Ever heard of Phil Graham? Throughout the 1950s, he was the publisher of The Washington Post. His father-in-law was the newspaper’s owner; he had married into the family business. But Graham didn’t view his role as a truth teller. Instead, he believed that the media’s job was “to mobilize consent for the policies of the government”—in other words, to persuade people to support the state. And because of those views, he became one of the architects of what became a widespread practice: the use and manipulation of journalists by the CIA. Graham was one of many in the media who worked with the Central Intelligence Agency to further its goals. They were hired and paid through a program called Operation Mockingbird. The purpose of program was to manipulate journalists—and through them, their readers, viewers, and listeners—to support viewpoints favorable to the government. Sometimes the stories promoted by the Mockingbird reporters were entirely false—fabrications conjured up in a dim corner of an office at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Other times, the story was true, but the way it was presented pushed the person reading or listening to see the story from a very specific perspective and come to a very specific conclusion — the conclusion the government had decided best served their purposes. By 1975, the story began to unravel, and the CIA admitted to Congress that they had, for decades, been actively manipulating the American people by using the mainstream media to direct their thoughts and opinions. Then Carl Bernstein (who used to work at The Washington Post, of all places) wrote an article in Rolling Stone in 1977 exposing how the CIA had “secretly bankrolled numerous foreign press services, periodicals, and newspapers." Bernstein also wrote how the CIA was not merely manipulating the foreign press but the domestic press as well, and went as far as to name the networks, publications, and people who had aided the CIA in their efforts. CBS, ABC, NBC, Reuters, Time, the New York Times, and more were working for the CIA and being compensated very well financially for their troubles. When Congress published their report on this media influence, the committee wrote that “The CIA currently maintains a network of several hundred foreign individuals around the world who provide intelligence for the CIA and at times attempt to influence opinion through the use of covert propaganda.” But highlighting what was happening didn’t stop it. For example, Leon Panetta, director of the CIA from 2009 to 2011, later revealed how the agency had influenced media outlets to “change attitudes within the country.” The government would do this by paying people in the media “to deliver a specific message.”
