Excerpt of Article for Rolling Stone, published October 20, 1977,
by Carl Bernstein (Original on Bernstein’s site here)

The last piece of real reporting at Rolling Stone was October 1977, a piece by Carl Bernstein called “The CIA and the Media.” In it he quotes Frank Wisner, head of the OPC at the CIA, as saying that he played the media “like a mighty Wurlitzer organ.” We must suppose that soon afterwards Rolling Stone got a visit from the mighty Wurlitzer and was told to stop the music. Which it dutifully did. Ironic, because the subject of Bernstein’s piece was the influence of the CIA on the media. Bernstein hasn’t been the same since and neither has Rolling Stone. Remember that this was one year after the Church Committee hearings (1975-76) in the Senate which also exposed the extent to which the CIA had taken over the media. Like Bernstein, Frank Church got played by the Mighty Wurlitzer, losing his re-election bid to vote fraud in 1980. By 1984, Church was dead.
— by Miles Mathis, “Why I don’t read the Mainstream Press”
[download: mileswmathis.com/rs.pdf (ref. mileswmathis.com/updates.html)]

After leaving The Washington Post in 1977, Carl Bernstein spent six months looking at the relationship of the CIA and the press during the Cold War years.

In 1953, Joseph Alsop, then one of America’s leading syndicated columnists, went to the Philippines to cover an election. He did not go because he was asked to do so by his syndicate. He did not go because he was asked to do so by the newspapers that printed his column. He went at the request of the CIA. Continue reading →