The Narco News Bulletin
"The
Name of Our Country is América"
--
Simón Bolívar
McFarren,
AP, and the Rise of the "Para-Journalists"
Part
II in a Series
Associated Press
Conflict Scandal Escalates
Journo-Lobbyist
Draws Fire from FAIR
How The Paramilitaries
of Journalism Do the Drug War's Dirty Work for Personal Gain
Part II in a Series
By Al
Giordano
"The Inca Indians
and Mestizos are good for nothing in the progressive evolution
of modern societies. Sooner or later, in the struggle for survival,
they will have to disappear beneath the sovereign rule of pure
or purified whites"
-- Gabriel
René Moreno, Bolivian Author, circa 1890
"The protests, which
have also left dozens injured, have been laced with a strong
dose of anti-white sentiment. Felipe Quispe, an Aymara Indian
and leader of the country's main farmers organization, told government
ministers in the talks that the land belongs to the Aymara and
Quechua Indians and not the whites."
-- Peter McFarren,
AP Correspondent and Corporate Lobbyist, Bolivia, September 2000
"The
root ideology of Bolivia is racism."
-- Pulso magazine,
La Paz, Bolivia, October 2000
The passage above by Associated Press Bolivia correspondent
Peter McFarren claimed "anti-white sentiment" by Bolivian
indigenous and social movements. In a media world that promotes
the belief that racism is a question of pigmentation and not
of race, McFarren's report is based on his distorted translation
of an indigenous word: "Khara" is an Inca term
in Bolivia that means "someone who is not from here."
A "khara" could
be white, black, yellow, or even look like a local, but he would
still be a "khara" if he was not from there. But Peter
McFarren translated the word to "white."
McFarren surely knows
that in the Aymará language of indigenous leader Felipe
Quispe, the word for "white" is "janq'u"
and not "khara."
Or, as the US Library
of Congress profile on Bolivia explains:
"Because all of the
so-called racial terms connoted social status rather than racial
background, they were applied indiscriminately and often interchangeably.
A wealthy, upperclass person of mixed blood, for example, might
be considered white, whereas a poorer one might be termed a mestizo.
An Indian might be called a cholo in one situation or a campesino
in another."
That McFarren, a blonde
and wealthy Bolivian-born son of a Methodist missionary from
the United States, educated in the US, translated the word khara
to "white," speaks volumes of his tendency to distort
the news in ways that clearly aid his conflict of interest.
Part I of this series
documented McFarren's unethical conflict-of-interest as a lobbyist
for a $78 million dollar water export project before the Bolivian
congress:
Long before McFarren's
September 14, 2000 lobbying presentation in the Hall of the Senate
in the Bolivian capital of La Paz, the evidence was already clear
that McFarren is something more, and something less, much less,
than a journalist.
The power of US correspondents
in Latin America has been a recurring theme in reports by The
Narco News Bulletin. Abuses of that power by correspondents
of the
New York Times in Mexico and the Miami Herald in Colombia have been
documented on these pages and have opened a discussion among
authentic journalists about the role of US correspondents. On
the day he ceased being the Miami Herald correspondent
in Colombia, Tim Johnson responded to The Narco News Bulletin
critique of his reporting: "The funny thing is
that I agree with much of what you say."
It bears repeating that
English-language coverage of events in Latin America can cause
governments and economic empires to rise or fall. There are so
few full-time US and English-language news correspondents in
Latin American countries that these individuals have come to
enjoy an absolute power of filtration of the news that has corrupted
too many of them absolutely.
And the wedge issue that
these "journalists" use time and time again to keep
the social movements of all América marginalized in the
English-language press is that of the war on drugs. In place
of reporting accurately on the impact of US-imposed drug policy,
US correspondents have enlisted as partisan soldiers in the war
on drugs. McFarren is an extreme example, but there are too many
others like him, backed by the unspoken policy upon US correspondents:
to be the journalistic paramilitaries on behalf of Washington's
party line. Just as paramilitary soldiers armed with guns do
the dirty work of the regimes, the journalistic paramilitaries
-- the para-journalists -- wage the info war to defend
and perpetrate US policy in foreign lands.
The drug war, since its
inception, has relied upon the use of the race card by news media
to push the buttons of fear and distortion. Not every agency
is always guilty of this: Reuters, for example, in its September
and October coverage of social unrest in Bolivia reported accurately
that the chewing of coca leaf by peasants and Indians in Bolivia
is a traditional and medicinal custom, not to be equated with
the harmful effects of sniffing cocaine hydrochloride. This point,
unfortunately, has been withheld from readers of Associated Press
reports on the recent confrontations between coca growers and
the Bolivian government.
