The School of Authentic Journalism

The School of Authentic Journalism is actually the School of the America's for unwitting naive journalists who are seduced into providing information about the activities of events worldwide to Peter Ackerman, Freedom House and a host of right wing organizations and individuals with whom Ackerman is closely asssociated.

The School of Authentic Journalism is supported by Matching Grants from Peter Ackerman’s International Center for Non-Violent “Conflict”. Jack Duvall who will be teaching “students” at the School is a member of the ICNC.

Peter Ackerman is a close associate of Neo-Con Michael Ledeen. They write articles together.

Peter Ackerman is a promoter of "freedom" in the Ukraine and the Orange Revolution. The Orange Revolution was reversed this week.

Ackerman's support in 2004 for Conflict in the Ukraine based on the idea that the 2004 elections were fraudulent helped result in the installation of a capitalist, free market president Viktor Yushchenko. This week voters voted again for Viktor Yanukovych who Peter Ackerman seems to believe stole the election the first time. Did he steal the election the first time?

Jack Duvall who hob-nobs with the likes of CIA directors, neo cons and other people of the far right is a teacher there at the school, promoting and teaching the value of Conflict.

Duvall, who along with Peter Ackerman who has supported the training of Anti Chavez Venezuelans in the “art” of “Non-Violent Conflict” will be teaching young and old journalists on how to create CONFLICT in nations that Freedom House, Narco News and the ICNC feels need more freedom. Nations like the Ukraine. Nations that more often than not have an alliance with perceived antagonists of the United States. Nations like Iran, Cuba and Venezuela.

Iran recently held elections, which the ICNC claims were fraudulent. They claimed the elections in the Ukraine were fraudulent too in 2004 and supported street protests demanding they be nullified. They succeeded. This week the result of their efforts was reversed.

This from the Financial Times of London:

Mr. Ackerman, who is very wealthy from an earlier career as a financier, says he does not accept government money. Questioned by the FT, Freedom House confirmed it had received funding from the State Department for activities in Iran. It declined to give details but said it was not involved in Mr Ackerman’s work in Dubai.
Freedom House also disclosed that it received $100,000 from Mr Ackerman last year and a further $100,000 from his organization.
In a research study, with Mr Ackerman acting as chief adviser, Freedom House sets out its conclusions: “Far more often than is generally understood, the change agent is broad-based, non-violent civic resistance – which employs tactics such as boycotts, mass protests, blockades, strikes and civil disobedience to de-legitimate authoritarian rulers and erode their sources of support, including the loyalty of their armed defenders.”

One typical maneuver of these organizations whether they be NGO’s or “think tanks” is that are now used by the Central Intelligence Agency as fronts and they claim that whenever an election in a foreign country results in a socialist or anti capitalist victor, that the election was fraudulent. They then help organize and support mass protests by the losing minority groups who supported the losing candidate.

So the School of Authentic Journalism is filled with students who are unaware of the associations of it's funders and their intent. Students at The School of Authentic Journalism attend on a scholarship funded by Peter Ackerman. Students like Ansel Herz who writes critically at times about U.S. involvement but in the last entry on his blog states that the Haitian people are putting their hopes in the U.S. military. The U.S. military is receiving 33% of all aid sent to Haiti. So it’s not the taxpayers who are footing the bill, it’s the donors for the presence of some 10,000 troops. And Ansel Herz supports U.S. troops in Haiti by stating that Haitians like the presence of U.S troops, they can trust no one else.

www.mediahacker.org

Students are taught the value of supporting U.S. troops in Haiti and revolutions in nations outside the U.S. They are encouraged to offer support to groups within these nations who oppose their leaders whether democratically elected (as in Iran, Venezuela and the Ukraine) or not.

From an interview with award winning author and journalist Eva Golinger www.greenleft.org.au/2007/716/37169

On top of that, some of the same groups or individuals have participated since 2004 in training sessions with other US entities such as the Albert Einstein Institute and the International Centre on Non-Violent Conflict. These are the entities that were responsible for helping to promote, fund and advise the “coloured” revolutions in Eastern Europe [in the] Ukraine, Serbia, Yugoslavia, Georgia. They failed in Belarus and they began working here (Venezuela) in April 2003, first with traditional opposition leaders and then, as in those movements in Eastern Europe, they used young people — students.,

There are articles critical of U.S policy in Venezuela and somewhat supportive of Hugo Chavez in Narco News. But one has to ask why is The School of Authentic Journalism being funded in part by the ICNC which according to Eva Golinger, supports opposition to Chavez.

The answer is that The School of Authentic Journalism is not quite "authentic".

Narco News for example had little to no criticism of Barak Obama position on Honduras. And Narco News had no understanding of how events would play out after the overthrow.

Narco News purports to report on the “drug war in the America’s” but really doesn’t touch on the subject of the various cartels and the headlines that are made in Mexico and Columbia.

Almost all the headlines of the most recent Narco News website are about it’s Peter Ackerman funded school.

If you are looking for information on events in the Americas produced from the School of Authentic Journalism, you are most likely going to find a website and Journalists who are funded and trained by a potpourri of teachers, some of whom like Jack Duvall are believed to be working for intelligence agencies of the United States.

Source watch makes the following claim regarding Jack Duvall, instructor at the School for Authentic Journalism

“Jack DuVall is the president of International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC), an organization that has produced what can only be termed propaganda films shown on PBS and on university campuses around the US. Note that ICNC is also a project of Peter Ackerman, a right-wing operator. DuVall and James Woolsey, the former head of the CIA, founded the The Arlington Institute.”