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thepapercutpost · 3 years ago

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Female Artists Fighting For Their Due Are Not Being Greedy; They’re Defending the Futures of Their Industries

"Scarlett Johansson" by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 (left). "File:191125 Taylor Swift at the 2019 American Music Awards (cropped).png" by Cosmopolitan UK is licensed under CC BY 3.0 (right)

In May of 2010, Iron Man 2 introduced Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

A few months later, Netflix—whose subscribers were, in majority, still receiving DVDs—began offering a standalone streaming subscription independent from its DVD rentals. It wasn’t until nearly ten years later that Disney, parent company of Marvel Entertainment, would launch its own streaming service, Disney+. And in 2021, after three pandemic-related delays, Black Widow, Natasha Romanoff’s solo film which fans had been demanding for 11 years, was finally released.

The long-awaited film garnered $80 million in North American theaters during its opening weekend, more than any other film released during the pandemic era. (In comparison, MCU’s last pre-pandemic release, Spider-Man: Far From Home, made $185 million). Because of the somewhat mercurial state of indoor gatherings around the world, Disney chose to make Black Widow available simultaneously in theaters and for an additional $30 fee for Disney+ subscribers. After opening weekend, in an unprecedented move in streaming service transparency, Disney revealed the film had grossed $60 million through Disney+’s Premier Access feature.

The next weekend, the film suffered a 67% drop in box office sales. Disney has not since released streaming numbers.

Within a month, news broke that Johansson was suing Disney over the film’s hybrid release. Her suit claims that her contract for the film guaranteed an exclusively theatrical release and that her compensation was largely tied to box office revenue, which was impacted by the film’s simultaneous availability on Disney+. The breach of contract is a serious allegation against the company, and it comes from the embodiment of one of the longest-standing pillars of its most successful franchise.

Disney’s response? Make her the bad guy. Paint her as the greedy, insensitive Hollywood prima donna. Publish her salary to prove it, despite a policy of “never publicly disclos[ing] salaries or deal terms.” And blame the pandemic.

In a statement, the company claimed Johansson’s suit had “no merit whatsoever” and called it “especially sad and distressing in its callous disregard for the horrific and prolonged global effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Their argument here is twofold: 1) the pandemic prevented them from releasing the movie in theaters, and 2) she should be happy with the millions she has already gotten.

We have all had to make concessions due to the pandemic, albeit most of us on a smaller scale. But Disney’s sudden overwhelming concern for public health and safety is less than convincing. Their claim that they couldn’t have released the film in theaters proves baseless on account of it, well, being released in theaters. What they seemingly meant was that the pandemic meant a smaller payday from movie theaters, so they found an additional method of distributing the film that just so happened to free them of the obligation of splitting its revenue with the star, not to mention movie theater companies.

Appealing to the sympathies of the billions of people in the world who can’t even fathom the amount of money Johansson and her movie star peers earn for each film they make is a slightly smarter move. After all, a jury who decides whether she wins her case will likely consist of non-millionaires who may be biased against a woman who out-earns them by two or three digits. Regardless of the amount of money in question or the wealth of the individual, a deal is a deal, and a written contract is legally binding. The bottom line is that Disney failed to honor the agreed-upon contingencies (ie. a theatrical release). Not to mention, this argument expects us to forget that Disney itself is a conglomerate worth hundreds of billions of dollars, hardly a poor, innocent victim of a rich woman’s greed.

In fact, Disney’s mentioning of “the $20 million she has received to date” only broadens the scope in Johansson’s favor. She is a Tony winner, two-time Oscar nominee, and one of the highest-grossing actors in box office history. If she retired today, her entire family would be able to live a life of luxury for generations to come without having to work a day. So why nitpick over the extra $50 million or so she could have earned with a theaters-only release, cause a Hollywood-sized fuss, and risk the company dragging her name through the mud, as they so predictably did?

Let’s ask Taylor Swift. The singer-songwriter shot to international superstardom in 2008, making her the face of pop music. In recent years, she has fiercely advocated for artists’ rights after experiencing her own long and ultimately failed attempt to buy back her master recordings from Big Machine Label Group, which was acquired by music manager Scooter Braun in 2019.

Similarly, Johansson’s representatives attempted to reach out to Disney after the announcement of Black Widow’s hybrid release, which could possibly have amended their agreement and avoided the lawsuit altogether. But, like Swift, she was ignored.

Swift famously writes her own music, often from her own experiences. Scott Borchetta, founder of Big Machine, claims that she had the opportunity to own her masters, but, from both his account and Swift’s, the offer was contingent upon her staying with the company. Seeing as doing business with his company was what landed her in this situation, she was not willing to accept this condition, nor did she later accept Braun’s offer to buy back her music, a deal from which Braun would have profited and which came with its own condition: an NDA.

Her claim that Braun’s deal “stripped [her] of [her] life’s work” ignited a highly publicized feud not just between Swift and Braun but between their friends, loyalists, and supporters. Swift’s team shared her stance on artists’ rights while Braun’s defended his nice guy image. Braun himself didn’t comment, instead allowing his allies to take shots at the singer. His wife, Yael Cohen Braun, in an Instagram post referred to Swift as a “bully” and to her claim as a “temper tantrum,” telling her, “the world has watched you collect and drop friends like wilted flowers.” Justin Bieber, a client of Braun’s, suggested Swift's intention when expressing her disgust over the deal was “to get sympathy.”

Even after selling her masters to a private equity firm for $300 million in November 2020, Braun continues to profit off every CD and every stream of every song from every one of the six studio albums Swift recorded while she was signed with Big Machine, an agreement she first entered into at age 15.

Where Johansson is clearly in the right legally, Swift is morally right. Borshetta and Braun were under no legal obligation to sell her the rights to the songs she wrote and created, but they should have.

Both Swift and Johansson have incited high profile disputes, and both have been called by critics the “wrong person” to serve as the figurehead for the big picture arguments based on how much money they make. Two multi-millionaires are hardly the best representatives of the little guy trying to make it in the entertainment industry. It’s no skin off either of their noses if they don’t revolutionize the way artists and actors are paid.

