Understanding the news: with the major news outlets working to further the agenda for a socialist new world order, Americans can and must learn to see through the slanted reporting. (Between the Lines).

In a free society, the news media performs a useful and essential function. As no individual can examine all events firsthand, the media plays the role of surrogate, transmitting the knowledge of those events to all citizens so they can make informed decisions. This is the function to which Jack Fuller, president of the Tribune Publishing Company, referred in responding to a survey on the media in 1997. "The central purpose of journalism," stated Fuller, "is to tell the truth so that people will have the information that they need to be sovereign."

When news organizations do not tell the truth, they can change perceptions, sometimes in dangerous ways. In his study of Nazi Germany, liberal historian William L. Shirer described the effect of the Nazi controlled press, not only on the thinking of the German people, but on his own thinking:

I myself was to experience how easily one is taken in by a lying and censored press and radio in a totalitarian state. Though unlike most Germans I had daily access to foreign newspapers, especially those of London, Paris, and Zurich ... my job necessitated the spending of many hours a day in combing the German press.... It was surprising and sometimes consternating to find that notwithstanding the opportunities I had to learn the facts and despite one's inherent distrust of what one learned from Nazi sources, a steady diet over the years of falsifications and distortions made a certain impression on one's mind and often misled it.... Often in a German home or office or sometimes in a casual conversation with a stranger ... I would meet with the most outlandish assertions from seemingly educated and intelligent persons. It was obvious that they were parroting some piece of nonsense they had heard on the radio or read in the newspapers. Sometimes one was tempted to say as much, but on such occasions one was met with such a stare of incredulity, such a shock of silence, as if one had blasphemed the Almighty, that one realizes how useless it was even to try to make contact with a mind which had become warped and for whom the facts of life had become what Hitler and Goebbels, with their cynical disregard for the truth, said they were.

The United States is not Nazi Germany. The press is not a department of the government. Yet the press is not what it once was. As authors Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel write in their recent book, The Elements of Journalism, "The real meaning of the First Amendment -- that a free press is an independent institution -- is threatened for the first time in our history even without government meddling."

The implication is clear, and disturbing. The news outlets are no longer free. They no longer provide the American people with the fully factual and truthful reporting citizens need to be free and self-governing. Instead, an agenda guides news reporting, an agenda that consists of employing bias as a means to an end. To remain free and self-governing, then, one must read between the lines and learn to recognize deception. To do that, it is essential, first, to understand that the goal sought by today's biased media cartel is to create a new international order that is both elitist and socialist.

The CFR Imprint on the News

One of the most important journalists in the last century was Walter Lippmann. Born in 1889, Lippmann received the best education money, and America, could provide: private schools then Harvard. By 1917, he had found his way into the Wilson administration. He had already been a member of the semi-secret American Round Table group which, according to the late Georgetown University historian Carroll Quigley, the Rhodes Trust had financed. In Quigley's words, the several Round Table groups, including the one in America, were "to seek to federate the English-speaking world along lines laid down by Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902) and William T. Stead (1849-1912)." With his impeccable socialist and internationalist credentials well established, Lippmann was appointed to lead the effort to draft Wilson's famous 14 Points and, according to Quigley, became official interpreter of those points to the British government. Lippmann later became a founding member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

While he provided yeoman's service to the internationalist cause while serving in government, his biggest impact came in the field of journalism. As a journalist, Lippmann had first served with The New Republic. According to Quigley, he was to guide that publication "in an Anglophile direction." Later, he became one of the most widely syndicated columnists in America and, during a career in journalism lasting until the Vietnam War era, proved excessively influential. He was, again according to Quigley, "the authentic spokesman in American journalism for the establishment on both sides of the Atlantic in international affairs."

As early as 1922, in his book Public Opinion, Lippmann asserted that "News and the truth are not the same thing...." The point of the news, according to Lippmann, is to point out certain facts, or bring to the public attention some event. In this view, news reporting is highly selective. And, because the news media has been nearly completely shot through by those who, like Lippmann, favor a left-wing, internationalist policy, the news is often selected and reported so that those positions are supported and contrary positions undermined.

Lippmann himself pointed to such selective and contrived reporting as indispensable in swaying public opinion to support Allied war aims in both World Wars. In his 1955 book, The Public Philosophy, he wrote:

When the world wars came, the people of the liberal democracies could not be aroused to the exertions and the sacrifices of the struggle until they had been frightened by the opening disasters, had been incited to passionate hatred, and had become intoxicated with unlimited hope. To overcome this inertia, the enemy had to be portrayed as evil incarnate, as absolute and congenital wickedness. The people wanted to be told that when this particular enemy had been forced to unconditional surrender, they would re-enter the golden age. This unique war would end all wars. This last war would make the world safe for democracy. This crusade would make the whole world a democracy.

