Guerrilla News Network, Inc. (GNN) is a privately-owned news web site and television production company. "Guerrilla News Network" was registered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office on March 1, 2005. [1] Its self-proclaimed mission is to "expose people to important global issues through guerrilla programming on the web and on television." They do this both through original articles, reporting, and multimedia, and with republished commentary and news articles from a variety of sources, including other progressive commentary sites, mainstream news agencies, and blogs. GNN also hosts blogs for its registered users and an unusually lively and active discussion forum, and may in the future feature collaborative user-driven investigations and user-submitted photo- and videojournalism. The company also produces feature documenataries, books and music videos.
A completely free website, GNN's web site, GNN.tv, is user driven; users/contributors receive a free blog page. GNN publishes submissions based on a voting system, wherein users/contributors who have had more publications on GNN have more voting weight. Submissions with enough votes are published to the front page, while everything else remains on its creators page until getting enough votes.
GNN allows submissions of original content in the form of 'articles'. These must be wholly original, sourced, and accompanied by a photograph or illustration. GNN also publishes headlines.
GNN was founded in 2000. Their headquarters are in New York City and they have production facilities in Berkeley, California. GNN has produced a series of award-winning short web films about such subjects as the CIA's involvement in the drug trade during the 1980s and genetically engineered foods. They also have produced two feature documentaries, the award-winning BattleGround: 21 Days on the Empire's Edge (which aired on Showtime), and recently released Sundance award-winning documentary American Blackout, which chronicles the disenfranchisement of African-American voters. The film has received praise from the black community for highlighting the ongoing infringements on their civil rights and is the center-piece of a national grassroots effort to "protect the vote." GNN produced a book entitled True Lies, published by Penguin-Plume in 2004, which Publishers Weekly called "an extensive contribution to ongoing critiques of the media." They have also produced politically-charged music videos for artists such as Ad Rock, Eminem and 50 Cent.
NewsVideos
GNN is probably best known for its series of "NewsVideos" - short, music-driven web documentaries. The following is a list of their NewsVideo library which can viewed on the Video section of their web site. The videos have been screened in numerous film festivals around the world and are compiled in two compilation DVDs, Ammo for the Info-Warrior and Ammo for the Info-Warrior II:
Crack The CIA: GNN's award winning documentry on the CIA's involvement with selling of narcotics (Winner, 2003 Sundance Online Film Festival)
Countdown GNN video scratches to AdRock's Nader remix
The Diamond Life Gems and carnage in Sierra Leone
Closer The Fall of Baghdad
Contaminated The new science of food
Drug War Reality Tour A controversial bus ride through America's heroin capital, Kensington, PA.
S-11 Redux (Channel) surfing the apocalypse.
Cynthia McKinney: Live in BK Bring The Troops Home Now!
IBM and the Holocaust Big Blue painted red and black...
GNN Workshop: Brazil The Quiet and Subtle Cyclone
CopWatch Bad boys... what you gonna do?
AfterMath Unanswered Questions from 9/11
When the Smoke Clearz Slamming the current state of Hip Hop
The War Conspiracy The CIA suppression of Peter Dale Scott
The Most Dangerous Game The truth behind Nazis and U.S. psyops
GNN Profile: Robert Sterling Guerrilla warfare in the information age
GNN Profile: John Stauber Stealing the spin from the PR industry Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Media & Democracy, Madison, WI on the PR industry's efforts to manage public opinion.
True Lies Slam poet Talaam Acey on the war on terror
Gary Webb: In his own words A tribute to the late reporter
This Revolution (with reviews) GNN Film Premieres at Sundance 2005; DVD Out Christmas Day, 2006; Acquired by Sundance Channel for national broadcast in Spring 2007
Tibet: Faith in Exile The Lesson of Non-violence
UA 93: The Road to Shanksville An exclusive video excerpt from GNN's book True Lies
The Last Plantation Cynthia McKinney was deliberately targeted by white U.S. Capitol Police Officers, part of the systemic racism of the U.S. Capitol Police Force say four African American Capitol Officers.
Music Videos
In addition to its work as a news web site and a documentary film production company, GNN produces politically-charged music videos for major recording artists. They are probably best known for the video "Mosh" for the rapper Eminem released shortly before the 2004 presidential election.
White America GNN Premieres the 'Dirty Version' of the Eminem video
Heat A 50 Cent Gangster Rap Music Video
Time and Time Again The new video for Chronic Future
Eminem's Mosh Eminem's Mosh Music Video - Directed by GNN's Ian Inaba
Review: "For an 18-year-old voting for the first time, Mosh provokes the same impact that the barricades of May 1968 in Paris did on the 'children of Mao and Coca-Cola,' as film genius Jean-Luc Godard put it." - Pepe Escobar, "American rebel vs American al-Qaeda", Asia Times.
Mosh Continues A recut version of the Eminem music video
Feature Documentaries
GNN has produced two feature documentaries, BattleGround: 21 Days on the Empire's Edge and American Blackout.
BattleGround: 21 Days on the Empire's Edge (2004)
In late 2003, GNN's Anthony Lappe and Stephen Marshall traveled to Iraq. The film follows the story of Frank al-Bayati, a former Shiite guerrilla who is traveling back to Iraq for the first time since the 1991 uprising against Saddam Hussein. Al-Bayati was wounded, captured, tortured and then escaped. He spent more than a year in a Saudi Arabian refugee camp before being repatriated to the U.S. Lappe and Marshall follow al-Bayati as he tracks down his family members and capture the emotional reunions. Al-Bayati's optimism for what he calls "liberated Iraq," is countered by the reality the filmmakers find on the ground. A growing insurgency is creating more enemies than it is killing. With candid interviews with top American commanders, the filmmakers capture the U.S. military's inability to grasp the nature of their enemy. In addition, Lappe and Marshall bring a Gieger counter and conduct their own radiation tests on Iraqi armor that has been hit by American shells. They find evidence of the use of depleted uranium, the controversial radioactive metal used in some American munitions.
