POLITICAL TRUTH: THE MEDIA AND THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY

[Joseph McBride]

https://www.amazon.com/Political-Truth-Assassination-President-Kennedy/dp/1939795613/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=JOSEPH+MCBRIDE+POLITICAL+TRUTH&qid=1640561446&s=books&sr=1-2

POLITICAL TRUTH: THE MEDIA AND THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY

by Joseph McBride

 

Hightower Press 

New on Amazon

$45; 491 pages

 

In 1963, President John F. Kennedy was killed in a coup d’état. Ever since then, it has been virtually taboo in the American mainstream media to report this basic truth. Instead, print and television “news” reporters and historians spread the government’s lies and attack people they label “conspiracy theorists” rather than investigating the case themselves. Joseph McBride, author of Into the Nightmare: My Search for the Killers of President John F. Kennedy and Officer J. D. Tippit, offers a deep analysis of this dereliction of journalistic duty. Political Truth assimilates a wealth of media disinformation and contrastingly accurate investigations by independent researchers, reporters, and filmmakers. McBride’s provocative study traces how the false reporting of the assassination has led to today’s poisonous political divide over the meaning of historical reality.

Joseph McBride is the author of twenty-four books, including biographies of Frank Capra and John Ford. He has been a journalist since 1960, writing for such publications as the New York Times Book Review, the New York Review of Books, Life, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, and, on this subject, for The Nation. He is a professor in the School of Cinema at San Francisco State University.

 

Edited December 27, 2021 by Joseph McBride

[Jim Hargrove]

Oh, man, I can’t wait to read this!  Mr. McBride’s topic called “The inevitable end result of our last 56 years” must be one of the longest threads ever to appear on this forum. Was the idea for this new book born right here?

And what a stunning idea it is!  It puts the emphasis right on the cover-up, hopefully so all can see!   Brilliant! 

JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass and now Mr. McBride’s new book.  The truth is striking back, not once, but twice.

Congratulations, Joe! 

[Anthony Thorne]

Great work Joe. Will pick this up in the new year.

Edited December 27, 2021 by Anthony Thorne

[Joseph McBride]

Thanks, my friends. POLITICAL TRUTH is the result of my long

study of the case, beginning informally in 1963 and

systematically in 1982. I began outlining this book in the 1990s

and then thought of having a chapter on the media in INTO

THE NIGHTMARE but realized it was too big a topic for one

chapter (other than the chapter in INTO THE NIGHTMARE on the four-day TV docudrama

over the assassination weekend). I have kept studying the case

all the way through and wrote POLITICAL TRUTH over the past couple of years.

Edited December 27, 2021 by Joseph McBride

[Ron Bulman]

Congratulations as well.  I'm confident before ever turning a page just based primarily on Into the Nightmare and your posts here this will be an excellent read.

That biography is much more extensive than the one Amazon had or has for Nightmare if I remember correctly.  I know you had mentioned before on here teaching a film class at I thought UC Berkeley, this says San Francisco State.  Did not know of the screenwriting or of teaching that subject as well.  I thought teaching the film class was due to being a film critic.  But twenty four books?  You've mentioned 3 -4 of the biographies.  I had no idea of the true depth.  Now this.  

[Joseph McBride]

Thanks, Ron. I updated the Amazon author page recently. I have never taught at UC Berkeley but live in Berkeley.

[Joseph McBride]

 

While I was researching my book POLITICAL TRUTH, I wrote and narrated "Political Truth: The Media and the Assassination," this segment of FIFTY REASONS . . . FIFTY YEARS, the 2013 video series on the assassination produced by Len Osanic for his Black Op Radio. Jeff Carter was the videographer.

[Joe Bauer]

7 hours ago, Joseph McBride said:

 

While I was researching my book POLITICAL TRUTH, I wrote and narrated "Political Truth: The Media and the Assassination," this segment of FIFTY REASONS . . . FIFTY YEARS, the 2013 video series on the assassination produced by Len Osanic for his Black Op Radio. Jeff Carter was the videographer.

Great video. Must see. Nice lead in to the book.

