Behind the big news: the John Birch society video Behind the Big News shows that the mainstream media distort the news because they are controlled by a powerful elite seeking global dominion. (Video Review).

Remember when a mere suburban housewife, who had never organized anything but a car pool, suddenly blossomed into the top-notch organizer of the Million Mom March on Washington to demand more gun controls?

Remember when General Motors was accused of outfitting trucks with faulty gas tanks that exploded on contact?

Remember when U.S. troops were so badly beaten in the Viet Cong Tet offensive, indicating that we couldn't stand up against them and "had to lose"?

Remember when -- well, the list is long, but if you remember any of the above events as reported by the media, you will probably be shocked to learn that their portrayal was far removed from the truth.

Although the public is becoming increasingly distrustful and critical of the media, most Americans don't realize the extent to which the media are deceiving them. For far too long, television networks, news magazines, and leading newspapers have been getting away with what amounts to criminal malfeasance with news distortions, cover-ups, omissions and even outright fabrications. And for far too long no one has even asked: If the media are indeed distorting the news and thereby affecting our worldview, why are they doing so?

The answer to this question and proof of media perfidy are now at your fingertips. The John Birch Society's powerful state-of-the-art video documentary Behind the Big News presents dozens of startling revelations of news that has been seriously altered. But it is impossible to understand these deceptions by looking at the media alone. This is because the media are not independent actors with their own agenda. Controlling the media and slanting the news are not ends in themselves but means to an end. The unfortunate truth is that the mainstream media serve a powerful elite working for global control.

Nothing in this mesmerizing video requires the viewer to take the Birch Society's word for it; the media indict themselves. Each topic is introduced with the original news broadcast as first presented to the public. This is followed by film shots, witness testimony, or discussions and analyses by highly placed, experienced individuals such as former ABC correspondent Roger Charles and Fox Military Affairs Analyst Ben Works. The truth of the corrected stories that emerges is not only highly convincing but also irrefutable.

Viewers will be outraged when they learn that the mere suburban housewife who organized the Million Mom March is in reality a political veteran, a former congressional staffer, and publicist for CBS news; that Bill Clinton should have been impeached not for lying but for treasonously handing over top-secret military technology to the Communist Chinese in return for campaign funding; that the government knew in advance about the horrifying Oklahoma City bombing; that Bosnians supposedly imprisoned in concentration camps behind barbed wire by Serbs were actually free outside while the television photographers were inside the barbed wire (one reporter won a Pulitzer Prize for this fraud). Top newscasters such as Walter Cronkite, NBC's Tom Brokaw, and CBS' Dan Rather are shown blanketing the country with similar misinformation.

Unholy Alliance

If these people were merely defining what is news and slanting it to fit their own ideological ends (their left-wing bias has been well documented), our situation would not be quite so dire. But the video makes it clear that an unholy alliance exists between the news producers and the Establishment elite of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), whose agenda has been revealed by one of their own. We learn that in the 1960s Georgetown University Professor Carroll Quigley was for two years allowed access to the confidential papers and secret files of a network of powerful internationalists, of which the CFR is its most visible front group. His resultant book Tragedy and Hope approvingly notes that the objective of this secret network is a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and therefore the world economy. The "tragedy" in Quigley's title is that the internationalists do not yet have this world control; the "hope" is that they soon will.

The video spotlights the amazing Washington Post article, "Ruling Class Journalists," written by Post reporter Richard Harwood (CFR). Harwood makes it clear who is calling the shots, as he defiantly declares that the CFR membership is the nearest thing we have to a ruling establishment.

Indeed, this unprecedented video examines the glaring conflict of interest between those supposedly monitoring and reporting the news, and those they report about. We learn that years ago there used to be a figurative Chinese wall between government officials and media pros. But now there is a close relationship, deliberately cultivated. These people socialize extensively with each other, forming many personal relationships. Objective standards fly out the window and corruption sets in. Young, hardworking journalists eager to move up eventually realize their career depends much less on honest reporting than on giving the boss what he wants to hear. And the boss is not interested in news that rocks the boat of his personal friends in the CFR.

Times' Treacherous Track Record

The New York Times, the most influential newspaper in the U.S., exemplifies how this works. A few individuals at the top, themselves members of the CFR, determine how national and international news will be presented for public consumption. Many editors of mainstream media rely on the Times for how to portray world events.

If treason is defined as giving aid and comfort to the enemy, the New York Times certainly qualifies. During the pivotal 1920s and 1930s, reporter Walter Duranty was the Times' man in Moscow. We are shown his gripping stories of Communism's glowing success printed on the front page of the Times, while at the same time Stalin was consolidating total power by brutally wiping out or starving to death millions of innocent human beings. We listen to an interview with British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge, who went to the Soviet Union expecting to find the promised workers' paradise but returned home to tell the appalling truth. Duranty, who received a Pulitzer for rearranging reality, personally dismissed Muggeridge's reporting as "bunk." This profound deception by the New York Times set the stage for FDR's recognition of the barbarous Soviet Union in 1933, thus opening the world's financial aid spigots.

