You people who have been reading our reporting over the last year and a half know what we are doing. Now we need you to support it.
As a collective of professional journalists disgusted at the betrayal of the profession by the corporate media and most of those who work for the owners, we have accomplished a lot, breaking stories and bringing to light news and perspectives on events that were not available anywhere else before we ran them, and sometimes even after we ran them–things like the video of the IDF execution of Furkan Dogan on the Mavi Marmara, exposing the CIA link to trained killer Raymond Davis in Pakistan, the $4.6 million bribe, on the eve of the Wall Street occupation, to the NYPD paid by the corrupt bank JP Morgan Chase, the Robin-hood-style campaign for Philadelphia sheriff of Cheri Honkala, and more. Just check out below our two weeks of solid and unique coverage of the occupation movement.
What’s missing is the support from you our readers. Sure, some of you have been extremely generous, and we are endlessly grateful, but most of you–even most of you who read us regularly–have sent us zip. And that’s not how it works! If you want journalism that’s not controlled by advertisers, that’s not bought by government grants, then you have to support it. There’s no other alternative.
For us to do what you want us to do, we need support from every reader. Not a lot. The model we are proposing is a democratic one: $5 per reader per year. At the going rate, that works out to about three cups of coffee per year!
We know these are hard time, but if every one of you would either send us just $5 in cash, a check for $5, or use the convenient Paypal button, just one time each year, we four journalists could devote full time to bringing you the blacked-out news that nobody is covering, or that the corporate media lie about.
Isn’t that worth such a small effort on your part? We think so, and we trust that you all will decide it’s the way to go. And please, remember too to take the extra step, when you read a story you think is important, to send it on to people you know, and introduce them to us. At the end of every article on TCBH! there’s a button to “Send to a friend.” Use it please, as often as you can, and help us reach more people.
Of course, if you’re flush and want to give us more, we’re happy to have it. Give us a $50 donation, and you get, for free, a signed copy of Dave LIndorff’s classic “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006), or, if you prefer, a copy of our attention-getting, all cotton, bright red T-Shirt, with the motto: “…a major destabilizing influence” (Be sure and email us your address and shirt size: S, M, L or XL).
UPDATE: $275 contributed so far today, mostly in the smallest donations. That’s a great sign! Maybe our readers are getting the idea. Keep it coming!