and Carlucci worked together “on Congolese efforts to get rid of Lumumba.” De Witte further commented: “We know that Devlin and other US personnel in the capital were informed about the transfer of Lumumba to the Kasai or Katanga... Everybody knew that there were waiting some subcontractors to do the dirty job, and, given the rank and involvement of Carlucci in Lumumba-related activities from the US embassy, we may assume (although it’s not proven) that Carlucci knew of what equaled a death sentence for Lumumba.”

After leaving the Congo, Carlucci was in Brazil at the time of CIA and US State Department efforts to overthrow the Goulart government, which lead to a military coup in March/April 1964. He was the US ambassador to Portugal during the years of intense revolutionary crisis in 1974-77, before returning to Washington and assuming top posts in the military and intelligence apparatus.

Carlucci’s efforts to suppress his role demonstrates that US complicity in Lumumba’s death remains a sensitive issue. The American establishment does not care for anyone to know that its interventions—past, present and future—are guided by the economic and political interests of US capitalism and often carried out by criminal and bloody means.

The bleeping of Carlucci’s name from Lumumba is not simply a matter of covering up the past. Carlucci remains a major figure in both the US state and the American corporate world, as well as within the Republican Party. The US, moreover, is intensifying its intrigues in Africa, and a reminder of its dirty past complicates its present-day activities on the continent.

The crude censorship of the film underscores as well the increasingly open assault on democratic rights and freedom of expression in the US.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/mar2002/carl-m15.shtml

NPR's On The Media Corrects Report on The Infinite Mind: Apologizes for 'Lapse of Journalistic Judgment'

"NPR's "On The Media" has corrected and apologized for a report it aired last fall accusing the executive producer of "The Infinite Mind" public radio series of having known about ethically questionable behavior by the program's host, Dr. Fred Goodwin.

(PRWEB) March 22, 2009 -- NPR's "On The Media" this week corrected its November 28, 2008 report that accused the executive producer of "The Infinite Mind" public radio series of having known that the show's host, Dr. Fred Goodwin, had received $1.2 million in fees for giving marketing lectures on behalf of pharmaceutical companies, while he was hosting the program.

In its on-air correction (http://onthemedia.org/transcripts/2009/03/13/05), "On The Media's" host, Brooke Gladstone, apologized for what she called the "lapse of journalistic judgment" in the report, which relied on an unnamed source to corroborate Goodwin's claim that Lichtenstein was aware of the speaking fees. In its correction, "On The Media" acknowledged that, contrary to what was originally reported by the show, the anonymous source says she has "no first-hand evidence that (Lichtenstein) knew of any fees." Gladstone added that "The Infinite Mind" says it "had always adhered to standard journalism practice in vetting guests and disclosing conflicts of interest."

"On The Media" also apologized for failing to seek a comment or response from Lichtenstein, who has maintained that he first learned about Goodwin's speaking fees from a November 22, 2008 article in the New York Times, and that Goodwin's activities violated the strict conflict of interest agreement Goodwin had with "The Infinite Mind." Gladstone said "On The Media's" failure to present Lichtenstein's and "The Infinite Mind's" side of the story was "a mistake, it wasn't fair and it didn't serve our listeners."

Despite "The Infinite Mind's" protests at the time of the broadcast, "On The Media" corrected the story only after the anonymous source came forward to say "On The Media" had incorrectly reported what she told the program. The source said she told "On The Media" that in 2003 "The Infinite Mind" was aware that host Goodwin gave educational lectures, but said she had no knowledge or evidence to support Goodwin's claim, as reported by "On The Media," that Lichtenstein or "The Infinite Mind" was aware that Goodwin was being paid to give marketing talks on behalf of pharmaceutical companies.

"On The Media's" report, which aired a week after the New York Times article was published, attracted wide attention as it represented the sole evidence that "The Infinite Mind's" producers were aware of the reported $1.2 million in speaking fees received by Goodwin.

