The eagerly awaited English edition of "Bought Journalists" was suppressed for three years under the title "Journalists for Hire" -- and still got 24 five-star-only Amazon reviews from would-be readers. 18 months on the bestseller list in Germany. Now it's finally here!
Ever get the feeling the media tries to manipulate or lie to you? You have plenty of company! And you are right -- the facts are in. A world-class media insider has blown the whistle on what really goes on inside the media industry.
Author Udo Ulfkotte was a respected journalist for 17 years with Germany's newspaper of record, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. He begins this explosive exposé by first owning up to his own career, where he had to sell out to have the job. He then reveals the deceptive tricks and secret networks of power within the media. How perks are used to bribe journalists and opinion makers to twist their reporting. How the tone of corruption is set from the top -- play along or quit. How the long arm of the NATO press office enrolls the media to get Europe to support more foreign wars.
Ulfkotte names hundreds of names and gives you a behind-the-scenes look at the organizations that influence the German media with one-sided propaganda, such as The Atlantic Bridge, Trilateral Commission, German Marshall Fund, CFR, and Aspen Institute. He unmasks the intelligence agencies behind these lobbies groups and the propaganda techniques they use, such as US Embassy grants for projects to influence European public opinion.
When the CIA holds the hand that holds the pen
Would you be surprised to learn that spies sit and write articles in newspaper editorial offices? Which are then published on op-ed pages under the names of well-known journalists? Or which journalists receive bribes for their reporting? Have you heard how prestigious "journalism prizes" are a reward system for cooperation? Much as "Heroes of Labor" were honored for writing the best communist propaganda in the former East bloc. Seen from the inside, the difference between journalist and propagandist isn't as far as you might like.
The elite owners of the media feel it's their right to think for us, and to mold public opinion to their agendas. Their Freedom of the Press is Freedom to Censor the news.
Our nation depends on the media to understand our world, just as each one of us depends on our eyes and ears. The media are our senses. When they hide the truth, or lie to us, they put us all in danger.
A million people died in Iraq, Libya and Syria because the press didn't just report the news, didn't just lie about the news, but they invented and sold the events that served as pretexts for wars. The author spent years in the Middle East, surviving an attack with chemical weapons supplied by US and German firms.
This book is a veteran's guide to the media spider's web. It shows how the system works, sharpens your common sense skepticism, and increases your immunity to the controlled media's attempts to do our thinking for us.
You will gain a whole new perspective on media reports. A good idea of how much you can believe the news on TV or the radio: almost nothing. Ulfkotte dissects the German media establishment, which media outlets are owned by political parties, the journalists that are under their influence, and what keeps them there. You will see how whole countries are manipulated – and who is pulling the strings and why. Here is the bad news about the news: our idea of a free press with a broad spectrum of opinion is pure fantasy. Very often, what is called the "news" is simply brainwashing.
If you look up Udo Ulfkotte, the author, on Wikipedia, you'll get the impression that this man was a wild-eyed right-wing conspiracy theorist. The fact that he spent most of his career writing for prestigious mainstream media outlets, working in close contact with top politicians and Western intelligence agencies, and making countless television appearances as a war correspondent and foreign policy expert, doesn't seem to count. At the bottom of his Wiki page, you'll also notice the long list of books he wrote, many of them run-away bestsellers in the German-speaking world - despite a virtual blackout on advertising. So, who was Udo Ulfkotte? Was he a highly-respected, mainstream journalist or just some unhinged conspiracy theorist? Presstitutes is the closest we will ever get to an Udo Ulfkotte autobiography. It is both an apology for his own personal conduct and a warning to a new generation of journalists. With his own career as the example, he details how easily young journalists are lifted up and swept along by the mainstream, unable to resist the reward system that shapes the Western media. From his first nudge as a university student toward working with the BND, German Intelligence, Ulfkotte's career provides many a look behind the scenes at what is packaged and sold in the media. After graduation, without any journalism background, but having been vetted by the BND, young Ulfkotte miraculously landed a job as an assistant foreign policy editor at Germany's most prestigious newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ). He stayed with them for 17 years, travelling to 60 countries and spending more time in the Middle East than in Germany. In 1988 he nearly died from an Iraqi nerve gas attack on Iranian troops, and discovered the gas had come from Germany. His reports and photos were buried. Gradually he became disillusioned with the dishonesty. His first critical book title, Classified Information: Federal Intelligence Service (BND), was published in 1997 and was promoted by the FAZ. He also began lecturing on "security management" in the University of Lüneburg's business school. But the FAZ was not happy when he published How Journalists Lie in 2002. He suffered another serious physical injury in 2003. The last straw was when a political party offered him a fat bribe to use his press credentials to spy on a rival politician's private life. After a heart attack, Ulfkotte decided he must expose as much political corruption as he could before he died. He wanted to wake people up. He still had an extensive network of sources who were also fed up, and he published about a book a year, each one more scathing than the last. Presstitutes was the biggest bestseller. The issue that was dearest to him was the loss of cultural identity, which was being aggressively promoted through massive corruption in the government and media. He warned of the dangers of mass immigration before the crime rates shot off the charts. He was now an official persona non grata. Police and prosecutors searched his home and offices six times over the next 10 years, as he said, "because I reported things in public that are not politically correct, especially things the public shouldn't know, things they would like to keep secret... the bearer of bad news is the first one to be hanged, beheaded or otherwise quartered." The searches were always reported in the media, and he lost his professorship, No charges were ever filed, but the media never reported on that. Dr. Udo Ulfkotte survived a poison gas attack in Iraq, a bout with cancer, and head injuries from being pushed down the stairs of his home by a spy for the ISI, the Pakistani CIA. He died of his fourth heart attack on January 13th 2017, just before his 57th birthday. Did he die a natural death? We may never know.
