THE HANDSTAND

june 2005

Forum for Peace Journalism
>From July 25th to August 4th in Tamera / Portugal
 
"A jounalist is not allowed to make himself common. Not even with something good." Hans-Joachim Friedrichs, an icon of German journalism said this. I want to contradict him. As a peace journalist I very much want to place myself into the service of something good. Into the service of a peaceful planet.
 
Media and war
In the wars of the last years, the fatal role of mainstream jounalism and it's manipulating, war-pushing function ( it´s logically extreme was the "Embedded Journalism" in the Iraq war) was frequently criticised. The budget for PR and media takes an increasing share of the defense budgets of war-prominent powers. Even anti-war journalism and independent media saw themselves included in the war machine against their own will. War - in addition I also name enviromental degradation, as well as the structural violence of our only outwardly peaceful culture - is the norm and the background experience of the media producers, as well as the readers. To write against war is important, but ultimately still a dance around the wrong centre. An alternative could become peace journalism.
 
The task of peace journalism
Wars will only have an end, when alternatives and peace intiatives are noticed by the public. The task of peace journalism is not only to write information and reports against war. It exists, above all, in the information about peace developments,- perspectives and -visions. Johan Galtung, who shaped the term peace journalism, said: "For the journalist violence is interesting because it is fast and something happens. Peace formation is always a slow process."
Peace journalism means to oppose the media effect of violence and disasters with a different fascination: of vision, of positive border extensions, of surprising chances, of the beauty of the living. It means to search not only the differences and the conflict potential in conflicts, instead to search for a common basis, a solution, or the level of vision, and to make it visible in the report. To present, such, for the eye of the watcher who is used to sensation, sometimes slowly or inconspicuously running processes as exciting and interesting as escalations of violence, requires new ways for the jounalism. To report in a de-escalating or visionary way is a too less practiced art in the journalistic repertoire so far. It´s not only about the simple form of "Good News"; it´s about a different perspective of the journalist, about the perspective of compassion, solution orientation, the perspective of life on earth. Therefore it needs new ways of training in journalism and - additionally - new, independent media.
I believe if a group of about ten journalists work together in the sense of peace journalism for five years when, besides the large information strea, they initiate a different field of information in the established media as well as in new media, a first small creek of peace information flows, growing constantly and gradually becoming a river. It will infiltrate the system at last.
Peace journalism can be a part of the postive, healing virus, that will overcome the system of violence.
 
FORUM for PEACE JOURNALISM
Invitation for jounalists who want to dedicate their work to peace
We invite a small group of media producers, journalists, moviemakers, internet-specialists and students for ten days, to inform us about the principles of peace journalism. But this time should not become a theoretical exchange. We want to work out a media strategy for two concrete examples and put them into practice: 
 
1. The planned pilgrimage with Israeli and Palestinian peace groups and the theatre tour "We Refuse to be Enemies" in Israel/Palestine this autumn. This event is prepared by the Peace Research Village Association. 
 
2. The current construction of an energy and foodwise self-sufficient Solar Village in Tamera, which can be built regionally, independently of multinationals, as an ecological, architectural, technological and social model village for the resettlement of crisis areas. Our working questions:
 
What media, what content, what kind of journalism are suitable to bring public interest to actions of the peace movement?
What types of information could contribute to the development of efficient, global networks of peace forces?
What information and support do groups and initiatives in crisis areas need to build up efficient resistance and effective alternatives?
What possibilities does the internet serve, to release iterative processes of peace information? With what language and symbols do we reach the youth?
With which language, and symbols, do we reach the political and economic decision makers, who are open for alternatives? 
The meeting will be the beginning of a co-operation that will initially last a few months. A longterm co-operation in the form of a Forum for Peace journalism is also possible and aimed for.
 
The meeting will take place during the Summer University in the Healing Biotope 1 Tamera in Portugal, 25. July - 4. August 2005. Here we will also be able to talk to the activists of the two example projects.
Media producers who are interested in taking part, please contact me.
Leila Dregger (werkstatt@snafu.de)

Liberal NSA Critic: Spy Agency Has Files on Journalists

A liberal critic of the National Security Agency claims staffers are none to happy with General Michael Hayden, the man President Bush selected as deputy to National Intelligence Director John Negroponte.