Since the publication of the New York Times article in November 2008, Goodwin has shifted his position from stating that "The Infinite Mind" was aware of his activities, to maintaining in interviews with the BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal) and other publications that he did not believe there had been, in fact, a conflict of interest. "I frankly do not see these things as a conflict of interest . . . I always thought that if you have multiple relationships they sort of cancel each other out," Goodwin told the student newspaper at George Washington University, where he is on the faculty.

"The Infinite Mind" had previously announced it would, after 10 years, be ceasing production at the end of 2008. "The Infinite Mind" was independently produced and distributed to public radio stations, and NPR aired the series on its Sirius Satellite channel.

For a decade, "The Infinite Mind" was public radio's most honored and listened to health and science program, examining all aspects of the mind and the biology of human behavior. The program featured the leading names in neuroscience and mental health, along with appearances by renowned authors, musicians and actors, and was the recipient of 30 major broadcast journalism awards.

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Trackback URL: http://www.prweb.com/pingpr.php/VGhpci1JbnNlLUhvcnItSGFsZi1Db3VwLUNvdXAtWmVybw==


See the original story at: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2009/03/prweb2251624.htm

Please, just leave - Right-wing crackpots plot to abandon the union

By MIKE MILIARD
thephoenix.com
March 19, 2009

"What kind of revolution appeals most to you?" read the now-deleted poll question on Sean Hannity's message board: "Military Coup, Armed Rebellion, or War for Secession?"

The next four to eight years are gonna be some fun!

Barely two months into the Obama administration, wing-nuts across the land are frothing at the mouth, talking feverishly of secession, violent revolution, tax revolt, "going Galt," and national divorce. It would be hilarious if it weren't so creepy.

We all had a good laugh this past December when Igor Panarin, dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry's academy for future diplomats, predicted that the financial crisis would eventually lead to widespread unrest, martial law, and, by 2010, a civil war in the US — the end result of which would be a motley collection of rump states like "Atlantic America" and the "Texas Republic," that then glom onto countries such as Canada and Mexico. It's an absurd idea.

Or is it? Perusing some of the sheer insanity spewed on rightist blogs, message boards, and comment threads — the pitchfork-shaking anger directed at this so-called socialist government — one has to wonder just what's percolating in this country. Maybe the big break-up is coming sooner than we think? ...

ut protests do only so much. More and more, it seems, nothing less than outright secession will satisfy some of these cranks. The right-wing Web is all atwitter over a recent open letter, spreading from blog to blog like a hanta virus, by one "John J. Wall, Law Student and an American." In it, Wall puts it plainly: he wants a divorce.

"Let's just end it on friendly terms," he writes. "We don't like redistributive taxes so you can keep them. . . . Since you hate guns and war, we'll take our firearms, the cops, the NRA, and the military." (What they'll do with all the guns he doesn't say.)

Ironically, when not busy fomenting revolution or concocting a plan to carve up the continental US, conservatives act a lot like the "hippies" that Wall went on to lambaste in his letter — thumbing their nose at authority and threatening to drop out of society.

It was reported on military.com last month that a soldier, First Lieutenant Scott Easterling, who is stationed in Iraq, has balked at following orders: "Until Mr. Obama releases a 'vault copy' of his original birth certificate for public review," he declared, "I will consider him neither my commander in chief nor my president, but rather, a usurper to the office — an impostor."

And the latest bit of in(s)anity making the rounds in conservative circles in is the notion of "going Galt," in which angry rich people protest Obama's fiscal policies by following the lead of John Galt —übermensch protagonist of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged — and removing their ostensibly valuable productivity from society. ...

http://thephoenix.com/Providence/News/78501-Please-just-leave/

BOSTON GLOBE'S ALEX BEAM - SON OF A NAZI/CIA COLLABORATOR - DEFLECTS ATTENTION FROM HIS OWN FAMILY BY WRITING ABOUT QUISLING FRANCES GOULD

By Alex Constantine

Alex Beam

AC Note: I've written about Jacob Beam, Alex Beam's father, in the past. Jacob was chairman of Radio Free Europe at one time (in which capacity he was cozy with the CIA and earned his "Mockingbird" psyop wings - inherited and currently sported by his "journalist" son), a carded member of the ultra-conservative Committee on the Present Danger, and a close friend of native Nazi Charles Lindbergh (I know, I know - the media have cleaned up his image) - and together they were pampered guests of the Hitler regime in Nazi Germany.

