Article: "Journalists Are Prostitutes"

I've seen several conservative sites mention and/or quote from Paul Craig Roberts article, "Journalists Are Prostitutes" which mostly is a translation of a 2015 lecture by Udo Ulfkotte. He was a journalist and, later, an assistant editor for the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) until 2003, when he apparently went off the reservation and started supporting political causes deemed "far right" or populist in Germany, such as wanting to limit immigration.

    In 2014, he published a book, Gekaufte Journalisten ("Bought Journalists") on which this lecture was based. The thesis of the book is "that the CIA and other secret services pay money to journalists to report stories in a certain light. According to Ulfkotte, the CIA and German intelligence (BND) bribe journalists in Germany to write pro-NATO propaganda articles, and it is well understood that one may lose their media job if they fail to comply with the pro-Western agenda." The book was never published in English.

   The part most widely cited or quoted from Roberts article is Ulfkotte's first experience with being a war journalist: during the Iran-Iraqi War, being driven with a bus-load of other journalists to a remote area of the Iraqi desert far from the front, where old burnt out vehicles were doused with gasoline and ignited to provide a background for Iraqi soldiers to pose as if in battle. As this should be a shock to anyone with knowledge of journalistic ethics. For instance, it was only a few years later, in 1992, that NBC's Dateline ran a story claiming that GM trucks were susceptible to fuel leaks and explosion in an accident. It turned out, that NBC's journalists had, in fact, had to resort to fireworks or rocket engines to get the vehicles to burst into flame. NBC later settled a lawsuit brought by GM.

    The more interesting part of Ulfkotte's account is how journalists' careers were dependent on how well they would take bribes and direction from political parties, government, intelligence services, and even foreign , and dignitaries, and be amply compensated for their loyalty.

     There are some sort of guidelines in all the big media companies. But that isn’t all: I learned very fast that if one doesn’t – I don’t mean this negatively – want to be stuck in the lower rungs of editors, if one wants to rise; for me this rise was that I was allowed to travel with the Chancellor, ministers, the president and politicians, in planes owned by the state; then one has to keep to certain subjects. I learned that fast.

     That is, if one gets to follow a politician – and this hasn’t changed to this day – I soon realized that when I followed the president or Chancellor Helmut Kohl etc, one of course isn’t invited because your name is Udo Ulfkotte, but because you belong to the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine.

     Then a certain type of reporting is expected. Which one? Forget my newspaper, this applies in general. At the start of the trip, the journalist gets a memo – today it is electronic – in his hand. If you are traveling abroad, it is info about the country, or the speeches that will be held. This file contains roughly what will happen during this trip. In addition there are short conversations, briefings with the politician’s press manager. He then explains to you how one views this trip. Naturally, you should see it the same way. No one says it in that way. But is is approximately what one would have reported.

     All the time you…no one tells you to write it this or that way…but you know quite exactly that if you DON’T write it this or that way,then you won’t get invited next time. Your media outlet will be invited, but they say ‘we don’t want him along’. Then you are out.

He continues:

      In the big media in Germany – just look yourself – who sit in the large transatlantic think-tanks and foundations,the foundation The Atlantic Bridge, all these organizations, and how is one influenced there? I can tell from my own experience.

     We mustn’t talk only theoretically. I was invited by the think-tank The German Marshall Fund of the United States as a fellow. I was to visit the United States for six weeks. It was fully paid. During these six weeks I could…this think-tank has very close connections to the CIA to this day, they acquired contacts in the CIA for me and they got me access to American politicians, to everyone I wanted. Above all, they showered me with gifts.

Also:

     This doesn’t happen to every journalist. It would be a conspiracy theory if I said that behind every journalist, someone pulls the wires.

     No. Not everyone has influence over the masses. When you – I don’t mean this negatively – write about folk costume societies or if you work with agriculture or politics, why should anyone from the upper political spheres have an interest in controlling the reporting? As far as I know, this doesn’t happen at all.

     But if you work in one of the big media, and want up in this world, if you want to travel with politicians, heads of state, with CEOs, who also travel on these planes, then it happens. Then you are regularly bought, you are regularly observed.

There is a lot to more, so be sure to read the whole thing.

     It would be naive to assume that things worked different with our media. Certainly, if the CIA was willing to provide special access (and gifts) to a foreign journalist, it would do the same with the journalists in the United States. In fact, the way that official Washington leaks like a sieve suggests that the same methods of operations exist here. Just as Ulfkotte was given access to secret documents and, sometimes, even given "news articles" already written for him by intelligence agencies, it is reasonable to believe that the same relationship exists between certain journalists and our "deep state." Obviously, I don't have proof of this, but it seems reasonable.

    And if the "deep state," including the intelligence agencies do exercise editorial control over the news, it is suggestive as to the journalistic "dog pile" on President Trump.