Thursday November 18 2004 - I am a news reporter and this is not my real name. You’ve been reading my articles for years, on national wires and in magazines. Well, you were. That was until the war in Iraq. Poof. It is gone. Freedom of the press is dead and buried in America.

If you are a news reporter and want to say something about the more than 100,000 civilians dead in Iraq, you can forget it. If you want to cover a local protest, where peaceful protesters are being shot by rubber bullets or gassed, forget it.

If you want to report on mass genocide in Fallujah, forget it. If you want to write about how the U.S. military has always known where Osama bin Laden was, forget it. If you want to take a serious look at 9/11, better forget it and download some new hacker software and toss your cell phone away.

U.S. media functions on advertising and power/politics. If the newspaper is driven by greed, the publisher kisses up to its advertisers and the companies in town that provide jobs, like Raytheon and Honeywell.

Young soldiers from poor homes don’t matter, especially if their skin is red, brown or black -- send them to Iraq. Poor white kids are good to go too. Of course there’ll be the red, white and blue banner coverage when they are killed, back home in Hometown America, articles on how they died a hero fighting for the war to defend …What? If the newspaper is just looking to "grease some wheels," and not make money, the publisher has one eye on political access to the White House and the other on bullying the state and federal courts with a shit load of press swayed to the newspaper’s agenda.

Well, knowledge is power. Study your local newspaper and call up the editor and publisher. Protest outside every media outlet that fails to carry the truth about the Bush Administration, war in Iraq, Fallujah, 9/11, Election 2004 and local protests.

Always have photographers and camcorders on hand at protests to record police abuse and outside agitators; take photos to the newspapers or send online.

Watch CNN and Fox News and note all the major advertisers; organize boycotts and protests of all the financial sponsors of the news programs. Investigate the corporate structure of the media and advertisers and see where the money flows. It’s fun -- search for corporate gains on the Google news search and also track the corporate owners through the state’s corporation board, it is public information. Get a list of the campaign contributors to the Bush campaign and cross-reference it with advertisers and media ownership.

Embarrass them; the media hates to be embarrassed; politicians hate to be caught with their pants down.

Track U.S. senators and their relationship to energy companies. Get lists of the owners of energy companies and their security firms. Start writing letters, ask news editors why Martha Stewart is in jail and not the executives of Halliburton, Bechtel, Raytheon, private security firms and every other American company that has greased its pockets with the blood of young U.S. soldiers and civilians in Iraq. Build white crosses for the dead in Iraq; post the faces of the mutilated children in Iraq all over town.

Listen to the extreme rightwing radio stations, call in, once you are on the air, challenge them. Organize boycotts of their advertisers.

The 2004 Election? Anything that can be downloaded can be uploaded; quick as a whistle, run your own numbers.

Read Alexandra Robbins book on Skull and Bones, "Secrets of the Tomb," about how Bush and Kerry were both members of the Yale secret society, along with the developers of the first atomic bomb and all the moneyed institutions. News editors do pay attention to letters and phone calls from readers. Tell them their reporters are doing a shitty job, name names. Organize boycotts of the worst media in town; build alternative media, real alternative media. Reach out to people all over the world, on the Internet, let them know that Americans do care that genocide was just carried out in Fallujah; post comments to news media online around the world.

Tell them: America is not the white face of George Bush; it is not the foul smell of the greased underbelly of oil.

Organize and resist.