Narco
News '02
Authentic
Journalism on the "War on Drugs" in Latin America
"The Name
of Our Country is América" - Simón Bolívar
What the Critics
Are Saying...
The
Authentic Journalism
Renaissance
in Their Words
"Smart and thorough political
reporting."
-- Jenn Shreve, Salon.com
"Aided by a handful of brave online journalists and the power of a population who had no desire
to return to a military dictatorship, the democratically elected
government of President Hugo Chavez managed to survive both a
coup attempt and the failure of the world's elite news media
to accurately report what was happening in Venezuela… Despite
a total media blackout in Venezuela and disinformation in the
U.S. news media, somehow the truth got out about what was happening...
Al Giordano's Narco News website -- an excellent source of information
on Central and South America -- along with the Independent Media
Center helped to break the media blockade."
-- Randolph T. Holhut
The Albion Monitor
"Happy Birthday Narco News! Two
years old and setting the platinum standard for authentic journalism.
Al Giordano's White Paper on the aborted Venezuelan Coup: Three
Days That Shook the Media, is just the most recent monumental
achievement by the founder of the little website that packs a
worldwide wallop!"
-- Barry Crimmins
Political Humorist & Columnist
www.barrycrimmins.com
April 18, 2002
"Even as the Times was propping up Carmona, Narconews.com was posting a portrait
of a blindfolded and gagged Simón Bolívar, the
19th-century hero who liberated Venezuela from Spain... Giordano,
a dogged critic of the Times, was vindicated the next
day when an international outcry led to Chávez's reinstatement
and a virtual front-page correction in the Times."
-- Cynthia Cotts, Press
Clips
The Village Voice
April 16, 2002
"This beautiful new trade paperback edition (of Abbie Hoffman's Steal This Book) features
introductions by two of today's most important activists, Lisa
Fithian and Al Giordano, both of whom worked with Abbie during
the 1980s. They provide historical context and personal anecdotes
that bring new readers up to speed on Hoffman's unique brand
of political wit and humor, his inimitable sense of theater,
and his legacy as a voice of spirited defiance in a time of overwhelming
uncertainty."
-- Four Walls Eight Windows
Press
Spring 2002
“In a little over a year,
Narco News has broken a string of scoops focusing on the war
on drugs. It exposed a conflict-of-interest scandal surrounding
a series of Associated Press articles about Bolivian politics,
which led to the resignation of AP's Bolivia correspondent, Peter
McFarren. It also broke the news that the president of Uruguay
Jorge Batlle has recently begun calling for the legalisation
of drugs.”
-- Sean Dodson
The Guardian of London
June 25, 2001
“Al Giordano's NarcoNews is known
for its hard-hitting reporting, especially when it comes to exposing
the myths of the drug war and government and corporate involvement
in drug trafficking.”
-- Fairness and Accuracy
in Reporting
April 13, 2001
“Giordano’s reporting on the serious conflicts of an AP reporter in Bolivia was right on the
mark and well documented in my view. The AP was slow to acknowledge
Giordano’s basic point — that its reporter could not
lobby the Bolivian legislature and continue to function as a
journalist — but the wire service ultimately distanced itself
from its former correspondent, thus underscoring that Giordano
hit the bull’s-eye.”
-- Howard Kurtz, Media
Critic, The Washington Post
Interview with the Boston Phoenix, April 13, 2001
“Narco News has broken important stories on the drug war.”
-- Editorial by The Nation
January 28, 2002
"Top notch reporting on
Al Giordano's Narco News from the conflicts in Colombia
and other conflict zones in Latin America."
