The Unraveling of the Propaganda Industrial Complex (Updated)

By Adam Garrie and Louis Conte, The Kennedy Beacon

On February 5, the White House confirmed that over $8 million of taxpayer money was paid to POLITICO during the final year of the Biden administration. It has also been reported that The New York Times, Reuters, the Associated Press, and the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) received millions of U.S. taxpayers dollars.

This story is still breaking, with the scale of the scandal escalating with every new X post, especially this one by Elon Musk, reposting a WikiLeaks apparent scoop: “USAID was funding over 6,200 journalists across 707 media outlets and 279 "media" NGOs, including nine out of ten media outlets in Ukraine.” Musk, who is spearheading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has been investigating government spending, posted a one word response: “wow.”

Musk also reposted a message from President Trump, which suggests an even wider scandal.

If true, these reports should shock every American. For if a democracy is to live up to its name, the press, long ago called “The Fourth Estate,” must be separate from the government. Its role? To hold the government accountable to the people.

So what happens when the government is funding the press? Wouldn’t they, as a funder, have certain content expectations?

According to reports from DOGE, under the Biden administration that is precisely what happened. The media outlets funded by a division of the federal government, surprise surprise, took pro-Biden, pro-censorship positions on all of the major issues. POLITICO in particular featured overwhelmingly negative coverage of Biden’s former political challengers, President Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

It’s becoming clear that The Propaganda Industrial Complex saw selected media outlets not as a collection of politically ‘neutral,’ independent-minded journalists out to expose the truth, but instead as paid PR hacks for the Biden White House.

Now we know how and why.

During the final years of the Biden administration, the existence of a “Censorship Industrial Complex” was transformed from a "conspiracy theory” to a fact that even the administration verified in court. During the Supreme Court’s consideration of injunctive relief by the state of Missouri and other plaintiffs, the Biden administration did not contest claims that it coerced big tech companies into censoring the constitutionally protected speech of Americans. Instead, the administration brazenly asserted that it had a right to do so

President Trump had also sued Meta over its government-coerced censorship of his Facebook and Instagram accounts. This year, Meta agreed to settle the case for $25 million.

This month we know now of a parallel force to the Censorship Industrial Complex. Thanks to DOGE, evidence has been uncovered which demonstrates that the taxpayer funded United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has been shelling out millions of dollars to private media outlets. Thanks to DOGE, we can now say that the Propaganda Industrial Complex is neither fiction nor a conspiracy theory. It is a fact.

As USAID faces scrutiny from DOGE and citizen journalists, another shocking truth is out: money given to USAID was transferred to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the biolab in China where the government and independent sciences believe the virus that causes COVID-19 originated.

According to DOGE’s findings, USAID provided the funds via its PREDICT program. The funds were then transferred to supposedly independent groups like the EcoHealth Alliance before being transferred to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Once it becomes clear that the biolab that created the virus was on the same payroll as the media outlets calling for the censorship of those challenging the debunked “wet market origin” narrative, we can more fully grasp the true danger of the Propaganda Industrial Complex.

DOGE is just scratching the surface. Clearly, the facts they’re revealing about USAID have less to do with government waste, more with the intentional twisting and suppression of the truth. Of course this violates the First Amendment. It’s also a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, creating an unfair marketplace of ideas.

Once DOGE completes its vital work, the Department of Justice must look into these matters. Americans must demand that.