Alex Beam, a columnist at the Boston Globe (and a vicious "Mockingbird" propagandist who reviles "conspiracy theorists" who get too close to the truth about fascism in domestic politics - in the pages of the most widely circulated daily in New England) distances himself from his roots by doing us all a favor - he has written an opinion piece excoriating philanthropist Frances Gould for her Nazi liaisons in France.

By posing as a freedom-loving anti-fascist, Beam apparently hopes to allay any suspicions concerning his fascist roots and (CIA-sponsored?) "journalism career":

The BSO's Tainted Donor
By Alex Beam
Boston Globe
March 17, 2009

Now a new book from Yale University Press states that the late Florence Gould - benefactress of the Symphony's Florence Gould Auditorium at Tanglewood, whose foundation bountifully subsidizes programs at Harvard, Milton Academy, the Boston Public Library, the Boston Camerata, the New England Conservatory, UMass-Amherst, and elsewhere - was a dyed-in-the-wool Hitlerite and bigot. "She was a Nazi sympathizer and a terrible anti-Semite who cohabited with the most appalling figures of the German occupation in Paris" - including the head of the Gestapo responsible for dynamiting synagogues and deporting Jews to the death camps - according to the book's author, Frederic Spotts.

Who was Florence Gould? She was a French divorcee and dancer who caught the eye of Frank Jay Gould, son of the famous robber baron Jay Gould. Her husband spent World War II on the Riviera, but she "quickly returned to Paris," according to Spotts's book, "The Shameful Peace: How French Artists and Intellectuals Survived the Nazi Occupation," "and in no time was cultivating Wehrmacht officers and Gestapo officials."

Spotts writes that Gould became a "collabo [collaborationist] queen" who hosted a ritzy salon "while Sylvia Beach [American founder of the famous bookstore Shakespeare & Co.] and some three thousand British and American civilians languished in an internment camp." According to its most recent tax filing, the Florence Gould Foundation donated $10,000 to Shakespeare & Co. in 2007.

The anti-Semitic French novelist Louis-Ferdinand Celine was fascinated by the woman he called "Madame Frank J. Gould, the wife (the 5th! I also knew the 2nd quite well) of the old American railroad billionaire . . . a former manicurist, French by birth (Lacaze), flighty and not at all dumb, a snob." Celine wrote that "she was enormously compromised with the Luftwaffe - where she had at least three young lovers and was very much at home in the German military headquarters." Gould's main squeeze was Ernst Junger, a German cultural official, World War I war hero and writer who had dabbled in anti-Semitic propaganda in 1930, according to an article Mehlman published in Modern Language Notes in 2007.

You know what they say: Money doesn't care who owns it. "She's not the first outrageous person to give money away," Spotts told me in a telephone interview from his home in the south of France.

Gould died on the Riviera in 1983, at age 87. She had no heirs and her legacy is the $100 million - those are 2007 endowment dollars - New York-based foundation in her name that makes extraordinary gifts to cultural institutions. Most recently reported recipients include the Metropolitan Museum of Art ($250,000), Lincoln Center ($100,000), Cornell medical school ($200,000), and so on. The Clark Art museum in Williamstown, founded by the American fascist and Parisian expatriate Sterling Clark, received $20,000 from the foundation.

The French Institute Alliance Francaise operates a Florence Gould Hall in Manhattan and there is a Florence Gould Theater in San Francisco.

BSO spokeswoman Bernadette Horgan said the Tanglewood auditorium was built in 1990 with a gift from the Florence Gould Foundation. The recently reported details of Mrs. Gould's biography were news to her. Foundation president John Young did not return my call.

