The Rockefeller Files: Chapter Six The Rockefeller Mediacracy by Gary Allen from archive.org

Chapter Six 

The Rockefeller Mediacracy 

"Equally important is CFR's influence in the 
mass media .... They control or own major 
newspapers, magazines, radio and television 
networks ..." 

-Admiral Chester Ward 
(CFR and USN, Retired) 

The Rockefellers, as we have seen, have never been ones to leave public opinion to 
chance. That is why they have invested their charitable monies so judiciously in 
education and religion. It would be naive to think that the family would not exert every 
possible subtle and unsubtle influence over the nation's mass media. 

In Chapter One we described how the Rockefellers use leverage to maximize the power 
of their investments in industry and finance. They follow the same principle when they 
buy influence over education. They do not pour money into local school board races; they 
put their bucks into the schools that train the teachers and they finance the writing of 
textbooks. Now that every public school is at the mercy of the Department of Health, 
Education and Welfare (which Nelson Rockefeller created and ran under Eisenhower), 
the family couldn't care less who controls the local school board. In the field of religion, 
the money goes to key seminaries where ministers are trained and to the National Council 
of Churches which claims to represent forty million Protestants. 

The Rockefellers grab, with all the gusto they've got, at the apex of whatever 
instrumentality they wish to control. The influence of the Council on Foreign Relations in 
the federal government is concentrated in the Executive Branch. That is where the action 
is-at the top. And so it is with Rockefeller control of the media. They are not interested in 
controlling the Burnt Mattress Weekly Blat; they go for the leaders in the field. In the old 
days, John D. sent his agents out to bribe editors and to buy up small papers, but that is 
very inefficient and antiquated in the electronic age. Now, the local papers are dependent 
on wire services and syndicated columnists to fill their news and editorial pages. 

The Rockefellers have made sure that the real movers and shakers in the field of mass 
communications have been initiated into their CFR lodge. Admiral Ward informs us: 

Equally important is CFR's influence in the mass media. Out of its 1,551 members, 60 
were listed in official CFR reports as engaged in "journalism." An additional 61 were 
listed in -communications management," a highly descriptive title, because CFR 



members do indeed "manage" mass communications media, especially the influential 
segments. They control or own major newspapers, magazines, radio and television 
networks, and they control the most powerful companies in the book publishing business. 

Few would argue the fact that the New York Times is the most influential newspaper in 
the U.S. "A significance of the Times, " Times man James Reston has written, "is its 
multiplier effect. What appears in the Times automatically appears later in other places. 

Concerning this multiplier effect, Alice Widener, columnist for Barron's,notes: 

It is a fact that most editors and newsmen on the staffs of Life, Look, Time, Newsweek, 
etc., and most editors, reporters, and commentators at NBC, CBS, and ABC take their 
news and editorial cues from the New York Times. . Technically, it is a great newspaper; 
but it reports much of the news in conformity with its editorial policies. 

The late Arthur Hays Sulzberger, chairman of the board of the New York Times, was a 
member of the CFR, and today there are at least 1 1 people in high positions with e Times 
who are CFR members. Sulzberger's son-in-law Orvil E. Dryfoos (CFR) succeeded him 
as publisher. The current publisher is Arthur Ochs " Punch" Sulzberger (CFR). 

Other CFR members at the Times are: Harding Bancroft, Executive Vice President. James 
Reston, Vice President and columnist; A. M. Rosenthal, managing editor; Seymour 
Topping, assistant managing editor; Max Frankel, Sunday editor; Harrison Salisbury, 
associate editor; C. L. Sulzberger, columnist; and David Halberstam, columnist. 

The Times is infamous for it's anti-anti-Communism and its support of socialist-fascist 
legislation. Its treatment of Stalin as a kindly liberal running a Russian branch of the 
ACLU should have made it a laughing stock, but didn't. Neither did the Times Herbert L. 
Matthews' (CFR) treatment of "Dr. Castro" as the George Washington of Cuba. Matthews 
swore repeatedly that Castro was anything but a Communist. Later, jokers commented 
that Castro could honestly say, "Igot my job through the New York Times. " 

Needless to say, the support Nelson Rockefeller has received in his political career from 
the normally Democrat Times has been nearly total. 