Actually, it makes them the best voices for their causes. The millions of dollars at stake in each of their deals, while massive amounts to the average onlooker, would be a drop in the bucket of their wealth. Yes, they both have huge platforms and established fanbases they can use to garner support, but the fact that they have no skin in the game is their real strength. They don’t need the money, which proves they’re not doing it for themselves.

Disney is trying to hide behind the pandemic to defend its decision to release Black Widow on Disney+, but the issue was present even before the pandemic started, evident in Johansson’s agreement that the film have an exclusively theatrical release. Her suit claims she insisted upon this contingency when the streaming service was launched.

Streaming changed the game. Johansson is likely not the only one to have lost out on media companies’ failure to compensate talent fairly in the wake of the streaming evolution, but she is the first to draw the amount of attention to it that she has. Her claim opens the eyes of fellow actors, film distributors, and the public to an issue that extends beyond her: if the film industry is capable of adapting their content to this new source of distribution, then they can accommodate the role of actors into the changing environment and pay them, and other individuals who make their films possible, what they’re owed.

Record companies can stand to shake things up, too. Contracts that grant an artist’s masters to the labels that produce their music, such as the one Swift signed with Big Machine in 2004, are the norm in the music industry. Hers is far from the first battle to be fought by artists over the rights to their own music. There was the famous Paul McCartney v. Prince debacle in the 1980s, for example. In most cases, revenue is doled out to the label, the producers, the managers, and, last and least, the artists. It’s a system that assumes the performers are just lucky to be there, to have the opportunity to become the next Taylor Swift.

But streaming isn’t just for the movies—it’s changing the music game, too. Artists used to be entirely dependent on record companies to promote their music and get it into the hands of radio stations, but streaming sites and social media have allowed artists to release music independently. Working with a record company is still highly advantageous to an up-and-coming artist, but the other options available to them leave some breathing room for an artist to negotiate and retain the rights to their own music.

So, will wins for Swift and Johansson mean making two rich people richer? Yes. But it also starts a conversation. It gets the word out to young artists and actors that they should expect more from the publishers and executives they work with. And it sends a message to CEOs and big corporations: change with the times.

Since leaving Big Machine, Swift has signed with Universal Music Publishing Group in an agreement that guarantees her the rights to the music she creates with them, from Lover on. She is also in the process of re-recording her first six albums, an endeavor that began with Fearless (Taylor’s Version) in April and will continue with the scheduled release of Red (Taylor’s Version) in November.

“Hopefully, young artists or kids with musical dreams will read this and learn about how to better protect themselves in a negotiation,” Swift wrote in a post. “You deserve to own the art you make.”

#opinion #entertainment #business #feature

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delwray-blog · 6 years ago

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WHO RULES AMERICA?

A R E S E A R C H - R E P O R T

You already know that the news and entertainment media are biased. Now you will find out why they are biased.

THERE IS NO GREATER POWER in the world today than that wielded by the manipulators of public opinion in America. No king or pope of old, no conquering general or high priest ever disposed of a power even remotely approaching that of the few dozen men who control America’s mass media of news and entertainment.

Their power is not distant and impersonal; it reaches into every home in America, and it works its will during nearly every waking hour. It is the power that shapes and molds the mind of virtually every citizen, young or old, rich or poor, simple or sophisticated.

The mass media form for us our image of the world and then tell us what to think about that image. Essentially everything we know—or think we know—about events outside our own neighborhood or circle of acquaintances comes to us via our daily newspaper, our weekly news magazine, our radio, or our television. It is not just the heavy-handed suppression of certain news stories from our newspapers or the blatant propagandizing of history-distorting TV “docudramas” that characterizes the opinion-manipulating techniques of the media masters. They exercise both subtlety and thoroughness in their management of the news and the entertainment that they present to us.

For example, the way in which the news is covered: which items are emphasized and which are played down; the reporter’s choice of words, tone of voice, and facial expressions; the wording of headlines; the choice of illustrations—all of these things subliminally and yet profoundly affect the way in which we interpret what we see or hear. On top of this, of course, the columnists and editors remove any remaining doubt from our minds as to just what we are to think about it all. Employing carefully developed psychological techniques, they guide our thought and opinion so that we can be in tune with the “in” crowd, the “beautiful people,” the “smart money.” They let us know exactly what our attitudes should be toward various types of people and behavior by placing those people or that behavior in the context of a TV drama or situation comedy and having the other TV characters react in the Politically Correct way.

Molding American Minds

For example, a racially mixed couple will be respected, liked, and socially sought after by other characters, as will a “take charge” Black scholar or businessman, or a sensitive and talented homosexual, or a poor but honest and hardworking illegal alien from Mexico. On the other hand, a White racist—that is, any racially conscious White person who looks askance at miscegenation or at the rapidly darkening racial situation in America—is portrayed, at best, as a despicable bigot who is reviled by the other characters, or, at worst, as a dangerous psychopath who is fascinated by firearms and is a menace to all law-abiding citizens.

The White racist “gun nut,” in fact, has become a familiar stereotype on TV shows.

The average American, of whose daily life TV-watching takes such an unhealthy portion, distinguishes between these fictional situations and reality only with difficulty, if at all. He responds to the televised actions, statements, and attitudes of TV actors much as he does to his own peers in real life. For all too many Americans, the real world has been replaced by the false reality of the TV environment, and it is to this false reality that his urge to conform responds. Thus, when a TV scriptwriter expresses approval of some ideas and actions through the TV characters for which he is writing, and disapproval of others, he exerts a powerful pressure on millions of viewers toward conformity with his own views. And as it is with TV entertainment, so it is also with the news, whether televised or printed. The insidious thing about this form of thought control is that even when we realize that entertainment or news is biased, the media masters still are able to manipulate most of us. This is because they not only slant what they present, but also they establish tacit boundaries and ground rules for the permissible spectrum of opinion.

As an example, consider the media treatment of Middle East news. Some editors or commentators are slavishly pro-Israel in their every utterance, while others seem nearly neutral. No one, however, dares suggest that the U.S. government is backing the wrong side in the Arab-Jewish conflict, or that 9-11 was a result of that support. Nor does anyone dare suggest that it served Jewish interests, rather than American interests, to send U.S. forces to cripple Iraq, Israel’s principal rival in the Middle East. Thus, a spectrum of permissible opinion, from pro-Israel to nearly neutral, is established.