If you believe former NSA staffer Wayne Madsen the NSA is also keeping files on reporters like Washington Times reporter Bill Gertz. Madsen, now a journalist who has contributed to various liberal publications, writes on a website that Hayden  "has presided over the systematic dismantling and demoralization of America's premier technical intelligence collecting outfit, the National Security Agency. "According to NSA insiders, Hayden's seven-year tenure at the agency, the longest for any NSA Director, has witnessed the cashiering of experienced analysts, linguists and field personnel and the crippling of America's ability to protect itself." And he claims that staffers "point to an agency wracked by poor morale, questionable outsourcing contracts and ineffective and corrupt management."

Madsen - who once called Bush presidential adviser Karl Rove "America's Joseph Goebbels" - makes several stunning allegations, among them that the NSA spies on unfriendly journalists.

The NSA maintains a database that tracks negative articles written about the agency, according to Madsen, and "high priority is given to articles written as a result of possible leaks from cleared personnel. "Bill Gertz of The Washington Times features prominently in the database ... "During the Clinton administration, Gertz was often leaked classified documents by anti-Clinton intelligence officials." In addition to Gertz, Madsen says other journalists who feature prominently in the database include Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker, James Risen of The New York Times, Vernon Loeb of The Washington Post - and Madsen himself.

Madsen also writes about what he calls President Bush and Dick Cheney's fascination with Russia's "Magic Mountain" - a Soviet-era underground complex embedded within Yamantau Mountain in the Urals. The $7 billion facility is believed to be an alternate "doomsday" command center for the Russian government and military in the event of a nuclear attack, according to Madsen. Members of the Bush administration, including Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, "have been pressuring the NSA and other intelligence agencies to come up with the goods on Yamantau," Madsen claims. "Wasting precious resources that could be used to combat terrorism, the intelligence agencies have been ordered to make Yamantau a top priority."

In another article, Madsen - who's seemingly fond of conspiracy theories - alleges that Hayden, Negroponte and John Bolton, President Bush's nominee for U.S. ambassador to the U.N., orchestrated the "misuse" of the NSA and other intelligence resources to conduct surveillance of those opposed to plans to invade Iraq. The three, Madsen writes in Online Journal, "directed an e-mail and telephone surveillance campaign against UN Security Council delegates to determine the voting intentions of wavering countries on the council's resolution authorizing military action against Iraq."

2. Russia  Still A Dangerous Place for Journalists
 
Russia is one of the world's  five most dangerous countries for journalists, a new report reveals.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists,  newsmen face "contract-style killings" which "pose a grave threat" to them. The Committee cited the deaths of at least seven journalists murdered in Russia "in direct reprisal for their work,"  including Forbes Russia editor Paul Klebnikov, who was gunned down on a Moscow street outside his office in July 2004. The committee added that it is investigating the motives in four other mafia-style contract killings that "may have been related to the victims' journalism."

The other four nations cited as dangerous places for journalists were the Philippines, deemed the "most murderous," followed by Iraq, Colombia, and Bangladesh.

.letter to the boston globe
 May 9, 2005   Editorial Staff

THE BOSTON GLoBE
Boston, MA   Re: Suggestions: Boston Globe, May 9, and every day  

Dear Editorial Staff:   As you know my husband and I treasure reading your newspaper each and every morning, for many reasons. There are a variety of many interesting subjects, many of which we cut and save for our files.   However, you must understand that we do have a valid complaint which rises up from time to time. It is obvious that you are writing your news recalling WWII especially for the Jewish people who like to see the Holocaust mentioned very often.  

Today, we read two more articles that mention the 6 million, in one of their first paragraphs.   Whoever is writing on WWII must desperately wish readers to be aware that the most pain experienced in that war was experienced by the 6 million Jews in German prison camps. There are no other groups that are so strongly focused on in your newspaper.   Would it be too much to ask that you make an excellent move on your part by  giving the rest of us a regular reminder from time to time about the other close to 60 million who were killed and/or incarcerated in WWII?   You seem to have a plentiful collection of memories, and we readers are being consumed by stories on Holocaust victims. What about the rest of the world involved in that war? In the Pearl Harbor attack? How many Philipinos were dead? And, worst of all, the horror of the first nuclear bombs in Japan? And how many lives were broken up emotionally and economically by the internment of the Japanese in the western part of the United States? We never hear of the loss of 27 million Russians in the same war . What about a story of the Italians who had to live in caves during WWII, practically starving to death?   Could we have a number of Jews who were GI???s during WWII? What percentage did they represent? How many American G Is were killed in Germany as a price of war? How many incarcerated by the Germans? How many GI’s were tortured and imprisoned by the Japanese? H ow many prisoners of war did the US torture and keep? Let’s have some stories of all of these? These, too, occurred. But we never hear these survivors’ stories!  

