Dear Progressive Reader,
This year’s Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to two journalists for “their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.” One half of the prize went to Dmitry Andreyevich Muratov, a Russian journalist who co-founded the pro-democracy newspaper Novaya Gazeta in 1993. (It was the same paper where journalist Anna Politkovskaya worked. She was killed on October 7, 2006 for her critical reporting). The other half of the $1.14 million cash award will go to Philippine journalist Maria Ressa. She founded the investigative news site Rappler in 2012. Ressa gave an interview to The Progressive last year. In the interview with Ed Rampell, she took the social networking site Facebook to task for its role in spreading misinformation—both in her home country of the Philippines, and here in the United States: “The information ecosystem, where social media, Facebook, became the world’s largest news distributor, has changed everything and allowed alternative realities to exist.”
These “alternative realities” were also showcased this week as Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen testified before the U.S. Senate, but this issue is not new. In June 2019, Alexandra Ellerbeck of the Committee to Protect Journalists wrote in The Progressive, “For many journalists, the hostility toward the press is scary not only because they are afraid of being targeted, but also because it undermines their relationships with their readers and the communities they cover.” And, she continued, “The truth is that [Donald] Trump is just as much a symptom as a cause of the challenges facing the media in the information age. His rhetorical attacks may have put fuel on the fire of harassment campaigns, and his insinuations about invented sources may have contributed to polarization and undermined trust in the media, but these trends predate him and will exist after he is no longer in the White House.” This is an issue on which The Progressive will continue to speak out. As founder “Fighting Bob” La Follette penned in November, 1920: “It is doubtful if the American people can ever emancipate themselves from the merciless exploitation of the colossal monopoly which controls markets and prices, until they shall establish a free and independent press.”
This week, our web writers cover a number of international stories. Jeff Abbott reports on the acquittal of Edwin Espinal and Raúl Álvarez, two Honduran activists who had protested that country’s 2017 presidential election. Caleb Brennan examines the history of the role of the United States in Colombia’s “forever war.” And Ish Theilheimer looks at the economic situation in Cuba, and the continued denial of aid by the Biden Administration. Finally, Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies ask “Why does Congress fight over childcare but not [the funding for] F-35s?”
Also this week, Chuck Collins, who worked with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists on the release of the Pandora Papers—by briefing foreign reporters on the U.S. wealth-hiding system—writes an op-ed for our Progressive Perspectives project on why U.S. tax havens should be shut down. And Bill Blum illuminates the U.S. Supreme Court’s “shadow docket” and their current crisis of legitimacy. “The public is, at long last, seeing through the rhetorical fog. The truth is—and always has been—that the court is political. It just practices politics by other means,” he explains.
October 5 marks the anniversary of the birth of civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer. In the latest issue of The Progressive, I reviewed a new book by author Keisha N. Blain that chronicles Hamer’s life and the messages she offers to the movements of today. This week was also the twentieth anniversary of the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan on October 7, 2001. Award-winning photographer David Bacon and I look back on the protests against that war, and the one in Iraq that followed less than eighteen months later. Writing early in October, for the November 2001 issue of The Progressive, historian Howard Zinn said, “War is terrorism, magnified a hundred times.”
Please keep reading, and we will keep bringing you important articles on these and other issues of our time.
Sincerely,
Norman Stockwell
Publisher
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