Another example is the media treatment of racial issues in the United States. Some commentators seem almost dispassionate in reporting news of racial strife, while others are emotionally partisan—with the partisanship always on the non-White side. All of the media spokesmen without exception, however, take the position that “multiculturalism” and racial mixing are here to stay and that they are good things.

Because there are differences in degree, however, most Americans fail to realize that they are being manipulated. Even the citizen who complains about “managed news” falls into the trap of thinking that because he is presented with an apparent spectrum of opinion he can escape the thought controllers’ influence by believing the editor or commentator of his choice. It’s a “heads I win, tails you lose” situation. Every point on the permissible spectrum of public opinion is acceptable to the media masters—and no impermissible fact or viewpoint is allowed any exposure at all if they can prevent it.

The control of the opinion-molding media is nearly monolithic. All of the controlled media—television, radio, newspapers, magazines, books, motion pictures—speak with a single voice, each reinforcing the other. Despite the appearance of variety, there is no real dissent, no alternative source of facts or ideas accessible to the great mass of people that might allow them to form opinions at odds with those of the media masters. They are presented with a single view of the world—a world in which every voice proclaims the equality of the races, the inerrant nature of the Jewish “Holocaust” tale, the wickedness of attempting to halt the flood of non-White aliens pouring across our borders, the danger of permitting citizens to keep and bear arms, the moral equivalence of all sexual orientations, and the desirability of a “pluralistic,” cosmopolitan society rather than a homogeneous, White one. It is a view of the world designed by the media masters to suit their own ends—and the pressure to conform to that view is overwhelming. People adapt their opinions to it, vote in accord with it, and shape their lives to fit it.

And who are these all-powerful masters of the media?

As we shall see, to a very large extent they are Jews. It isn’t simply a matter of the media being controlled by profit-hungry capitalists, some of whom happen to be Jews. If that were the case, the ethnicity of the media masters would reflect, at least approximately, the ratio of rich Gentiles to rich Jews. Despite a few prominent exceptions, the preponderance of Jews in the media is so overwhelming that we are obliged to assume that it is due to more than mere happenstance.

Electronic News and Entertainment Media Continuing government deregulation of the telecommunications industry has resulted, not in the touted increase of competition, but rather in an accelerating wave of corporate mergers and acquisitions that have produced a handful of multi-billion-dollar media conglomerates. The largest of these conglomerates are rapidly growing even bigger by consuming their competition, almost tripling in size during the 1990s. Whenever you watch television, whether from a local broadcasting station or via cable or a satellite dish; whenever you see a feature film in a theater or at home; whenever you listen to the radio or to recorded music; whenever you read a newspaper, book, or magazine—it is very likely that the information or entertainment you receive was produced and/or distributed by one of these megamedia companies:

Time Warner The largest media conglomerate today is Time Warner (briefly called AOL Time Warner; the AOL was dropped from the name when accounting practices at the AOL division were questioned by government investigators), which reached its current form when America Online bought Time Warner for $160 billion in 2000. The combined company had revenue of $39.5 billion in 2003. The merger brought together Steve Case, a Gentile, as chairman of AOL-Time Warner, and Gerald Levin, a Jew, as the CEO. Warner, founded by the Jewish Warner brothers in the early part of the last century, rapidly became part of the Jewish power base in Hollywood, a fact so well-known that it is openly admitted by Jewish authors, as is the fact that each new media acquisition becomes dominated by Jews in turn: Speaking of the initial merger of Time,

Inc. with Warner, Jewish writer Michael Wolff said in New York magazine in 2001 “since Time Inc.’s merger with Warner ten years ago, one of the interesting transitions is that it has become a Jewish company.” (“From AOL to W,” New York magazine, January 29, 2001) The third most powerful man at AOL-Time Warner, at least on paper, was Vice Chairman Ted Turner, a White Gentile. Turner had traded his Turner Broadcasting System, which included CNN, to Time Warner in 1996 for a large block of Time Warner shares. By April 2001 Levin had effectively fired Ted Turner, eliminating him from any real power. However, Turner remained a very large and outspoken shareholder and member of the board of directors. Levin overplayed his hand, and in a May 2002 showdown, he was fired by the company’s board. For Ted Turner, who had lost $7 billion of his $9 billion due to Levin’s mismanagement, it was small solace. Turner remains an outsider with no control over the inner workings of the company.

Peter Chernin of Fox: Without the cheerleading of Fox News, the Iraq War would have been a much harder sell to the American people.

Also under pressure, Steve Case resigned effective in May 2003. The board replaced both Levin and Case with a Black, Richard Parsons. Behind Parsons, the Jewish influence and power remains dominant.

AOL is the largest Internet service provider in the world, with 34 million U.S. subscribers. It is now being used as an online platform for the Jewish content from Time Warner. Jodi Kahn and Meg Siesfeld, both Jews, lead the Time Inc. Interactive team under executive editor Ned Desmond, a White Gentile. All three report to Time Inc. editor-in-chief Norman Pearlstine, a Jew. Their job is to transfer Time Warner’s content to target specific segments of America On line’s audience, especially women, children, and teens. Time Warner was already the second largest of the international media leviathans when it merged with AOL. Time Warner’s subsidiary HBO (26 million subscribers) is the nation’s largest pay-TV cable network. HBO’s “competitor” Cinemax is another of Time Warner’s many cable ventures.

Until the purchase in May 1998 of PolyGram by Jewish billionaire Edgar Bronfman, Jr., Warner Music was America’s largest record company, with 50 labels. Warner Music was an early promoter of “gangster-rap.” Though when Ted Turner, the Gentile media maverick (pictured, top), made a bid to buy CBS in 1985, there was panic in the media boardrooms across the country. Turner had made a fortune in advertising and then built a successful cable-TV news network, CNN, with over 70 million subscribers. Although Turner had never taken a stand contrary to Jewish interests, he was regarded by William Paley and the other Jews at CBS as uncontrollable: loose cannon that might at some time in the future turn against them. Furthermore, Jewish newsman Daniel Schorr, who had worked for Turner, publicly charged that his former boss held a personal dislike for Jews.

