Authentic Journalism Is a Question of Survival

It’s Become the Concrete Way to Understand What Happens in the Street

By Fernando León Romero
Special to The Narco News Bulletin

September 30, 2009

All too used to be passive beings in which we are surrounded, we settle in to receiving commercial bombardment of what is called “news.” Where is the real journalism? We change the channel, leaf threw some newspapers, and we find nothing more than a small part of the story of what is happening outside.

The format of news to which we have become accustomed to is designed to destructure our thinking. In fast succession, we see that the Mexican Senate approved the infamous Chávez Chávez as attorney general, that Mel Zelaya returned to Honduras; information of importance to us all but which is presented only for a moment. In the next second we see decapitated police in Guerrero or the rising tide of swine flu. We’ve grown used to this, to receiving everything halfway – if we learn anything at all.

Our brains get soft and cease to question the content and we hide out of fear of being decapitated ourselves, or of dying of influenza, or from a gun shot in the subway of Mexico City.

Our problem is that we hope to receive something. The real world is out there and needs each and every one of us to discover it. Authentic journalism is based on that. It is about unmasking information and breaking the information blockade that eliminates everything that happens down below.

For nine years, Narco News has tried to break through those lines, and, step by step, destroy them. Going up against powerful interests and with few resources, it has been able to become the lighthouse for authentic journalism.

After years of training young journalists through The School of Authentic Journalism, Narco News has succeeded in building a real journalism team, a journalism in which it doesn’t matter if someone else gets angry over our reports, a journalism that doesn’t answer to any special interest, a journalism where everybody has a seat: Authentic journalism.

Next February – if we meet our fund-raising goal – the 2010 School of Authentic Journalism will convene. The School doesn’t charge any price, because the rights to education and information belong to all of us. The training will be given to youths of all ages throughout the world who want to understand how make authentic journalism work to bring accurate information to the entire planet. In the current credibility crisis of the mass media, authentic journalism has become the necessary tool for all of humanity.

Censorship and disinformation don’t fit in this kind of journalism. Information must be available to all, building the capacity to act among its readers. That’s why we have to keep forming our ranks – that’s fundamental – and it is a job we all share to make happen.

That’s why we ask you to help create this world where we all fit, where nobody is denied the information we need, where journalism faithfully reports reality. Your donations are necessary to make this School happen, and also to keep reporting to you from across this hemisphere as we do it.

Once you donate, you can know and feel how you are contributing to change this world.

You can donate online at this link:

http://www.authenticjournalism.org

Or you can send a check to:

The Fund for Authentic Journalism
PO Box 241
Natick, MA 01760 USA

Thank you so much,

Fernando León Romero
Mexico City

Lea Ud. el Artículo en Español

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