Consortium News is comprised of former insiders at senior levels of intelligence and mainstream media who broke with the establishment to share their unique insights about the world with our readers.
Aerial view of CIA headquarters.in Langley, Virginia. (Carol M. Highsmith, Wikimedia Commons)
By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News
CN at 30
What distinguishes Consortium News from other independent media is the special character and background of our writers and editors.
While there are many talented “citizen journalists” who produce fine independent news sites, there are none that are founded and continue to function with the insider knowledge of Consortium News.
CN‘s founder Robert Parry achieved a special place in the annals of mainstream journalism with his investigations into the Iran-Contra scandal for the Associated Press.
It was Bob’s work that uncovered the role of Oliver North in the scheme to bypass Congress’ decision to stop funding the Nicaragua Contras by covertly selling arms to post-revolution Iran — through Israel — and using the proceeds to illegally fund the counter-revolutionary militants.
After Bob’s stories were spiked at the AP and then at Newsweek, he realized he could no longer work inside the mainstream and brought his experience and knowledge to the fledgling world wide web to launch Consortium News in 1995.
Around the time of the U.S. war of aggression against Iraq in 2003, which Consortium News was among the very few U.S. outlets to oppose, Parry approached former C.I.A. officer Ray McGovern and others to write for the publication.
That began a long collaboration with the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), with CN exclusively publishing their trenchant memos to the U.S. president, as well as articles from McGovern, C.I.A. whistleblower John Kiriakou, ex-C.I.A. Elizabeth Murray, Ret. Army Col. Ann Wright, F.B.I. whistleblower Coleen Rowley, former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter and other senior, ex-U.S. intelligence officials.
Consortium News’ advisory board has also been peopled by former influential insiders of the stature of Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg; former U.S. Senator Mike Gravel, who Ellsberg gave the Papers to; Pulitzer Prize winning former New York Times correspondent Chris Hedges; a former senior British diplomat, Ambassador Craig Murray; and the legendary former mainstream journalist John Pilger, whose articles CN also published.
Ellsberg worked for the Pentagon and the RAND Corporation, and Pilger was a correspondent for The Daily Mirror and a columnist at The New Statesman.
Robert Parry receiving the 2017 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in London on June 28, 2017. From left to right with Parry, are Victoria Brittain, John Pilger and Vanessa Redgrave. (Shirlee Matthews)
The editorial side of Consortium News is run by journalists who formerly worked for establishment media. CN‘s deputy editor Corinna Barnard is a former Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswire editor.
CN columnists include Patrick Lawrence, a former Asia editor for The International Herald Tribune; As’ad AbuKhalil, a professor of Middle East politics at the University of California; as well as McGovern, who delivered Oval Office briefings to Presidents Ronald Reagan and President George H.W. Bush; Kiriakou, who led the capture of al-Qaeda militant Abu Zubaydah; and Ritter, a former U.S. Marines counter-intelligence officer who as chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq blew the whistle on the impending U.S. invasion of that country.
The executive producer of Consortium News‘ webcast CN Live!, Cathy Vogan, was a university and film school lecturer in France, Germany and Australia, and has worked at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and other TV networks.
Consortium News Editor-in-Chief Joe Lauria is a veteran journalist with decades of experience in some of the most powerful establishment media. His first professional job was with The New York Times in 1975, making this his 50th anniversary in journalism.
In 1990 he began reporting on international affairs from United Nations Headquarters in New York for numerous newspapers, including the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph of Britain; The Star of Johannesburg, The Montreal Gazette and six years for The Boston Globe and six and a half years for The Wall Street Journal.
The Consortium editor was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London Insight team and has made numerous mainstream media appearances, including on the BBC World Service, CNN, the PBS NewsHour, C-Span, Sky News and ABC’s Good Morning America. He won journalism awards from the Center for Public Integrity and the United Nations Correspondents Association.
Having been on the inside of the Establishment, these writers, editors, producers and board members work to provide the public with a significantly different point of view of international and domestic U.S. affairs than the mainstream corporate media.
There is no other publication around with this roster of former insiders turned dissident. It is a reason to support Consortium News’ continued work during its 30th Anniversary.
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.
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Thank You, Consortium News.
You truly are a most valuable and RARE hub of lighthouses! Sat bold atop a solid rock in a black sea made tempestuous by tyrannical intent, your news articles consistantly pierce through the ever-thickening smog of propaganda, misinformation and outright deception with blinding clarity. You are a bastion for hope and humanitarianism.
Sadly, I’ve yet to find another such organisation/online news source with the level of integrity I’ve become used to here. It’s as simple as that – your actions speak as loud as your articles. Your word appears to actually be your bond!
One thing I truly appreciate which annoys me greatly with practically every other news site I come across, be they alternative or otherwise, is that links found in articles posted here always take the reader directly to the information’s source and not simply to another ‘in-house’ (and often unrelated) article. Consequently, it’s so much easy to dig deeper into any topics addressed on Consortium News because of this ‘old school’ method of routinely adding links to pertinent sources existent outside of one’s own website.
Lastly, I can’t finish without mentioning my appreciation for the comment moderators for what I can only assume is a particularly time-consuming fight against hordes of trolls and spam-bots in the ‘reply’ sections and, for the decent people who comment here.
Not since the first chat rooms at the very beginning of the free internet have I come across so many mature, honest and considered comments by some incredibly human beings and I’m honoured to have the opportunity to share my thoughts alongside them.
W/o a doubt, “CN‘s founder Robert Parry achieved a special place in” the Universe! Bob Parry’s legacy,“LIVES” Large!”
Thirty (30) years, later, Robert Parry’s “Free Press” is still rock’n its online newspaper, “Consortium News dot com” (CN), blazing trails per the interdependence of its independent, investigative journalists, independent contributors, academics, authors, activists, legal scholars, judges, VIPS rock’n The Parry’s “One love. One heart. Let’s get together & be all right” i.e., Consortium News dot com.
….. i.e., “I sent one of these spiked articles to Bob and he published it.” [From that day, “Swoosh!” Nothin but Net!] “I became part of his consortium of mainstream journalists who found a way to get out his unapproved work.” Joe Lauria
IMO, “Consortium News dot com” is like having coffee w/“the Bhudda” of, by & for” liberation from suffering, i.e.,
…“Democracy is two wolves & a lamb voting on what to have for lunch”; AND, “Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote,” i.e., Robert Parry, The Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism! AWARDED “for the kind of reporting that distinguished Martha, in her own words “the view from the ground”. This is essentially a human story that penetrates the established version of events & illuminates an urgent issue buried by prevailing fashions of what makes news.” Wikipedia
Long Live, Consortium News dot com.“Keep It Lit!” via the window of opportunity, above. “Open” 24/7. TY!!!
I thank them all and those who continue to give us the truth in the face of all those who falsify truth!!