To block Turner’s bid, CBS executives invited billionaire Jewish theater, hotel, insurance, and cigarette magnate Laurence Tisch to launch a “friendly” takeover of CBS. From 1986 to 1995 Tisch was the chairman and CEO of CBS, removing any threat of non-Jewish influence there. Subsequent efforts by Ted Turner to acquire CBS were obstructed by Gerald Levin’s (pictured, bottom) Time Warner, which owned nearly 20 percent of CBS stock and had veto power over major deals. But when his fellow Jew Sumner Redstone offered to buy CBS for $34.8 billion in 1999, Levin had no objections.

Thus, despite being an innovator and garnering headlines, Turner never commanded the “connections” necessary for being a media master. He finally decided if you can’t lick ’em, join ’em, and he sold out to Levin’s Time Warner. Ted Turner summed it up:

“I’ve had an incredible life for the most part. I made a lot of smart moves, and I made a lot of money. Then something happened, and I merged with Time Warner, which looked like the right thing to do at the time. And it was good for shareholders. “But then I lost control. I thought I would have enough moral authority to have all the influence in the new company. If you go into business, be very careful with whom you merge. “I thought I was buying Time Warner, but they were buying me. We had kind of a difference in viewpoint. Then they merged with AOL, and that was a complete disaster, at least so far. I have lost 85 percent of my wealth.” “Be very careful with whom you merge.”

Ted Turner’s Lesson:

Its involvement with Interscope Records (prior to Interscope’s acquisition by another Jewish-owned media firm), it helped to popularize a genre whose graphic lyrics explicitly urge Blacks to commit acts of violence against Whites.

Bronfman purchased Warner Music in 2004, keeping it solidly in Jewish hands.

In addition to cable and music, Time Warner is heavily involved in the production of feature films (Warner Brothers Studio, Castle Rock Entertainment, and New Line Cinema). Time Warner’s publishing division is managed by its editor-in-chief,

Norman Pearlstine, a Jew. He controls 50 magazines including Time, Life, Sports Illustrated, and People. Book publishing ventures include Time-Life Books, Book-of-the-Month Club, Little Brown, and many others. Time Warner also owns Shout cast and Winamp, the very tools that most independent Internet radio broadcasters rely on, and, as a dominant player in the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), was essentially “negotiating” with itself when Internet radio music royalty rules were set that strongly favored large content providers and forced many small broadcasters into silence. (The Register, “AOL Time Warner takes a grip of net radio,” 8th April 2003)

Disney. The second-largest media conglomerate today, with 2003 revenues of $27.1 billion, is the Walt Disney Company. It’s leading personality and CEO, Michael Eisner, is a Jew.

The Disney empire, headed by a man described by one media analyst as a “control freak,” includes several television production companies (Walt Disney Television, Touchstone Television, Buena Vista Television) and cable networks with more than 100 million subscribers altogether. As for feature films, the Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group includes Walt Disney Pictures, Touchstone Pictures, Hollywood Pictures, and Caravan Pictures. Disney also owns Miramax Films, run by the Jewish Weinstein brothers, Bob and Harvey, who have produced such ultra-raunchy movies as The Crying Game, Priest, and Kids.

When the Disney Company was run by the Gentile Disney family prior to its takeover by Eisner in 1984, it epitomized wholesome family entertainment. While it still holds the rights to Snow White, the company under Eisner has expanded into the production of a great deal of so-called “adult” material.

In August 1995, Eisner acquired Capital Cities/ABC, Inc., which owns the ABC television network, which in turn owns ten TV stations outright in such big markets as New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Houston.

In addition, in the United States ABC has 225 affiliated TV stations, over 2,900 affiliated radio stations and produces over 7,200 radio programs.

ABC owns 54 radio stations and operates 57 radio stations, many in major cities such as New York, Washington, and Los Angeles.

Radio Disney, part of ABC Radio Networks, provides programming targeting children.

Sports network ESPN, an ABC cable subsidiary, is headed by President and CEO George W. Bodenheimer, who is a Jew. The corporation also controls the Disney Channel, Toon Disney, A&E, Lifetime Television, SOAP net, and the History Channel, with between 86 and 88 million subscribers each.

The ABC Family television network has 84 million subscribers and, in addition to broadcasting entertainment (some of it quite raunchy for a “family” channel), is also the network outlet for Christian Zionist TV evangelist Pat Robertson.

Although primarily a telecommunications company, ABC/Disney earns over $1 billion in publishing, owning Walt Disney Company Book Publishing, Hyperion Books, and Miramax Books. It also owns six daily newspapers and publishes over 20 magazines. Disney Publishing Worldwide publishes books and magazines in 55 languages in 74 countries, reaching more than 100 million readers each month on the Internet, Disney runs Buena Vista Internet Group, ABC Internet Group, ABC.com, ABCNEWS.com,

Oscar.com, Mr. Showbiz, Disney Online, Disney’s Daily Blast, Disney.com, Family.com, ESPN Internet Group, ESPN.sportzone.com, Soccernet.com, NFL.com, NBA.com, Infoseek (partial ownership), and Disney Interactive.

Time Warner’s Norman Pearlstine: He controls 50 popular magazines. Disney CEO Michael Eisner: Subverting the Disney legacy.

Viacom Number three on the list, with 2003 revenues of just over $26.5 billion, is Viacom, Inc., headed by Sumner Redstone (born Murray Rothstein), a Jew. Melvin A. Karmazin, another Jew, was number two at Viacom until June 2004, holding the positions of president and chief operating officer. Karmazin remains a large Viacom shareholder. Replacing Karmazin as co-presidents and co-COOs are a Jew, Leslie Moonves, and Tom Freston, a possible Jew. (We have been unable to confirm Freston’s Jewish ancestry; he has done work for Jewish organizations and was involved in the garment trade, a heavily Jewish industry, importing clothing from the Third World to the U.S. in the 1970s.)

Viacom produces and distributes TV programs for the three largest networks, owns 39 television stations outright with another 200 affiliates in its wholly-owned CBS Television Network, owns 185 radio stations in its Infinity radio group, and has over 1,500 affiliated stations through its CBS Radio Network. It produces feature films through Paramount Pictures, headed by Jewess Sherry Lansing (born Sherry Lee Heimann), who is planning to retire at the end of 2005.

