SILENCED Kickstarter campaign: Only 6 days to go and the producers are within $2,000 of their goal to raise funding for post-production.

Telling the truth becomes a dangerous act when four federal whistleblowers reveal the darkest corners of America’s war on terror.

SILENCED is new documentary now in production from Academy Award nominated director James Spione.

Trailer:

The War on Whistleblowers

SILENCED follows a group of high-profile truthtellers who dared to question official national security policy in post 9-11 America, and have endured harsh consequences. (more…)

Media literacy alert! This article about covert advertising does exactly what it talks about. It masquerades as content while advertising products…

When advertising becomes content, who wins — advertisers or publishers, or both?
by Mathew Ingram
PaidContent.org
March 2, 2013

One of the biggest trends in media at the moment is “sponsored content” or what some call “native advertising.” But is it the savior of online media, or just another mirage in the advertising desert?

Andrew Sullivan, the former Daily Beast writer who recently launched his own standalone publishing venture, has made it pretty clear that he doesn’t like advertising, which is why his site is supported entirely by reader subscriptions. And he also made it clear in a recent series of posts that he doesn’t like the growing trend of sites like BuzzFeed using what they call “sponsored content” as a replacement for traditional advertising — something he suggested was ethically questionable for media entities of all kinds.

Like it or not, however, this phenomenon is becoming more and more commonplace — and not just at new-media ventures like BuzzFeed but also at traditional publishers like The Atlantic. Is it the savior of online media, or just another mirage in the advertising desert? This is a question we are going to discussing at length at paidContent Live in New York on April 17, including a panel entitled “The future of native advertising: Blurring ads and content.”

If it’s useful, does it matter if it’s sponsored? (more…)

Submitted by Peter Markus:

The True Story Behind Operation ‘Argo’ to Rescue Americans From Iran
by Antonio Mendez, Matt Baglio
The Daily Beast
September 17, 2012

The true story behind the new movie “Argo” about how CIA operatives posing as a Hollywood production rescued 6 Americans hiding in Iran during the 1979 embassy crisis. An excerpt from Antonio Mendez and Matt Baglio’s new book, Argo.

On Nov. 4, 1979, thousands of Iranians stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking 66 Americans hostage, including three CIA officers. The crisis lasted 444 days—a drawn-out drama dubbed “America Held Hostage” on television. But during the tumult, six American consular officials managed to slip by the Iranian mob.

As they hid out in the homes of two Canadian diplomats, the Secret Six dreamed up escape plans worthy of Robert Ludlum, and perhaps just as outlandish.

That is, until the CIA appeared with a plan even crazier than anything they had imagined: a scheme to have them pose as a crew of politically clueless filmmakers from Tinseltown scouting locations for a sci-fi film. (more…)

How the Drudge Report, With Its Condoleezza Rice ‘Scoop,’ Again Rules the Media
by Lauren Ashburn
The Daily Beast
July 15, 2012

His Condi Rice item went viral despite its utter implausibility. Lauren Ashburn on why the press is held captive by the conservative blogger’s thinly sourced gossip.

The headline screamed across the homepage of the Drudge Report: ROMNEY NARROWS VP CHOICES; CONDI EMERGES AS FRONTRUNNER.

Matt Drudge—the shadowy, fedora-wearing Internet gossip machine who has boasted from day one that he is a conservative—crowed that his sources revealed former secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is at the top of the veep list. He even went so far as to punctuate the scoop with an exclamation point!

Bull. I’m a good enough poker player to know a campaign bluff when I see one. The claim is so ludicrous as to be laughable, and Drudge must know it considering his reported alliance with the Romney campaign.

Yet in typical fashion, the media—knowing the claim had little basis in reality—went along for the ride. The Today show, Good Morning America, CNN, Fox, MSNBC, even The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, along with plenty of others, took the bait and devoted countless minutes and column inches to the tale. (more…)

Update: Erin submits that this obit from Matt Taibbi, published in Rollingstone, gives a more spot-on assessment of the man.

Andrew Breitbart, 1969-2012
by David Frum
The Daily Beast
March 1, 2012

“Of the dead, speak nothing but what is good.”

It’s an ancient rule and a wise one, but one that does not do justice to the life and career of Andrew Breitbart, dead today aged 43.

It is impossible to speak nothing of a man who traced such a spectacular course through the contemporary media.

But to speak only “good” of Andrew Breitbart would be to miss the story and indeed to misunderstand the man.

Video: Breitbart spews hatred at Occupy Wall Street protestors

Watch more controversial Breitbart video moments here.

Obit continues. (more…)

Putin fake arrest video resonates with Russians
by Elizabeth Flock
Washington Post
February 17, 2012

The prime minister of Russia stood in handcuffs inside a cage, looking downcast, as a judge questioned him.