McFarren's distorted translation
on "anti-white sentiment" is a case in point: as the
only official English-language correspondent in Bolivia, his
reports routinely get picked up or copied by other news agencies.
That's the reality of today's news industry: institutionalized
plagiarism of works that don't deserve to be copied. Subsequent
articles in the New York Times and the Miami Herald
-- by reporters who were not present and probably have never
heard the word "khara" in their lives -- repeated the
big lie: that the indigenous leader Felipe Quispe ("El Mallku,"
or "Great Condor") attacked the "whites"
in his discourse during negotiations between the government and
Bolivian peasants.
In fact, El Mallku was
speaking of the "kharas" -- almost every indigenous
language has a word for "those who are not from here"
-- and the interpretation by McFarren, copied by others, was
his intentional distortion aimed at frightening caucasian readers
of the Indians in order to gain support and sympathy for the
government of Bolivian dictator-turned-"president"
Hugo Banzer.
As documented
by Narco News on October 6th, that is the very same Banzer regime upon which
Peter McFarren must rely to gain support for his $78 million
water export project.
McFarren has ignored and
censored real news to help the Banzer regime remain in control
of a country that demands a change. His unethical behavior mandates
that he be relieved of his conflict of interest. But that he
would make up, so cynically, an inaccurate translation for the
word "khara" in order to defend those interests is
as racist as it is unethical. And this falsification of the news
comes from a "cultural promoter" who peddles in "preserving
Bolivian culture." Racism is not limited to skin tone; indeed,
in Bolivia and so much of Latin America, racism is often focused
on a single question: to be or not to be indigenous.
The conflict of interest
could not be any clearer. The dirty work in protecting that conflict
is more subtle and nefarious. And so the protectors of the rampant
corruption in US news bureaus in Latin America are mute before
the charges. To open this Pandora's box of institutionalized
media corruption would expose too many dark secrets of modern
commercial "journalism" to public light. And so they,
the great communicators, have fallen mute.
Silence
and Stonewalling from AP
Confronted by the facts in our first story -- sent by
email on October 6, 2000 to each of the officers of the AP Managing
Editors Association (APME) -- the self-described guardians of
ethics at Associated Press have run from offering an official
response.
They fell impotent and
silent before the claim: They did not defend McFarren. They did
not criticize him. They did not question his unethical conflict.
They did not even announce an investigation into the charges
made by The Narco News Bulletin, charges so serious that
had they been documented against any domestic journalist within
the United States they would have ended entire journalistic careers.
To place this story in perspective: Imagine a prominent Washington
journalist as a lobbyist before congress for a multi-million
dollar business project that happened to directly profit a foundation
of which that journalist was president. This is exactly what
the AP and APME endorse with their silence in Bolivia.
Their silence shouts a
cowardice and intellectual dishonesty unworthy of any journalist,
much less the self-serving club that claims to monitor and consult
the Associated Press on matters of journalistic ethics.
The president of the APME
is one Jerry Ceppos of the Knight-Ridder corporate newspaper
chain. Although Ceppos did not respond to the letter sent to
him by Narco News, he did respond to one of our readers,
who
then posted the Ceppos "response" on the APME web site
discussion board.
Ceppos wrote only two sentences on this grave matter:
"I will
forward your concerns to the AP but suggest that you also contact
the AP directly. APME is not involved in management of the AP."
-- Jerry Ceppos,
President, APME
The reader who received
this letter from Ceppos then posted his own response on the APME
discussion board that spoke eloquently for the growing concerns
of many:
"This is a bit confusing
to me, given that according to the APME website, the APME "works
in partnership with AP to improve the wire service's performance"
and the APME "conduct[s] regular wire watches to evaluate
AP's performance".
"For X to do Y, X
needs to be capable of doing Y. Thus if the APME oversees the
AP in any meaningful sense, then the APME must be able to do
something regarding a gross conflict of interest on the part
of an AP correspondent. Either the APME in fact has no power
of 'improvement and evaluation' over the AP, or I'm being blown
off.
"The arcana of press
bureaucracy is of no interest to me, but I do care about what
happens to the case of Peter "Mr. Bolivia" McFarren.
If saying "you need to talk to the AP" is a way of
dismissing the problem, I ask that the APME officers to reconsider.