Viacom was formed in 1971 as a way to dodge an anti-monopoly FCC ruling that required CBS to spin off a part of its cable TV operations and syndicated programming business. This move by the government, unfortunately, did nothing to reduce the mostly Jewish collaborative monopoly that remains the major problem with the industry. In 1999, after CBS had again augmented itself by buying King World Productions (a leading TV program syndicator), Viacom acquired its progenitor company, CBS, in a double mockery of the spirit of the 1971 ruling. Redstone acquired CBS following the December 1999 stockholders’ votes at CBS and Viacom. CBS Television has long been headed by the previously mentioned Leslie Moonves; the other Viacom co-president, Tom Freston, headed wholly-owned MTV.

Viacom also owns the Country Music Television and The Nashville Network cable channels and is the largest outdoor advertising (billboards, etc.) entity in the U.S.

Viacom’s publishing division includes Simon & Schuster, Scribner, The Free Press, Fireside, and Archway Paperbacks. It distributes videos through it’s over 8,000 Blockbuster stores. It is also involved in satellite broadcasting, theme parks, and video games.

Viacom’s chief claim to fame, however, is as the world’s largest provider of cable programming through its Showtime, MTV, Nickelodeon, Black Entertainment Television, and other networks. Since 1989 MTV and Nickelodeon have acquired larger and larger shares of the juvenile television audience. MTV dominates the television market for viewers between the ages of 12 and 24. Sumner Redstone owns 76 percent of the shares of Viacom. He offers Jackass as a teen role model and pumps MTV’s racially mixed rock and rap videos into 342 million homes in 140 countries and is a dominant cultural influence on White teenagers around the world. MTV also makes race-mixing movies like Save the Last Dance. Nickelodeon, with over 87 million subscribers, has by far the largest share of the four-to-11-year-old TV audience in America and is expanding rapidly into Europe. Most of its shows do not yet display the blatant degeneracy that is MTV’s trademark, but Redstone is gradually nudging the fare presented to his kiddie viewers toward the same poison purveyed by MTV. Nickelodeon continues a 12-year streak as the top cable network for children and younger teenagers.

NBC Universal another Jewish media mogul is Edgar Bronfman, Jr. He headed Seagram Company, Ltd., the liquor giant, until its recent merger with Vivendi. His father, Edgar Bronfman, Sr., is president of the World Jewish Congress. Seagram owned Universal Studios and later purchased Interscope Records, the foremost promoter of “gangster rap,” from Warner. Universal and Interscope now belong to Viv-Sumner Redstone of Viacom: He encouraged his lieutenant, Tom Freston, to create a homosexual-oriented television network to add to his media empire. Edgar Bronfman, Jr. of Warner Music, late of Vivendi Universal this Seagram’s liquor heir buys and sells media empires like Collectors trade stamps. His father is president of the World Jewish Congress.

Endi Universal, which merged with NBC in May 2004, with the parent company now called NBC Universal. Bronfman became the biggest man in the record business in May 1998 when he also acquired control of PolyGram, the European record giant, by paying $10.6 billion to the Dutch electronics manufacturer Philips.

In June 2000, the Bronfman family traded Seagram to Vivendi for stock in Vivendi, and Edgar, Jr. became vice chairman of Vivendi. Vivendi was originally a French utility company and was then led by Gentile Jean-Marie Messier. A board of director’s faction led by Bronfman forced Messier to resign in July 2002. Vivendi also acquired bisexual Jew Barry Diller’s USA Networks in 2002. (Diller is the owner of InterActive Corporation which owns Expedia, Ticketmaster, The Home Shopping Network, Lending Tree, Hotels.com, CitySearch, Evite, Match.com, and other Internet businesses.)

Vivendi combined the USA Network, Universal Studios, Universal Television, and theme parks into Vivendi Universal Entertainment (VUE). After the Vivendi-NBC merger,

Bronfman used his considerable personal profits to strike out on his own and recently purchased Warner Music from Jewish-dominated Time Warner. The current chairman of NBC Universal is a Gentile often associated with Jewish causes, longtime NBC employee Bob Wright. Ron Meyer, a Jew, is president and chief operating officer of Universal Studios. Stacey Snider, also Jewish, is the chairman of Universal Pictures.

The president of NBC Universal Television Group is Jeff Zucker, another Jew.

With two of the top four media conglomerates in the hands of Jews (Disney and Viacom), with Jewish executives running the media operations of NBC Universal, and with Jews filling a large proportion of the executive jobs at Time Warner, it is unlikely that such an overwhelming degree of control came about without a deliberate, concerted effort on the Jews’ part.

Other media companies:

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation owns Fox Television Network, Fox News, the FX Channel, 20th Century Fox Films, Fox 2000, and publisher Harper Collins. News

Corp. is the fifth largest megamedia corporation in the nation, with 2003 revenues of approximately $19.2 billion. It is the only other media company which comes close to the top four. Its Fox News Channel has been a key outlet pushing the Jewish neoconservative agenda that lies behind the Iraq War and which animates both the administration of George W. Bush and the “new conservatism” that embraces aggressive Zionism and multiracialism, Murdoch is nominally a Gentile, but there is some uncertainty about his ancestry and he has vigorously supported Zionism and other Jewish causes throughout his life. (Historian David Irving has published information from a claimed high-level media source who says that Murdoch’s mother, Elisabeth Joy Greene, was Jewish, but we have not been able to confirm this.) Murdoch’s number two executive is Peter Chernin, who is president and chief operating officer—and a Jew.

Under Chernin, Jews hold key positions in the company: Gail Berman runs Fox Entertainment Group; Mitchell Stern heads satellite television division DirecTV;

Jane Friedman is chairman and CEO of Harper Collins, and Thomas Rothman is chairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment. News Corporation also owns the New York Post and TV Guide, and both are published under Chernin’s supervision. The primary printed neoconservative Rupert Murdoch of News Corporation: An ardent Zionist and backer of the neocons. Sony’s Andrew Lack: The Japan-based Company perhaps not wanting to disrupt “American” corporate culture has staffed its U.S. operations with Jewish executives. Melvin Karmazin is out at Viacom and currently oligarch without portfolio. When a reporter asked the then-CBS president why he wanted a merger with Viacom, he said: “This is the deal I’ve wanted to make, I think, from the time I was bar-mitzvahed.” journal, The Weekly Standard, is also published by News Corporation and edited by William Kristal, a leading Jewish neocon spokesman and “intellectual.”

