Intro: This is a revised and up-dated post from June 2021 by Eva Bartlett ...Boston Globe Columnist Stephen Kinzer on Honest Content and The State of Journalism Today
No name recognition there yet..you might want to get to know him and find out more information
Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist and activist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years). Follow her on Twitter @EvaKBartlett
"I asked the author and journalist Stephen Kinzer how the corporate media came to be so devoid of honest content and discussed the rise of censorship by Big Tech.
He started as an independent journalist in Central America in the mid-70s, when few journalists were going there, later reporting from Central Asia, Turkey, the Caucasus, and Europe.
✓ ... Kinzer learned journalism by going places and writing firsthand what he saw and heard. According to Kinzer, there are many qualifications for being a journalist that are much more important than what school you went to or what you studied.
“The most important one is independent thinking. The great curse of our press in the West is willingness to accept the official narrative,” he said. In his view many American journalists are merely stenographers. “They’re sitting down at a press conference, they write down what some government spokesman says, then they go and print that in a newspaper. . .
“And when you want to have a story that’s very well-sourced, they call the State Department, and the Defense Department, and several think tanks, and some congressmen. And they think, ‘Well I sure covered the landscape on this one!’”
But that, Kinzer argues, is not what covering the landscape is about.
“The great qualification you need for a journalist is the confidence to go out and see for yourself, and believe that your eyes are actually telling you more than press releases from some other country. . .
“It’s truly amazing, I’ve seen the decline of this profession into such willing subservience. We don’t have any core of regular columnists or people trying to challenge established narratives. We do have voices that pop up periodically, but they’re so drowned out by the regular columnists who just voice the same tropes over and over again,” Kinzer said.
“The intellectual laziness of the American press in covering the world has never been as extreme as it is now.
In the past several years, there has been an increase in social media giants deciding what content is acceptable and what “violates” so-called “community standards.” Commenting on the matter, Kinzer said that “the power of private companies to decide what people see and don’t see is greater now than ever.”
APRIL 10, 2006
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Mr. Kinzer talked about his book Overthrow : America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq, published by Times Books. He discussed the U.S.'s long history of regime change and proposed that the U.S. invasion of Iraq had historical roots going back to the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893. He said that while the policy of direct military involvement to achieve regime change was put on hold during the Cold War, it had been reestablished since the fall of the Soviet Union. Mr. Kinzer also talked about fourteen episodes of regime change contained in his book, including America’s involvement in Cuba, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Iran. He answered questions from members of the audience following his remarks.
AUGUST 25, 2022 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
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Letters, August 25, 2022
For Stanton, the Challenger
To the editor:
Although I’m not enrolled in any political party, I’ve asked for a Democratic ballot in the Sept. 6 primary so I can vote for the insurgent candidate for state representative, Jack Stanton, who is challenging the entrenched incumbent, Sarah Peake.
This is a classic David vs. Goliath clash. A veteran politician is being challenged by a “climate radical” less than half her age. She dismisses systemic change as “not ready for prime time.” He grasps the urgency of this moment and is determined to slow our rush toward regional and planetary suicide.
Rep. Peake is part of the tight leadership group that serves the Speaker of the House. That group is the most regressive force in the State House, dedicated to maintaining secrecy and discipline. Peake has opposed measures that would give legislators and voters 72 hours to read bills that emerge from the Speaker’s office instead of 24. She opposes releasing committee votes on key legislation. As a tested loyalist, she helps the Speaker maintain one of the most opaque legislative regimes in the U.S.
In 2018, Rep. Peake defended the Speaker’s use of tax money to pay off women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted by legislators in exchange for nondisclosure agreements. She said that payoffs and nondisclosure agreements actually benefit victims.
It’s valuable to have a legislator from your neighborhood who’s powerful. But if proximity to power means participating in an antidemocratic leadership clique, the price isn’t worth it.
Jack Stanton is rebelling against get-along, go-along politics. Peake refused to appear with him in public until five days before election day.
I’m from the same generation as Rep. Peake. I say: vote us out! We made a mess of the world. Maybe the next generation can save it. The standard-bearer for that generation is Jack Stanton.
Stephen Kinzer
Truro in
Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq is a book published in 2006 by New York Times foreign correspondent and author Stephen Kinzer about the United States's involvement in the overthrow of foreign governments from the late 19th century to the present
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