Today what are often deemed as being credible news sources are often totally made up stories made to push an agenda or meet a governmental objective. Many journalists working for public relations firms are now hired by a U.S. government department to produce fake news reports. These false reports-- that amount to being overt manipulative propaganda-- are being presented as factual news by journalists, and are rebroadcast by news stations without revealing the segment is from a PR firm hired by the government, thus giving it the appearance of genuine news.

The U.S. government’s hiring of PR firms to create and dissemination fake news is nothing new at all; it has been going on for a long time.  An interview with John Stauber from prwatch.org notes that issues such as “fake news” have been around for years and the mainstream has hardly ever covered it. ”David Miller, of Spin Watch, has noted in a commentary that there is a lot of fake news: “This is the age of the fake. We live in an era where the gap between how the world is and how powerful interests try to portray it has grown dramatically wider.

Virtually nothing in public debate these days is free of the virus of fakery.... In recent years the fakes have become more sophisticated, so that the distinction between fake and real is less easy to discern”. The media is manipulated in all manners through professional public relations (PR) firms, and covert and overt government agencies which disseminate propaganda as news.

In March 2005, the New York Times revealed that there has been a large amount of fake and prepackaged news created by US government departments, such as the Pentagon, the State Department and others, and disseminated through the mainstream media. The New York Times noted that the US government has “aggressively” used public relations to prepackage news. Records and interviews shows that in just the past four years alone at least 20 federal agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments. Many were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the government’s role in their production.

A number of these government-made news segments are made to look like local news (either by the government department or by the receiving broadcaster) Sometimes these reports have fake reporters such as when a “‘reporter’ covering airport safety was actually a public relations professional working under a false name for the Transportation Security Administration. Other times, there is no mention that a video segment is produced by the government.

Citing the New York Times at length: …. “The federal government has aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. In all, at least 20 federal agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years, records and interviews show. Many were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the government’s role in their production.

Some reports were produced to support the administration’s most cherished policy objectives like regime change in Iraq or Medicare reform. Others focused on less prominent matters... (But there purposes are always about accomplishing governmental objectives). They often feature “interviews” with senior administration officials in which questions are scripted and answers rehearsed. Critics, though, are excluded, as are any hints of mismanagement, waste or controversy.

Some of the segments are broadcast in some of nation’s largest television markets... prepackaged segments [include] “suggested” lead-ins written by public relations experts. It is a world where government-produced reports disappear into a maze of [news programming, feeds, web sites, etc.] only to emerge cleansed on the other side as “independent” journalism.

 ^{— David Barstow and Robin Stein, Under Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged TV News, New York Times, March 13, 2005 [Emphasis Added]}

Furthermore, a former CIA agent mentioned in an interview, that the US has been doing it since the 1950s and 1960s at least:

When I was in the agency from the late 1950s on through to the late 1960s, the agency had operations going internationally, regionally, and nationally, attempting to penetrate and manipulate the institutions of power in countries around the world, and these were things that I did in the CIA—the penetration and manipulation of political parties, trade unions, youth and student movements, intellectual, professional and cultural societies, religious groups and women’s groups and especially of the public information media. We, for example, paid journalists to publish our information as if it were the journalists’ own information. The propaganda operations were continuous. We also spent large amounts of money intervening in elections to favor our candidates over others. 

^{— Philip Agee, The Nature of CIA Intervention in Venezuela, Interviewed by Jonah Gindin, Venezuelanalysis.com, March 22, 2005}

The media is manipulated in all manners through professional public relations (PR) firms, and covert and overt government agencies which disseminate propaganda as news. These media reports are used to promote certain political policies, ideologies and governmental objectives. Some reports are used, for example, to produce support for the administration’s most valued policy objectives, like Medicare reform. Others have been used, in cases where a war is deemed questionable professional public relations firms are hired to help sell that war to the public. [The 2003 war on Iraq saw a great deal amounts of public relations and media manipulation at work.  PR was turned onto America’s own citizens to convince them to support the war by making it appeared to be more glorious and right, than could it otherwise in fact was.]

These false news reports, that are being presented as factual news, are also often used as smear tactics to discredit, and /or destroy the reputation of someone or to defame or marginalize a particular targeted group. It can either involve outright lies, or a distortion of the truth that are then disseminated nationally as well as internationally reaching millions.

The State Department typically distributes its segments via satellite to international news organizations like Reuters and Associated Press Television News, which in turn distribute them to the major United States networks, which then transmit them to local affiliates.” In this way, a large audience is reached.

Techniques used by governments and parties/people with hidden agendas include: Paying journalists to promote certain issues without the journalist acknowledging this, or without the media mentioning the sources; Governments and individuals contracting PR firms to sell a war, or other important issues; Disinformation or partial information reported as news or fact without attributing sources that might be questionable; PR firms feeding stories to the press without revealing the nature of the information with the intention of creating a public opinion and smear tactics to discredit, stain or destroy an opposing political viewpoint, the reputation of someone or to defame or marginalize a particular targeted group.

The above examples of the U.S. government usage of fake news reports to support its governmental objectives is precisely what is being done to African Americans as a means of meeting its unrelenting objective of maintaining its white racial dominance and control. It is an insidious yet very sophisticated system of control that creates deplorable false misinformation and media reports about its Black population.

Fake news reports about African Americans are deliberately disseminated unrelentingly everywhere through news releases in magazine articles, radio, television, press releases, documentaries, and false census reports perpetuating and framing the myth of Whites’ racial, moral, and ethical superiority over its Black population. However, the weapon is not in how the message is carried, but is instead within the messages that it carries and how these messages adversely affect its targeted Black recipient group. It is designed to adversely manipulate and shape the minds and collective consciousness of America’s Black population by subjecting them to seeing only the fraudulent worst in themselves. 

It drills the message that Blacks are powerless, of lesser moral, and intelligence and that they need Whites to govern over their lives.  It totally detaches African Americans from their sense of power and reality. Moreover, it corrupts African Americans’ sense of racial unity and cohesion, mold the character of self-hatred, engender self-doubt, self-loathing, and distrust among their group while insinuating that Blacks admire, respect, and trust only Whites. It is being deployed in all sectors - government, media, health and welfare, entertainment, and education, etc- nationally and internationally.

It is surmised that this modern method of control was implemented in 1968 in the face of widespread violence that ensued after the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  Dr. King’s brutal assassination led to many demonstrations of unrest and rioting disturbances; that of which were reported in more than 100 cities across the nation. This violence resulted in the loss of lives and property that cost the nation and taxpayers millions of dollars and increasingly placed the peace and stability of the nation in dire jeopardy. The problem led to the then president, Lyndon B Johnson, ordering that a commission be formed, later known as the Kerner Commission, to investigate and prescribe a cure or recommendations for the problem. The Commission concluded that blatant White racism was the single aggravating factor for the collective problems.

The Kerner report’s findings required that the U.S. Government abandon it’s condoning of open, blatant forms of racism to control and maintain White dominance. This abandoning of dated tactics led to the need for developing an improved method of controlling and suppressing its Black population.  Changing times made it necessary for the U.S. government to change its methods to a much more subtle and socially acceptable means of continuing its racial suppression of Blacks and to maintain its White dominance.  Clearly, the sophisticated method of psychological warfare met such a need.  It was the logical choice, perfect for the changing times. 

By Franklin Jones

Divineblacktruth.org