Most of the television and movie production companies that are not owned by large media corporations are also controlled by Jews. For example, Spyglass, an “independent” film producer which has made such films as The Sixth Sense, The Insider, and Shanghai Noon, is controlled by its Jewish founders Gary Barber and Roger Birnbaum, who are co-chairmen. Jonathan Glickman serves as president and Paul Neinstein is executive vice president. Both men are Jews. Spyglass makes movies exclusively for DreamWorks SKG. The best known of the smaller media companies, DreamWorks SKG, is a strictly kosher affair. DreamWorks was formed in 1994 amid great media hype by recording industry mogul David Geffen, former Disney Pictures chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, and film director Steven Spielberg, all three of whom are Jews. The company produces movies, animated films, television programs, and recorded music. Considering the cash and connections that Geffen, Katzenberg, and Spielberg have, DreamWorks may soon be in the same league as the big four. One major studio, Columbia Pictures, is owned by the Japanese multinational firm Sony. Nevertheless, the studio’s chairman is Jewess Amy Pascal, and its output fully reflects the Jewish social agenda. Sony’s music division recently merged with European music giant BMG to form Sony BMG Music Entertainment, now one of the world’s largest music distributors. It is headed by CEO Andrew Lack, formerly president and CEO of NBC—and a Jew. Sony’s overall American operations are headed by a Jew named Howard Stringer, formerly of CBS, who hired Lack. It is well known that Jews have controlled most of the production and distribution of films since shortly after the inception of the movie industry in the early decades of the 20th century. When Walt Disney died in 1966, the last barrier to the total Jewish domination of Hollywood was gone, and Jews were able to grab ownership of the company that Walt built. Since then they have had everything their way in the movie industry. Films produced by seven of the firms mentioned above—Disney, Warner Brothers, Paramount (Viacom), Universal (NBC Universal), 20th Century Fox (News Corp.), DreamWorks, and Columbia (Sony)—accounted for 94% of total box-office receipts for the year 2003.

The big three in television network broadcasting used to be ABC, CBS, and NBC. With the consolidation of the media empires, these three are no longer independent entities.

While they were independent, however, each was controlled by a Jew since its inception: ABC by Leonard Goldenson; NBC first by David Sarnoff and then by his son Robert; and CBS first by William Paley and then by Laurence Tisch. Over several decades these networks were staffed from top to bottom with Jews, and the essential Jewishness of network television did not change when the networks were absorbed by other Jewish-dominated media corporations. The Jewish presence in television news remains particularly strong.

NBC provides a good example of this. The president of NBC News is Neal Shapiro. Jeff Zucker is NBC Universal Television Group president. Reporting directly to Zucker is his close friend Jonathan Wald, formerly an NBC program producer, now a senior consultant for CNBC.

David M. Zaslav is president of NBC Cable (and also a director of the digital video firm TiVo Inc.). The president of MSNBC is Rick Kaplan. All of these men are Jews. A similar preponderance of Jews exists in the news divisions of the other networks. Sumner Redstone, Tom Freston, and Les Moonves control Viacom’s CBS. Moonves demonstrated his power in 2002 by replacing the entire staff of the new CBS Early Show. He is also a great-nephew of William Kristol preaches neo-conservatism under Chernin and Murdoch.

Amy Pascal is the head of Columbia Pictures. Steven Spielberg is a partner with Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen in up-and-coming Jewish media firm Dream works SKG.

Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister. Al Ortiz (also a Jew) is executive producer and director of special events coverage for CBS News. Senior executive producer Michael Bass and Victor Neufeld (formerly producer of ABC’s 20/20) produce the CBS Early Show; both are Jews.

At ABC, David Westin, who is a Jew according to Jeffrey Blankfort of the Middle East Labor Bulletin, is the president of ABC News. The senior vice president for news at ABC is Paul Slavin also a Jew. Bernard Gershon, a Jew, is senior vice president/general manager of the ABC News Digital Media Group, in charge of ABCNEWS.com, ABC News Productions, and ABC News Video Source.

The Print Media

After television news, daily newspapers are the most influential information medium in America. About 58 million of them are sold (and presumably read) each day. These millions are divided among some 1,456 different publications. One might conclude that the sheer number of different newspapers across America would provide a safeguard against minority control and distortion. Alas, such is not the case. There is less independence, less competition, and much less representation of majority interests than a casual observer would think.

In 1945, four out of five American newspapers were independently owned and published by local people with close ties to their communities. Those days, however, are gone. Most of the independent newspapers were bought out or driven out of business by the mid-1970s. Today most “local” newspapers are owned by a rather small number of large companies controlled by executives who live and work hundreds or even thousands of miles away. Today less than 20 percent of the country’s 1,456 papers are independently owned; the rest belong to multi-newspaper chains. Only 103 of the total number have circulations of more than 100,000. Only a handful is large enough to maintain independent reporting staffs outside their own communities; the rest must depend on these few for all of their national and international news.

The Associated Press (AP), which sells content to newspapers, is currently under the control of its Jewish vice president and managing editor, Michael Silverman, who directs the day-to-day news reporting and supervises the editorial departments. Silverman had directed the AP’s national news as assistant managing editor, beginning in 1989. Jewess Ann Levin is AP’s national news editor. Silverman and Levin are under Jonathan Wolman, also a Jew, who was promoted to senior vice president of AP in November 2002.

In only two percent of the cities in America is there more than one daily newspaper and competition is frequently nominal even among them, as between morning and afternoon editions under the same ownership or under joint operating agreements.

