-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.nitronews.com/dowbenko.html Click Here: <A HREF="http://www.nitronews.com/dowbenko.html">Nitro News - Uri Dowbenko</A> ----- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ (AP) ASSOCIATED PROPAGANDA HISTORY OF A "NEWS" SERVICE By Uri Dowbenko Media Columnist [EMAIL PROTECTED] The secret history of the Associated Press reveals a pro-establishment, anti-populist bias that stretches all the way back to its origin. As an aside to a true life crime story, historian J. Anthony Lukas describes the beginnings of the ubiquitous AP in his book Big Trouble. Lukas contends that in the early days of the twentieth century, "Americans were aghast that a great octopus like the AP could embrace eight hundred member papers, putting its product before as many as twenty-five million readers every day." Even then, AP's homogenized and biased stories, masquerading as "objective" journalism, were offensive to American readers. "'Here,' wrote one stupefied editor, 'is the most tremendous engine for power that ever existed in this world. If you can conceive all the power ever wielded by the great autocrats of history, even that would be less than the power now wielded by the Associated Press.'" Of course, this assessment was made long before the inevitable orchestration of radio, television and the press into what CIA operative Frank Wisner liked to call the "Might Wurlitzer" of Big Media Cartel propaganda. "The AP's puissance was measured as much by organizational rigor as by sheer size, for in an era of trusts, it was one of the nation's most effective monopolies," continues Lukas. "A newspaper with a precious AP franchise was protected against any competitor in its territory seeking one, while the AP itself had dread powers to discipline a paper that dealt with a rival news service." A parallel situation in history, of course, is the Rockefeller-controlled Standard Oil Trust, which through corporate-mob tactics, indistinguishable from organized crime, succeeded in monopolizing the entire oil industry in the United States. But how did AP get that way? "In 1898, facing charges of trafficking with the enemy, the Chicago 'InterOcean' challenged the AP's structure in court," writes Lukas. "When the Illinois Supreme Court upheld the suit, finding that the AP was 'so affected with a public duty' that it must provide its news to any applicant, the AP abruptly dissolved as an Illinois corporation and reorganized in New York, this time not as a business corporation but as a mutual association - like a literary society or fishing club - permitting it arbitrarily to expel any memb er who protested publicly against the way the organization was run. Henceforth all insurgency was doomed." In its new incarnation, disguised as a co-operative, Associated Press was able to smash any resistance to its heavy-handed tactics. In a prescient analysis of today's interlocking corporate-based monopoly media cartel, Lukas writes that "to its critics, the AP was fond of stressing this 'mutuality,' arguing that it was merely a 'clearing house' drawing news primarily from its members and distributing it to other members." "In fact, the AP stood for the notion that news was private property, fiercely retaliating against anyone who poached on its preserve," reveals Lukas. "It was dominated by an inner circle of large metropolitan newspapers that at the time of the service's reincarnation in 1900 had each purchased a thousand dollars in bonds worth forty votes, compared to the single vote held by ordinary members." Redolent of the operation of the Federal Reserve and its privately-owned magical money machine, the newsmongers of Associated Press have a similar monopoly in the distribution of what passes for "information" and a daily record of events which eventually become "history." "Buttressed by this margin, old-guard papers like the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Star were firmly in the saddle," continues Lukas. "Where it drew news from a member paper, which generally supported the community's most substantial interests, the AP reflected the outlook of that city's power structure." Currently, AP's offices in New York's Rockefeller Center reflect the globalist nature of the media establishment's concerns for tight rigid news control and the subsequent molding of public opinion. For Upton Sinclair, writes Lukas, "the AP's vast reach ensured that American public opinion was 'poisoned at the source.'" (By the way, where does your hometown paper get its so-called "news"?) "In large cities and some state capitals, the AP maintained bureaus staffed by its own men, and to cover major events, it dispatched its own reporters," writes Lukas. "But that did little to diversify the AP's menu. To Oswald Garrison Villard of New York's Evening Post, the AP had 'always bowed down before authority and rarely ever stood up to the government in any controversy.'" AP remains the same yesterday, today, and most likely tomorrow. The wide variety of internet news sources, however, as well as alternative media must be anathema to the control freaks of the Big Media Cartel. Interestingly enough, the origin of mandatory public education in America is based on a similar agenda. The late 19th century Minnesota Congressman and author Ignatius Donnelly believed that "it was foisted on Americans, so that children would be able to read the newspapers, the propaganda sheets of the ruling elite." Donnelly himself said as much. Around 1890, he wrote that "the rich men owned the newspapers and the newspapers owned the readers. If the public had not been able to read and write, they would have talked with one another upon public affairs and have formed some correct ideas; their education simply facilitated their mental subjugation." So-called education, after all, is about the control of minds. According to historian and former Hoover Institution scholar Antony C. Sutton, author of Am erica's Secret Establishment, "any group that wanted to control the future of American society had first to control education, i.e. the population of the future." Sutton asserts that "this was the victory of the Hegelians, who believed that the State is superior to the individual. Prussian militarism, Naziism and Marxism have the same philosophic roots." "The influence of John Dewey is that he can be recognized as the pre-eminent factor in the collectivisation, or Hegelianization, of American Schools," continues Sutton. "Dewey believed education is not child-centered, but state-centered because for a Hegelian, social ends are always State ends. The misunderstanding between modern parents and the educational system begins here. Parents believe a child goes to school to learn skills to use in the adult world, but Dewey states specifically that education is not a preparation for future living. Its function, he believed, was to 'prepare the child as a unit in an organic whole,'" concludes Sutton. In other words, school is just a way to prepare kids to be cogs in society. Welcome to the Machine. "Political dissent is not to be tolerated" is a standard tenet of the AP "modus operandi." According to Lukas, the AP's M.O. has been the same ever since. "The Hayward case [the subject of Big Trouble] may have been the first trial in American history in which the real target wasn't so much the jurors in the box as the larger jury of public opinion," he writes. "It bore the signs of a spectacular show trial, a great national drama in which the stakes were nothing less than the soul of the American people." The soul of the American people remains the target of the Big Media Cartel. Remember, when you see that AP symbol at the beginning of a "news" story, think Associated Propaganda. (Copyright 1999 Uri Dowbenko) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ * Read last week's Uri Dowbenko column Uri Dowbenko is a marketing consultant who heads a modular agency with full service capabilities. He is one of America's most prolific writers on the media. His reviews and articles explore the psycho-political and historical context of contemporary books, movies and pop culture. He is also Chairman and CEO of New Improved Entertainment Corporation, a new company actively seeking capitalization for an extensive slate of politically incorrect feature film projects. Dowbenko's column is published exclusively in Nitro News every week. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ | Cover | Specials | Columnists | Farce Files | | Talk Back | News Shop | Scoops | About Us | All material is © 1999 Nitro New Media. Fax (313) 557-4189 | E-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. 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