25 YEARS: The Meaning of Consortium News

Founding editor Bob Parry left a legacy of strict, non-partisan journalism, really the only kind of journalism that there is, which this site has endeavored to continue, writes Joe Lauria.

“The point of Consortium News, which I founded in 1995, was to use the new medium of the modern Internet to allow the old principles of journalism to have a new home, i.e., a place to pursue important facts and giving everyone a fair shake.” But, he added, “More and more I would encounter policymakers, activists and, yes, journalists who cared less about a careful evaluation of the facts and logic and more about achieving a pre-ordained geopolitical result – and this loss of objective standards reached deeply into the most prestigious halls of American media.

“This perversion of principles – twisting information to fit a desired conclusion,” he went on “– became the modus vivendi of American politics and journalism. And those of us who insisted on defending the journalistic principles of skepticism and evenhandedness were increasingly shunned by our colleagues, a hostility that first emerged on the Right and among neoconservatives but eventually sucked in the progressive world as well. Everything became ‘information warfare.'”

[consortiumnews.com]

{“The idea had developed that the way to defeat your political opponent was not just to make a better argument or rouse popular support but to dredge up some ‘crime’ that could be pinned on him or her.”

Soon the Democrats would be using the same tactics.

“The trend of using journalism as just another front in no-holds-barred political warfare continued – with Democrats and liberals adapting to the successful techniques pioneered mostly by Republicans.”

Thus Bob, in just trying to do his job as a reporter, became increasingly critical of the Democrats too.

“Ironically, many ‘liberals’ who cut their teeth on skepticism about the Cold War and the bogus justifications for the Vietnam War now insist that we must all accept whatever the U.S. intelligence community feeds us, even if we’re told to accept the assertions on faith.”}

For those forums outside this group post I'm sharing this with, I extend an open offer to you to join us at "Out Of The Illusion " Group where I use a select few independent new sources and political commentators that have followed and correlate with the dissenting awareness of fake news along with the late Robert Parry and the first Internet news site founded by him. I highly suggest reading the memoriam for Robert Parry [consortiumnews.com] to get a feel for what an actual investigative journalist use to stand for. No longer found in our MSCM worldwide that's owned by billionaires who pay pubic relation firms to create and manipulate the information handed down to our failed bought Fourth Estate today. Breaking free of their delusional reality can come with pain and despair for some. But truth must be known for us to advance as a society.