Much of the competition has disappeared through the monopolistic tactics of the Jewish Newhouse family’s holding company, Advance Publications. Advance publications buy one of two competing newspapers and then starts an advertising war by slashing advertising rates, which drives both papers to the edge of bankruptcy. Advance Publications then steps in and buys the competing newspaper. Often both papers continue one as a morning paper and the other as an evening paper. Eventually, though, one of the papers is closed—giving the Newhouse brothers the only daily newspaper in that city. For example, in 2001 the Newhouse’s closed the Syracuse Herald-Journal leaving their other Syracuse newspaper, the Post-Journal, with a monopoly. The Newhouse media empire provides an example of more than the lack of real competition among America’s daily newspapers: it also illustrates the insatiable appetite Jews have shown for all the organs of opinion control on which they could fasten their grip. The Newhouse’s own 31 daily newspapers including several large and important ones such as the Cleveland Plain Top, Samuel Newhouse, Jr. of Advance Publications; below him heir apparent Samuel Newhouse IV. The Newhouse Media Empire has avoided much of the volatility of the others by remaining privately held.

It was established through rapacious monopolistic practices, driving competitors out of business.

Donald Graham, CEO of the Washington Post Company. His is the third generation of racially Jewish owners of the most influential paper in the nation’s capital and all its associated enterprises.

Dealer, the Newark Star-Ledger, and the New Orleans Times-Picayune; Newhouse Broadcasting, consisting of television stations and cable operations; the Sunday supplement Parade, with a circulation of more than 35 million copies per week; some two dozen major magazines, including The New Yorker, Vogue, Wired, Glamour, Vanity Fair, Bride’s, Gentlemen’s Quarterly, Self, House & Garden, and all the other magazines of the wholly owned Conde Nast group. The staffing of the magazines is, as you might expect, quite Kosher. The parade can serve as an example: Its publisher is Randy Siegel, its editor, and senior vice president is Lee Kravitz, its creative director is Ira Yoffe, its Science editor is David H. Levy, and its health editor is Dr. Isadore Rosenfeld. This Jewish media empire was founded by the late Samuel Newhouse, an immigrant from Russia. When he died in 1979 at the age of 84, he bequeathed media holdings worth an estimated $1.3 billion to his two sons, Samuel and Donald. With a number of further acquisitions, the net worth of Advance Publications has grown to more than $9 billion today. The gobbling up of so many newspapers by the Newhouse family was facilitated by newspapers’ revenue structure. Newspapers, to a large degree, are not supported by their subscribers but by their advertisers. It is advertising revenue—not the small change collected from a newspaper’s readers—that largely pays the editor’s salary and yields the owner’s profit. Whenever the large advertisers in a city choose to favor one newspaper over another with their business, the favored newspaper will flourish while its competitor dies. Since the beginning of the last century, when Jewish mercantile power in America became a dominant economic force, there has been a steady rise in the number of American newspapers in Jewish hands, accompanied by a steady decline in the number of competing Gentile newspapers—to some extent a result of selective advertising policies by Jewish merchants. Furthermore, even those newspapers still under Gentile ownership and management are so thoroughly dependent upon Jewish advertising revenue that their editorial and news reporting policies are largely constrained by Jewish likes and dislikes. It holds true in the newspaper business as elsewhere that he who pays the piper calls the tune.

Three Jewish Newspapers

The suppression of competition and the establishment of local monopolies on the dissemination of news and opinion have characterized the rise of Jewish control over America’s newspapers. The resulting ability of the Jews to use the press as an unopposed instrument of Jewish policy could hardly be better illustrated than by the examples of the nation’s three most prestigious and influential newspapers: the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. These three, dominating America’s financial and political capitals, are the newspapers that set the trends and the guidelines for nearly all the others. They are the ones that decide what news is and what isn’t at the national and international levels. They originate the news; the others merely copy it. And all three newspapers are in Jewish hands. The New York Times, with a 2003 circulation of 1,119,000 is the unofficial social, fashion, entertainment, political, and cultural guide of the nation. It tells America’s “smart set” which books to buy and which films to see; which opinions are in style at the moment; which politicians, educators, spiritual leaders, artists, and businessmen are the real comers. And for a few decades in the 19th century, it was a genuinely American newspaper.

The New York Times was founded in 1851 by two Gentiles, Henry J. Raymond, and George Jones. After their deaths, it was purchased in 1896 from Jones’s estate by a wealthy Jewish publisher, Adolph Ochs. His great-great-grandson, Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., is the paper’s current publisher and the chairman of the New York Times Co. Russell T. Lewis, also a Jew, is president and chief executive officer of The New York Times Company. Michael Golden, another Jew, is Peter R. Kann, who controls Dow Jones & Co., publishers of the Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, and 33 other newspapers.

Harvey Weinstein, who, with his brother Bob, has produced such motion pictures as the Crying Game, Priest, and Kids through Miramax Films in association with Michael Eisner’s Walt Disney Company, Vice-chairman. Martin Nisenholtz, a Jew, runs their massive Internet operations. The Sulzberger family also owns, through the New York Times Co., 33 other newspapers, including the Boston Globe, purchased in June 1993 for $1.1 billion; eight TV and two radio broadcasting stations; and more than 40 news-oriented Web operations. It also publishes the International Herald Tribune, the most widely distributed English-language daily in the world. The New York Times News Service transmits news stories, features, and photographs from the New York Times by wire to 506 other newspapers, news agencies, and magazines. Of similar national importance is the Washington Post, which, by establishing its “leaks” throughout government agencies in Washington, has an inside track on news involving the Federal government.

The Washington Post, like the New York Times, had a non-Jewish origin. It was established in 1877 by Stilson Hutchins, purchased from him in 1905 by John R. McLean, and later inherited by Edward B. McLean. In June 1933, however, at the height of the Great Depression, the newspaper was forced into bankruptcy. It was purchased at a bankruptcy auction by Eugene Meyer, a Jewish financier and former partner of the infamous Bernard Baruch, a Jew who was industry czar in America during the First World War. The Washington Post was run by Katherine Meyer Graham, Eugene Meyer’s daughter, until her death in 2001. She was the principal stockholder and board chairman of the Washington Post Company; and she appointed her son, Donald Graham, publisher of the paper in 1979. Donald became Washington Post Company CEO in 1991 and its board chairman in 1993, and the chain of Jewish control at the Post remains unbroken. The newspaper has a daily circulation of 732,000, and its Sunday edition sells over one million copies.

