Why not both? Life -> Art -> Life.
https://www.openculture.com/2018/12/cia-helped-shaped-americ...
> According to Eric Bennett, writing at The Chronicle of Higher Education and in his book Workshops of Empire, the Agency instrumentalized not only the literary publishing world, but also the institution that became its primary training ground, the writing program at the University of Iowa.
https://fcpp.org/2021/06/28/the-cias-media-assets/
> Four years after he broke the Watergate story, Carl Bernstein quit the Washington Post and spent six months looking at the relationship between the CIA and the press. The result was a 25,000-word cover story in the October 20, 1977 edition of Rolling Stone called “The CIA and the Media.” The article, still online at carlbernstein.com, remains interesting and relevant.