Holy Crap

[bunglenose]

Check out Al Giordano's ranting letter to Project Censored after being nominated to receive an award for the top 25 most censored stories of 2006, on the stolen Mexican election.

It's so refreshing to read something like this once in awhile.  There are still radical journalists out there who 1) don't suck, and are actually doing fucking awesome work

Comments

[thejscheck]

awesome. it points up a two-step effect i've suspected for a while: the opening then closing of the net -- somewhat cylical, of course. the explosion of political blogs in wake of the media's rolling over the for the 2003 iraq invasion indeed opened up many new pathways for off-the-radar reporting and journalism, but as with everything, many of the leading lights were somewhat absorbed by the spectacle (yes, i said "absorbed by the spectacle", sue me) hence the search for more new sources and greater data triangulation continues.

it also points up that in the end, DIY is still the best cure for tyranny.

[bunglenose]

actually much more shocked that you said "cyclical" than "absorbed by the spectacle"

but yeah, good point.

there's some crazy statistic from a few years back, i don't remember the exact numbers, but the upshot is that with x billion websites, the huge majority of internet traffic is on a small handful.

[thejscheck]

in terms of "cycles," not in an historical sense, more in an action-reaction sense. expansion-contraction, but yes, even that too is an unscientific article of faith, unlike superdistribution, of course.

[tagonist]

Hm. I'm impressed with what he says about the fetishization of "censorship." I'm always irritated when that canard is applied to the actions of non-governmental bodies (like, say, anyone shouting down a Henry Kissinger speech or jumping on-stage to pull the plug on a white supremacist band or something) and I like what he says about the left feeling its ideological coherence depends on underpaying its workers. I hadn't realized the Project Censored awards were not paid, and I wholly agree they should be.

That said, his passion for self-publishing, while admirable, is hardly itself a justification for flipping anyone else the bird- I'm sure the guy who owns AMAZON.COM feels the same way about selling through bricks-and-mortar bookshops, and I imagine everyone who works at a publishing house feels something akin to this towards folks who publish online and lard up their pages with adverts and pleas for donations. The fact is, everybody has a reason why their method of getting words to the consumer is, while something of a sacrifice

[bunglenose]

well, there are certainly some liabilities in his screed, I just found the tone refreshing and thought he made some good points.

I agree in theory with your points about every distributor being thoroughly convinced of the rightness of his or her own model, but I don't conclude that there is therefore a one-to-one moral or ethical equivalency between them all. And I certainly think there is a difference between being mission driven vs. being profit driven.

I took his comments re: editors to be directed toward "bad" editors. It's not like Giordano is unfamiliar with how the world of professional journalism works, and in his duties at narco news he is himself essentially an editor.

abuse of the word "censorship" is always annoying.