Watch Vladi­mir Putin in “jail”. Click on “cc” for English subtitles

The video showing Vladimir Putin on trial for corruption and terrorism was clearly a fake, but it went viral anyway — attracting millions of viewers since it was posted on YouTube several days ago, the Associated Press reports.

Called “The Arrest of Vladimir Putin,” the video comes a week after thousands of Russians protested in Moscow against the prime minister, who will run for a third term as president March 4. Putin was president from 2000 to 2008, and has been prime minister ever since. He is widely expected to win the presidential election, despite the public’s discontent, which peaked with widespread protests in December.

(more…)

The Secret, Corporate-Funded Plan To Teach Children That Climate Change Is A Hoax
by Brad Johnson
thinkprogress.org
February 14, 2012

The first in a series of posts about the Heartland Institute’s inner workings, from internal documents acquired by ThinkProgress Green.

Internal documents acquired by ThinkProgress Green reveal that the Heartland Institute, a right-wing think tank funded by the Koch brothers, Microsoft, and other top corporations, is planning to develop a “global warming curriculum” for elementary schoolchildren that presents climate science as “a major scientific controversy.” This effort, at a cost of $100,000 a year, will be developed by Dr. David E. Wojick, a coal-industry consultant.

“Principals and teachers are heavily biased toward the alarmist perspective,” Heartland’s confidential 2012 fundraising document bemoans. The group believes that Wojick’s project has “potential for great success,” because he has “contacts at virtually all the national organizations involved in producing, certifying, and promoting scientific curricula.” The document explains that Wojick will produce “modules” that promote the conspiratorial claim that climate change is “controversial”:

(more…)

Submitted by Larry Croft:

Book Review: The Lomborg Deception
by Sharon Begley
Newsweek
February 22, 2010

Debunking the claims of the climate-change skeptic.

In naming roustabout, lumberjack, ironworker, and dairy farmer America’s “worst jobs,” CareerCast.com omitted one whose awfulness is counterbalanced only by its public-spiritedness: fact-checking Bjørn Lomborg.

The Danish political scientist won fame and fans by arguing that many of the alarms sounded by environmental activists and scientists—that species are going extinct at a dangerous rate, that forests are disappearing, that climate change could be catastrophic—are bogus. A big reason Lomborg was taken seriously is that both of his books, The Skeptical Environmentalist
(in 2001) and >Cool It (in 2007), have extensive references, giving a seemingly authoritative source for every one of his controversial assertions. So in a display of altruistic masochism that we should all be grateful for (just as we’re grateful that some people are willing to be dairy farmers), author Howard Friel has checked every single citation in Cool It. The result is Lomborg Deception, which is being published by Yale University Press next month. It reveals that Lomborg’s work is “a mirage,” writes biologist Thomas Lovejoy in the foreword. “[I]t is a house of cards…Friel has used real scholarship to reveal the flimsy nature” of Lomborg’s work. (more…)

Al-Qa’ida glossy advises women to cover up and marry a martyr
By Julius Cavendish in Kabul
The Independent
14 March 2011

Not content with launching an English-language magazine that debuted with a feature called “How to make a bomb in the kitchen of your Mom”, al Qa’ida’s media wing has followed up with a magazine for women, mixing beauty tips with lessons in jihad.

The 31-page glossy, Al-Shamikha, which translates loosely as “The Majestic Woman”, features a niqab-clad woman posing with a sub-machine gun on its cover.

Much like Elle or Cosmopolitan, it includes advice on finding the right man (“marrying a mujahideen”), how to achieve a perfect complexion (stay inside with your face covered), and provides tips on first aid and etiquette. (more…)

Submitted by Peter Markus:

Another Runaway General: Army Deploys Psy-Ops on U.S. Senators
By Michael Hastings
Rollingstone
February 23, 2011

The U.S. Army illegally ordered a team of soldiers specializing in “psychological operations” to manipulate visiting American senators into providing more troops and funding for the war, Rolling Stone has learned – and when an officer tried to stop the operation, he was railroaded by military investigators.

The orders came from the command of Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, a three-star general in charge of training Afghan troops – the linchpin of U.S. strategy in the war. Over a four-month period last year, a military cell devoted to what is known as “information operations” at Camp Eggers in Kabul was repeatedly pressured to target visiting senators and other VIPs who met with Caldwell. When the unit resisted the order, arguing that it violated U.S. laws prohibiting the use of propaganda against American citizens, it was subjected to a campaign of retaliation.

“My job in psy-ops is to play with people’s heads, to get the enemy to behave the way we want them to behave,” says Lt. Colonel Michael Holmes, the leader of the IO unit, who received an official reprimand after bucking orders. “I’m prohibited from doing that to our own people. When you ask me to try to use these skills on senators and congressman, you’re crossing a line.”

Read the rest of this article here.

Editor’s note: The Art of the Prank is in receipt of previously unpublished content from the vast archive of WikiLeaks documents. We feel we have an obligation, in the pursuit of freedom of information, to publish these excerpts as we receive them. We will continue to post them as they are sent to us. We realize the danger Julian Assange faces. We can honestly say we do not know where he is.