Running a close second to the New York Times in the prestige race is the Washington 
Post. Every Senator and Congressman, regardless of his party or political persuasion, has 
the Post on his desk each morning. Like the Times, the Post is read by the people who 
count when it comes to running the country. The Post's owner and publisher Katharine 
Graham is a member of the CFR, as are other top editors and management personnel. For 
years the Post has been referred to as "the uptown Daily Worker. "The only time the Post 
has ever opposed "big government- is when it has been used to investigate Communism. 
When this has happened, the people at the Post frantically start waving the Constitution 
and babbling about "freedom of speech " - something they regularly suppress when it 
involves opposition to fascism- socialism or the Rockefellers. 



One of the most influential members of the Post's staff is the incredibly talented truth- 
twister, cartoonist Herbert L. Block. Herblock's cartoons are syndicated daily in hundreds 
of papers. (And for every person, who reads the editorial page, there are probably a 
hundred who look at the lead cartoon.) 

The Los Angeles Times is the West Coast's most important newspaper. Formerly 
staunchly conservative, the paper made a sharp Left turn fifteen if teen years ago and 
while it still retains its COP standing for protective coloring, it has become an organ for 
Establishment socialism. The Times is connected to the Rockefellers' CFR through board 
chairman Franklin Murphy and the fact that it owns a wire service in conjunction with the 
ultra-Liberal Washington Post. In addition, the Los Angeles Times owns the important 
Newsday on Long Island. 

Other major newspapers with CFR interlocks are: the Arkansas Gazette, Des Moines 
Register & Tribune, Gannett Co. (publisher of newspapers in 40 cities from New York to 
Hawaii), The Houston Post, Minneapolis Star & Tribune, The Denver Post and Louisville 
Courier. * 

Equally important has been CFR influence within the wire services. For many years 
Arthur Sulzberger was a director of the Associated Press while today Katharine Graham 
and John Cowles, Jr. are on the board. In addition, the New York Times has its own news 
service as does the Washington Post-Los Angeles Times. Every daily newspaper in the 
country uses one or more of these wire services for news and editorials. 

Today it might be argued that television has superseded the newspaper as the primary 
creator of public opinion. Naturally, the Rockefellers have reached for control of the tube. 
William S. Paley, chairman of the board of CBS, is a CFR member as well as a trustee of 
the Ford Foundation. CBS has over 200 TV and 255 radio affiliates nationwide. CBS's 
president, Arthur Taylor, and Michael O'Neill of CBS publications are both members of 
the CFR. The former president of CBS was Dr. Frank Stanton (CFR), who is also a 
trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation and Carnegie Institution. CBS directors who are 
CFR members include Roswell Gilpatrick, Courtney Brown, Henry Schacht, and William 
Burden. CBS (sometimes referred to as the Conspiracy Brainwashing System) newsmen 
who are CFR members include Charles C. Collingwood , Richard C. Hottelet, Marvin 
Kalb, Larry LeSueur, and Daniel Schorr.* 

* There are more than thirty Committees on Foreign Relations in major US cities which 
the CFR says are -affiliated- with the Council. Members of these local CFR Committees 
staff scores of other newspapers and radio television stations. 

The National Broadcasting Company is a subsidiary of the Radio Corporation of 
America. Until his recent retirement, the head of RCA-NBC was long-time CFR member 
David Sarnoff. Like CBS's Paley, Sarnoff was born in Russia. Under him, RCA was a 
major financial contributor to the CFR. Sarnoff spent much of his time promoting - 
foreign aid." Succeeding David Sarnoff at RCA is son Robert, a director of the 
Advertising Council, a spinoff of the CFR. 



NBC newsmen John Chancellor and Irving R. Levine are CFR members, as are directors 
Thornton Bradshaw and John Petty. 

The American Broadcasting Company is the Tag- Along Tooloo of the Big Three 
networks. It has 153 TV stations and specializes in escapist entertainment. It generally 
leaves the -documentary- propaganda to the Big Two. Its news audience amounts to only 
7 million, while the other networks divide up the remaining 35 million news watchers. It 
does not have the CFR ties that CBS- and NBC do, but Chase Manhattan Bank controls 
6.7 % of its stock-enough to give it a controlling interest. Chase, through its trust 
department, controls 14 % of CBS and 4.5 % of RCA. Instead of three competing 
television networks called NBC, CBS, and ABC, what we really have is the Rockefeller 
Broadcasting Company, the Rockefeller Broadcasting System, and the Rockefeller 
Broadcasting Consortium. 

