When a post was answered along the lines of 'Oh, yeah....then how come the press doesn't know about communist influence blah blah blah.....', I promised a post on what has happened to our press.
As follows:
1. As specified in the founding documents, our democracy is based on the information gleaned from a free and independent press. This is necessary, as the self-interest of politicians would otherwise stand in the way of the public being informed. Perhaps the best summary of what we expect is here:
"The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."
2. This is no longer the case. See this: "In a shocking New York Times opinion piece, CNNs chief news executive Eason Jordan has admitted that for the past decade the network has systematically covered up stories of Iraqi atrocities. Reports of murder, torture, and planned assassinations were suppressed in order to maintain CNNs Baghdad bureau."
Read Jordans op-ed at:
The News We Kept to Ourselves - NYTimes.com
3. If only this began in recent days, a la CNN. No, the trend took full force during the tenure of a President so popular that he could cow the Supreme Court, and count on the press media coverage that would pander to his whims. FDR.
Unfortunately for America, FDR's whims mirrored those of Joseph Stalin.
a. So, for 4 generations of Americans, there has been head-to-toe immersion in Soviet propagnada.
4. Russian presence in wartime America was so large that they had to set up a corporate headquarters on Sixteenth Street in Washington. One of the executives in the huge staff was Victor Kravchenko, metallurgist, engineer, executive, and captain in the Red Army. And the first Soviet defector.
Fleming, "The Anti-Communist Manifestos."
a. Kravchenko remarked on the effects of the propaganda: "Americans seemed intent on explaining everything in Stalin's favor, to the discredit to the democracies....What the Communists had not yet succeeded in doing in their own country- as the purges and the millions of political prisoners indicate- they had succeeded in doing in America!" Kravchenko, "I Chose Freedom," p. 467-468.
b. More than interesting was Kravchenko's explanation:
'...the Russian people expected lies and read between the lines of the Soviet state-run press. The Americans, confident of the First Amendment saw no reason to expect lies from their press, so accepted propaganda transmitted by correspondents from Moscow, e.g., Walter Duranty; CNN.
5. With all due respect to FDR, it is possible that his adventure with internationalism might be due to succumbing to even earlier propaganda. The Commintern, the Communist International, was founded in Moscow in March, 1919. Not far behind it, the Communist Party, USA (CPUSA) was founded in Chicago in September, 1919. This from the November 24, 1919 application of the CPUSA to the Commintern:
The final struggle of the communist proletariat will be waged in the United States. Our conquest of power alone assuring the world Soviet Republic! Realizing all of this, the Communist Party prepares for the struggle. Long live the Communist International, long live the world revolution!
a. The progressive left, and the liberal left, while not themselves communists, share many of the same sympathies, such of redistribution of wealth, and workers rights, nationalizations of industry, etc, but are not quite as far left as the communists, and would not go to the same lengths as the communists to achieve their goals. This does not mean, though, that the help of these dupes is not necessary in order for the communists to achieve victory. Even at their peak, in the 30s, the Communist Party of the United States never had more than 100 thousand members: so deception of the dupes was critical.
Dr. Paul Kengor, Hoover Institution, Stanford DUPES: How America's Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century
6. But, based on FDR's obvious enthralled views toward Stalin and the USSR, and the organs of dissemination of information backing same, it was clear that one's career, and reputation was on the line should they by misguided enough to confront, deny, dispute, the pro-Soviet agenda.
And, exactly the same phenomenon is at play in universities today.
While the public was amazed and interested in Kravchenko's revelations about Stalin's plans, his book was a best seller, the press was largely silent.
"Editorial comment was minimum and cautious. Most US editors, mindful of the delicacy of US-Soviet relations, of the gravity of the war, and of the 26-year-old difficulty in getting at the truth in any item dealing with Russia, did not want to stick out their neck." Time Magazine, March 1944
So much for comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable....
As follows:
1. As specified in the founding documents, our democracy is based on the information gleaned from a free and independent press. This is necessary, as the self-interest of politicians would otherwise stand in the way of the public being informed. Perhaps the best summary of what we expect is here:
"The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."
2. This is no longer the case. See this: "In a shocking New York Times opinion piece, CNNs chief news executive Eason Jordan has admitted that for the past decade the network has systematically covered up stories of Iraqi atrocities. Reports of murder, torture, and planned assassinations were suppressed in order to maintain CNNs Baghdad bureau."
Read Jordans op-ed at:
The News We Kept to Ourselves - NYTimes.com
3. If only this began in recent days, a la CNN. No, the trend took full force during the tenure of a President so popular that he could cow the Supreme Court, and count on the press media coverage that would pander to his whims. FDR.
Unfortunately for America, FDR's whims mirrored those of Joseph Stalin.
a. So, for 4 generations of Americans, there has been head-to-toe immersion in Soviet propagnada.
4. Russian presence in wartime America was so large that they had to set up a corporate headquarters on Sixteenth Street in Washington. One of the executives in the huge staff was Victor Kravchenko, metallurgist, engineer, executive, and captain in the Red Army. And the first Soviet defector.
Fleming, "The Anti-Communist Manifestos."
a. Kravchenko remarked on the effects of the propaganda: "Americans seemed intent on explaining everything in Stalin's favor, to the discredit to the democracies....What the Communists had not yet succeeded in doing in their own country- as the purges and the millions of political prisoners indicate- they had succeeded in doing in America!" Kravchenko, "I Chose Freedom," p. 467-468.
b. More than interesting was Kravchenko's explanation:
'...the Russian people expected lies and read between the lines of the Soviet state-run press. The Americans, confident of the First Amendment saw no reason to expect lies from their press, so accepted propaganda transmitted by correspondents from Moscow, e.g., Walter Duranty; CNN.
5. With all due respect to FDR, it is possible that his adventure with internationalism might be due to succumbing to even earlier propaganda. The Commintern, the Communist International, was founded in Moscow in March, 1919. Not far behind it, the Communist Party, USA (CPUSA) was founded in Chicago in September, 1919. This from the November 24, 1919 application of the CPUSA to the Commintern:
The final struggle of the communist proletariat will be waged in the United States. Our conquest of power alone assuring the world Soviet Republic! Realizing all of this, the Communist Party prepares for the struggle. Long live the Communist International, long live the world revolution!
a. The progressive left, and the liberal left, while not themselves communists, share many of the same sympathies, such of redistribution of wealth, and workers rights, nationalizations of industry, etc, but are not quite as far left as the communists, and would not go to the same lengths as the communists to achieve their goals. This does not mean, though, that the help of these dupes is not necessary in order for the communists to achieve victory. Even at their peak, in the 30s, the Communist Party of the United States never had more than 100 thousand members: so deception of the dupes was critical.
Dr. Paul Kengor, Hoover Institution, Stanford DUPES: How America's Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century
6. But, based on FDR's obvious enthralled views toward Stalin and the USSR, and the organs of dissemination of information backing same, it was clear that one's career, and reputation was on the line should they by misguided enough to confront, deny, dispute, the pro-Soviet agenda.
And, exactly the same phenomenon is at play in universities today.
While the public was amazed and interested in Kravchenko's revelations about Stalin's plans, his book was a best seller, the press was largely silent.
"Editorial comment was minimum and cautious. Most US editors, mindful of the delicacy of US-Soviet relations, of the gravity of the war, and of the 26-year-old difficulty in getting at the truth in any item dealing with Russia, did not want to stick out their neck." Time Magazine, March 1944
So much for comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable....
