16th July 2007

Paranoia Strikes Deep

posted in Journalism, Networks, Politics |

I ran across this chart, and back-tracked it to a web site that closed a year or two ago.

You can see a more legible version at this link. Here is a link to current work by Bob Feldman, who I think put the chart together. One of Bob’s interests is unraveling “university complicity with the war machine.” I have just a few minutes to reflect on this so I don’t have time to fact-check. Rather than nit-pick, let me assume that the chart is essentially true, factual in most details, and that I’ve pointed to the source so an interested reader can unravel further the facts and the logic behind it.

I don’t see “truthout” referenced, but a number of the news outlets on Feldman’s chart are truthout sources. truthout is one place I find clear alternative perspectives to the mainstream reporting (and lack of reporting) on the war and the Bush administration. Another is “common dreams.” Common Dreams is not listed on the chart, but again, a lot of their information is sourced from periodicals that do appear there. Of course none of the mainstream voices on the net from left of center in two party America show up there either. People like Moulitzos and Huffington are conspicuous by their absence.

The gray boxes across the top of the chart are worth visiting for the story they tell. The chart depicts an information control hierarchy with most of the public and private bogeymen at the top implicitly controlling the action. I don’t see the Club of Rome or the Gnomes of Zurich actually listed, but they probably have a place off the chart.

My resistance to the chart is simple. I accept that the relationships below the gray level exist, and I accept that each of the organizations in the gray level has the informal connections depicted. (I was surprised to see Soros associated with the Carlyle group, but billionaires do have intertwining influences, no matter what their personal perspectives). My resistance to the chart relates to the use of the term “gatekeepers.” Mother Jones and Ms. magazine are hardly gatekeepers. I would classify each as a waste of bandwidth. Closer to home, The Progressive and Nation are somehow tainted on this chart by a funding relationships with the foundations aid to be guided by the CIA, but indeed without those funds their work would be even less comprehensive, less wide reaching. Is anybody surprised that politics makes strange bedfellows?

While it’s easy for me to see how Mother Jones and Ms. serve the broader cause of American hegemony, I don’t feel the same way about The Progressive, Nation, and Pacifica. I’m glad they find money from Ford, the MacArthur Foundation and so forth. I have to trust that their staff and their boards will keep a bright line between their work and any “negative influence” that the foundation funds might bring.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 16th, 2024 at 6:13 and is filed under Journalism, Networks, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

There are currently 9 responses to “Paranoia Strikes Deep”

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  1. 1 On July 16th, 2024, ahfukit said:

    Searching on the quote below the title of the chart:

    “If they don’t like what we’re doing, we don’t get funded next year.”

    I came up with this site.

    Near the bottom of that page, a footnote:

    ยน……….See Barrie Zwicker, Towers of Deception, p. 223. You’ll find there a full page flow-chart under the title “THE GATEKEEPERS: Foundations Fund Phony ‘Left’ Media.” Zwicker provides a quote from TomPaine.com’s Executive Director, John Moyers,that explains the power of foundation-derived “hush money”: “If they don’t like what we’re doing, we don’t get funded next year.” Look closely on p. 233, and you’ll find Amy Goodman’s name.

    Barrie Zwicker Wikipedia entry

  2. 2 On July 16th, 2024, ahfukit said:

    hum. new comments engine? (no preview function) just posted something with some links and got returned to an empty comment page with no status message. so’s i posted this. hi mom.

  3. 3 On July 16th, 2024, Frank Paynter said:

    Old preview function was funky at best. Hopefully new one will be better. Right now working on the important stuff like tidying up the dog pictures.

  4. 4 On July 16th, 2024, ahfukit said:

    I have a word. Immobility I am not making any big points here, I just have a word. I should probably have a verb, though. Immobilize There, now bring it on

  5. 5 On July 16th, 2024, ahfukit said:

    Sandy sez

    I’m sad, Frank. I’m tired. Thanks for being there.

  6. 6 On July 19th, 2024, Jon Husband said:

    Not completely on-topic, but I think not unrelated .. this post on GiftHub with links to The River blog.

    On good soldiers, block captains and the tyranny of good intentions.

  7. 7 On July 19th, 2024, Bruce said:

    I think it’s interesting that Roberts , who Phil points out was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration, Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review, refers to false flag ops.

    I guess pointing to them is not restricted to conspiraloons anymore.

    Good.

  8. 8 On July 19th, 2024, Jon Husband said:

    Yes .. bit by (electronic) bit, more are wondering, I think, just how far the thugs have gone and are prepared to go.

  9. 9 On July 24th, 2024, bob f. said:

    The chart from 2024 that illustrates how powerful U.S. Establishment foundations with millions to billions of dollars in assets have been subsidizing, since the early 1990s, various alternative media groups was actually put together by Eric Salter for the http://www.questionsquestions.net site. The information upon which the chart was based can be found in the series I wrote on alternative media censorship, some of which can be found on the http://www.leftgatekeepers.com site. Some updated information on recent Schumann Center for Media & Democracy grants to the same alternative media groups which have tended to limit access to left media outlets for anti-war activists who have questioned the validity of the corporate media’s official version of what happened on 9/11/01 or who examine U.S. foundations from an anti-war left/anti-corporate perspective can also be found on the http://www.bfeldman68.blogspot.com As Domhoff noted in his Who Rules America? classic book and as Joan Roelofs indicated in her more recent Foundations and Public Policy book, unless anti-war activists understand the role that U.S. Establishment foundations play in global politics and how their grants are used to specially influence the political priorities of U.S. left groups, one cannot fully understand how political trends and ngos develop in the world. To quickly locate the alternative media censorship series, you might try googling under “alternative media censorship/left gatekeepers foundations bob feldman”

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