* Certainly no one was very surprised that CBS carried an almost unprecedented 2-hour 
propaganda show on "The Rockefellers- during prime viewing time on Friday, December 
28, 1973. CBS used its star, Walter Cronkite, to narrate this spectacle, which was so 
sugary it must have sent thousands of diabetics scrambling for their insulin. Cronkite 
closed by saying that if any family had to have as much money and power as the 
Rockefellers, it was a good thing it was the Rockefellers! For a political candidate to buy 
that kind of television time would cost an astronomical sum. But Rocky has-friends. It 
didn't cost him a nickel. 

Although the advent of television has somewhat diminished the influence of the slick 
magazines upon mass opinion, their importance is still significant. Until its demise 
(caused by advertisers switching to television), the nation's second-leading magazine in 
circulation was Look, with 7,750,000 copies distributed per issue. Look was owned by 
Cowles Communications, headed by Gardner and John Cowles. Both Cowles brothers are 
members of the Council on Foreign Relations. 

The Cowles publishing empire encompasses Harper's a list of trade journals, a string of 
newspapers and television stations, and Harper & Row. Managing the operation for the 
Cowles family is Cass Canfield of the CFR and World Federalists. John Cowles is 
married to Canfield's daughter. 

John Cowles runs the Minneapolis Tribune and Des Moines Register. He is a trustee of 
the Rockefeller- interlocked Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and of the Ford 
Foundation, and he is a member of the National Policy Board of American Assembly - a 
front created by Averell Harriman, the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, and the CFR to 
run propaganda seminars for leaders in American business, labor, communications, and 
the academy. He is on the Advisory Council of the US Committee for the US and the 
ultra-Leftist National Committee for an Effective Congress, which operates a "be kind to 
the Communists- lobby in Washington. 

According to the American Legion's Firing Line of August 15, 1954, John Cowles joined 
twenty-three others signing telegrams to US Senators -asking support of measures which 



would stifle all Congressional investigations of Communism. "Little wonder, Brother 
John is very serious about merging America into a World Government with the 
Communists. The following is from a U.P.I, dispatch of June 7, 1959: 

John Cowles, publisher of " The Minneapolis Star and Tribune " said today that the 
traditional American concept of national sovereignty is obsolete... 

Gardner Cowles, chairman of the board of Cowles Communications, works hard to keep 
up with the Leftist activities of his brother. Besides being a member of the CFR, he is 
also a member of the Atlantic Union Committee. 

Running Look magazine for the Cowles boys was William Atwood (CFR), who once 
wrote that we could "thank our lucky stars that Castro is not a Communist. - 

What Americans can thank their lucky stars about is that Look, which published more 
smears against anti Communists than any other publication outside the official 
Communist Press, went broke. 

After nearly four decades as a leading opinion maker in America, Life bit the same dust 
as Look and for the same reason, despite a whopping circulation of 8.5 million. Life's 
corporate brother, Time, the leading news weekly, with a circulation of 4.2 million (as 
compared to Newsweek 's 2.5 million and U. S. News & World Report's 1.8) is healthy, as 
are Time Inc.'s Sports Illustrated and Fortune. 

The Time corporation recently bought its first newspaper, the Newark Evening News, for 
$34 million, and later purchased thirty-two more in the Chicago suburbs. It also owns 
Little, Brown & Company, an Establishment book publisher; 300,000 shares of Metro- 
Goldwyn Mayer; 600,000 acres of timberland; and, is part owner of media in South 
America, West Germany, Hong Kong, and Australia. In addition to all this, Time Inc. 
owns some thirty television stations in America, giving this mammoth conglomerate a 
voice in every form of mass media newspapers, magazines, movies, television, book 
publishing, and even teaching machines. 

The builder of this empire was the late Henry Luce (CFR), whose impact on American 
thinking has been enormous. As Theodore White (CFR) has noted, " He revolutionized 
the thinking of American readers." Luce started his rise to publishing glory with loans 
from CFR Establishmentarians Thomas Lamont and Dwight Morrow (like Lamont, a J. 
P. Morgan partner), Harvey Firestone, E. Roland Harriman, and various members of the 
Harkness family (Standard Oil fortune). Their influence became especially apparent 
when he started his business magazine, Fortune, in the middle of the depression. As John 
Kobler writes in The First Tycoon: 

"It is a bemusing paradox that Fortune, the magazine of business, questioned the 
efficiency of the free-enterprise system and even took on a faint socialist tinge. Some of 
its editors and contributors stood far to the left...." 