Joey;

Thank you for your offer to publish some of the more controversial classified U.S. government documents WikiLeaks brought into the public domain on the 28th of November 2010. Although The New York Times and the Guardian began publishing some of the 251,287 WikiLeaks documents, The New York Times has bowed to government pressure and decided to withhold some passages and in some cases, entire cables whose disclosure, they claim, could compromise American intelligence efforts and even upset U.S. domestic political stability.

Some of the documents being withheld which will give the world unprecedented insight into the US Government’s foreign and domestic activities, appear to be benign except as to cause some embarrassment to certain public figures. One cable withheld is about Silvio Berlusconi, who, while contemplating a run for the Italian presidency, took a medical holiday in Luzern, Switzerland to have a very large “OMERTA” tattoo removed from his back by surgical laser. Also, he and Vladimir Putin have been described by an aid as having had an alcohol and drug fueled “boys night,” shooting out the windows of the UK Consul General’s empty parked Daimler with automatic weapons the pair borrowed from their bodyguards on a Berlusconi Moscow visit.

Sarah Palin attempted to secretly adopt two Downs Syndrome infants through an Asian adoption agency. The Chinese balked when Palin revealed that she needed stand-ins for Trig, (more…)

What the Federal Reserve is up to, and how we got here, by Xtranormal:

Quantitative Easing Explained

via Huffington Post

The Good News About Mel Gibson
by Frank Rich
The New York Times
July 16, 2010

For Fourth of July weekend fireworks, even Macy’s couldn’t top the spittle-spangled eruptions of Mel Gibson. The clandestine recordings of his serial audio assaults on his gal pal were instant Web and cable-TV sensations — at once a worthy rival to Hollywood’s official holiday releases and a compelling sequel to his fabled anti- Semitic rant of 2006. A true showman, Gibson offered vitriol for nearly all tastes, aiming his profane fusillade at women, blacks and Latinos alike. The invective was tied together by a domestic violence subplot worthy of “Lethal Weapon.” There was even a surprise comic coda, courtesy of Whoopi Goldberg, who, alone among Gibson’s showbiz peers, used her television platform on “The View” to defend her buddy’s good character.

The Gibson tapes — in plain English and not requiring the subtitles of some of the star’s recent spectacles — are a particularly American form of schadenfreude. There’s little we enjoy more than watching a pampered zillionaire icon (Gibson’s production company is actually named Icon) brought low. The story would end there — just another tidy morality tale in the profuse annals of Hollywood self-destruction from Fatty Arbuckle to Lindsay Lohan — were it not for Gibson’s unique back story.

Six years ago he was not merely an A-list movie star with a penchant for drinking and boorish behavior but also a powerful and canonized figure in the political and cultural pantheon of American conservatism. That he has reached rock bottom tells us nothing new about Gibson. He was the same talented, nasty, bigoted blowhard then that he is today. But his fall says a lot about the changes in our country over the past six years. We shouldn’t take those changes for granted. We should take stock — and celebrate. They are good news.

Read the rest of this Op-Ed piece here.

Submitted by Toni Dalton, as seen on Counterpunch.org:

The Ambush of Helen Thomas
by Gary Leupp
Counterpunch.org
June 8, 2010

“Any Better Comments?”

Outrage!

White House journalist Helen Thomas, covering a Jewish American Heritage Month celebration at the White House May 27, is accosted on the sidewalk by someone who asks: “Any comments about Israel? We’re asking everybody today—any comments about Israel?”

Smiling in grandmotherly fashion—-the way an 89 year-old woman might do when suddenly approached by an 17 year old boy who seems sincerely interested in her thoughts—she replies: “Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine.”

“Oooh…” responds the questioner. “Any better comments?” (A voice in the background: “Helen is fun!”)

“Hah hah hah,” laughs Helen. “ Remember these people are occupied, and it’s their land, not German, and not Poland.”

“So where should they go? What should they do?”

“They could go home. Poland. Germany.”

“Where’s home? You’re saying Jews should go back to Poland and Germany?”

“And America and everywhere else.”

A week later this video of the impromptu interview appears on “RabbiLIVE.com,” website of Rabbi David Nesenoff. (Who by the way is this “live rabbi”? Who is this rabbi character who’s terminated the career of a Washington press icon? How many journalists are even asking?) (more…)

UPDATE June 7, 2010: Israel Apologizes For Circulating Spoof Video Mocking Gaza Flotilla, Huffington Post

Three points of view, submitted by Toni Dalton, from LatmaTV, June 3, 2010:

The Gaza Flotilla participants explain how they can con the world – http://www.facebook.com/latma.co.il

Also from Toni, from salon.com:

How Israeli propaganda shaped U.S. media coverage of the flotilla attack by Glenn Greenwald

And from ZSpace:

Kill A Turk And Rest, by Uri Avnery