Journalism: Not What It’s Cracked Up To Be

“What’s happened to mainstream journalism?” is the question being asked by millions of thinking people, and more than ever before. Could a real clue be found in what may be termed “sound bite” reporting rather than investigative journalism dug up by investigative journalists? They, like the extinct Dodo bird, are becoming a vestige of the past, especially since most media (90 percent in the USA [1]) are owned, controlled, and manipulated by five corporations: Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch’s News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, and Viacom.

In former years, each issue of Time Magazine used to be voluminous, not the scrawny few pages it is today. Currently, newspapers are anemic renditions of their glorious past, i.e., scaled down from pages packed full of good reporting and reading into a sanitized propaganda versions of the news that spews forth what could be considered “crowd control” for the mind.

An apparent storm of arousal to misrepresentative information from what some call the “lame stream press,” the alternative (alt) media and press have left mainstream news media in their dust. One reason is that the Internet allows access to global networks where some independent news reporting is very different from the supposed “free press” in the USA. One really has to question why U.S. citizens are not permitted to know information about certain topics discussed openly and freely in other countries, e.g., specifics regarding the dangers of vaccines, plus how numerous countries are having second thoughts about their effectiveness, and also questioning their efficacy and adverse reactions [2].

Another equally-controlled and restricted news item is what’s referred to as Solar Radiation Management or weather geoengineering, aka “chemtrails,” which ‘decorate’ the skies above our heads with toxic chemicals polluting and poisoning the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat, plus creating abnormal weather patterns we have been experiencing in recent years, and numerous die-offs around the globe [3,6].

But not all journalists are satisfied to take the “cool aid” (hush money) or drink from the kook aid trough, as they say. One, in particular, Dr Udo Ulfkotte, a former editor of theFrankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, one of Germany’s largest newspapers, wrote the 2014 tell-all book, Bought Journalists, “in which he claims that the CIA and other secret services pay money to journalists to report a particular story in a certain light.” [4] What a striking, but not quite unexpected, confession to make. He claims while “an editor of a major German daily has said that he personally planted stories for the CIA.” [5]

Dr Ulfkotte definitely seems remorseful about his past transgressions of misleading the public. Here are some of his comments:

“When I told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Ulfkotte’s newspaper) that I would publish the book, their lawyers sent me a letter threatening with all legal consequences if I would publish any names or secrets – but I don’t mind. You see, I don’t have children to take care of. And you must know I was severely injured during the gas attack I witnessed in Iran in 1988. I’m the sole German survivor from a German poison gas attack. I’m still suffering from this. I’ve had three heart attacks. I don’t expect to live for more than a few years.” [5]

He was “taught to lie, to betray and not to tell the truth to the public.” [5]

“I ended up publishing articles under my own name written by agents of the CIA and other intelligence services, especially the German secret service.” [5]

“I’m ashamed I was part of it. Unfortunately I cannot reverse this.” [5]

Here is an interview with Dr Ulfkotte during which he tells how the news and press indoctrination and reporting processes work.