Another Journalism Is Possible… Let’s Make It Reality!

Journalism Also Needs a Revolution

By Maylin Alonso Chiong
Havana, Cuba

December 8, 2009

“You make the pictures and I’ll make the war” was the recommendation of William Randolph Hearst, one of the principal figures of the “Penny Press” in the United States, to his correspondent in the Spanish-American-Cuban conflict of 1898.

More than just an invitation, the request by “the magnate of journalism” would last, as a concept, right into the present day: the manipulation of reality and its manufactured legitimacy through the media.

Maylin Alonso Chiong

Why then are these institutions sustained? Because in the twenty-first century people still buy newspapers? Maybe these questions cancel each other out: Why vote in elections if governments, as repressive regimes, are responsible for the disillusions of the people throughout history? Why do the needs for information and for social order exist? The answer could maybe be because everything depends on those who are pulling the strings from behind the curtain.

Latin America today lives an age of hope with leaders and projects that have bet on a different path than that which for centuries despaired so many millions of anonymous souls via the front pages of newspapers. This is the moment to change history. And the journalism that it depends upon also needs a revolution to break the schemes that impose standardization, decontextualization, amnesia and the “supposed objectivity” of information. That’s why it’s necessary to believe and create: To create those who can make this revolution happen and to believe that, after more than a century of manipulations, another journalism is possible…

Help us to do that with the School of Authentic Journalism, with your donation, today, at this link:

http://www.authenticjournalism.org

Or send a check to:

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

Thank you,

Maylin Alonso Chiong
Havana, Cuba
School of Authentic Journalism, Class of 2010

Please support Maylin’s scholarship via this link:

Lea Ud. el Artículo en Español

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