As a result of this impassioned nonsense public opinion became so envenomed that the people would not countenance a workable peace; they were against any public man who showed "any tenderness for the Hun...."

Once inflamed, the people proved willing to support all manner of barbarity. The era of the total war, with its indiscriminate bombing of civilians, was entirely acceptable. To his credit, Lippmann was uneasy with this outcome. But the point was made. Once suitably prepared, cajoled, persuaded, and "educated" by the propagandistic press, the people could be made to agree to any internationalist idea. Indeed, at the end of WWII, the people were persuaded that only a world federated under the United Nations would be free from future war.

Still-potent Force

The news outlets still play their role in the ongoing attempt to create a new internationalist order, and do so in much the same way they always have. In this effort to slant the news, these outlets use a number of techniques. First, and most obviously, there is the outright lie. For instance, the constant mantra that the United States is a democracy is a lie, even though nearly everyone believes it. Of course, this lie serves the interests of left-wing internationalists by confusing Americans about the true nature of their government. *

Errors of commission of this sort, though, are far less common than errors of omission. In other words, rather than giving a true accounting of significant events as they occur, news providers more commonly try to ignore stories that undermine their agenda, while exploiting stories that further their agenda. The "War on Terror" has provided innumerable examples. For instance, on April 30, 2002, during a speech in San Jose, California, President Bush warned the nations of the world, "you're either with us, or you're with the terrorists." Clearly, three nations "with the terrorists" are those identified by President Bush as forming the "Axis of Evil." These include Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. Among those nations who have been "with us" in the war against terror are Russia and China. Interestingly, a recent CIA report to Congress on arms proliferation notes, according to Bill Gertz of the Washington Times, that "Russia and China have been supplying Tehran with nuclear-related equipment that will boost Iran's ca pability to build nuclear weapons." In addition, the CIA report notes that "firms in China have provided dual-use missile-related items, raw materials and-or assistance to several countries of proliferation concern -- such as Iran, North Korea and Libya." Obviously, Russia and China are in bed with the terrorists. The press, however, has shied away from drawing this conclusion. In this case, they have chosen not to connect the dots. Why? Simply this: Connecting the dots would make it abundantly clear that Russia and China are not acting as allies would act. This would damage the internationalist cause which has long worked to include Russia and China in the developing global order.

Failing to connect all the dots that matter is just one method by which the media selectively reports only those things that support its leftist and internationalist agenda. Another technique often used is the ad hominem argument. This technique was used in 1999 in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial about gun control. In the wake of shootings at Columbine and Atlanta, the Journal-Constitution opined: "Some will argue, even in the wake of this tragedy, that guns are not the problem, that instead they offer a means for protecting ourselves from them madmen. That argument is itself a form of criminal lunacy that can no longer be treated as credible." By calling the natural right to self-defense a form of "criminal lunacy," this editorial deceitfully dehumanizes those who favor gun rights. This, of course, also furthers the leftist, internationalist cause seeking to restrict the use of force to national and then international governing bodies.

Yet another common technique of deception is the argument ad nauseam. William L. Shirer referred to it when he noted that the constant repetition of Nazi propaganda "made a certain impression on one's mind." This technique is commonly employed, for instance, in the abortion debate when news headlines repeat the chant that abortion is a woman's right. Repeating such phraseology over and over does not alchemically transform the statement from falsehood to fact. It does, however, constantly keep the refrain in the minds of the citizens and is likely, over time, to make a certain impression. The frame of reference will change. Rather than thinking of abortion in terms of murdering a child, people begin to think of it in more abstract terms such as "reproductive rights."

Surviving the News

With the media cartel employing so many techniques of distortion and deception, just how is the average citizen to gather the basic knowledge needed to form sound opinions from which to make useful judgements? First, always keep in mind the essential nature of media bias, namely its advocacy of a leftist, internationalist world order. Awareness of this bent makes it much easier to read between the lines, be the subject the war on terrorism or gun control.

Second, consider the source. Does the source have a track record of obvious bias? Has the source made statements or predictions that have proven false? Does the report depend heavily on other, unnamed sources? If so, do not accept reports from this source at face value. Verify the report, if possible, with reports on the same subject from other independent sources.

Next, find a reliable source and keep it at hand for cross referencing. If news reports published elsewhere seem a little suspect, check the facts against reports on the same or similar topics in the source that has proven reliable. And, in many cases, it may make sense to check previous reporting to see how and why a story might have changed over time.

These efforts will not always be easy, but they are important. The media cartel is not interested in providing unbiased information to support the civic duties of the citizenry. The responsibility for remaining informed of the truth has now fallen squarely on the shoulders of each individual.

* Democracy is majority rule. On the other hand, a republic is governed by the rule of law, affording everyone, including minorities, protection under the law. For more information on this topic, visit our website at: www.thenewamerican.com/focus/constitution/