Here's a conservative magazine in 1976 selling itself to readers as a refreshing and more trustworthy alternative to an overly liberal "mainstream media" that hated America. The publisher of that magazine was the John Birch Society. 
FWIW, in 1976 the head of the JBS, Robert Welch, believed that the world was run by a conspiracy with its roots in the Bavarian Illuminati. He expected that conspiracy to destroy America and set up a UN-run One World Government in 1976, but that prediction didn't come true.
When it didn't come true, he credited the John Birch Society with successfully staving off that One World Government takeover, at least for the time being. So yeah, clearly a more reliable news source than Time or Newsweek.
You can hear Welch giving a quick summary of his Illuminati theory here.
The first iteration of the "Illuminati Conspiracy" in US politics was 1798, when many Federalists used it to whip up support for President John Adams and opposition to Thomas Jefferson and the politicians who allied with him.
https://twitter.com/SethCotlar/status/1025047504360894464?s=20&t=zP3O9Yh5d6kUf3hl7zJQDw
I wrote about it a bit in my 2011 book on the politics of the 1790s. google.com/books/edition/…
Anyway, this is why I deeply despise the seemingly innocuous film National Treasure; because it tapped into and helped breathe new life into this reactionary, Bircher-ite conspiracy theory thread in our political culture.
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