Mr. McFarren is a business lobbyist and philanthropist intimately
tied to the workings of the government in Bolivia. For him to
also pose as an AP journalist is absurd and an embarrasment to
the AP.
"If, on the other
hand, the APME has no power over the AP, then I wonder why it
exists. As the self-described caretaker of the AP wire, how can
the APME justify its own existence if it cannot come down hard
on such a blatant case of conflict of interest?"
Note the lack of information
in Ceppos' letter: He urges the reader to contact AP, but does
not offer a name, an email address, a phone number, nothing.
The AP's own web site contains no information or name of anyone
involved with Latin American news coverage. On the matter of
"ethics," it simply states that the APME writes the
code of ethics for AP and monitors AP reports.
It's a shell game of buck-passing
between AP and APME that allows both organizations to evade responding
to charges of unethical journalism.
Indeed, the APME is no
more than a front to protect corrupted journalism.
The APME's own discussion
board has this disclaimer:
"This forum is for
discussion of issues and topics related to the Associated Press
Managing Editors. Comments or questions about AP stories or services
should go to AP's corporate Web site, www.ap.org. Member editors should contact their local chief
of bureau directly."
And yet, the AP web site
address offered by APME contains no message board and no information
on how to contact the Latin American desk. AP has no ombudsman,
no letters page, it is a journalistic entity drifting in outer
space without an ethical anchor, while it hides behind the APME,
which, as Ceppos makes clear, is toothless and without interest
in doing the job that it claims it exists to do.
APME
President Jerry Ceppos: No First-Time Offender
Ceppos is best known for another journalistic scandal
involving his tenure as executive editor at the San José
Mercury News in California. For it was Jerry Ceppos who had
ultimate responsibility for the "Dark Alliance" series
by Gary Webb in 1996 that documented US Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) involvement in narco-trafficking in Latin America.
That part of the Webb series has never been, indeed could not
be, called into question: it has been documented by US Senator John Kerry (D-Massachusetts)
and his select subcommittee on narcotics and terrorism, dating back to 1986.
The part of the San
José Mercury News story that was attacked by official
news organizations was its report that the CIA had hands-on involvement
in distributing that cocaine in the form of crack on the streets
of US cities.
Ceppos, upon the attacks
by the New York Times, the Washington Post and
other "Cathedrals of Journalism" suddenly shifted gears.
He went from being proud of his newspaper's groundbreaking reports
on official US involvement in drug trafficking to running from
the story altogether. Ceppos' Mercury News offered a muddy
correction on the Webb series.
But instead of accepting
responsibility as the newspaper's top editor for what, if it
had been an inaccurate report, was the blame of the editorial
staff, Ceppos turned the reporter, Gary Webb, into the scapegoat.
Webb was banished from
the story, and thus left unable by Ceppos to defend or further
document his reports, and sent to the journalistic equivalent
of Siberia: a bureau job that forced Webb to drive 100 miles
to and from his new office each day in order to support his family.
Webb quietly left the Mercury News as rumors of threatened
lawsuits circulated in journalistic and investigative circles.
Webb landed on his feet as a librarian and researcher but has
never publicly commented on what happened between the newspaper
and him. Narco News points out that most publicly-volatile
legal settlements and payments of damages are accompanied by
"gag orders" that forbid the winner -- in this case,
it would be the reporter who had been wronged by a newspaper's
fraudulent damages to his career -- from speaking publicly about
anything related to the case.
And so Jerry Ceppos' pattern
of silence and stonewalling was long established even before
he gained the career plum of the presidency of APME. Narco
News further points out the historic pattern of how jobs
like that of APME president are too often given as rewards for
dirty work done on behalf of the powerful. Just as former Colombian
President César Gaviria won the job of president of the
Organization of American States (OAS) as reward for his joining
the US-sponsored attack on his attorney general -- Gustavo de
Greiff, who dared to state that drugs must be legalized -- Jerry
Ceppos achieved the presidency of APME precisely because of his
willingness to engage in unethical activity to protect the hypocrisy
of the drug war.
McFarren:
Still At Large
The cowardice and complicity of the APME has left AP Bolivia
correspondent Peter McFarren in place as gatekeeper of information
for Associated Press and, simultaneously, as lobbyist for a $78
million dollar private-sector water export project.
In the days after our
first report, on October 6, McFarren himself did not file any
reports. Another AP correspondent filed one shallow report in
the time that Reuters filed six. McFarren, temporarily, had something
in common with the roads and highways of Bolivia: he was paralyzed
from communicating. But last week, when the protests were temporarily
negotiated away, McFarren's byline reappeared to cheer the "victory"
of the Banzer regime in the negotiations and to endear himself
once more to the dictator-president he needs to get his multi-million
dollar water project approved.
