=dig on mockingbird media==
In 1977, a Rolling Stone magazine article written by Carl Bernstein alleged that over 400 mainstream media journalists were employed by the CIA to parrot their disinformation. He also claimed that one of the most important journalists contracted by Operation Mockingbird was Joseph Alsop (top), who wrote for over 300 different newspapers. Other journalists implicated by the investigation in promoting the tales of the CIA – true or false – were (pictured above, left to right): Stewart Alsop (NewYork HeraldTribune), Ben Bradlee (Newsweek), James Reston (The New York Times), Charles Douglas Jackson (Time), Walter Pincus (Washington Post) and Charles Bartlett (Chattanooga Times). At far right is Carl Bernstein, pictured about the time of his Rolling Stone expose.
Many journalists who wrote propaganda stories on behalf of the CIA viewed their collaboration as patriotic justifying their actions as serving national interests against communism. “I’m proud they asked me and proud to have done it,” Joseph Alsop, a noted American journalist and syndicated columnist, unabashedly crowed after it was discovered he (along with many other top journalists) engaged in clandestine operations on behalf of the CIA. “The notion that a newspaperman doesn’t have a duty to his country is perfect balls.”
In congressional investigations into the CIA’s relationship and cooperation with major American media corporations, which included both House and Senate committee investigations in the 1970s, the agency acknowledged utilizing journalists to gather and spread information. However, as Bernstein notes in his report, “The CIA’s use of the American news media has been much more extensive than agency officials have acknowledged publicly or in closed sessions with members of Congress.”