The Washington Post Company has a number of other media holdings in newspapers (the Gazette Newspapers, including 11 military publications); in television (WDIV in Detroit, KPRC in Houston, WPLG in Miami, WKMG in Orlando, KSAT in San Antonio, WJXT in Jacksonville); and in magazines, most notably the nation’s number-two weekly newsmagazine, Newsweek.

The Washington Post Company’s various television ventures reach a total of about 12 million homes, and its cable TV service, Cable One, has 750,000 subscribers. The Wall Street Journal sells 1,820,000 copies each weekday and is owned by Dow Jones & Company, Inc., a New York corporation that also publishes 33 other newspapers and the weekly financial tabloid Barron’s. The chairman and CEO of Dow Jones are Peter R. Kann, who is a Jew. Kann also holds the posts of chairman and publisher of the Wall Street Journal.

Most of New York’s other major newspapers are in no better hands than the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. In January 1993 the New York Daily News (circulation 729,000) was bought from the estate of the late Jewish media mogul Robert Maxwell (born Ludvik Hoch) by Jewish real-estate developer Mortimer B. Zuckerman. Another Jew, Les Goodstein, is the president and chief operating officer of the New York Daily News. And, as mentioned above, the neocon-slanted New York Post (circulation 652,000) is owned by News Corporation under the supervision of Jew Peter Chernin.

News Magazines

The story is much the same for other media as it is for television, radio, films, music, and newspapers. Consider, for example, newsmagazines. There is only three of any importance published in the United States: Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report. Time, with a weekly circulation of 4.1 million, is published by a subsidiary of Time Warner Communications, the news media conglomerate formed by the 1989 merger of Time, Inc., with Warner Communications. The editor-in-chief of Time Warner Communication is Norman Pearlstine, a Jew. Newsweek, as mentioned above, is published by the Washington Post Company, under the Jew Donald Graham. Its weekly circulation is 3.2 million. U.S. News & World Report, with a weekly circulation of 2.0 million, is owned and published by the aforementioned Mortimer B. Zuckerman, who also has taken the position of editor-in-chief of the magazine for himself. Zuckerman also owns New York’s tabloid newspaper, the Daily News, which is the sixth-largest paper in the nation.

Our Responsibility

Those are the facts of media control in America. Anyone willing to spend a few hours in a large library looking into current editions of yearbooks on the radio and television industries and into directories of newspapers and magazines; into registers of corporations and their officers, such as those published by Standard and Poor’s and by Dun and Bradstreet; and into standard biographical reference works can verify their accuracy. They are undeniable. When confronted with these facts, Jewish spokesmen customarily will use evasive tactics. “Ted Turner isn’t a Jew!” they will announce triumphantly as if that settled the issue. If pressed further they will accuse the confronter of “anti-Semitism” for even raising the subject. It is fear of this accusation that keeps many persons who know the facts silent. But we must not remain silent on this most important of issues. The Jewish control of the American mass media is the single most important fact of life, not just in America, but in the whole world today. There is nothing—plague, famine, economic collapse, even nuclear war—more dangerous to the future of our people.

Jewish media control determines the foreign policy of the United States and permits Jewish interests rather than American interests to decide questions of war and peace.

Without Jewish media control, there would have been no Persian Gulf War for example. There would have been no NATO massacre of Serb civilians. There would have been no Iraq War, and thousands of lives would have been saved. There would have been little if any, American support for the Zionist state of Israel, and the hatreds, feuds, and terror of the Middle East would never have been brought to our shores.

By permitting the Jews to control our news and entertainment media we are doing more than merely giving them a decisive influence on our political system and virtual control of our government; we also are giving them control of the minds and souls of our children, whose attitudes and ideas are shaped more by Jewish television and Jewish films than by parents, schools, or any other influence. The Jew-controlled entertainment media have taken the lead in persuading a whole generation that homosexuality is a normal and acceptable way of life; that there is nothing at all wrong with White women dating or marrying Black men, or with White men marrying Asian women; that all races are inherently equal in ability and character—except that the character of the White race is suspect because of a history of oppressing other races; and that any effort by Whites at racial self-preservation is reprehensible.

We must oppose the further spreading of this poison among our people, and we must break the power of those who are spreading it. It would be intolerable for such power to be in the hands of any alien minority with values and interests different from our own. But to permit the Jews, with their 3,000-year history of nation-wrecking, from ancient Egypt to Russia, to hold such power over us is tantamount to race suicide. Indeed, the fact that so many White Americans today are so filled with a sense of racial guilt and self-hatred that they actively seek the death of their own race is a deliberate consequence of Jewish media control.

Once we have absorbed and understood the fact of Jewish media control, it is our inescapable responsibility to do whatever is necessary to break that control. We must shrink from nothing in combating this evil power that has fastened its deadly grip on our people and is injecting its lethal poison into our people’s minds and souls. If our race fails to destroy it, it certainly will destroy our race.

A growing number of White Americans are working to build new media not under Jewish control. National Vanguard Books, the publisher of this pamphlet, also publishes its own full-color magazine of news, thought, and opinion, National Vanguard, a sample of which is available from the address below for $5 in the U.S. and Canada, $8 elsewhere. We also operate news and comment Web site, updated several times daily, at NationalVanguard.org; and a weekly radio program, American Dissident Voices. The program itself and a broadcast schedule are available at natvan.com and National Vanguard.org or by writing to the address below. It is vital that we support our own alternative media. The National Alliance, the parent organization of National Vanguard Books, is a membership organization of activists working for White interests and helping to build and fund our new media. For further information on Alliance membership, write to P.O. Box 90, Hillsboro WV 24946 USA.

Additional copies of this pamphlet may be ordered from National Vanguard Books, P.O. Box 330, Hillsboro, WV 24946 USA. 10 copies $6. 25 copies $9. 100 copies $20. 1000 Copies $154 prices include postage. Our book catalog, listing over 600 books, videos, and audio recordings, is available for $3 postpaid.

All contents copyright ©2004 National Vanguard Books, Inc. Media owners, managers, and corporate relationships change from time to time, of course. All of the names and other data in this report, except where otherwise noted, are accurate as of November 2004.

Media of Our Own

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