Ownership of WaPo by CIA Contractor Puts US Journalism in Dangerous Terrain

[marmar]

....(snip)....

NORMAN SOLOMON: Yeah. It's very dangerous to normalize the situation that we have today, where a man who has 25 billion (with a B) dollars in personal wealth, Jeff Bezos, and has been able to accumulate that wealth because he's the founder and CEO and main stakeholder in Amazon is now the only owner of The Washington Post. And Bezos's outside company, Amazon, has just entered into a $600 million contract with the Central Intelligence Agency. So, on the one hand, Amazon is in a business deal to keep the secrets of the CIA in its computing cloud, while the newspaper that Bezos is the sole owner of ostensibly is in the business of exposing the secrets of the CIA and other government agencies. Well, they're at cross purposes.

The mythology is that that doesn't matter, because who owns a newspaper doesn't affect the atmosphere or policies or reporting that come out of the newsroom. But in the real world, this is a new structural relationship that, unlike in the past, is not only built on personal relations or ideological connections or some stray business affinities; this is a direct conflict of interest, where the owner of what some believe is the most powerful political media outlet in the country is not only gaining more wealth from a big contract with the CIA, but is also eager to gain even more business from the CIA, because Amazon has said, hey, the $600 million from the agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, is just a start. We look forward to, Amazon says, in its words, "a successful relationship with the CIA."

So this is, I think, at the crossroads of a contradiction between an ostensibly free press and a corporate-digital-governmental tacit alliance that is about using digital power to keep some data secret and to extend the surveillance state, to gather data and to use it, among other things, in the service of ongoing warfare across much of the planet. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/21385-ownership-of-wapo-by-cia-contractor-puts-us-journalism-in-dangerous-terrain

[Eleanors38]

1. This may be just making the marriage legal. As with TPP,

the WAPO is already fast on the draw to support government policy when it is about ready to emerge & draw flies.

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. drats....I can't support a secret CIA service provider.

Amazon also wants to begin pay for TV over the internet.

following in footsteps of Facebook: getting bigger and richer and becoming more evil as it grows.

[TreasonousBastard]

3. And yet, while NSA and...

other gummint exploits are roundly criticized, Amazon around here is as popular as it ever has been.

Amazon, which while inventing nothing new, has destroyed more businesses than Wal-Mart and affected our personal lives far more than the NSA or TPP ever will, is given a pass.

Why is that?

[kelliekat44]

4. No more dangerous than being owned by Murdoch. nt

[truedelphi]

5. Solomon is a real journalist.

In a world of Katy Couric,'s and Piers Morgan, he is the real deal.

Quite a while back, in the eraly Eighties, Bill Casey explained how this is what would happen.
During his very first address to new CIA recruits, as the new head of the CIA, he said
“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”
– William Casey, CIA Director (from first staff meeting, 1981)

And Bill Colby said this: “The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media.”
– William Colby, former CIA director

People think that to be "be CIA" you have to sign on a dotted line. But I doubt that is true. As long as you are able to allow your "brand of journalism" to be totally managed by the TV station executives, and never ask any hard questions of anyone you interview (And Katy Couric comes to mind as I type this) you will be given the green light to advance. Should you grow a conscience, your career will be over in a heart beat. After all, remember what happened to Dan Rather when he started to write that article about George W, in the fall of 2004?

[Enthusiast]

6. The merger of state and corporate power?

I see.