By Joseph Farah
I didn’t know what to expect when I resumed an aggressive fundraising campaign for WND this week.
Back in the first quarter of 2018, beginning in January, I saw our revenues collapsing thanks to the Internet Cartel’s vicious anti-Donald Trump predilection.
If you think the New York Times, Washington Post and CNN hate Trump, you need to look at Google News.
I know Google doesn’t create content. But as the primary distribution system for content online, what it does is aggregate the most hateful, the most over-the-top, the most absurdly provocative anti-Trump fake news it can find. I have tested this theory, and if you doubt me, you can do so yourself.
Just go to Google News and survey it any day of the week.
Keep in mind, because Google is not a “publisher” per se, it has legal obligations to be “neutral” in its presentation – “fair and balanced,” if you will.
That’s a joke. It is provably a lie.
The fact that Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Amazon all rely on the radical leftwing lunatics at the Southern Poverty Law Center as their guide to what represents “hate speech” is all you really need to know.
They all push the notion that the president of the United States is a hater, and thus all those who voted for him are also – or else they are misguided idiots.
But back to my humbling campaign of begging for money for the survival of the world’s first independent online news business – one that started in 1997 because I saw the Internet as a level playing field with low barrier to entry for such an effort. (And it was a level playing field, for the first 10 or even 15 years.)
In the first quarter of this year, WND visitors and subscribers responded with $300,000 in donations to bail us out. I knew we couldn’t just keep asking our audience for money daily and weekly, so we weaned ourselves away from asking for donations in March. Thus, guess how much our revenues went down in the second quarter: $300,000.
We found ourselves facing imminent extinction again. So, at the end of July, knowing we were facing a very tough August – traditionally a low revenue month in the best of times – we began pleading for money, again. I never liked doing this. But we had to do it. There was no other way out.
We’re operating on the edge. But we weren’t through 2016. Our revenues were quite predictable from 2010 through 2016 – pretty much always around $10 million or greater. But no one got rich at WND – not me, not other shareholders, not other employees.
Instead, if we grew, we plowed those resources into more content, more reporting, better reporting, better books and more of them – movies too.
It all came crashing down so quickly after the 2016 election there can be no other explanation as to its cause.
The Internet Cartel was going to make WND and other independent media pay for the election of Donald Trump.
Are you angry about the fake news you see on CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC?
Are you angry at the anti-Trump drumbeat of the New York Times and the Washington Post? Those are rhetorical questions.
But understand who the marionettes are – the Internet Cartel, their distribution source, their cheerleaders. They won’t give the news coverage of the independent media the time of day.
We’re all perceived as deplorables and irredeemables – the people they blame for Trump’s upset in 2016.
So, what’s the logical thing to do if you are appalled at what the Big Media have become? Support the independent media voices like WND!
I didn’t leave the euphemistically labeled “mainstream media.” It left me. All I ever wanted to do was journalism. And I’m still doing it – applying the standards and practices of real American news-gathering, the same standards and practices I used when running major metro dailies and newsrooms through the early 1990s.
And I’m not giving up. If I have to continue to beg and borrow (and I have, and make no apologies for it), I’m determined to see this 21-year-old experiment in real American journalism through. I’m determined to build up WND to the point at which it rivals and exceeds anything we have achieved in the past. That’s my pledge to you. And as long as you will support that mission, I will keep on fighting. I may be an old dog, but I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve.
Mainly, I write today to say thank-you for the outpouring of financial support and prayer we’ve seen in recent days. Yes, I believe in the power of prayer and I can feel its effects and power. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Here’s how you can continue to support us through August:
WND desperately needs your help in the form of fervent prayer and urgent financial contributions to stabilize its position as the pioneer in independent news gathering. We’re in the midst of an existential battle for survival right now – just as other independent media are, with all of us facing seemingly insurmountable odds on the rigged playing field the Internet Cartel has created. Good people, dedicated media professionals, are suffering with pay cuts and late salary payments. Help us survive to keep up the fight! We need to raise a minimum of $100,000 in August to make ends meet.
You can also support WND’s groundbreaking new book, “The Gospel in Every Book of the Old Testament,” with your tax-deductible contributions in any amount to the fabulous missions organization, Gospel for All Nations, which has adopted the project to help spread the truth of the Good News around the world. This book, coming out in hardcover in September, is an important part of WND’s recovery, rebirth and revitalization plan for later this year. Your help with book-printing and marketing expenses will help get us through the trials of 2018.
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