 

 

Edited December 28, 2021 by Joe Bauer

[W. Niederhut]

14 hours ago, Joseph McBride said:

 

While I was researching my book POLITICAL TRUTH, I wrote and narrated "Political Truth: The Media and the Assassination," this segment of FIFTY REASONS . . . FIFTY YEARS, the 2013 video series on the assassination produced by Len Osanic for his Black Op Radio. Jeff Carter was the videographer.

Very interesting stuff, Joe, and  I'm looking forward to reading your new book.  It sounds like an important, historical masterpiece.

I wish it would become a New York Times bestseller and give the Sulzbergers some well-deserved ulcers.  🤥

I have been very interested in the subject of our national propaganda establishment lately, and your many years of study and research on this subject will help fill in a lot of gaps in my knowledge of the how the mainstream media colluded in the cover up of the JFK assassination op.

Quick question regarding the video.  Do you think Dan Rather, Don Hewitt, William S. Paley, CBS, et.al. had foreknowledge of the Dallas assassination op?

I knew that Dan Rather lied about the trajectory of JFK's head during the fatal shot, but I had never heard the story of CBS having multiple staffers in Dallas, in anticipation of a big event.

I used to admire Dan Rather-- after his Watergate interview with Nixon--but, nowadays, he's looking increasingly nefarious to me.

[Joseph McBride]

Thanks for your comments. Here's what I write about this, among many

other observations on Rather's long involvement with the assassination:

 

Rather convinced his superiors in New York to “lay on double coverage all over Texas and quadruple it

in Dallas,” he wrote in his 1977 memoir, titled with unconscious irony

The Camera Never Blinks: Adventures of a TV Journalist. According to

John B. Mayo’s 1967 book Bulletin From Dallas: The President Is Dead,

CBS had *five* full network TV production crews in Dallas at the time of

the assassination, including the only live remote TV network hookup (to

broadcast Kennedy’s speech at the Trade Mart, a focal point of security

concerns), while NBC and ABC each had only the customary single crew

following the president. Rather wrote,

 

When the President’s party left Washington, CBS was staffed for

the road as fully as a network can be without planning an invasion.

Still, I do not mean to invest in this any mystic implications. We

were preparing for the unexpected. An incident. A reaction. A

story. We were not having visions. But whatever was to happen in

Dallas, I knew we would be in an unusually good position to cover it.

 

What would become known as Rather’s “golden gut” in anticipating

possible trouble — perhaps in this case a euphemism for some kind of

advance knowledge of what was going to occur; he was not the only

person who expected danger for Kennedy in Dallas — gave CBS a critical

advantage in its coverage and vaulted Rather to national prominence.

[W. Niederhut]

BTW, Joe, someone should notify Ron Unz at the Unz Review about Political Truth.

I think Ron Unz would be very interested in this book, based on what I have read in his scholarly American Pravda series.

https://www.unz.com/

[Anthony Thorne]

CBS President Frank Stanton had previously been floated by the CIA as a possible director of the Psychological Strategy Board, and he was a chairman of the RAND Corporation's Board of Trustees. Stanton was also on the Executive Committee of the Business Advisory Council at the Department of Commerce. In CIA letters online (at CIA Crest) I see correspondence between Stanton, Dulles and Charles Cabell. Moving in those circles it'd be no surprise if Stanton and a few other CBS figures had been in the loop.

[Ron Bulman]

I finally got started reading this earlier today.  Wondering if any others here have read it.  The first 40 pages were engrossing to me, this should be worth re reading and taking notes!  Bill Moyers candor in the 90's was enlightening.  Pg. 40 I chuckled, hadn't thought of Peter F. Drucker's Peter Principle in years.  Might it apply to our most recent former prez?

[Joseph McBride]

I am glad you are reading POLITICAL TRUTH, Ron. This book covers a lot of ground and 

is the result of many years of study and thinking about the mainstream media's

dereliction of duty.

Edited April 14, 2022 by Joseph McBride

[Ron Bulman]

Yes, it does cover a lot of ground, just in the first 100 pages.  Dan Rather may not have lied about what he saw.  The "violently forward" part was on the uncut first generation copy also seen by Hoovers number three guy Cartha DeLoach watching "John Kennedy pitching suddenly forward", repeatedly.  That gets deep quickly.