Hey everyone, I’m Mnar Adley, founder and editor-in-chief of MintPress News and director of our new video project “Behind the Headlines”.

I have an urgent appeal to make to everyone who cares not only for our first amendment but for the future of our planet. Independent, watchdog journalism that holds the military class accountable is under threat.

With the war in Ukraine raging on and corporate media outlets pushing a pro-NATO agenda – we’ve entered wartime where having access to alternative information to the war machine is crucial to preventing escalation. The nuclear arms race is not a joke. 

We’re experiencing an unprecedented amount of censorship, unlike anything we’ve seen before. 

Just in the last month, independent antiwar journalists have been targeted in organized smear campaigns, de-platformed, outright purged off of social media platforms, and even given “state-affiliated” labels on their accounts. Youtube has deleted hundreds of thousands of historical videos for prominent antiwar journalists and figures including Abby Martin,  Chris Hedges, and Lee Camp, and is demonetizing political content everywhere to hit our bank accounts.

Our very own fundraisers on Gofundme were taken down without reason and an opportunity to appeal. 

 And this doesn’t even include the past 5 years being algorithmically shadowbanned by Big Tech. 

These are the modern-day book burners.

They are trying to discredit the work of the most important dissenting voices of our time. They want to cause division and censor any information that challenges the corporate and military establishment’s agenda. They want war to fill the bank accounts of the executives at Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. 

For the last several years, MintPress has been at the forefront of sounding the alarm about the deep state working with Silicon Valley tech giants like Google, Facebook and Twitter to control the free flow of information and your news feed to ensure any alternative narrative to the establishment algorithmically disappears. 

We’re nowhere near backing down because the future of our planet and the prosperity of peace and justice depend on our reporting. 

This is why I consulted with anti-censorship, pro-free press, and human rights experts on our nonprofit board– including Mickey Huff, president of the Media Freedom Foundation and the director of Project Censored; FBI whistleblower, Coleen Rowley; and international human rights attorney, Todd Pierce– to create a new video reporting project called Behind The Headlines. To help us build this project we will need your support.

We need to raise $400,000 in the next year, so we’re creating our first phase fundraiser to be stated for $200,000.

It’s a two-month campaign.

The goal is to create a video platform that is a 100% people-funded non-profit video platform with the most important dissenting names in independent media that have felt the brunt of this censorship campaign. 

We’re working with Political Comedian Lee Camp and documentary filmmaker & investigative journalist Dan Cohen.

In addition to our aforementioned board for Behind the Headlines, we also have an esteemed board of advisors, including investigative journalists and filmakers John Pilger, and Abby Martin; Israeli peace activist Miko Peled, Bolivian journalist Ollie Vargas, and Palestinian academic Dr. Ramzy Baroud.

Lee camp is from a long line of political comedians from George Carlin to Bill Hicks ……. We’re giving him a platform with full editorial freedom to write and produce his own political comedy show. 

Lee Camp’s shows are like a form of investigative comedy. They give the audience something to think about regarding key issues of the day that are often either distorted in the establishment press, or ignored altogether. Given the many challenges we face from the climate crisis, war, and global pandemic, it’s important to laugh when and how we can, otherwise, we’d just have to wail and cry. Lee blends wit and dark humor with quality reporting that is truly a call to action. 

Dan Cohen is a jack of all trades. He’s an investigative journalist based in Washington DC reporting from the belly of the beast. He’s currently working on several guerilla-style documentaries where he traveled to the heart of conflicts targeted by US imperialism and corporate pillaging– the first is a three-part series about a revolution in formation in Haiti. Another is about the failures of the peace accord in Colombia. Another about resistance in Gaza and Israel’s temple movement and their plans to destroy al Aqsa mosque as part of an end of times prophecy.

All of this traces back to the US empire and its plots to create and maintain instability around the world. In addition to documentaries and written investigations, Dan is also leading our video investigative series called Behind The Headlines. He has exposed how corporate media is in bed with the Pentagon, the Biden administration and much more.

For far too long, some of the best and most important dissenting journalists have been forced to turn to foreign state media to produce the most groundbreaking watchdog journalism because the US legacy media has failed the public. It specializes in producing fast food news that is sensationalized, divisive, working as a mouthpiece for the two-party duopoly, weapons manufacturers like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon and hawkish think tanks that are funded by NATO. 

We don’t have a watchdog media anymore, we have an extremist corporate lapdog media beating the drums of war. 

We can’t rely on the legacy media in our own country to tell us what’s really happening at home and around the world, and we shouldn’t have to go to foreign state media outlets to fill in those holes. We have to create our own and be the media!

The truth is we can’t keep waiting for the oligarchy to give us a media that represents we the people. It’s time we unite on a broader front of non-partisanship that holds the elite accountable – the way journalism is defined by our first amendment – to revive the fourth estate and create our very own media that goes Behind The Headlines. 

It’s time that we put our money where our mouth is because our First Amendment and its free press, free speech principles are on life support. 

To help us build this project we will need your support. We need to raise $400,000 in the next year, so we’re creating our first phase fundraiser to be stated for $200,000. It’s a two-month campaign that will support the following: 

1. Lee Camp’s new weekly political comedy show ‘The Most Censored News with Lee Camp’
2. Completing four documentaries by Dan Cohen:
   1. Endgame Apocalypse: Inside Israel’s Temple Mount movement and its plans to destroy al-Aqsa Mosque [Trailer coming soon] 
   2. Israel’s May 2021 Mega Assault on Gaza & the armed resistance that won the war [Trailer coming soon] 
   3. Inside Colombia’s narco-state & diabolical plot between DEA & Colombian government to plunge the country into a state of civil war 
   4. Three-part series: Haiti’s rising resistance movement against Neoliberalism & US occupation and how the US is trying to quash it 
3. And a monthly Behind The Headlines Report, an investigative video project with Dan Cohen covering the military-industrial complex, how propaganda works and much more. 
4. Weekly Video Podcast interview series with Mnar Adley 

The funds for this campaign will help us cover all the production & editing costs, social media and travel costs associated with creating high-quality video content and documentaries. In addition to this, the funds will help us cover the costs of launching our website.  

I hope you’ll join us today!

Mnar Adley

Director of Behind The Headlines & MintPress News