TruePublica Achievements In 2017 – Despite Censorship

By TruePublica Editor: Steadily inclining visits to the TruePublica website throughout 2016 was unfortunately undone as a direct result of Google changing their search algorithms right at the beginning of the year. Many left-leaning, dissenting and alternative news websites complained and there were countless reports emanating from all over the world of censorship. In an era dominated by social media, search engines, fake news, propaganda and automated bots, was it really that surprising that the worlds biggest publisher became the worlds biggest censorship engine. We even found misreported site visits to distort any successes achieved throughout the year.

However, despite this, where we have no ability or rights to object, nearly three quarters of a million pages of content was read in the year.

TruePublica is a project to publish news, analysis, commentary, reports, intelligence and research on events of public interest, and do so by sifting out propaganda, disinformation and fake news. TruePublica does not publish sport, celebrity or fashion. We don’t do gossip, click-baiting or campaigns to deceive or misinform. We don’t sell anything and don’t steal data. We don’t even use ‘cookies’. Even more unpopular nowadays, we publish long-form articles.  We are slowly building a hub for independent journalists and the organisations on the front-lines fighting for our hard-won rights and liberties. We were never expecting to be a hugely popular website.

The most searched for words on our website throughout 2017 was propaganda, corruption, democracy and surveillance.

Our articles were featured in the European Financial Review, World Financial Review, Global Research, Spuknik News, Reddit, The Liberty Beacon, Vox Political, Counterpunch, Consortium News, Information Clearing House and many, many more.

TruePublica broke two particularly important stories. The first was a case of connecting the dots with the illegality of the Brexit campaigns:

 

The Link Between Brexit And The US Election, MI6, Fake News And Dark Money

 

Three weeks later, The Guardian published the same story, now subject to a bitter legal battle that is still being fought out today.

TruePublica also broke the story of the American FBI issuing images and information including the name of the perpetrator of the Manchester arena bombing that enraged not just the British security services but the Prime Minister as well. We reported that – “two minutes from the incident itself a reporter from an American media outlet, issues images of the carnage. Andre Walker’s employer is no less than Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.” All of the detail we reported was confirmed by the security services over the following few days in:

 

Manchester Bombing: What We Don’t Know

 

TruePublica worked alongside Corporate Europe Observatory to bring a story of corruption from inside the EU trading bloc which was fostered by the EU Commission. Our article “Corruption in the European Union” republished all over the world – and by some notable outlets.

We worked with only the most transparent of Think Tanks and charities to publish their battles on behalf of our civil liberties and human rights and also published their fights in the courtrooms.

We have just joined up with Food & Water Europe and Food & Water Watch who are working with groups on both side of the ocean to fight the trans-atlantic fracking pipeline on the fracking frontline. We are also looking forward to joining the fight in 2018 at the very heart of the housing crisis that is blighting civil society in Britain.

TruePublica became a media partner with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and Insurge Intelligence and added George Monbiot and Dr Nafeez Ahmed to our growing list of excellent journalists.

We were honoured to welcome Paul Larudee, a Fulbright-Hays lecturer and US government advisor to the Middle East, a co-founder of the Syria Solidarity Movement, and a major figure in the pro-Palestinian movement, contributing to our reporting team.

The Rutherford Institute headed up by the attorney who represented Paula Jones in a sexual harassment suit against former President Bill Clinton in the mid-1990s, who lives and works in Charlottesville, Virginia joined us and writes every week about the decline of civil liberty in America.

We built direct contact with more journalists in the USA, South America, France, London and the Middle East.

In the last few months of the year we added ThinkPublica – a project that brings great new ideas from the best Think Tanks to offer alternatives to the damaging anti-social systems that neoliberal capitalism has brought to our nation. Then we added NewsPublica – a news aggregator to help combat the informational bias waged against us all.

Our top three most read stories for the year were centred on state propaganda, lies and collusion by the security services and treachery from within the corridors of political power.

 

In January: BBC Caught Staging FAKE News Chemical Attack To Drag Britain into Syrian War

In May:  The Manchester Bombing – The Uncomfortable Truth

In October:  How Brexit Was Engineered By Foreign Billionaires To Bring About Economic Chaos – For Profit

 

It is a sad fact that Britain in particular is now one of the most oppressive countries in the western world for having a free press. Reporters Without Borders latest Press Freedom Index reminds us just how serious the problem is. “A heavy-handed approach towards the press – often in the name of national security – has resulted in the UK slipping down the World Press Freedom Index. Parliament adopted the most extreme surveillance legislation in UK history, the Investigatory Powers Act, with insufficient protection mechanisms for whistleblowers, journalists, and their sources, posing a serious threat to investigative journalism. Even more alarming, the Law Commission’s proposal for a new ‘Espionage Act’ would make it easy to classify journalists as ‘spies’ and jail them for up to 14 years for simply obtaining leaked information.”

 

The result; Britain has fallen yet again in world free press rankings to 40th place behind countries such as Ghana, Namibia, Surinam and the like.

 

In Britain today, a handful of billionaires set the news agenda, corporate advertising censors their own bad behaviours, the state has a considerable hand in censorship and propaganda and journalists are more fearful of losing their livelihoods than ever. Independent and alternative news websites have closed at an alarming rate.

Last week, TruePublica was also made a media partner of The Media Fund. In their words, this is “a groundbreaking new cooperative to finance independent media in the UK. Through a website and app the fund will provide maximum simplicity for public users to set up regular direct debits to independent media organisations; taking the burden of fundraising off the shoulders of independent media organisations whilst increasing publicity and outreach.”

Website: themediafund.org – YouTube:  Video

All in all, we hope you agree that TruePublica has offered a different approach to news and information.

Finally, we would like to thank our other contributors, people like Felicity Arbuthnot, Rick Sterling, Craig Murray, Jonathan Cook, Andre Vltchek, Chris Cole, John Pilger, Paul Craig Roberts, Robert Burrowes and Steven Lendman for their incisive work. Also our partners who stand up every day to call out corruption and wrong-doing at the highest level. Some of these people were arrested, sued or harassed and on occasions put everything on the line because they were investigating or reporting the truth or fighting court battles.

Like it or not, journalism is hailed as the 4th pillar of democracy and a world without it would bring an era of darkness where the diversities of the world become obsolete, where corporate and political power would quickly reach an apogee of crime and corruption, where accountability becomes an antiquated notion and where the masses have no voice. Where you can – support it.

 

Have a great holiday break – Have a great 2018.

TruePublica Will Be Back Wednesday January 3rd

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

---