Founding editor Bob Parry left a legacy of strict, non-partisan journalism, really the only kind of journalism that there is, which this site has endeavored to continue, writes Joe Lauria.
By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News
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On Nov. 15, 1995, Robert Parry, one of the country’s leading investigative reporters, started a website on something called the internet that was like no other that had existed before. Thirty years later it is still going.
For the Associated Press and Newsweek, Bob had uncovered major stories. He blew the cover on Iran-contra, one of the greatest scandals in U.S. history. He first reported on the C.I.A.’s relationship with the Nicaraguan Contras in their narcotic shipments into the United States. And he put the spotlight on the first October Surprise in the 1980 presidential election.
But revealing crimes and malfeasance by the U.S. government did not sit well with his mainstream editors. They tried spiking his stories, they set up absurd demands — like asking Oliver North to confess — and at one point told him to stop asking too many questions “for the good of the country.”
After working on an October Surprise documentary for PBS’ Front Line, Bob left establishment journalism behind so that he could simply do his job unhindered. He found a like-minded consortium of journalists whose stories had also been suppressed to begin Consortium News.
Against ‘Conventional Wisdom’
The late Robert Parry
It started on paper as a newsletter mailed to subscribers’ homes. But on Nov. 15, 1995, Bob launched the first online, independent news site in the U.S. He beat Salon.com online by five days and established outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal by several weeks and months.
More importantly, Bob Parry was at the forefront of alternative online news that questioned establishment narratives and Washington “conventional wisdom.”
He covered stories the mainstream media wouldn’t, and took angles on stories that were being ignored. With virtually no staff, besides the help of his sons and long-time assistant Chelsea Gilmour, Bob built a following, and enough readers to fund the operation.
Thousands came to depend on Bob’s take on the news. A TV presenter once told me that he would wait to see what Bob had written that day before deciding what his show would be about. While Consortium News has never come close to being mass media, its audience attracted influential people in Washington and elsewhere.
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Bob wrote:
“The point of Consortium News, which I founded in 1995, was to use the new medium of the modern Internet to allow the old principles of journalism to have a new home, i.e., a place to pursue important facts and giving everyone a fair shake.” But, he added, “More and more I would encounter policymakers, activists and, yes, journalists who cared less about a careful evaluation of the facts and logic and more about achieving a pre-ordained geopolitical result – and this loss of objective standards reached deeply into the most prestigious halls of American media.
“This perversion of principles – twisting information to fit a desired conclusion,” he went on “– became the modus vivendi of American politics and journalism. And those of us who insisted on defending the journalistic principles of skepticism and evenhandedness were increasingly shunned by our colleagues, a hostility that first emerged on the Right and among neoconservatives but eventually sucked in the progressive world as well. Everything became ‘information warfare.'”
Bob continued to break stories about the Reagan era into the 1990s, including the existence of a secret “perception management” program run by the C.I.A. from within the White House.
VIPS
U.S. Army personal of 315th Psychological Operations C search Iraqi suspects at the Abu Ghurayb Market after a grenade attack on American soldiers in Baghdad. (SSGT Stacy Pearsall, USAF)
With the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Consortium News became the home of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, a consortium of former intel offices who exposed the faulty intelligence leading to the war. Like honest reporters just trying to their jobs, Bob said, there were also honest intelligence officers trying to do the same.
Bob wrote that Republicans started the downward trend in politics and journalism by first “weaponizing” information to delegitimize their opponents. “Rather than accept the reality of Nixon’s guilt, many Republicans simply built up their capability to wage information warfare.” He wrote:
“The idea had developed that the way to defeat your political opponent was not just to make a better argument or rouse popular support but to dredge up some ‘crime’ that could be pinned on him or her.”
Soon the Democrats would be using the same tactics.
“The trend of using journalism as just another front in no-holds-barred political warfare continued – with Democrats and liberals adapting to the successful techniques pioneered mostly by Republicans.”
Thus Bob, in just trying to do his job as a reporter, became increasingly critical of the Democrats too.
He wrote groundbreaking stories on the Obama administration’s wars in Syria and Libya and especially on the U.S. engineered coup in Ukraine. He was especially fierce about Democrats who lost their skepticism and embraced the intelligence agencies. He wrote:
“Ironically, many ‘liberals’ who cut their teeth on skepticism about the Cold War and the bogus justifications for the Vietnam War now insist that we must all accept whatever the U.S. intelligence community feeds us, even if we’re told to accept the assertions on faith.”
Perhaps’ Consortium News‘ and Bob’s biggest story was being in the forefront of skepticism on the now thoroughly debunked Russiagate story, which was taken on faith from unnamed intelligence sources.
Bob defended Julian Assange as early as 2010 against government designs to arrest and imprison him, which did not please many Democrats, especially after the 2016 election.
For taking an independent stand based on where the facts led him, Bob upset both Republican and Democratic partisans.
That’s because he left a legacy of strict, non-partisan journalism, really the only kind of journalism that there is, which this site has endeavored to continue. It led to personal attacks on Bob from Republicans and Democrats, oblivious to the fact he was critiquing their political enemies too. The attacks on this site for the same reasons have continued.
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Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange.
“And he put the spotlight on the first October Surprise in the 1980 presidential election.”
In his book on this subject, he admitted that he could not say for certain that it was true. I think that shows a high level of integrity.
A Paean to CN’s founding editor, Bob Parry
Blind Spots of Partisanship
The bias ‘blind spot’ is the cognitive bias of failing to see the impact of biases on one’s own judgment, while being quick to recognize them in others.
Is the ability to be non-partisan an innate human trait?
Individuals may have innate personality tendencies that make them more or less likely to adopt strong partisan identities, but becoming non-partisan is ultimately a learned ability that is also significantly shaped by psychological development and conscious choices in navigating social and political information.
Is there such a pure ability in human reasoning to distinguish between the subjective and objective self?
The human experience is fundamentally subjective, and we always interpret the world through our individual perceptions and thought processes.
Apparently, there is not a single, “pure” ability to completely and objectively distinguish between one’s subjective and objective self; rather, it is a complex, developed skill involving self-awareness, critical thinking, and a conscious effort to recognize and mitigate personal biases.
In other words where the fundamentally subjective human mindset is involved, claiming to be totally objective is highly improbable, and more importantly, unwarranted, unless, or until we succumb, en masse to our alienation to machines.
Partisanship is a complex phenomenon with both positive and negative dimensions. While it can provide a sense of identity and community, an overreliance on ‘negative partisanship’ can be detrimental to democratic processes and social cohesion. The key lies in finding a balance between supporting one’s party and maintaining a willingness to engage with and understand those who hold different views.
The Human Capacity to Differentiate
While all experiences are ultimately processed subjectively, humans do possess the capacity for objective self-awareness and reasoning, though it is a cultivated ability, not a “pure” or effortless one.
While the ability to distinguish between subjective experiences and objective reality is a fundamental aspect of human cognition, it is not a purely natural ability, in the same way basic sensory perception is. It is instead a complex skill that develops through a combination of innate cognitive capacities and environmental factors such as language, social interaction, and abstract thought.
Humans have the natural potential for this distinction, but its realization and sophistication depend heavily on cognitive maturation and environmental learning, making it an emergent ability rather than an instinctual one.
In a nutshell, it takes a lot of individual introspection to objectively distinguish between one’s subjective and objective self!
Note:
Subject observations, gleaned through continuously expanding PI (personal intellect), paraphrased with the grammatical assist of machine technology.
May we see the downfall of the MSM!