AGR fall fund drive begins
Mazen Al-Tomaizi, a Palestinian journalist reporting for
Al-Arabiya, was killed by fire from a US helicopter while reporting
on live television from Iraq on Sept. 12. After publishing material
critical of Russian president Valdimir Putin’s policies in Chechneya,
reporter Anna Politkovskya drinks coffee on an airplane and wakes to
find she was poisoned while on her way to report on the siege of the
school in Beslan three weeks ago. In August, al–Jazeera newspaper
offices in Iraq were ordered to close, on the grounds that they incite
violence, when they consistently provide thorough and unflinching coverage
of the destruction and bloodshed in the Middle East.
British journalist Peter Hounam was arrested on May 27 in Israel for
an 1986 interview with whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu that exposed the
country’s nuclear secrets. A grand jury subpoena, with a possibility
of 18 months in jail, was delivered in August to Time magazine reporter
Matthew Cooper to pressure him to reveal his anonymous sources regarding
the leaked identity of a CIA operative. According to the International
Press Institute 57 journalists have been killed so far in 2004.
The Bush administration has ordered media not to feature images of soldiers
returning to the US in body bags. This past March, Asheville’s
programming was censored by Sinclair Broadcasting not to include an
ABC 20/20 episode that featured the names of soldiers killed in combat
since the beginning of the war on Iraq.
The New York Times and The Washington Post have issued apologies over
the last few months for not questioning the Bush administration’s
claims about weapons of mass destruction and helping to implement an
unjustified war. In 2004 five major corporations — Time Warner,
Disney, Murdoch’s News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, and
Viacom (formerly CBS) — control the majority of the US media industry,
according to Ben Bagdikian’s book The Media Monopoly.
In a world where repression is become a more pervasive aspect of day
to day life and finding the truth amongst fascist propaganda is increasingly
difficult, independent media plays an important role. Disseminating
information with the goal of spreading truth stands in contrast to mainstream
media’s overt intention of securing a stake in the spoils of corporate
empire. The mainstream media’s cooperation with a regime bent on
imperialist domination is an act of aggression towards our world —
a world full of different cultures, animals, plants, ideas, ecosystems;
art, love and beauty. As evidenced in the sufferings of the aforementioned
journalists who worked to share information that was not in line with
what those in power want us to hear — telling the truth can be
dangerous because it is an effective tool in creating and maintaining
a world that is not based on greed, fear and profit.
Every issue of the Asheville Global Report is the result of the collective
efforts of individuals who share their skills and time to make information
about what is happening in the world today available to others. We do
not do this for an SUV or luxury condo, but because sharing knowledge
will help create a world where everyone has food, security, clean water,
and can live in an atmosphere of mutual respect.
In the weekly print run of at least 2,500 papers, 50 of those are free
prisoner subscriptions; around 25 we send without charge to infoshops,
libraries and other independent publications. There is a total of 150
paid subscriptions throughout the US and the rest of the papers are
available for free throughout western North Carolina. Our website receives
30,000 hits a month. We do not want to be the only source of information
in the world, but rather a part of decentralized and grassroots effort
of people to communicate with each other.
Unfortunately, to produce AGR requires money. Every year we have a fund
drive to ask our readers to help support us by making a contribution
to keep AGR going. This fall fund drive catches us at a time when we
have just enough money to continue operating for another month. Please
help insure that we can continue operating for another six years. Thank
you for your continued support.
Sincerely,
The Asheville Global Report editorial collective
