Special Report: Documents from the Reagan presidential library reveal that two major institutions promoting “democracy” and “freedom” — Freedom House and National Endowment for Democracy — worked hand-in-glove, behind-the-scenes, with a CIA propaganda expert in the 1980s, reports Robert Parry.
Tag: Ronald Reagan
Murdoch, Scaife and CIA Propaganda
Special Report: The rapid expansion of America’s right-wing media began in the 1980s as the Reagan administration coordinated foreign policy initiatives with conservative media executives, including Rupert Murdoch, and then cleared away regulatory hurdles, reports Robert Parry.
The Victory of ‘Perception Management’
Special Report: In the 1980s, the Reagan administration pioneered “perception management” to get the American people to “kick the Vietnam Syndrome” and accept more U.S. interventionism, but that propaganda structure continues to this day getting the public to buy into endless…
How Reagan Promoted Genocide
From the Archive: The Senate’s torture report is provoking some rare self-reflection among Americans even as TV talk shows are dominated by torture apologists. But there is a larger context to America’s modern embrace of the “dark side” including support for…
The Sordid Contra-Cocaine Saga
From the Archive: It’s been a decade since the big U.S. newspapers hounded journalist Gary Webb to suicide because he exposed their failure to stop one of Ronald Reagan’s worst crimes: drug trafficking by the Nicaraguan Contras. The sordid saga finally was told…
How Reagan Enforced US Hypocrisy
From the Archive: To understand why many right-wingers are so defensive about offensive U.S. acts, even waterboarding and anal rape, you must look back to the Reagan years when “moral equivalence” became an accusation against applying universal standards to the U.S.,…
Thanks to Our Donors: 19 Great Years
From Editor Robert Parry: Nineteen years ago this month, Consortiumnews.com came into being as the first Internet-based investigative newsmagazine, or what was then called an “e-zine.” Back then, the name was just “The Consortium” and we operated through a server…
Gary Webb and Media Manipulation
Many Americans still count on the mainstream media to define reality for them, but too often the MSM spins false narratives that protect the powerful and diminish democracy, as happened in the long-running denial of cocaine trafficking by President Reagan’s beloved…
Treating Putin Like a Lunatic
Exclusive: Official Washington treats whatever comes out of Russian President Putin’s mouth as the ravings of a lunatic, even when what he says is obviously true or otherwise makes sense, as the New York Times has demonstrated again, writes Robert…
Can MSM Handle the Contra-Cocaine Truth?
Exclusive: “Kill the Messenger” tells the tragic tale of journalist Gary Webb who revived the Contra-cocaine scandal in the 1990s and saw his life destroyed by the mainstream media. The question now is: Will the MSM continue its cover-up of this sordid…