Leading Journalists Expose Major News Cover-ups by Media Corporations

Below are some astounding statements from a summary of the book Into the Buzzsaw on the informative website http://www.WantToKnow.info. In this eye-opening book, 20 award-winning journalists describe in detail how they were prevented by corporate media ownership from reporting major, revealing news stories. These courageous journalists have won numerous awards, including several Emmys and a Pulitzer. This message is sent with the hope of strengthening democracy and building a brighter future for all of us.

Kristina Borjesson—CBS, Emmy award winner. Pierre Salinger announced on Nov. 8, 1996, that he’d received documents proving that a US Navy missile had accidentally downed TWA flight 800. That same day, FBI’s Jim Kallstrom called a press conference. At one point, a man raised his hand and asked why the Navy was involved in the investigation while a possible suspect. “Remove him!” Kallstrom yelled. Two men leapt over to the questioner and grabbed him by the arms. There was a momentary chill in the air after the guy had been dragged out of the room. Kallstrom and entourage acted as if nothing had happened. Jim Kallstrom was later hired by CBS. (pp. 290, 291)

Jane Akre—Fox News. After our struggle to air an honest report on hormones in your milk, Fox fired the general manager of our station. The new GM said that if we didn’t agree to changes the lawyers were insisting upon, we’d be fired for insubordination. We pleaded with him to look at the facts we’d uncovered. His reply: “We paid $3 billion dollars for these TV stations. We’ll tell you what the news is. The news is what we say it is!” After we refused, Fox’s general manager presented an agreement that would give us a full year of salary, and benefits worth close to $200,000 in “consulting jobs,” but with strings attached: no mention of how Fox covered up the story and no opportunity to ever expose the facts. After declining, we were fired. (pp. 213 - 219)

Monika Jensen-Stevenson—Emmy-winning producer for 60 minutes. Robert Garwood—14 years a prisoner of the Vietnamese—was found guilty in the longest court-martial in US history. At the end of the court-martial, there seemed no question that he was a monstrous traitor. In 1985, Garwood was speaking publicly about something that had never made the news during his court-martial. He knew of other American prisoners in Vietnam long after the war was over. My sources included outstanding experts like former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency General Tighe and returned POWs like Captain McDaniel, who held the Navy’s top award for bravery. With such advocates, it was hard not to consider the possibility that prisoners (some 3,500) had in fact been kept by the Vietnamese as hostages to make sure the US would pay the more than $3 billion in war reparations. (pp. 255, 256)

Gary Webb—San Jose Mercury News, Pulitzer Prize winner. In 1996, I wrote a series of stories that began this way: A Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods gangs of LA and funneled millions in drug profits to a guerilla army run by the CIA. The cocaine that flooded in helped spark a crack explosion in urban America. The story developed a momentum all of its own, despite a virtual news blackout from the major media. Ultimately, it was public pressure that forced the national newspapers into the fray. The Washington Post, New York Times, and Los Angeles Times published stories, but spent little time exploring the CIA’s activities. Instead, my reporting and I became the focus of their scrutiny. It was remarkable that the four Washington Post reporters assigned to debunk the series could not find a single significant factual error. A few months later, the Mercury News, under intense CIA pressure, backed away from the story, publishing a long column apologizing for “shortcomings” in the series. The New York Times splashed the apology on their front page, the first time the series had ever been mentioned there. I quit the Mercury News after that. (pp. 143 - 153)

For more on these and the eye-opening stories of other leading journalists, go to the two-page summary of Into the Buzzsaw at http://www.WantToKnow.info/mediacover-up Or even better, go straight to http://www.WantToKnow.info/massmedia for the information-packed 10-page summary. For other reliable resources on the media cover-up, visit our Media Information Center. If these stories were reported in headline news where they belong, caring citizens would be astounded and demand to know more. This has not happened, which is why we feel compelled to provide them here.

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