-- Danny Schechter ("The
News Dissector")
Former Producer, ABC News
Editor, The Media Channel
March 30, 2002
“Four years ago, veteran journalist
Al Giordano moved for security reasons to an undisclosed location
in Mexico to write firsthand on the drug war… Giordano,
an investigative journalist who used to work for The Boston
Phoenix, moved to Mexico to expose what he believes is the
complicity between some legitimate businesses and government
officials and the drug traffickers
-- Alexandra Marks
Christian Science Monitor
July 24, 2001
“Many of the most-respected media critics in the country have noted (the lawsuit) aimed
at chilling the free speech of Narco News. Every one of these
respected journalists has found only ethical and truthful practice
of journalism by the defendants being sued by your powerful clients…
Mr. Giordano is a respected journalist telling the truth from
Latin America about the war on drugs, espousing concerns with
which you are familiar. Mr. Giordano documents events of concern
to Americans on whose behalf the drug war is being waged in Latin
America, at risk to his own safety.”
-- U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney
(D-Georgia)
Letter to Robert Strauss of Akin Gump
August 3, 2001
“Banamex didn't know with whom
it was picking a fight… It occurred to Giordano that he
could also effect social change through journalism. For the next
eight years he worked as a political reporter, ending up at the
Phoenix, where he still occasionally publishes… Unhappy
with what he saw as the decline of journalism in the U.S., he
wrote an essay to that effect called ‘The Medium Is the
Middleman,’ which his friend the late Jeff Buckley adapted
into a song called ‘The Sky Is a Landfill,’ (it
appears on Buckley's posthumous 1998 record ‘Sketches
for My Sweetheart, the Drunk'). Shortly after that, Giordano
moved to Mexico.”
-- Mim Udovitch
Rolling Stone
August 30, 2001
(In story that named Al Giordano as “Hot Muckraker”
for 2001)
“Nonetheless, Jeff (Buckley), (Tom) Verlaine, and
the band managed to nail preliminary
versions of four songs. One of them, an anthemic wall-toppler
called ‘The Sky Is a Landfill,’ was inspired
by ‘The Medium Is the Middleman: For a Revolution Against
Media,’ an anti-media tract by writer Al Giordano.”
-- David Browne
from the book Dream Brother: The Lives and Music of Jeff and
Tim Buckley, (HarperEntertainment, 2001)
“We at the Phoenix knew
we had something special on our hands when, more than two years
ago, we published a major exposé by Al Giordano on the
alleged drug-trafficking activities of one of Mexico’s richest
and most powerful bankers (see ‘Clinton’s Mexican
Narco-Pals,’ News, May 14, 1999). What we didn’t
know was that the story and its aftermath would turn Giordano
into an international cause célèbre.”
-- Editorial, The Boston
Phoenix
August 16, 2001
“The new independent journalists of the Internet, as personified by Al Giordano, play a crucial
role in preserving the democratic aspirations of First Amendment
protection.”
-- Electronic Frontier
Foundation
Amicus Brief to the New York Supreme Court
July 2001
"Al Giordano said he would
put the drug war on trial, and after
a July 20 hearing in a New York City courtroom, few doubters
remain."
-- Editorial by The Razor
Wire
Publication distributed to U.S. prisoners
Summer Issue, 2001
“Make no mistake, Narco
News posts a style of writing you won't find landing in your
typical American driveway or on the major wire services. The
slant is opinionated, left-wing and activist. But that doesn't
undermine its legitimacy, especially on the Web… Last fall
Giordano gained media attention when an Associated Press correspondent
in Bolivia resigned after Narco News reported that the AP writer
had lobbied the government there on a water project.”
-- Amy Langfield
Online Journalism Review
July 29, 2001
“With more than two decades of experience as a journalist and activist, Alberto Giordano,
the editor-founder of Narco News - one of the most widely-read
web pages by analysts of organized crime and narco-politics -
has confronted a lawsuit in the U.S. courts due to the attack
by one of the magnates of Salinism, Roberto Hernández…
In a way it could be said that Giordano's tribune is that of
David. Tenacious, stubborn, obstinate, this obsessive smoker
who follows the path of Subcomandante Marcos in utilizing the
Internet to declare war against injustice, recognizes that, in
effect, the founding of Narco News is an idealistic, but realistic,
project. His web page is ultra-recognized throughout the entire
world. Giordano knows that the power of the word can be lethal
and that, at the core, was intuited by Roberto Hernández
who has engaged in all legal subterfuges to try to flatten his
critics… A boxing analogy could be made about the fight
between Hernández with the editor of Narco News. The Banamex
magnate appears as a heavyweight but with a clumsy manner, while
in the other corner is a middleweight, light, agile, ready to
battle to the ultimate consequences.”