With the reappearance
of McFarren's byline, the Associated Press and the APME revealed
to all the world their own hypocrisy and corruption, as well
as the arrogance and impunity which has become their trademark.
McFarren's
History as Drug War Para-Journalist
In his "reporting" for AP, as well as McFarren's
own English-language weekly, The Bolivian Times, he has
been a slavish promoter of the US-imposed drug war, especially
when it served his agenda to curry favor with the Banzer regime
of Bolivia.
He began the new millenium
with a report cheering the "success" of the drug war
in Bolivia.
His January 1, 2000 report
can be found online in the Media Awareness Project archives:
In a story titled, "BOLIVIAN
COCAINE FARMERS ARE GOING BANANAS -- AND STRAIGHT," McFarren
claimed that coca farmers were happy with the government's eradication
of their crops and pleased with "alternative development"
programs of the US government and the United Nations.
"Claudio Beltran
used to grow coca plants, but now he oversees dozens of other
Quechua Indian farmers as they pick and process bananas for export,"
wrote McFarren. "He says he's happy with the changes brought
by a government campaign to wipe out production of the raw material
for cocaine, and not only because he makes more money."
McFarren's story had the
motive of covering-up the growing unrest among coca growers,
who have seen their livelihoods destroyed by the US-imposed eradication
program. That discontent, by September, boiled into a nationwide
revolt that succesfully blockaded the main highways and roads
and paralyzed Bolivia for a month. McFarren's version of the
story, however, implied that all was well in the Bolivian region
of Chimoré:
"The situation in
the region is much more peaceful since coca farming disappeared,"
McFarren quoted the peasant farmer as saying. Then McFarren equated
the farmworkers union with narco-traffickers, saying the "cocaine
gaings and coca-leaf farming unions held sway over as many as
250,000 people." In fact, those unions are a thousand times
more democratic than the Bolivian government, their leaders are
elected and major decisions are only made by consulting and achieving
the support of the base membership.
McFarren's role as publicist
-- not journalist -- was clear in his New Year's address. Look
at which institutions he promotes: "The United States government
and the United Nations are investing tens of millions of dollars
in the development of alternative crops to replace coca and fight
the illegal drug industry. Miguel Zambrana, owner of Chapare
Export, began experimenting with banana plantations nine years
ago, backed by $500,000 in seed money provided by the U.S. Agency
for International Development. Assisted by Ecuadoran agricultural
experts and additional loans from the World Bank-financed Bolivian
Export Foundation, Zambrana has built up a highly successful
operation. He employs 200 men and women, most of them former
coca leaf growers, and produces bananas for the Argentine and
Uruguayan markets."
And then McFarren quoted
the then-US Ambassador, Donna Hrinak, to top off his distortion:
"Driving through the Chapare today evokes images of eco-tourism,
tropical fruits and wildlife and moneymaking ventures, images
every day more powerful than the region's past association with
the seediness of drug trafficking."
Nine months later the
coca growers rose up in rebellion. And readers of AP news were
caught by surprise because of the distorted "reporting"
of Peter McFarren.
McFarren's
War on Water
The drug war, in Our América, too often
serves as a curtain of smoke to obscure the large scale looting
of Latin American resources that is the cornerstone of US policy.
In fact, the dispute that
first sparked this year's wave of social protests in Bolivia
was not driven by coca leaf, but by a drug to which every human
being is addicted: water.
McFarren's report of April
10th of this year can also be found at the Media Awareness Project
archives:
McFarren's version of
the events began:
LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) -
The government agreed Monday to back off water price hikes that
sparked a weeklong spiral of violent protests by thousands of
farmers and workers, fueled by the economic crisis in South America's
poorest country.
The protests, which have
virtually shut down Cochabamba, Bolivia's third largest city
and have left six dead, prompted a security crackdown and a ``state
of siege'' decree giving police and the military a freer rein.
An end to the unrest was
in sight Monday evening, after the government reached an agreement
with protest organizers, the Roman Catholic Church and local
officials over an expensive water project in Cochabamba and a
controversial new water law....
The Cochabamba protests
were prompted by a 20 percent increase in city water rates needed
to finance the badly needed expansion of water and sewage systems
in the central city, high in the Andes. Demonstrations quickly
spread to rural areas with thousands protesting a new water law,
unemployment, rising fuel prices and economic difficulties.