Apparently that is what Luce's Rockefeller connected financial angels wanted. And, 
although he later seemed to oppose F.D.R., Henry Luce cheered his accomplishments: " I 
didn't vote for F.D.R. but it was all right with me that he won. He accomplished a lot of 
necessary social reform.-" 

Jeanne Harmon, a former Life staff writer, tells in Such Is Life how tolerant Luce was of 
the Communist cell openly working at Time-Life. Mrs. Harmon relates how headlines 
were suddenly altered to convey meanings never intended, and how she and her fellow 
reporters were subjected to pressures to ignore some stories and push others. She also 
reveals that Whittaker Chambers was not welcomed back to Time-Life after he had 
testified against Alger Hiss (CFR). 

Henry Luce was at one time actually considered an anti Communist. Yet he always 
bitterly opposed anyone like Robert Taft , General Douglas MacArthur, or Barry 
Goldwater, whom he thought might actually do something about Communist subversion 
in the United States. Luce's bogus anti-Communism was used to promote his World 
Government crusades. He was a member of the CFR and the Atlantic Union. Henry Luce 
was also a strong supporter of the United Nations, even after Alger Hiss's role in its 
establishment was revealed. 

The Rockefeller Mediacracy 

In the late Fifties, Henry Luce switched from the "World Government to oppose 
Communism- line to the - peaceful co-existence and World Government with 
Communism- line, and Life went back to glorifying the Soviet Union as it had done 
during World War II. In 1966 , Luce took a group of 43 US businessmen behind the Iron 
Curtain to promote aid and trade with the enemy. 

The chairman at Time Inc. is Andrew Heiskell (CFR), who is married to a New York 
Times heiress. Editor-in-chief of all Time Inc. publications is Hedley 

Donovan, a Rhodes Scholar, former reporter for the Limousine Leftist Washington Post, 
and a member of the CFR. Other CFR - Establishmentarians in the Time Inc. hierarchy 
are vice chairman Roy Larsen and directors John Gardner and Sol Linowitz. 

The CFR members of Time Inc. also include James Linen, chairman of Time's executive 
committee; vice presidents Otto Fuerbringer and Barry Zorthian and directors Frank 
Pace, Jr. and Rawleigh Warner. So closely is Time Inc. now linked with the Rockefellers 
that the two jointly own a helicopter. 

Rapidly closing the circulation gap with Time is News week. 

Newsweek is owned by the Washington Post. 

Chairman of the board Frederick Beebe is a member of the CFR as was the late owner, 
Katharine Graham's son Phillip. Retired editor Malcolm Muir is a CFR member, as are 



current editors Osborn Elliot and Robert Christopher, and vice president Nicholas 
Katzenbach. Other CFR men at Newsweek are editorial page editor Philip Geyelin, 
columnist Stewart Alsop, contributing editor Carl Spaatz, Atlanta Bureau chief William 
Anderson, and directors Katharine Graham and Kermit Lansner. 

Other magazines in the CFR orbit are Business Week ,Atlantic Monthly, McCalls, World 
Review (formerly Saturday Review of Literature) and Scientific American 

* One of the most curious publications to join the list of CFR interlocked journals is the 
ostensibly conservative magazine National Review. Although National Review has in the 
past claimed to be an opponent of the Eastern Liberal Establishment, it has never called 
attention to the conspiratorial activities of the Rockefeller Dynasty - and, in fact, has 
bitterly ridiculed anyone who suggested that there were any conspiratorial wolves mixed 
in with the Liberal sheep. Many well-informed conservatives were puzzled by National 
Review's refusal to consider the possibility that most of the liberal" mistakes - the 
magazine decried were actually carefully planned and deliberate acts; their bewilderment 
is bound to increase when they learn that editor-in-chief William F. Buckley, Jr., who has 
boasted of his personal friendship and warm admiration for such important Insiders as 
Henry Kissinger, and who enthusiastically endorsed Nelson Rockefeller for Secretary of 
Defense, is himself a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. 

Book publishers with representatives on the CFR include : 

MacMillan, Random House, Simon & Schuster, McCraw-Hill, Harper Brothers, IBM 
Publishing and Printing, Xerox Corp., Yale University Press and Harper & Row. Many of 
these specialize in publishing textbooks. 

The Book of the Month Club's chairman Axel Rosin is a member of the CFR. 

