nice comments

if you read reader's digest, you might also want to be aware that it's part of the mighty wurlitzer dispensing disinfo & propaganda to the masses, shaping thinkable thought

Heidenry, John. Theirs Was the Kingdom: Lila and DeWitt Wallace and the Story of the Reader's Digest. New York: W.W. Norton, 1993. 701 pages.
www.namebase.org/sources/UH.html

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The Digest empire, particularly through its Washington bureau, was a major outlet for Cold War propaganda and had significant connections to the U.S. intelligence community. Author John Heidenry does an excellent job of ferreting out these connections, even though this accounts for less than one-sixth of the book.

[Ralph McGehee, CIABASE, January 1995 Update Report says that this book "portrays the close relationship between the CIA and the Reader's Digest." It "names individuals, publications and books authored as part of the CIA's propaganda."]


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AMERICAN DREAMERS:
The Wallaces and Reader's Digest: An Insider's Story
archive.salon.com/sneaks/sneakpeeks961113.html

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Readers who have instinctively disliked Reader's Digest will have their worst suspicions confirmed in "American Dreamers," a new book from former Digest managing editor Peter Canning. Among other things, Canning details how, in the 1940s and 50s, the State Department and CIA fed content to the Digest and helped its international editions thrive. He also notes the magazine's numerous pro-Vietnam War editorials, and the way Nixon speeches found their way into the magazine under the byline "The Editors."

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from Manufacturing Consent
by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky
www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Herman%20/Manufac_Consent_Prop_Model.html

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The mass media themselves also provide "experts" who regularly echo the official view. John Barron and Claire Sterling are household names as authorities on the KGB and terrorism because the Reader's Digest has funded, published, and publicized their work;

...

Propaganda campaigns may be instituted either by the government or by one or more of the top media firms...The campaigns to publicize the crimes of Pol Pot and the alleged KGB plot to assassinate the pope were initiated by the Reader's Digest, with strong follow-up support from NBC-TV, the New York Times, and other major media companies. Some propaganda campaigns are jointly initiated by government and media; all of them require the collaboration of the mass media...For stories that are useful, the process will get under way with a series of government leaks, press conferences, white papers, etc., or with one or more of the mass media starting the ball rolling with such articles as Barron and Paul's "Murder of a Gentle Land" (Cambodia), or Claire Sterling's "The Plot to Kill the Pope," both in the Reader's Digest. If the other major media like the story, they will follow it up with their own versions, and the matter quickly becomes newsworthy by familiarity. If the articles are written in an assured and convincing style, are subject to no criticisms or alternative interpretations in the mass media, and command support by authority figures, the propaganda themes quickly become established as true even without real evidence. This tends to close out dissenting views even more comprehensively, as they would now conflict with an already established popular belief. This in turn opens up further opportunities for still more inflated claims, as these can be made without fear of serious repercussions.

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