Another point to make: why do your photographers (AP) repeatedly print photos of Arabs or Palestinians waving their arms high in the air, but Sharon and his entourage are pleasantly seated at meetings in dignified positions? This definitely portrays an unfair idea of Arabs, giving the reader an incorrect picture of them as people who wish for freedom and democracy, also making them appear less than intelligent though many of them are well educated.   May we make a suggestion? Let’s be realistic. There are many non-Jews who read your paper and tire of the "same old, same old." Perhaps you should have a short edition added to the Boston Globe for a lesser price, offered only to readers who care to peruse or study assiduously all the facts about the Holocaust, all of the court cases purporti ng to collect monies from countries’ railroads, banks and other syst ems, also all of the public occasions honoring only the Jewish people who died during World War II.  

We need fair play, giving a balance to the daily news. We are not haters of Jews or Zionists, but the over-extending of Holo caustal writing is becoming nearly ridiculous. There are too many pro-Israeli editorials and op-eds compared to the few pro-Palestinian views. The long and extended obits for those involved in the Holocaust are extremely interesting and we enjoy reading their histories, but they, too, are seen more often than others.   As for the rest of us, we could peacefully take up our morning news without the strong focus on just one subject. This would be a great improvement. Certainly the press would create less resentment by lessening to a great extent this repetitive style of journalism. Also, you might see a great deal less of the anti-Semitism that is written about so very often.   Sincerely,  
Carol Rae Bradford
Editorial@globe.com Baron@globe.com r_loth@globe.com ombud@globe.com

Weapons of Mass Deception
ByChristian Henderson
Aljazeera April 2005

At the time of the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003, 70% of Americans told pollsters they believed Saddam Hussein's government was partly responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

In the prelude to the war, the Bush administration hinted at the existence of a link between Iraq and the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.

However, intelligence investigations commissioned by the White House and Congress have since determined the suggested links were false.

According to Danny Schechter, a media veteran of almost 40 years who nicknamed himself the News Dissector, the 70% figure suggests US media failed their public and led them to believe a baseless claim.

As the invasion played out on television screens around the world, Schechter "self-embedded" in his living room and examined US media coverage of the war.

He turned his conclusions into Weapons of Mass Deception www.wmdthefilm.com, a documentary film that examines how the media covered the war.

In the post-September 11 nationalistic ardour, the film concludes the US mainstream media failed to challenge Washington over its reasons for going to war, shut out anti-war voices and blurred the lines between commentary and journalism.

Aljazeera.net spoke to Schechter on the sidelines of last week's Aljazeera Television Productions Festival in the Qatari capital, Doha, where Weapons of Mass Deception was shown. 

Aljazeera.net: Why did you make this film?

Danny Schechter: I have been a journalist since the 1960s. And in some ways, this project grew out of a lifetime of work. I worked in radio; I worked in local television; I worked in cable news; I worked in ABC; I worked in mainstream and I worked in independent [media] so I think I had a wide range of experience.

I have also written six books about media issues, so I have had a chance to think about it more deeply; I think all that uniquely qualified me to take on this project.

What are you trying to do in this film?

I try to offer some fresh insights. I also try to speak to journalists about what this means in terms of our responsibilities to challenge and what this means in terms of democracy.

In the film, I make the suggestion that the Bush administration practices deception as part of its strategy and military strategy.

We know that everything they were saying about WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction)and the link with Usama [bin Laden] were not true and many of us knew it then and we said so, but everyone was saying something different.

Now, with study after study they say it was "group think" in the intelligence community. That's why they screwed up.

If there was group think in the intelligence community, what about the journalistic community? There was group think there, too.

Are you influenced by Noam Chomsky and his theory of manufacturing consent?