Given this kind of power over the media, it is hardly surprising that the Rockefeller 
family generally gets the powder puff treatment from the media. The interlocking CFR 
web woven by the Rockefellers explains why Nelson received such unanimous hosannas 
from the media during his hearings for the Vice Presidency. Though a few individual 
reporters were mildly critical of some facets of Nelson's career, the managers of the 
major papers and magazines positively drooled over themselves at the prospect of Sir 
Nelson the Fair being a heartbeat away from the Presidency. This is not exactly the tone 
used on Barry Goldwater in 1964. The one-eyed press is a Rockefeller-con trolled 
Cyclops. 

There is yet another power the Dynasty has over the mass media. The average newspaper 
depends on advertising for from two-thirds to three-fourths of its revenues. Ike Mc 
Anally, for four decades a reporter with the New York Daily News, comments in Counter 
attack: 

The most persistent influence upon the editorial policies of metropolitan newspapers 
today is the large advertiser. In many instances these advertisers are department stores. 



Some of these make open and contemptuous demands upon the front offices of 
newspapers to support the left wing. Others relay " suggestions. " 

... Newspapers have surrendered unconditionally to left wing front office pressures, real 
and imaginary.... 

... They realize that if they write a story which might draw unfavorable reaction from, for 
instance, a department store, the city editor is apt to throw their copy back at them.... It is 
inevitable that with front offices swinging over, individual newsmen have more elastic 
principles. 

Here's how it works. Every one of the major department store chains 

" R. H. Macy & Company, Federated Department Stores, Gimbel Brothers, Sears, 
Roebuck & Company, J. C. Penney Company, The May Department Stores Company, 
Interstate Department Stores, and Allied Stores Corporation- has on its board of directors 
at least one officer who is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and/or a partner 
in the CFR interlocked international banking firms such as Kuhn, Loeb; Lazard Freres; 
Lehman Brothers; Dillon, Read & Company; or Coldman Sachs. 

Department stores, of course, are not the only buyers of advertising space. Oil companies 
are also biggies. So are banks. As are the myriad of corporations listed in the early part of 
this book as under Rockefeller family domination. Establishment adventurers will, of 
course, permit a paper to take a moderately conservative stand, but it is taboo to discuss 
the Rockefeller Establishment and its links with the International Communist Conspiracy. 

With all of this membership in America's key mass media, it can hardly be an accident 
that few people know about the Council on Foreign Relations. If the Rockefellers wanted 
publicity for the CFR you can bet there would be feature spreads in Time and Newsweek 
plus a " 60 Minute- CBS Special narrated by Walter Cronkite. If you check The Readers 
Guide to Periodical 

Literature at your local library, you will find but a single listing on the CFR in over 50 
years. And that in the relatively obscure Atlantic Monthly. A check of newspaper files 
shows that only two feature articles on this incredibly powerful organization have 
appeared, one in the Christian Science Monitor and one in the New York Times. As we 
said before, such anonymity can hardly be accidental. 

The involvement of the Rockefellers with the media has multi-multi implications. One is 
that the Rockefeller gang's plans for monopolistic World Government are never, but 
never, discussed in the machines of mass misinformation. The media decides what the 
issues will be in the country. They can turn on the poverty issue or turn it off. The same 
holds true for population explosion, pollution, peace, detente,or whatever. We have in 
this country what columnist Kevin Phillips has termed a mediacracy. 



The mediacracy can take a man like Ralph Nader and make him an instant folk hero. Or 
they can take an enemy of the Rockefellers and create the image that he is a cretin, a 
buffoon, a bigot, or a dangerous paranoid. 

The use of psychology and propaganda, or if you will, brainwashing, is not a Communist 
invention. It was developed in the West in such places as the Rockefeller financed 
Tavistock Institute in England. While the Communists have used these tools for 
mindbending, so have the Rockefellers. The hidden persuaders from Madison Avenue, 
the Rand Corp. think-tank or Hudson Institute, can and do manipulate public opinion. 
The Establishment elitists refer to it as" the engineering of consent." That means we are 
made to think the manacles they are slipping on our wrists are love bracelets. The 
techniques developed by the Rockefeller "Thought Trust " have just been adopted and 
used more brutally by the Communists. 

With money the Rockefellers gained control of the media. With the media the family 
gained control over public opinion. With control over public opinion they gained control 
of politics. And with control of politics, they are taking control of the nation. 

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Chapter Seven 

Surrender by Consent