Greasing the Presses

The influence of the United States in some Latin American media, and especially among certain regional journalists, is not merely a matter of ideology: at times it is also a matter of money.

A recent article by American journalist Jeremy Bigwood – the same investigator who showed the conspiratorial interference of his country’s embassy in Bolivia – constitutes a journey to the Never-Never Land where communications corporations and their pen-wielding servants dwell.

Bigwood is no leftist charlatan. He is an anti-establishment investigative journalist and it is thanks to him that we learned how the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) financed the fascist and separatist Santa Cruz Chamber of Commerce, an entity that appears to be involved in the aborted plot to assassinate Evo Morales.

Bigwood has investigated the panoply of American institutions that finance “the hemispheric free press” and has come across more than one surprise.

First is the number of agencies involved. Among the most important are the NED, the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the US Institute for Peace (USIP), and the ubiquitous US Agency for International Development (USAID).

These paper tigers are active in 70 countries and their money goes to universities, academic improvement programs for journalists, individual grants, specialty seminars, NGOs dedicated to the press and a variety of others.

How much money are we talking about? USAID, for example, in 2006 alone handled 53 million dollars for investment in media and journalists. That same year the Department of State contributed 15 million dollars for hospitality, conventions, conferences and a wide spectrum of “academic activities” linked to the international press.

We are talking about money that is white and official. Of the black money – which comes from the untouchable funds of the CIA, from Department of State subcontractors, and from embassies located in “delicate zones” – little or nothing is known.

How many journalists, for example, have arrived recently in the United States under the protective umbrella of Grant IV, the cultural exchange program initiated under John Kennedy in 1961?

This figure is known. In 2007, for example, four hundred and seventy newspapermen consumed ten million dollars in travel and lodging expenses budgeted under Grant IV.

Obscurity, in contrast, covers certain USAID activities. This agency has assimilated CIA methods and now refuses to indicate which foreign organizations receive some of its funds. And when Jeremy Bigwood asked about the nature of certain institutions identified as recipients of USAID money, he was told that the information is classified.

Bigwood was able to get a hold of a cable sent from the United States Embassy in Caracas to Washington August 19, 2002:

“We expect Mr. [name erased by Bigwood]’s participation as an IV grantee to be directly reflected in his reporting on political and international topics. As he moves upward in his career, our improved ties with him would mean a potentially important friend in positions of editorial influence.”

Nor is the Department of State idle here, maintaining various subordinate operations – in addition to deciding which countries USAID emphasizes. One of these offices, called the Office of Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs (OPDPA), is tasked with directly financing certain specially chosen journalists. The list of these privileged few remains a secret but there are bloodhounds on the trail.

In Bolivia, in 2006, one of the branches of the Department of State, called the Bureau of Democracy and Human Rights, sponsored an organization of fifteen journalistic workshops and sent, free of charge, the conclusions of these “professional workshops” to 200 Bolivian radio stations.

Bigwood has shown that the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) has been budgeted, from 1999 to 2006, with nothing less than 650 million dollars (yes, six-hundred and fifty million dollars).

It is the BBG that broadcasts Voice of America, founded in 1942, Radio and TV Martí (annual budget of 40 million dollars), Radio Sawa (heard in Egypt, Iraq, and the Persian Gulf), Radio Farda (directed at Iran) and the television channel Alhurra, a kind of CNN in Arabic with programming aimed at the Middle East.

USAID’s budget for Iran – we are speaking of the 2008 fiscal year – was 75 million dollars. Of that money, 25 million was used for “media development.” The remaining 50 million supported what Bigwood cites as “transformational diplomacy.”

Bigwood also cites The Chavez Code, a book by lawyer Eva Golinger – of Venezuelan origin and American citizenship – as recording how direct beneficiaries of USAID and NED programs were implicated in the 2002 coup attempt and how the United States Embassy in Caracas established guidelines and directives for the Venezuelan NGO Súmate, one of the most notable opposition fronts.

In the past the CIA created, bought or rented hundreds and even thousands of media and journalists. It is enough to remember “El Mercurio” as published in Allende’s Chile, or to recall “Orbe,” a news agency active during that same era.

But we are not speaking of the past. We are talking about the present. Because Bigwood recently inquired, in writing, if the CIA continues financing journalists. The response from the Central Intelligence Agency was the same as it has been for the past fifty years:

“The CIA, as usual, cannot confirm nor deny this type of allegation.”

The empire may be in crisis. But it lives on. Cash in hand and ready to spend.