Review: The New York Times Magazine: "a movingly human and many-sided portrait of the war." BattleGround won the Silver Hugo Award for documentaries at the 2004 Chicago International Film Festival. It was acquired by Showtime USA and HomeVision for broadcast and home video distribution, respectively.
Director: Stephen Marshall Producers: Anthony Lappe, Lisa Hsu
[American Blackout http://www.americanblackout.com] (2006)
Directed by GNN’s Ian Inaba, American Blackout chronicles the recurring patterns of voter disenfranchisement witnessed from 2000 to 2004. Told through the life of Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney who took an active role investigating the scrubbing of the Florida voter roles and then found herself in her own election debacle after publicly questioning the Bush Administration about the terrorist attacks of 9-11. American Blackout travels from Florida to Georgia to Ohio examining the contemporary tactics used to control our democratic process and silence political dissent.
Director: Ian Inaba Producer: Anatasia King
Awards:
Winner – Special Jury Prize, Sundance Film Festival 2006 Winner – Best Documentary Feature, Cinequest Film Festival 2006 Winner – Stand Up Audience Award, Cleveland International Film Festival 2006 Winner – Special Jury Prize, Independent Film Festival of Boston 2006 Winner – Audience Award, Columbus Alive Deep Focus Film Festival 2006 Winner – Best Documentary Feature, Urbanworld Film Festival 2006
Books
In 2004 GNN released a book of investigative journalism and media criticism, entitled True Lies (Penguin-Plume). True Lies was written by Anthony Lappe and Stephen Marshall with additional reporting from Ian Inaba. Reviews:
From Publishers Weekly: Making an extensive contribution to ongoing critiques of the media, Web-based Guerrilla News Network reporters Lappé and Marshall charge that the public is served by members of "a lazy and compliant news media" who often act as mere "glorified stenographers" to the government and corporate sources they rely on for information and answers. To back up their claims, the authors collect un- and under-reported news stories from the past few years, giving careful scrutiny to alternative versions of election fraud, conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11, the notion of American empire, Gulf War illness and military vaccinations, "crossover" voting (voting in two primary elections) and electronic voting machines. Perhaps the most compelling chapter deals with the U.S. military use of depleted uranium in armor-tipped weapons. Introduced in the first Gulf War and used again in the Balkans, the recent invasion of Iraq saw a renewed proliferation of these "radioactive kinetic penetrators." This time they were used in heavily populated areas now occupied by American forces as well as Iraqi civilians. Why, the authors ask, "has the mainstream American media paid so little attention to this literally radioactive issue?" Lappé and Marshall also critique the left-leaning organizations and activists for distortions in their dispatches. Their own presentation, which allows most of the stories to speak for themselves without heightened language, does manage to lead by example.
“Must read.” – Marc Maron, Air America Radio
“Stephen Marshall and Anthony Lappé are among a dying breed of journalists who still believe that journalism is about giving a voice to the voiceless and holding people in positions of power accountable for their actions.” – Metro, Silicon Valley’s weekly newspaper
Disinformation Accusations
In October 2006, a small group of long-time GNN site members went public with their belief that GNN was an American intelligence disinformation operation[2][3]. This belief is founded on several key points:
1. Site editor Anthony Lappe's work for the USIA in Palestine. According to Lappe, this project entailed teaching the technical aspects of videography to young Palestinian videojournalists. While conceding that the situation was ethically questionable, he has defended his actions by claiming that he was young at the time, and that his work for the USIA helped him learn about the internal workings of the American State Department.
2. Co-creator Stephen Marshall's involvement with a pirate radio station dedicated to overthrowing the Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha. Abacha's regime accused the station, Voice of Free Nigeria, of being a CIA front, but Marshall has denied this.
3. Producer Ian Inaba was formerly employed by the Israeli technology company Check Point. The company's founder, Gil Shwed, formerly served in the secretive Unit 8200 electronic warfare branch of the Israeli Military. Whether Inaba's employment with Check Point should be considered evidence of links to Israeli Intelligence remains contested.
4. GNN has received funding from the Ford Foundation for their documentary American Blackout, which chronicles the disenfranchisement of African-American voters from the Civil Rights era to today. There is no evidence that the Foundation's funding altered the film's content in any way. The grant was recieved by GNN after the film was completed and screened at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. However, critics claim that the Ford Foundation has had ties to CIA in the past and that it funds moderate-left media sources as a matter of propping them up over more radical sources, rather than altering funded content itself. This issue, like the rest of the accusations, remains hotly debated.
It is important to note that no direct evidence exists to prove the accusers' hypothesis, though they argue that this is due to the nature of psy-ops themselves, and that it's a matter of "connecting the dots." Supporters of GNN have argued that such an approach is unnecessarily speculative and unreliable. The accusers admit to being a group of four former GNN community members. Apart from one vocal critic, Canadian Andrew Stromotich, they have refused to reveal their identities. This has prompted several GNN users to put forth the counter-hypothesis that their allegations are motivated by personal or professional agendas and that their allegations fail to take into account GNN's large body of work criticizing and investigating the CIA in particular, and U.S. government policies in general. The anonymous accusers in turn deny that this is the case.
See also
External links
References
- Stephen Marshall interviewed
- Article about Channel One, from the Ryerson Review of Journalism.
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