An op-ed by Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and John Perry Barlow, on the launch of The Freedom of the Press Foundation, an organization I'm proud to also serve as a board member.
We believe that not only does WikiLeaks need to survive, it must be joined by an array of others like it, edited transparency media that have so far failed to emerge, self-censoring victims of the chilling effects of the WikiLeaks blockade. Moreover, the watchdogs that do exist struggle for backers as brave as they are. The old media fear the fears of their advertisers. The new ones often depend on a few large foundations or donors, who, being from the elite themselves, may hesitate to part its curtains.
The answer, we believe, is to crowd-fund transparency, making it easy and relatively anonymous for the public to support the best watchdogs in one place, setting up a kind of United Way for the Truth.
Here's a previous BB post about the organization's launch.
Image: Daniel Ellsberg outside Bradley Manning's hearing at Ft. Meade, via HuffPo.
