Alberto Giordano is an award-winning newspaper reporter, radio and television host, and Internet journalism pioneer who founded the Internet newspaper Narco News in 2000 and its School of Authentic Journalism in 2002. Prior to moving to Latin America, Giordano was the political reporter for the Boston Phoenix, and he has published his work in The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Nation, The Utne Reader, American Journalism Review, New Left Review, and other publications. In 2004, Giordano received the Upton Sinclair Freedom of Expression Award.
Narco News draws together a network of journalists as co-publishers, including, at one time, the late Gary Webb. The School of Authentic Journalism, in Mexico and Bolivia, has trained more than 100 journalists to be investigative reporters on civil rights and the impact of U.S. drug policy on Latin America.
In 2001, Giordano received First Amendment protections in a landmark New York Supreme Court case — Banamex vs. Mario Menendez, Al Giordano and Narco News — setting a precedent for all online journalists and Web sites. His criticism of the war on drugs, and its impact on Latin America are featured regularly at narconews.com.
Street Roots: You've said you intend to put the war on drugs on trial. What's the verdict?
Alberto Giordano: The drug war (that is, the policy of drug prohibition) is guilty of all the crimes it claims to combat: It is the cause of the violence, the corruption, most of the harm to the addict and user, the high price of the drugs, the formation of criminal organizaations and gangs to traffic them, and the ability of those groups to purchase guns and commit other predatory crimes. Internationally, the United States policy has been to impose drug prohibition on other countries, causing greater corruption and violence, as well as impeding pro-democracy movements, destroying rainforest and other environments through aerial herbicide spraying, and destabilizing governments.
In 2000, when Narco News was sued by the largest bank in Mexico, Banamex (now part of Citibank) for publishing photos, testimony and other evidence of cocaine smuggling on the owner's coastal Mexican properties, we said we would “put the drug war on trial.” And we did. In 2001, the New York Supreme Court ruled in our favor and established First Amendment protections for Internet journalists, a new precedent of law that now protects all online journalists.
S.R.: In your time in Latin America, what are you seeing the war on drugs doing to Latin America’s people, its economy and its governments?
A.G.: The corruption is the most harmful effect. With so much illegal money now flowing to ship the cocaine — which comes from the coca plant which only grows well in the Andes of South America — to the United States and other lands, police, politicians and military officials are turned into criminals. The sheer amount of money can't be resisted. But most of the profits go to the banking and financial services companies that launder the funds to make them seem legal: that's also corrupted the economic systems of the U.S. and elsewhere.
In places such as Colombia (where coca grows) and Mexico (where it doesn't, but which serves as the “straw” between the drug and the gringo's nose), the policy has emboldened authoritarian regimes which take billions of dollars from the U.S. — in the name of fighting drugs — and use them, instead, to repress peaceful pro-democracy movements. Conversely, when other countries democratically decide to elect officials that don't go along with U.S. economic and trade policies, the drug war is selectively used to hurt those democracies, which we've seen in Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia most recently. One of the biggest casualties is human rights in all these places.
S.R.: How do you think your reporting from Latin America can make a difference on drug policies in the United States?
A.G.: An informed public will always make better decisions. For all the mass media in the United States, it has one of the most poorly informed peoples of the world. It is told that all these police, prisons, guns and rules are meant to stop drug abuse, when in fact they really accomplish the opposite: creating profits and other incentives for those willing to build criminal organizations.
Education is a step-by-step process. No one story changes a policy. But by reporting the facts day after day, I think the "conventional wisdom" gets chipped away and people begin to see the drug war much the way that almost a century ago people that once supported alcohol prohibition came to the conclusion that it did more harm than good.
In the meantime, the fact that more U.S. citizens know more of the truth about Latin America has created more room for countries down here to advance better drug policies. Brazil and Argentina, for example, are global leaders in “harm reduction” policies that seek to help, not punish, the addict and reduce the harms associated with his and her drug use, and to also advance democratically and in other human rights.
S.R.: You've written for some big names in the corporate media, yet you also have developed strong opinions about the status of the mainstream media, and what you see as its complicity in perpetuating false information and promoting special interest agendas. Where, on the issue of the drug war, are the media failing us?
A.G.: The commercial media fails us in every way possible, but in doing so helps its bottom line: profits. Phamaceutical companies and other interests are big advertisers in the media — both through their own ads and their front groups like the Partnership for a Drug-Free America — and of course the more violence and turmoil out there, the more newspapers one can sell, the more viewers one can draw. The media has a symbiotic parasitic relationship with the violence caused by prohibition, and so by claiming that violence is caused by drugs rather than the policy, it reinforces public support for that policy. Of course, the American public's views about prohibition are changing, year after year, now in favor of medical marijuana, of needle exchange and other harm-reduction programs, and of not putting nonviolent offenders in prison. The media has yet to catch up. It is in fact way behind the public in seeing things as they truly are, rather than its own simulation of events.
S.R.: Tell us about theory and practice of authentic journalism. What impact are you seeing from authentic journalism, and the new wave of independent media?
A.G.: Authentic journalism has enjoyed a renaissance in recent years, largely on the Internet. Simply put, it is journalism at the service of the people rather than the advertising class. Not all independent media seeks to do better journalism: many just mimic the dominant errors of commercial journalism. But there are a growing number of independent media makers that also think it important to change the way journalism is done, and to grow and be better at it ourselves.
I think that's the difference between authentic journalism and mere alternative journalism: Authentic journalists embrace the credo that "with great power comes great responsibility," and that includes a duty to report more clearly, honestly, and effectively in a way that regular people can understand and which inspires all to act on that better understanding, to participate, to not let democracy atrophy and to wrestle it away from the special interests that today hold it hostage.