Noam Chomsky doesn't watch television; he is more of an analyst of the New York Times and elite journalism so I didn't go to him for an interview.

I was more interested in journalists who covered the war and how they were debating it. So I feel that Chomsky had a brilliant analysis of media, but more of it is oriented toward print. It doesn't always take into account the techniques of the media.

What do you think of Chomsky's critics who accuse him of overestimating the sophistication of media control, and that - in reality - it is more to do with day-to-day decisions and market forces?

I don't buy the conspiracy theories of media. I remember a group of Syrians came to our office and they said: 'We agree with you because we really know the Jews run everything.' This was their analysis. I said, excuse me, Rupert Murdoch is not Jewish the last time I looked.

You know the problem is corporate media and corporate-controlled media and how they operate within their framework.

What do you mean when you use the term post-journalism era?

Journalism is at a crossroads. There are many journalists today who still believe in the values of journalism but who are frustrated by the difficulty of practicing it because the companies they work for do not really respect journalistic principles. What they are there to do is satisfy their bottom line concerns, they have closed bureau after bureau.

There has been a pattern of dumbing down, and by dumbing it down it means people inside media are dumbing themselves down. They are not asking good questions, they are not challenging official narratives the way they should be.

If you look at Fox News, there is very little journalism, very little reporting. Mostly it is talk shows posing as news programmes and [they are] opinion driven, you have three times more pundits on air as opposed to journalists. That's another sign of the post-journalism era.

Are blogs an alternative to mainstream media sources?

There are now 10 million blogs. Of those, maybe 10% claim to be journalistic. Some of the bloggers are very responsible, really challenging and doing investigative digging that mainstream media are not.

Some are motivated just by ideological concerns. Recently, for example, Eason Jordan, the former chief of news at CNN - when he said at Davos 12 journalists had been killed by US soldiers there was a big shock and he was forced to resign. In that case, a blogger took an off-the-record meeting and just blasted it out there with out having a full record of what was said.

I think a lot of blogging can be very irresponsible and some of it is sponsored by political forces by the Republican party or the Democrat party and the like, so it has a political and ideological not a journalistic function. Journalists review copies of the 9/11 Commission report

But in my blog www.mediachannel.org what I try to do every day is take the top stories and report what is not being reported by comparing and contrasting.

You credit American journalists who helped you make this film. Do you think many in the US media are sympathetic to your message?

Whenever I talk to people in the media off the record, including anchormen, people are very supportive, people slip me footage from various networks. People are very helpful, but a lot of them are living in a lot of fear. Everybody feels vulnerable, people have mortgages; they have families - it's difficult to be courageous.

Many American media people feel vulnerable and as if they are being bullied, they feel totally insecure. In the culture of the newsroom, if you put your head up, it will get chopped off. Everybody is getting along by going along and that's a dangerous kind of conformity.

If the US is involved in another war, how do you think it will be reported in the US media? Do you think the media have learned from some of the mistakes of the Iraq war.

The institutional practices have not changed. I feel like the coverage of the elections was very similar to the coverage of the war. The same templates are being used, the same approach, the lack of political scrutiny, the lack of other voices, the way things are being framed, the lack of investigative checking.

The American media reported the Iraqi elections as a great victory for democracy. Everyone else reported them and asked Iraqis why they were voting and they said to get the Americans out and to end the occupation. Their reasons are very different from the way it was presented on American televisions. So we still have this propaganda system, in effect, but its credibility is starting to be questioned. And I hope my film will contribute to that.

What I want to see is more journalists taking more responsibility for what they do and showing more solidarity when other journalists are shot and killed.

How many people in the American media protested the killing of Tariq Ayub [Aljazeera's correspondent slain in Baghdad by US fire on 8 April 2003]? That was blatant, a completely blatant assassination and yet nobody said a word. We need to challenge that and show more solidarity with other media workers.

My beef with Big Media

Ted Turner
This article appeared in Ode issue: 23

Fewer and fewer corporations control an ever larger share of what we see in the media. Ted Turner warns that this is a dangerous development for the public, for democracy—even for capitalism itself.

In the late 1960s, when Turner Communications was a business of billboards and radio stations and I was spending much of my energy racing boats, a UHF-TV station came up for sale in Atlanta. It was losing $50,000 U.S. a month and its programmes were viewed by fewer than 5 percent of the market. So I acquired it.

