Consortium News at Left Forum in New York to Honor Bob Parry

Consortium News will hold a panel discussion at the Left Forum in New York on Sunday to honor the memory of Robert Parry, the late founder and editor of this website. 

To remember Bob, the panel will discuss “The Death of Principled, Non-Partisan Journalism.”  Bob was completely non-partisan. Any political or business leader from any political party, group or nation was fair game for his incisive reporting. It was reporting based on the principle of seeking not just factual accuracy, but the meaning of those facts. He was driven to convey to the public not only information, but as close to the truth of a matter as was possible to obtain.  Bob told a C-Span interviewer in the 1980s that to criticize the U.S. government was to open oneself falsely to the charge of anti-Americanism. In fact Bob’s principled and non-partisan journalism was for him the very essence of being American. 

In an era in which just a handful of powerful corporations own virtually all of the mainstream media that dominates mass communications in America, a viewpoint such as Bob’s is crowded out of the mainstream. The internet has given a place for dissent to be heard. But in this hyper-partisan and unprincipled age of journalism, dissenters who are shut out of the corporate media are dismissed as unhinged or as propagandists. Consortium News seeks to remain in the forefront of the struggle against such repression.

On the panel to discuss the issue are Margaret Kimberley, a columnist and editor at Black Agenda Report, and a Consortium News contributor; Don DeBar, the producer and host of Community Public Radio; and Mark Crispin Miller, a professor of media at New York University. Joe Lauria, the editor-in-chief of Consortium News, will moderate the discussion.  It will take place on Sunday, June 3 from 2 pm to 3:50 pm in Room 1.99 at John Jay College, 445 W 59th St, New York, NY 10019.  Register here for the forum.