Welcome to the Alternative Orange
Blaine DeLancey
| Revision History | ||
|---|---|---|
| • October 10, 1991 | Newspaper: Funded by Syracuse University students. | |
| The Alternative Orange: Vol. 1, No. 1 (pp. 2) | ||
| • August 24, 2000 | Webpage:  . | |
| DocBook XML (DocBk XML V3.1.3) from original. | ||
Howdy. As the only dinosaur left from last year's Alternative Orange staff I'm writing. We are sure of our mission, which is to provide coverage which you won't find in the mainstream press, be it The Daily Orange, CBS news or The New York Times. We try to cover stories and issues that you haven't heard about in the main-stream media, or to give a different slant to items that the main-stream media has covered inadequately.
It has been argued that a more effective press censorship exists in the United States than anywhere else in the world. When most of us think of censorship, we have an image of some government official looking over articles and deciding what can and cannot be made public. What distinguishes the main-stream U.S. media is that the government doesn't have to pay attention: the media is careful not to print or broadcast anything the government wouldn't like. Certain stories are simply not appropriate, it seems, for the public to hear about. A brief example: during the 1988 presidential election, In These Times contacted virtually all of the major media -- ABC, CBS, NBC, The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times-Mirror, NPR -- with the story of George Bush's secret negotiations with Iran in 1980. According to Reagan/Bush campaign worker Barbara Honegar, Bush was the major actor in persuading Iran not to release the U.S. hostages until after the 1980 election, to better insure that Reagan and Bush would win. The payoff was arms shipments to Iran from 1981 onward. Honegar's charges were corroborated by members of the Iranian parliament, the former president of Iran, and various other sources. In These Times, which broke the story of the negotiations, tried to persuade other media to cover it. They all refused: ABC, in response to the question of why, told ITT that the story simply wasn't newsworthy. We thought that it was, and reported it rather extensively. That sort of story is, basically, why we are here.
Two key points about the Alternative Orange: we're not professionals and there aren't many of us. We will welcome any help you want to give us. We need articles, cartoons, photos, we need help with layout, we need help in general (as some of our less friendly readers have been happy to point out in the past). Submit something. Tell us what you think we should cover. Talk to us.
As incentive, I might mention a narrowly averted local disaster that the media also neglected. Last year we had a staff of about seven or eight folks. Some graduated, some got jobs teaching at Georgetown. Had it not been for the sudden appearance of a few interested souls this summer, this rag damn well might have evolved into the Alternative Blaine, which Lord knows this campus doesn't need. You and only you can insure that this never happens. Come work with us.