But deception to advance the Insiders' subversive agenda to destroy friendly non-Communist governments and help Communist ones is the New York Times 'nature. We learn further that during the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s, Herbert Matthews was the Times' man in Madrid. No one would ever have known from his reports that this was a battle by ruthless Marxists to turn Spain into a Communist country. Described by Matthews as "idealistic democrats" seeking to "liberate" Spain from the media-vilified anti-Communist General Franco, at the same time these "democrats" were massacring thousands of anti-Communists.

But to add to these staggering revelations about the Times, we learn that Herbert Matthews was subsequently sent to Cuba to begin the same CFR process of destroying a friendly government and replacing it with a Communist one, this time successfully. Matthew's notoriously lying articles painted Castro as definitely not a Communist, even though at that time much was known of Castro's Communist past. Matthews and the Times so successfully covered up the truth and set the stage for the Insiders to bring Castro to power that a caustic saying became common: Castro got his job through the New York Times. Having pleased the power elite, Matthews was kept on at the Times for 45 years.

Why? William Jasper, a senior editor of THE NEW AMERICAN magazine, helps us understand that the Establishment's policy of backing Duranty and Matthews reflects a larger policy to legitimize Communism. Describing Communism as the most absolute form of government with the highest concentration of power by an oligarchy, or elite, at the top, Jasper holds that this is precisely what the CFR globalists have pushed for throughout the 20th century. There is thus a natural confluence of interest (not antagonism) between Communists and the internationalist Insiders in our own government. They are both after the same thing -- world domination. As we think about this, it solves the puzzle of why our, government has consistently eliminated or vilified our anti-Communist friends such as Chiang Kai-shek, Batista, Somoza, and Franco.

The Media as Gatekeeper

But this video documentary does much more than catalog a long string of media abuses. One of its most useful contributions is that it categorizes the major strategies and tactics so that viewers can perceive the patterns for themselves. A major category of media manipulation is its role as gatekeeper of what information gets to the American public.

For example, John McManus, president of the John Birch Society, explains that reporters are forbidden to touch certain areas. We are shown shots of Jimmy Carter's 1976 presidential campaign in which the media gives this little-known governor from a southern state preferential treatment. Over and over Carter promised that he would bring new faces, new ideas to Washington. Repeatedly he was described as not beholden to the Establishment, even though he was at that time already a known member of that same Establishment. Safely in office on fraudulent claims, Carter packed his administration with the same old Insider crowd, including Zbigniew Brzezinski, a member of the CFR Board of Directors, whom Carter appointed National Security Adviser.

McManus describes a similar cover-up regarding the televised debate between Bill Clinton and his Democratic opponents in the 1992 primary election, when Clinton was a known member of the CFR and its Japanese/European offspring the Trilateral Commission. Although this should have made the headlines, the media would not touch it. From World War II to the present, media cover-up has facilitated the Establishment's grip on the White House. By preventing this crucial information from becoming news, control of the White House is protected. So no matter which party is in or which party is out, the socialist, internationalist program and pro-UN bias continue to the detriment of Americans.

Media Sensationalism 

Have you ever wondered why dreadful, nightmarish scenes make up such a large, frequent portion of newscasts? Gruesome murders, sickening plane crashes, fatal accidents, foreign wars, melting glaciers, forest fires, killing droughts, and rising sea levels are all top stories until we are so desensitized that we lose sight of the intent behind the reports.

William Jasper explains that creating crises accomplishes an important objective. People in a crisis environment do not think rationally. Fear takes over and people are swept along thinking that "something" must be done. Thus they are ready to accept more stringent controls and restrictions on their freedoms in a panic atmosphere than they would otherwise. Global warming, ozone depletion, and overpopulation (none of which actually exist) are being presented as global crises that require global solutions handled by the UN.

There is much valuable discussion in this video about guns. We are shown how the phony information about the Million Mom March against guns illustrates a basic revolutionary tactic: Creating the illusion of a massive outpouring of spontaneous public support for disarming civilians in the name of public safety. Media cooperation is essential; we must be shown enormous crowds surging on the White House, while the talking heads intone that this is putting tremendous pressure on Congress to cave in to the "national" demand for gun controls. Unmentioned is that the Million Mom March fell far short of its name or that widespread civilian gun ownership saves innocent lives and helps deter crime.

The harsh truth as exposed in this exceptional video is that without the media the Establishment couldn't succeed in its plan to transfer our national sovereignty to a New World Order. The media's role is morally unacceptable and evil, deserving of our utmost condemnation. It has often been noted that the pen is mightier than the sword; if so, consider the power of the pen amplified enormously today by the immediacy and vibrancy of the visual media.

Yet the power of the truth is stronger. As G. Vance Smith, CEO of the John Birch Society, sums up, the media counts on the immensity of their illusions to prevent the public from catching on -- but their real objective is to break the will to resist. They insidiously imply that a one world government, a one world court, a one world military, and a one world currency are all inevitable, that the momentum toward them can't be stopped. But, says Smith, "To know what's going on isn't going to help a darn bit unless we do something with what we know. An individual, even well informed, can't stop this thing by himself."

The video ends on a high note of hope and confidence as it outlines steps to a solution. Buy this extraordinary documentary and use it to open the eyes of your friends and relatives. Those you can influence will be much more resistant to ongoing media deceptions. But more importantly, they may just decide to become a vital part of the solution.