And again, perhaps to
obscure the explosive matter of McFarren's own plan to siphon
3,000 liters of Bolivian water per second to copper mines in
Chile, the AP correspondent cynically linked the water protests
with drug traffickers:
On Monday, Information
Minister Ronald MacLean accused drug traffickers of backing the
demonstrations in an attempt to stop a government program to
eradicate production of coca leaf, used to make cocaine.
``These protests are a
conspiracy financed by cocaine trafficking looking for pretexts
to carry out subversive activities,'' MacLean said. ``It is impossible
for so many peasants to spontaneously move on their own.''
The destruction of coca
leaf production has deprived thousands of peasants of their sole
means of income, particularly in the area around Cochabamba.
Read those words again
by the government minister, repeated by McFarren without offering
any counterpoint by the protesters themselves:
``It is impossible for
so many peasants to spontaneously move on their own.''
Again, he is speaking
mainly of Indigenous peasants. The implication that the well-organized
peasant unions cannot "move on their own" and therefore
must be backed by cocaine traffickers is part and parcel of what
Pulso magazine called "the root ideology of Bolivia...
racism."
In each of these stories,
McFarren has done no more than parrot the Bolivian and US governments'
propaganda.
In addition to McFarren's
blatant $78 million conflict-of-interest in which he needs that
same Bolivian government's support for his water export project,
McFarren had another motive to play the racist drug war card
last April: to create a lot of smoke that hides his own water
grab from public scrutiny.
To offer an idea of the
scale of McFarren's water export project, the entire water supply
for the city of Cochabamba -- that which sparked the April conflicts
-- is slightly more than 800 liters per second. McFarren's plan
would take 3,000 liters per second out of water-starved Bolivia.
McFarren,
like APME, Doesn't Answer to the Charges
Not even McFarren has defended himself from these
serious charges. The Narco News Bulletin quoted him fairly
and accurately in Part
I of this series,
and offered him, via an October 6 e-mail, full opportunity to
respond, uncensored, on our pages. McFarren has not offered any
defense of his unethical activities.
McFarren has also failed
to disclose to Narco News, as he said he would upon written
request, the names of the officers and investors behind COBOREH,
the Corporación Boliviana de Recursos Hidricos, who he
represents as a lobbyist to the Bolivian Congress.
In recent days, McFarren's
conflict of interest reared its head again.
As Clifford Krauss reported
in the New York Times of the negotiated truce after 30
days of citizen blockades has frozen the entire Bolivian infrastructure:
The government met the
most important demands of the Aymara- speaking peasants after
Indian leaders threatened to surround La Paz and starve the capital
in a replay of a bloody Indian rebellion in 1781. Sitting across
a table from Indian leaders , government ministers agreed to
prop up corn prices, reverse a land titling process that would
have raised taxes and revert government water rights back to
Indian peasants.
That final point -- "revert
government water rights back to Indian peasants" -- directly
impacts Peter McFarren's $78 million dollar project to export
3,000 liters per second of water from Bolivia to copper mines
in Chile.
What more proof do AP
and the APME need to determine that McFarren has a clear conflict
of interest writing about anything to do with the peasant rebellion
or the Banzer government? His own water grab was part of the
negotiations between peasant blockaders and the government.
In fact, a new controversy
has begun in the Bolivian state of Potosí, from where
McFarren's project will take the water to pump toward Chile.
There, state government and industry leaders who stand, with
McFarren's Quispus Foundation, to profit from the water grab,
are now protesting the government's negotiated agreement with
indigenous and peasant organizations. That's because the agreement
signed between the government and the peasant organizations specifically
places McFarren's water export project on hold.
McFarren's own report
of the negotiated agreement for AP made no mention that the delay
of his water project was part of the accords that were the central
news of his most recent story.
And the daily Los Tiempos
of Cochabamba reports: Government and industry officials in Potosí
have now given the Bolivian government a deadline of November
10th to break its deal with the peasant and indigenous groups
on the water export law, or they will begin protests of their
own.
McFarren is at ground
zero in the controversy. The social unrest in Bolivia exists,
to a large degree, because of his own conflict of interest. Beyond
the "appearance of conflict" that is forbidden by APME's
code of ethics that -- they claim -- governs AP reporters, McFarren
is guilty of a direct and absolute conflict of interest.
