I wanted to share this story with you: http://digg.com/d31MgOF?e --- "Izzy Award Winner Jeremy Scahill: "We're At a Ground Zero Mo" The winner of the second annual Izzy Award, named after muckraking journalist I.F. Stone, discusses independent media and this critical moment in journalism. +1 person dugg this story.
*JS:* "..On the flip side of that, it's the role of independent journalists to embed themselves with the victims of U.S. foreign policy -- in the case of U.S. journalists -- or domestic policy. What I mean by that is to actually go out to where the people live who are most affected by these policies -- be it Afghanistan or the slums of the United States. You have to be un-embedded from the powerful and you have to embed yourself with the disempowered, because I think part of our role as independent journalists is not only to confront those in power, but to give voice to the voiceless. * BD: You've reported from all over the world. Talk about the relationships you've observed between the powerful and the powerless.* *JS:* You have this nexus of the iron fist of U.S. militarism that is backing up the so-called "hidden hand" of the free market. And so what we see is that the United States will economically target countries, then have that targeting of them with economic neo-liberalism backed up by brute military force -- by supporting military dictatorships, by interfering in elections. One strain that has tied together the people that live on the other side of the barrel of the gun that is U.S. foreign and economic policy is that they always, out of the rubble, seem to emerge in some form of resistance. We've seen that in Iraq, and we're seeing it in Afghanistan. We've certainly seen it throughout Latin America. Another thing that's important for people to remember: If we fail to stop the United States from targeting communities across the globe, we don't choose the kind of resistance that people offer up to wars that we should have stopped. We in this country have an obligation to hold our leaders responsible, because if we don't, then in one way or another, we're responsible for the consequences -- either in terms of attacks on civilians there, or in opposition that rises up violently to the policies we had a moral obligation to try to confront and expose." "..I remember how proud I was when I saw the *New York Times* forced to credit Marcy Wheeler, who was an online blogger, for picking up details on the Bush administration's torture program. They had to credit Marcy Wheeler, and put a quote from her, and cite her in their newspaper. That to me was a great moment in the recent history of independent media, because what it did was shame the corporate media. It said that a blogger with very little resources can out-scoop the *New York Times* on a very important story that was catching headlines at that time. Part of what we're doing is trying to fill the void that is left from corporate media. We either shame them, or force them to cover it, because we make it a major issue.." "..We live in a very exciting time in independent media. Corporate journalists are less powerful now than they were 10 years ago, but their owners are much more powerful. Still, the journalists themselves -- they're no longer these sort of regal kings on a hill. Peggy Noonan represents a dying generation of people that pontificate from a golden palace somewhere, hoping the poor will never get through her gates. The poor are now journalists around the world. The question is: how do we fund it? How do we keep it viable? How do we keep it credible? And that is our challenge right now..". -- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth?hl=en-GB.