Encore

Three of the four best books I read last year were novels by Justin Cartwright; the fourth was "Cost," by Roxana Robinson. The plot of Cartwright's "Masai Dreaming" disturbingly evokes the world of Florence Gould. A Jewish doctor has survived the Nazi occupation of Paris by ministering to patients in a Jewish hospital. His daughter returns to Paris to warn him to escape, before the last group of Jews is transported East, to the death camps. But he insists that he is out of danger; the Allies have landed in Normandy, and he has achieved a modus vivendi with the more enlightened elements of the German administration.

Maybe yes, maybe no.

Alex Beam's e-dress is beam@globe.com.

http://www.boston.com/ae/music/articles/2009/03/17/the_bsos_tainted_donor/
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PS: NOTE TO ALEX BEAM ...

CARE TO COMMENT?

From: "Alex Constantine"
To: beam@globe.com
Tuesday, March 17, 2009 8:14 PM

Dear Vermin:

Here you are, in all your CIA-Nazi glory:

http://aconstantineblacklist.blogspot.com/2009/03/boston-globes-alex-beam-son-of-nazi.html

March 20 Update: Mr. Beam did not respond to my request for a comment above. I also contacted some half-dozen editors and reporters at the Boston Globe. None of them acted on the information re Alex and Jacob Bean, and no response has come from any of them.

I interpret this silence as confirmation.

Is the Internet killing the news media?

Pew report on state of American journalism paints bleak picture
'Net Insider By Scott Bradner
Network World - 03/16/2009

The latest Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism report on the state of the U.S. news media makes for sobering reading if you are a student thinking of pursuing a career in journalism or if you are already in the business. The bottom line is that the business is toast unless you are in the Internet side, and even there it's toast.

The report's first few sentences tell most of the story:

• Newspaper ad revenues are down more than 20% in the last two years.

• Twenty percent of the journalists who worked in newspapers have lost their jobs in that time period.

• Ad revenues were down last year in local TV news more than 5% (even in an election year).

• The traffic at the top news sites went up more than 25% last year.

• The ad-based model for funding journalism is unlikely for the future.

STORY CONTINUES
•••••
" ... All over America, as newspaper revenues plummet – by the end of 2008, ad sales were down about 25 percent from three years earlier – publishers cannot seem to shed editors, reporters and sections of their papers fast enough. ... "

The Conversation: What do you lose if newspapers don't survive?
The New Republic
MAR. 01, 2009

... More than any other medium, newspapers have been our eyes on the state, our check on private abuses, our civic alarm systems. It is true that they have often failed to perform those functions as well as they should have done. But whether they can continue to perform them at all is now in doubt.

Even before the recession hit, the newspaper industry was facing a mortal threat from the rise of the Internet, falling circulation and advertising revenue, and a long-term decline in readership, as the habit of buying a daily paper dwindled from one generation to the next.

The recession has intensified these difficulties, plunging newspapers into a tailspin from which some will not recover and others will emerge only as a shadow of their former selves. The devastation is already substantial.

At the Los Angeles Times, the cumulative effect of cutbacks has been to reduce its newsroom by half – and that was before its parent company, Tribune, declared bankruptcy. Another company weighed down by debt, the McClatchy chain, which includes the Sacramento Bee, the Miami Herald and 28 other dailies, has laid off one-quarter of its work force in the past year; according to one executive, the editorial downsizing is under 20 percent but is now cutting "close to the bone."

(On Friday, the Rocky Mountain News, owned by E.W. Scripps Co., published its final edition. Earlier last week, the Hearst Corp. said it will close or sell the San Francisco Chronicle if it can't cut expenses.)

Newspapers are also shrinking in numbers of pages, breadth of news coverage, features of various kinds and home delivery of print editions.

All over America, as newspaper revenues plummet – by the end of 2008, ad sales were down about 25 percent from three years earlier – publishers cannot seem to shed editors, reporters and sections of their papers fast enough. And there is more pain to come. According to a December forecast by Barclays Capital, advertising revenue will drop another 17 percent in 2009 and 7.5 percent more the year after.

