Independent Media Sandy Close and the Force on Nature
All over the world, Journalists are being killed, intimidated, harassed, and imprisoned. According to the U.N. 55 journalists were killed in 2021. Eight journalists have been killed this year in Mexico alone. Access to the internet and social media is curtailed or reduced in many countries and disinformation and propaganda campaigns fill the platforms worldwide. In addition, public opinion about media and journalism are at an all-time low. Unlike most Americans unaware or oblivious to these statistics. A rare breed on awakened humans have committed their lives to cultural story telling, otherwise known a journalism.
by Rose Davis
The Guardians of the Truth. Sandy Close is one of these essential Guardians of the Truth tasked with force
feeding a dull public healing knowledge and awareness about mass incarceration, white supremacy, widening economic inequality a militarized form of global capitalism that disproportionately affects people of color and women worldwide. – and rely of silence and erasure.
She started her career covering China and Vietnam as an editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review in the mid-1960s. She became editor of Pacific News Service in 1974 and was a pioneer in developing youth media. In 1996, she founded New America Media, the first and largest collaboration of ethnic news organizations. Her
work has received several awards, including a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Award” and the 2011 Polk Award for Career Achievement. In 1996, a film she co- produced, Breathing Lessons, won an Academy Award for best short documentary.
She founded Ethnic Media Services in 2017 to continue her work amplifying and elevating the voices of ethnic media. She is surrounded by a cadre of committed staff and an animated support group.
The heated arena of the world stage has uncovered fractures of our society revealing , evidence of systematic injustice and other corruptions oppressing the people. Journalist are duty bound to let the citizens know in order to start new transformative conversations. Investigative reporters are critical to this task.
Concern for ones safety and avoiding the media groups who serve as an arm of a violent power structure requires caution. Based on the observation by many scholars, no true vacuums exist in nature (on Earth) because the difference in pressure results in an immediate force that acts to correct the equilibrium. Nature abhors a vacuum, and in such a manner so too does the corporate hierarchy.
With obstinate fervor Sandy Closes et al are pushing to fulfill their commitment as Journalist for the People. Ethnic Media produced a recent forum highlighting the danger that investigative journalists are faced with the closer that they get to exposing the mechanisms of the hidden and forbidden realities behind the secret
curtain of power. Four veteran journalist were interviewed and sold their individual stories suppression, intimidating and life threatening encounters Sandy and her team have fought valiantly to keep journalism alive relevant and significant. The vacuum that nature abhors is occupying space in the media universe
that nature dictates must be filled with the incessant, unrelenting push by committed journalists to bring accurate information to the people while bringing storytelling back to its original journalistic intent and remaking media in the pursuit of justice. Nature, like justice is slow. Patience is required when dealing with Indigenous time, but as Sam Cook told us, A Change is going to Come.
The Tipping Point is Close
