The International Organization of Journalists (IOJ, French: Organisation internationale des journalistes) was an international press workers' organization based in Prague, Czechoslovakia, during the Cold War. It was one of dozens of front organizations launched by the Soviet Union in the late 1940s and early 1950s.[1][2] It was controlled in Prague by the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, with the assistance of KGB agents.[3] It was described by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency as "an instrumentality of Soviet propaganda".[4]
The International Organization of Journalists was formed at a congress held in Copenhagen in June 1946. At this meeting, the International Federation of Journalists and the International Federation of Journalists of the Allied and Free Countries merged into the new organization and for a time the new organization was broadly representative of the journalists of the world. However, by 1950 the IOJ had become dominated by communists and the non-communist member organizations had withdrawn. These would re-launch the International Federation of Journalists in 1952.[5]
A declassified Central Intelligence Agency document from 1955, described the IOJ as "an instrumentality of Soviet propaganda".[4] In a 2009 interview with the newspaper Helsingin Sanomat, the Finnish professor Kaarle Nordenstreng who was the chairman of the IOJ 1976–1990, acknowledged that they took orders from the Kremlin but maintained that their operations were far from straightforwardly following their directives.[6]
Organization
The decision-making body of the IOJ was Congress, which met every four years. Members of the IOJ, and delegations representing groups that had less than 20 members, had a voice, but no vote in the deliberation. Congress elected the Executive Committee, whose members could be nominated either by member federations or by the Congress itself. The Executive Committee met once a year. The IOJ Bureau was also elected by the Congress and consisted of the President, Secretary-General and a number of Vice-Presidents and met as required. Members of the Bureau were ex-officio members of the Executive Committee. The General Secretariat handled day-to-day administration of the IOJ and was headed by the General Secretary under the direction of the Bureau.[7] Originally headquartered in London, in June 1947, the IOJ moved to Opletalova 5, PragueII, [8] and in 1966, to Vinohradska 3, Prague 1,[9] and by 1978, to Parizska 9, 11001 Prague 1.[10]
The IOJ published a monthly The Democratic Journalist in English, French, Spanish, German and Russian.[17] Other publications included Interpressgrafik, Journalists' affairs and Afrique mass media.[18]
The World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) is an international federation of trade unions established in 1945. Founded in the immediate aftermath of World War Two, the organization built on the pre-war legacy of the International Federation of Trade Unions as a single structure for trade unions world-wide, following the World Trade Union Conference in London, United Kingdom.
Operation Mockingbird is an alleged large-scale program of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that began in the early years of the Cold War and attempted to manipulate domestic American news media organizations for propaganda purposes. According to author Deborah Davis, Operation Mockingbird recruited leading American journalists into a propaganda network and influenced the operations of front groups. CIA support of front groups was exposed when an April 1967 Ramparts article reported that the National Student Association received funding from the CIA. In 1975, Church Committee Congressional investigations revealed Agency connections with journalists and civic groups.
The World Peace Council (WPC) is an international organization with the stated goals of advocating for universal disarmament, sovereignty and independence and peaceful co-existence, and campaigns against imperialism, weapons of mass destruction and all forms of discrimination. Founded from an initiative of the Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers' Parties, WPC emerged from the bureau's worldview that divided humanity into Soviet-led "peace-loving" progressive forces and US-led "warmongering" capitalist countries. Throughout the Cold War, WPC operated as a front organization as it was controlled and largely funded by the Soviet Union, and refrained from criticizing or even defended the Soviet Union's involvement in numerous conflicts. These factors led to the decline of its influence over the peace movement in non-Communist countries. Its first president was the French physicist and activist Frédéric Joliot-Curie. It was based in Helsinki, Finland from 1968 to 1999, and since in Athens, Greece.
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) is the largest global union federation of journalists' trade unions in the world. It represents more than 600,000 media workers from 187 organisations in 146 countries.
The International Union of Students (IUS) was a worldwide nonpartisan association of university student organizations.
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The World Federation of Scientific Workers (WFSW) is an international federation of scientific associations. It is an NGO in official partnership with Unesco. Its goal is to be involved internationally in all aspects of the role of science, the rights and duties of scientists and their social responsibility. According to some opinions, it was a Cold War-era communist front. The group was said to be composed by a majority of scientists who supported communism, but this was not the criterium for addmitance. The federation opposed nuclear tests conducted by any states.
The World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY) is an international youth organization, and has historically characterized itself as left-wing and anti-imperialist. WFDY was founded in London in 1945 as a broad international youth movement, organized in the context of the end of World War II with the aim of uniting youth from the Allies behind an anti-fascist platform that was broadly pro-peace, anti-nuclear war, expressing friendship between youth of the capitalist and socialist nations. The WFDY Headquarters are in Budapest, Hungary. The main event of WFDY is the World Festival of Youth and Students. The last festival was held in Sochi, Russia, in October 2017. It was one of the first organizations granted general consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council.
A communist front is a political organization identified as a front organization under the effective control of a communist party, the Communist International or other communist organizations. They attracted politicized individuals who were not party members but who often followed the party line and were called fellow travellers.
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References
↑ Jeffrey T. Richelson (1997). A century of spies: intelligence in the twentieth century. p.252.
↑ Ralph And Brown Fred R. Sanders (2008). National Security Management: Global Psychological Conflict. p.31.
↑ Political posters in Central and Eastern Europe, 1945-95: signs of the times. James Aulich, Marta Sylvestrová. p. 66
1 2 Hettena, Seth (2020-03-09). "Is Zero Hedge a Russian Trojan Horse?". The New Republic. ISSN0028-6583. Retrieved 2020-03-09. Ivandjiiski also proudly informed me of his membership, since 1974, in the International Organization of Journalists, a front organization that a declassified CIA study described as 'an instrumentality of Soviet propaganda.'
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