Who should care

Some observers, confident of the blessings of technology, refuse to shed any tears for the traditional giants of journalism, on the grounds that their troubles are of their own making and of little consequence to the general welfare. In this view, regardless of whether newspapers successfully adapt to the Internet, new and better sources of news will develop online, and they will fill whatever void newspapers leave. Others are so angry at the mainstream media – the reviled "MSM" – that they see the economic misery of the press as a deserved comeuppance. Let the bastards suffer.

These reactions fail to take into account the immediate realities and the full ramifications of the crisis threatening newspaper journalism.

This is no time for Internet triumphalism: The stakes are too high. Nearly all other news media, except for online news, are also retrenching, and the online growth is not close to offsetting the decline elsewhere.

Despite all the development of other media, the fact is that newspapers in recent years have continued to field the majority of reporters and to produce most of the original news stories in cities across the country.

Drawing on studies conducted by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, Tom Rosenstiel, the project's director, says that as of 2006 a typical metropolitan paper ran 70 stories a day, counting the national, local and business sections (adding in the sports and style sections would bring the total closer to 100), whereas a half-hour of television news included only 10 to 12.

And while local TV news typically emphasizes crime, fires and traffic tie-ups, newspapers provide most of the original coverage of public affairs. Studies of newspaper and broadcast journalism have repeatedly shown that broadcast news follows the agenda set by newspapers, often repeating the same items, albeit with less depth. ...

FULL STORY

CNN's Yellin failed to identify CPR chairman as ex-CEO of scandal-plagued hospital firm

Vampires (who want the decimation of all health care proposals) this way come:

Summary: CNN's Jessica Yellin identified Conservatives for Patients' Rights chairman Richard Scott as someone who "runs urgent-care clinics" and the leader of "a media campaign to limit government's role in the health-care system." But Yellin did not note that Scott resigned as chairman of the nation's largest for-profit health-care company in 1997 amid a federal investigation into the company's Medicare billing, physician recruiting, and home-care practices.

Story at MediaMatters.org

Polish media bill targets former neo-Nazi head of TV

By Gabriela Baczynska
Reuters
Mar 12, 2009

WARSAW - Poland's center-right ruling party and leftist opposition unveiled Thursday plans to reform the state television broadcaster which would allow for the removal of its controversial head who has a neo-Nazi past.

Piotr Farfal, a onetime skinhead and former editor of a neo-Nazi magazine known for its anti-Semitic, homophobic views, became acting chief executive of Polish Television (TVP) in late 2008 after an internal power struggle at the broadcaster.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk's government needs the new bill to oust Farfal, a member of the right-wing, staunchly Roman Catholic League of Polish Families (LPR).

Farfal says he has renounced his youthful association with extreme rightwing ideas, which are particularly controversial in Poland, which lost millions of its citizens, including Jews, during Nazi Germany's brutal wartime occupation.

The bill would force a shakeup in the TVP management, scrap Poland's national television and radio licensefee and prepare TVP for digitalization.

Tusk's Civic Platform says the bill would also reduce the scope for political meddling in public-owned media.

"Today we are presenting a joint project aimed at reforming the public media," said Jerzy Szmajdzinski, deputy speaker of the lower house of parliament and a member of the small leftist SLD opposition party.

Tusk needs SLD support to overcome an expected veto of the bill by President Lech Kaczynski, a conservative who blocked a similar attempt to reform public broadcasting last year.

Kaczynski is twin brother of Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of Poland's main opposition party, Law and Justice (PiS), which led a coalition government in which Farfal's LPR also served until Tusk's party defeated them in elections in October 2007.

Farfal and many others in the state television hierarchy owe their positions to that period of PiS-led government and, under current rules, cannot be easily dislodged.

Public media in Poland has remained vulnerable to political interference since the end of one-party communist rule in 1989.

In deference to leftist insistence that TVP should continue to receive public funds to support its 'educational' mission, senior Civic Platform lawmaker Zbigniew Chlebowski said a "public mission fund" would replace the current license fee.

It was not immediately clear how the new fund would work.

Parliament is expected to approve the media bill by early June, Szmajdzinski said.

(Writing by Gareth Jones; editing by Katie Nguyen)

http://www.reuters.com/article/televisionNews/idUSTRE52B4CG20090312