When we founded Consortiumnews.com in 1995 – as the first investigative news magazine based on the Internet – there was already a crisis building in the U.S. news media. The mainstream media was falling into a pattern of groupthink on issue after issue, often ignoring important factual information because it didn’t fit with what all the Important People knew to be true.

Though we have struggled with funding – surviving for more than two decades through a combination of our own frugality and the generosity of our readers – we have managed to produce groundbreaking journalism on many of the most significant issues of the day, including national security, foreign policy, politics and the environment.

Now, even as the fate of the world becomes more tenuous amid a resumption of Cold War tensions between the West and Russia, we are seeing the Western media engaging in a self-inflicted blindness that has left the West’s citizens blind as well. This dilemma – this crisis in democracy – has made the role of Consortiumnews even more essential today than it may have been in 1995.

The late Robert Parry
Founder and editor of Consortium News

Bob had always wanted to do more video. One year ago, Elizabeth Vos and Cathy Vogan teamed up with the new Consortium News editor, Joe Lauria, to create CN Live!, a long-format series offering "weekly insight into the news". We have since produced over 30 episodes, two location documentaries and many short films with such an enviable line-up of international guests that CN Live! is said to be "punching far above its weight". We want to punch higher!

Our faithful audience now spans across 50 countries, with a lot more young people and females tuning in to our channel. We're proud of our work in this new medium, and hailed as the best for some of our reporting, but how long is a shoe-string? Your help, dear viewers, is needed more than ever, not only to keep our production afloat, but to give you much, much more.

Starting on September 7 2020, we'll be working extra hard to cover the extradition hearings of Julian Assange, with flash updates and weekly round-ups. Stay tuned for the announcement of our schedule.