Salem-News.com Kicks Ass

Freedom of the press exists for those who own one.

Salem-News.com

(SALEM, Ore.) - Free media, it is a beautiful thing, and we are free to write crazy headlines like this, which I am actually borrowing from the historic Los Angeles radio station that had KLOS 95.5 kicks ass plastered on LA and Orange County billboards back in the 70's and 80's.

This is a new day and the value of honest news seems to have fallen. It's been replaced by mold-fitting, impersonal, corporate advertising and infomercials. TV stations that once delivered hard hitting information now rely on those half-hour product presentations and God knows, the commercials from big pharma.

I'm just a journalist publishing news nearly solo for seven years. I could be handcuffed to my laptop and might not know. I left a career in TV news to launch Salem-News.com and rarely regret it, though I wonder in amazement why it hasn't gone farther than it has.

As far as our writers go, they are hard charging and talented beyond belief. Many are authors, others are professors, attorneys, doctors, and a good percentage of this team either served in the military during war or covered war and conflict as reporters and photographers; the list is long and distinguished and perhaps the best part, is that some members of the team are not people with titles, and their articles sometimes are even closer to the hearts of our readers. Accomplishments and titles are to be respected, but the real measurement of a person is still the ambition of their heart.

Several like myself, are Genocide fighters who never apologize for articles if they are 'offensive' to the offending parties. We're nice, fair and reasonable, until it comes to flagrant idiocy and we have no ability to look the other way when it comes to obvious violations of things like human rights.

Some day when it is all breaking into pieces, and this nation is disintegrating due to greed and corruption and warmongering, I will look back at these years and wonder with all of my heart how and why we have had to operate without support, without backing. It blows my mind to consider what would happen if this team and its news were to be promoted on a national scale, it wouldn't take very much, or very long, to see real change begin to take place.

But then America has become a society of suicidal complacence and perhaps our ideas about peace and honor and decency among human beings are just dated, 'yesterday', you know? People with money all too often are hypnotized by it and it becomes the center of their lives. That is wrong, saving humanity should be the goal of every person with resources, but that is a dream.

Plenty of readers and people who claim to be readers, write emails every day telling me our goals of saving the Palestinians are wrong, that peace is not something this earth will ever see, and that we should hand our interest over to the future, forget what happened to people in the past. We say no way.

It isn't like I really believe them, but the United States has changed and media is corrupt and we are the only agency that has weathered the storm this long without either selling out or closing our operation. This totally unique position is to be attributed to our unflexing role and refusal to sell out to the highest bidder; particularly those whose philosophies contrast with ours.

I wish people could understand this and get behind us. We could turn this shore-bound ship around. We need a national advertising campaign and we need to get into more homes. Once we reach a certain point it will happen by itself, but we have to get there and somebody would have to put something into it to make it happen. Me, I'm too busy publishing news and I'm a journalist, not a salesman, and therein lies the problem.

In the meanwhile, with a hundred writers in 25 we'll keep covering police brutality, human rights violations in Palestine, Genocide in Sri Lanka, deadly corruption in Rwanda, we'll continue to see certain stories take off and make a life changing difference. It isn't like we are low on time, it is more like we're nearly out of time.

People love their money, they love their new Cadillac, and they are concerned with their own scene. Screw everyone else, that's the message I constantly receive. Most people who have resources aren't concerned with saving this world for future generations, so good day and good luck.

If at any time a party is interested in working with us, my email is below, and there is a PayPal icon on the top right side of the main page.

Tim King is a former U.S. Marine with twenty years of experience on the west coast as a television news producer, photojournalist, reporter and assignment editor. In addition to his role as a war correspondent, this Los Angeles native serves as Salem-News.com's Executive News Editor. Tim spent the winter of 2006/07 covering the war in Afghanistan, and he was in Iraq over the summer of 2008, reporting from the war while embedded with both the U.S. Army and the Marines. Tim holds numerous awards for reporting, photography, writing and editing, including the Oregon AP Award for Spot News Photographer of the Year (2004), first place Electronic Media Award in Spot News, Las Vegas, (1998), Oregon AP Cooperation Award (1991); and several others including the 2005 Red Cross Good Neighborhood Award for reporting. Tim has several years of experience in network affiliate news TV stations, having worked as a reporter and photographer at NBC, ABC and FOX stations in Arizona, Nevada and Oregon. You can send Tim an email at this address: newsroom@salem-news.com