When I moved to buy a second station in Charlotte—this one worse than the first—my accountant quit in protest, and the company’s board vetoed the deal. So I mortgaged my house and bought it myself. The Atlanta purchase turned into a Superstation; the Charlotte purchase—when I sold it 10 years later—gave me the capital to launch CNN. Both purchases played a role in revolutionizing television. And neither could happen today.

In the current climate of consolidation in the media industry, independent broadcasters simply don’t survive for long. That’s why we haven’t seen a new generation of people like me or even Rupert Murdoch—independent television upstarts who challenge the big boys and force the whole industry to compete and change. It’s not that there aren’t entrepreneurs eager to make their names and fortunes in broadcasting if given the chance. If nothing else, the 1990s dot-com boom showed that the spirit of entrepreneurship is alive and well in the world today, with plenty of investors willing to put real money into new media ventures.

The difference is that the U.S. government has changed the rules of the game. When I was getting into the television business, lawmakers and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) took seriously the commission’s mandate to promote diversity, localism, and competition in the media marketplace. They wanted to make sure that the big, established networks—CBS, ABC, NBC—wouldn’t forever dominate what the American public could watch on TV. They wanted independent television producers to thrive. They wanted more people to be able to own TV stations. They believed in the value of competition. When the FCC had received a glut of applications for new television stations after World War II, the agency set aside dozens of channels on the new UHF spectrum so independents could get a foothold in television. That helped me get my start 35 years ago.

But that was then.

Today, media companies are more concentrated than at any time over the past 40 years, thanks to a continual loosening of ownership rules by the FCC. Media giants now own not only broadcast networks and local stations; they also own the cable companies and the studios that produce most of the programming. To get a flavour of how consolidated the industry has become, consider this: In 1990, the major broadcast networks—ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox—fully or partially owned just 12.5 percent of the new television series they aired; the rest were from independent producers. By 2000, it was 56.3 percent. Just two years later, it had surged to 77.5 percent.

In this environment, most independent media firms either get gobbled up by one of the big companies or driven out of business altogether. Yet instead of balancing the rules to give independent broadcasters a fair chance in the market, Washington continues to tilt the playing field to favour the biggest players.

In the media, as in any industry, big corporations play a vital role, but so do small, emerging ones. When you lose small businesses, you lose big ideas. People who own their own businesses are independent thinkers. They know they can’t compete by imitating the big guys—they have to innovate. They are quicker to seize on new technologies and new product ideas. They steal market share from the big companies, spurring them to adopt new approaches. This process promotes competition, which leads to higher quality, more jobs and greater wealth. It’s called capitalism.

But without the proper rules, healthy capitalist markets turn into sluggish oligopolies—and that is what’s happening in media today. Large corporations are more profit-focused and risk-averse than ever before. The moguls behind the mergers are acting in their corporate interests and playing by the rules. We just shouldn’t accept those rules. They make sense for a corporation. But for a society, it’s like over-fishing the oceans. When the independent businesses are gone, where will the new ideas come from? We have to do more than keep media giants from growing larger; they’re already too big. We need a new set of rules that will break these huge companies into smaller ones.

Throughout the 1990s, media mergers were celebrated in the press and otherwise ignored by the American public. So, it was easy to assume that media consolidation was neither controversial nor problematic. But then a funny thing happened. In the summer of 2003, the FCC proposed changes favouring even more consolidation—raising the national audience-reach cap from 35 percent to 45 percent; allowing corporations to own a newspaper and a TV station in the same market; and permitting corporations to own three TV stations in the largest markets, up from two, and two stations in medium-sized markets, up from one.

Unexpectedly, the public rebelled. Hundreds of thousands of citizens complained to the FCC. Groups ranging from the National Organization for Women to the National Rifle Association demanded that Congress reverse the ruling. And lawmakers finally took action, pushing the national audience cap back down to 35, until—under strong White House pressure—it was revised back up to 39 percent. Last June, the U.S. Court of Appeals threw out the rules that would have allowed corporations to own more television and radio stations in a single market.