-- José Martínez
M.
Nationally syndicated columnist, Mexico
Author of The Professor’s Teachings: The Investigation of
Carlos Hank González (2000, Oceano Press)
"David slew Goliath with a stone,
and similarly on December 5, 2001 in a New York courtroom, tiny
NarcoNews.com cut down the giant Banamex, humbling billionaire
narcotraffickers and money launderers, and setting a big precedent
for the First Amendment rights of online journalists."
-- Chuck Armsbury
Senior Editor, The Razor Wire
(Most Widely Read Newspaper in the U.S. Prison System)
March 21, 2002
"Sean launched into a story about
how Al had helped put his boss, a regional DEA chief who trafficked
cocaine, behind bars. Sean also said Al had called him 'The dirtiest
DEA agent in the US' on his (1990s) radio show - a claim Sean
said was off base. But instead of being angry at Al, Sean had
the utmost respect for him."
-- Peter Gorman
Journalist, Iquitos, Peru
September 2001
“Al Giordano recognizes
that since this matter of the lawsuit began he has spent hours
and hours preparing his defense and has been obligated to leave
things that before seemed fundamental on the side. But not even
that seems to deter his steel will to mount his defense with
all the moral authority that he has earned through an impeccable
journalistic career.”
-- Beatriz Fregoso
La Crisis (Mexican national newsweekly)
January 16, 2001
“They can grit their teeth and suffer Al's reporting, day after aggravating day, as he exposes the
ugly underside of this endless war on drugs - and actually makes
things happen, like real journalists are supposed to do.”
-- Gary Webb
Pulitzer prize winning journalist
Author of Dark Alliance (Seven Stories Press)
April 2001
“The AP confirmed yesterday…
that McFarren has resigned. McFarren's extracurricular efforts
were disclosed by journalist Al Giordano, a former Boston
Phoenix writer who recently launched NarcoNews.com.
-- Howard Kurtz
The Washington Post
October 24, 2000
“Giordano, a former political reporter for the Boston Phoenix, has never been
sued for libel before; indeed, he's usually the one making the
accusations. This past October, an AP correspondent resigned
after Narco News caught the reporter lobbying the Bolivian government
on behalf of a private company.”
-- Cynthia Cotts
Media Critic, The Village Voice
December 20, 2000
“The task of Giordano and the web site www.narconews.com has been important. Details
have been revealed there about the falsification of information
about drug trafficking and accusations have been made about US
hypocrisy in the war on drugs.”
-- Carlos Ramirez (Mexico’s
most widely-read newspaper columnist)
El Universal and 24 other dailies
January 8, 2001
“For much of the '80s and '90s,
Al Giordano cut a wide swath among Massachusetts journalists
and political junkies.”
-- Mark Jurkowitz
The Boston Globe
April 4, 2001
"I suspect that silencing Giordano
himself would be an utter impossibility."
-- Dan Kennedy
Media Critic, www.dankennedy.net
(Giordano's former editor at the Phoenix)
The Boston Phoenix, April 13, 2001
“Authentic journalism has
a first and last name: Alberto Giordano.”
-- Editorial by the daily
Por Esto!
Mérida, Yucatán (Mexico’s third largest daily
newspaper)
December 16, 2001
“In little more than a year
of existence, NarcoNews has scooped or shed new light on many
a drug war-related story that the American media has overlooked.”
-- Mark K. Anderson
Wired.com
May 8, 2001
"Narco News, its website, and the writers who post information, are entitled to all the
First Amendment protections accorded a newspaper-magazine or
journalist... Furthermore, the nature of the articles printed
on the website and Mr. Giordano's statements at Columbia University
constitute matters of public concern because the information
disseminated relates to the drug trade and its affect on people
living in this hemisphere..."
-- Supreme Court of the
State of New York
December 5, 2001
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