Joining Media With Conscience
By Don Williams

I was hurting. So when Shahram asked me to join Media With Conscience and its stellar cast of contributing editors, I answered Yes. The invitation spoke volumes about Shahram's heart and soul, and his quest for a better world. You see, I had recently made a momentous decision to stop writing my weekly column for a major newspaper, The Knoxville News-Sentinel and its online counterpart. The decision was painful. I had been with the Sentinel for nearly 22 years, first as a full-time writer, the past 11 as a weekly freelance columnist.

However, I felt I could not continue, as a matter of, well, conscience. Even though my column had been declared the most popular among some 30 weekly columns at the newspaper in a readership poll, and even though I'd won more than my share of awards, my editor directed me to write my column only every other week. It seems I wrote far too many columns critical of the Bush administration and not enough "local columns" in the words of my editor, for this staunchly Republican region.

My conscience told me I must stop writing for this newspaper at once, because I'd always be waiting for the other shoe to drop--the cancellation of my column--should I stray too far from the paper's conservative stance. This would amount to undue pressure--even if only subconsciously--and I would no longer feel free to speak my mind. I decided almost immediately that I'd reached a divide with the News-Sentinel that could not be overcome. I said as much in a farewell column, which the paper declined to publish.

I was gratified when many in the reading community of East Tennessee and online readers from across the country spoke up in my defense. About a thousand supportive emails and letters to the editor flowed in. I've kept many of these. Offers of new writing opportunities appeared in my inbox almost overnight. Among the most treasured was Shahram's invitation to become a contributing editor to Media With Conscience. I had long admired this forum for reporting and commentary that exhibited not only a conscience but a large heart and a soulful and empathetic approach to the world--while providing insight and rational analysis. As you realize, these phenomena do not always fit hand in glove.

Mostly, I was heartened to find my commentary flowing across digital space with reporters and commentators I had come to admire over the past six to eight years. Greg Palast, Norman Solomon, Will Durst and the rest had long had opposed the bombing, invasion and occupation of Iraq, efforts to cover up the truth about global warming, the abandonment of a just peace in the Middle East, the corruption of the U.S. Constitution, the denial of human rights wherever that occurred, the destruction of a dozen treaties around the world that leaders of scores of nations had sweated blood to achieve, the revival of the nuclear arms race. They'd opposed stolen elections and many other sins of the Bush Administration from the beginning, and had shown no favoritism to other regimes that threatened to turn back the clock on human progress and the rise of a new consciousness in the world. All passed the supreme test of refusing to wilt before pressures brought not only by government officials, but also by a public that would have made all of us complicit in war crimes and other transgressions for which history will not forgive our leaders.

Shahram chooses well day to day in linking to articles that matter, just as he chose well when enlisting contributing editors to Media With Conscience. I've never been prouder to be associated with any group of individuals.

May they long endure as examples of how media must conduct itself if our world is to survive.

God bless you, Shahram. God bless you Media With Conscience.

Don Williams

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