Originally published October 4 2015
New "fact checking" news organization has ties to the CIA
by J. D. Heyes
(NaturalNews) A new "fact-checking" news organization that purports to be the purveyor of honesty and truth actually has ties to the CIA, which is known to use propaganda and other media techniques in order to sway public opinion in the U.S. and abroad.
As reported by Blacklisted News, the Poynter Institute, which claims to be "a global leader in journalism," announced in July that it was using $300,000 in grant money to launch an "international fact-checking site" in 2016.
According to a press release from the organization:
The initiative will comprise of a new website, e-learning packages around fact checking skills and an annual global fact checking summit. Poynter will be working with an international community of fact checkers that will be based at the institute.
Government ties
Blacklisted News points out that members of the Poynter Institute have dubious ties, as do some of the endowment groups that provided start-up funding for the fact-checking initiative.
One person is Kawika Riley, a fellow at the Poynter Institute who has close ties with the U.S. government and often volunteers to work with the Department of Homeland Security.
In addition, Poynter is supported, in part, by the Knight Foundation, which Blacklisted News said also has close ties to DHS. Caitria O'Neill, Knight Foundation's Chief Executive Officer, has close DHS ties as well. In fact, DHS also has its own intelligence agency.
Finally, some of Poynter's fact-checking project is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, a CIA front organization responsible for funding politicians and groups in other countries with the express purpose of undermining existing governments viewed as hostile to the U.S.
This was also noted by the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity:
After covert CIA backing of Radio Free Europe and other organizations was exposed in the 1970s, a group of neoconservatives decided to create a new kind of CIA to do in the open that which had been done in secret: the National Endowment for Democracy. More than 30 years later, even though the Cold War is a distant memory, the NED is still a $100 million per year, taxpayer-funded worldwide "regime change" operation.
Perhaps none of this should surprise you. As Natural News has previously reported, the Obama Federal Communications Commission implemented a policy in 2014 whereby FCC-contracted monitors were sent into newsrooms across the nation to supervise the content they're creating and producing through a series of involuntary surveys.
News monitors, Google fact-finders
The program, known as a CIN (pronounced "sin") Study, involves government officials monitoring content created by the media, including articles, television reports and internet content.
"Under the newly proposed Federal Communications Commission (FCC) initiative, journalists must provide to the public content that meets one of eight groups of 'critical needs,' or face unknown penalties," correspondent Julie Wilson reported.
Wilson further noted:
Scholars at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Communication and Democracy conducted a study to determine what "critical needs" are necessary for Americans. These eight "critical needs" are defined by the government as correct or adequate information regarding "emergencies and risks," "health and welfare," "education," "transportation," "economic opportunities," "the environment," "civic information" and, lastly, "political information." All approved by the government.
Jon Rappoport reported in March that Google wants to begin ranking web sites in its search engine based on facts, not links. Google, which worked with the NSA on its spying programs and whose top officials have close ties to the Obama White House, gets to decide which "facts" are true and which aren't.
What could go wrong with that?
"So Google, along with its friends at the CIA, will engineer a new and improved, greater flood of (dis)information across the Web. And this disinfo will constitute an overwhelming majority opinion...and will become the standard for measuring truth and trustworthiness," writes Rappoport.
Sources include:
BlacklistedNews.com
Poynter.org
DHS.gov
SOTT.net
RonPaulInstitute.org
NaturalNews.com
NaturalNews.com
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