The FCC defends its actions by saying that we have more media choices than ever before. But only a few corporations decide what we can choose. That is not choice. That’s like a dictator deciding what candidates are allowed to stand for parliamentary elections, and then claiming that the people choose their leaders. The loss of independent operators hurts both the media business and its citizen-customers. When they disappear, the emphasis in the media shifts from taking risks to raking in profits. When that happens, quality suffers, local culture suffers and democracy itself suffers. Top managers in these huge media conglomerates run their companies for the short term. Media mega-mergers inevitably lead to an overemphasis on short-term earnings.

You can see this overemphasis in the spread of reality television. Shows like Fear Factor cost little to produce—there are no actors to pay and no sets to maintain—and they get big ratings. Thus, American television has moved away from expensive sitcoms and on to cheap thrills. We’ve gone from Father Knows Best to Who Wants to Marry My Dad?, and from My Three Sons to My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiancé.

Consolidation also means a decline in the local focus of both news and programming. After analyzing 23,000 stories on 172 news programmes over five years, the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that big media news organizations relied more on syndicated feeds and were more likely to air national stories with no local connection than smaller ones. That’s not surprising. Local coverage is expensive, and will usually be sacrificed in the quest for short-term earnings.

Loss of local content also undercuts the public-service mission of the media, and this can have dangerous consequences. In early 2002, when a freight train derailed near Minot, N.D., releasing a cloud of anhydrous ammonia over the town, police tried to call local radio stations, six of which are owned by radio mammoth Clear Channel Communications. According to news reports, it took over an hour to reach anyone at the stations to put an alert on the air. No one was answering the phone because the programming for all six stations was being beamed from Clear Channel headquarters in San Antonio, Texas—some 1,600 miles away. By the next day, 300 people had been hospitalized, many partially blinded by the ammonia. Pets and livestock died.

Consolidation has given big media companies new power over what is said not just on the air, but off it as well. Cumulus Media banned the band Dixie Chicks on its 42 country music stations for 30 days after lead singer Natalie Maines criticized President Bush for the war in Iraq. It’s hard to imagine Cumulus would have been so bold if its listeners had more of a choice in country music stations.

And Disney recently provoked an uproar when it prevented its subsidiary Miramax from distributing Michael Moore’s film Fahrenheit 9/11. As a senior Disney executive told The New York Times: “It’s not in the interest of any major corporation to be dragged into a highly charged partisan political battle.” Follow the logic, and you can see what lies ahead: if the only media companies are major corporations, controversial and dissenting views may not be aired at all.

This is a fight about freedom—the freedom of independent entrepreneurs to start and run a media business, and the freedom of citizens to get news, information, and entertainment from a wide variety of sources, at least some of which are truly independent and not run by people making decisions based on quarterly earnings reports. No one should underestimate the danger. Big media companies want to eliminate all ownership limits. With the removal of these limits, immense media power will pass into the hands of a very few corporations and individuals.

What will programming be like when it’s produced for no other purpose than profit? What will news be like when there are no independent news organizations to go after stories the big corporations avoid? Who really wants to find out? Safeguarding the welfare of the public cannot be the first concern of a large publicly traded media company. Its job is to seek profits. But if the government writes the rules in a way that encourages entry into the market of entrepreneurs—men and women with big dreams, new ideas, and a willingness to take long-term risks—the economy will be stronger, and the country will be better off.

Media companies have grown so large and powerful, and their dominance has become so detrimental to the survival of small, emerging companies, that there remains only one alternative: bust up the big conglomerates. We’ve done this before: to the railroad monopolies in the first part of the twentieth century, to phone companies more recently. Breaking up the media conglomerates may seem like an impossible task when their grip on the policy-making process in Washington seems so sure. But the public’s broad and bipartisan rebellion against the FCC’s pro-consolidation decisions suggests something different. Politically, big media may again be on the wrong side of history—and up against a country unwilling to lose its independents.

John Swinton on the American press

One night, probably in 1880, John Swinton, then the preeminent New York journalist, was the guest of honour at a banquet given him by the leaders of his craft. Someone who knew neither the press nor Swinton offered a toast to the independent press. Swinton outraged his colleagues by replying:

"There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it.

There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with.

Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone.

The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press?

We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."

(Source: Labor's Untold Story, by Richard O. Boyer and Herbert M. Morais, published by United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America, NY, 1955/1979.)