The
Public Speaks
The discussion board at the AP Managing Editors Association
web site has brought various commentaries -- all opposed to McFarren's
conflict of interest -- and yet APME and AP continue to refuse
to respond publicly. That discussion board can be found online
at:
One reader posted there:
What newspaper in the
world would allow one of their
reporters to directly lobby the government on the behalf
of huge private interests and continue to report on
events of relevance for those interests? No paper that
follows the APME code of ethics could do that, but
apparently 1550 daily papers that make up the AP are
doing just that.
Can I now assume that
the AP reports out of Colombia
are written by lobbyists for the makers of helicopters
and herbicides? How would that be any different at all
from McFarren's lobbying in Bolivia? If the AP allows
McFarren to get away with this, how on earth can I ever
trust the credibility of another AP reporter again?
Does all this mean that
the APME is a monumental
failure at it's stated goal of "setting ethical and
journalistic standards for newspapers?"
Another reader wrote:
Dear AP,
Is it true? You filter
the news; make the news; and perpetrate the ignorance of the
American people? I always believed it was the Press that would
ultimately keep us free, keep our Constitution in place. In fact,
I see now how you have been aiding those who have sought to erode
our Democracy.
Before, I could only suspect
you. Now I see at least one smoking gun: Your handling of the
Bolivia situation.
The Associated Press and
the AP Managing Editors Association may have the right to remain
silent, but if they wish to be credible news organizations they
have a greater responsibility to respond. Indeed, their own "code
of ethics" states clearly their responsibility to "report
matters regarding itself or its personnel with the same vigor
and candor as it would other institutions or individuals."
AP and the APME have thus betrayed their
very own "code of ethics."
In the meantime, Authentic
Journalism organizations like The
Media Channel in
New York City (with more than 400 affiliates across the globe)
and FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting)
have begun to openly question the Associated Press and its role
in Latin America. FAIR's nationally-syndicated radio show, Counterspin,
heard on 110 radio stations in the United States, featured the
story this week. On that program, co-host Janine Jackson announced
that FAIR is preparing an alert to its members on the AP Bolivia
conflict of interest. Para-journalists beware: FAIR has exposed
and defeated corrupted journalism before.
If the citizens of América
want better journalism, this is the time to fight for it. AP
and the APME have been exposed as paper tigers and false journalists.
Their silence reveals their fear. Of what? They fear the informed
voice of the readers: your voice, the voice of the people. The
very voice that Peter McFarren has censored for years from his
powerful position as AP bureau chief in Bolivia to serve the
racist war on drugs and his $78 million conflict of interest.
Since when did journalism
become a conspiracy of silence? A journalist who cannot answer
to serious charges of conflict of interest and unethical behavior
is no journalist at all. McFarren, Ceppos and the commanders
of AP and APME are not journalists. They are "para-journalists,"
in a racket of mutual protection with the powers that rely on
injustice and untruth to remain in control. And nowhere is that
more evident than in their defense of the indefensible: the drug
war conquest of our América.
Welcome to the 21st century,
an epoch in which journalists have been supplanted by the "para-journalists,"
the paramilitaries of misinformation who do the dirty work for
the regimes that Authentic Journalists once investigated.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Former Boston Phoenix political reporter
Al Giordano is publisher of The Narco News Bulletin, reporting
on the drug war from Latin America. He has written for the Washington
Post, American Journalism Review and scores of other publications.
He receives email at narconews@hotmail.com
Memo
to Civil Society:
What
Can Be Done About Corrupted US Journalism in Latin America?
1. Join
the Discussion at the APME web site:
2. Write
to the APME officers:
President: Jerry
Ceppos, vice president/news,
Knight Ridder; (408) 938-7830; fax: (408) 938-7766; jceppos@knightridder.com.
Vice President: Chris Peck, editor, Spokesman-Review, Spokane; (509) 459-5423,
fax (509) 459-5482, chrisp@spokesman.com.
Secretary: Caesar
Andrews, editor, Gannett
News Service; (703) 276-5898; candrews@gns.gannett.com.
Chair, Journalism Studies: Ed
Jones, editor, The
Free Lance-Star, Fredericksburg, Va.; (540) 374-5401, fax (540)
373-8455, edjones@freelancestar.com.
Vice Chair, Journalism
Studies: Paula LaRocque, assistant managing editor, Dallas Morning News;
(214) 977-8770; fax: (214) 977-8164; palarock@metronet.com.
3. Seek
Alternate Routes to Factual Reporting from Latin America
Subscribe
to the Narco
News Group
to Receive Fresh Reports on the Drug War from Latin America
The
Narco News Bulletin
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Briefings from Latin America
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Closing In on
the Para-Journalists