{"id":91889,"date":"2017-05-08T12:00:03","date_gmt":"2017-05-08T11:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=91889"},"modified":"2017-05-05T15:23:59","modified_gmt":"2017-05-05T14:23:59","slug":"oliver-stone-honored-with-press-freedom-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/05\/oliver-stone-honored-with-press-freedom-award\/","title":{"rendered":"Oliver Stone Honored with Press Freedom Award"},"content":{"rendered":"

Director Oliver Stone \u2013 in recognition of his brave work in documentary films \u2013 has been selected as the winner of the 2016 Gary Webb Freedom of the Press Award.<\/em><\/p>\n

4 May 2017 – <\/em>Though most people know Oliver Stone as a famous screenwriter and movie director, he has also lent his talents and resources to a number of documentary films that embrace the core journalistic idea that there are usually two sides \u2013 if not more \u2013 to a story.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Director Oliver Stone<\/p><\/div>\n

In doing so, Stone has taken on controversial subjects, both in challenging conventional history as with Showtime\u2019s \u201cUntold History of the United States\u201d and daring to treat foreign leaders \u2013 who were undergoing demonization by the U.S. government and media \u2013 as complex figures who deserve to have their say as well.<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, Stone has faced intense criticism for deviating from mainstream U.S. groupthinks, which seek to portray international adversaries as cardboard villains deserving only of American hatred and bombs.<\/p>\n

But Stone learned as a decorated young soldier in the Vietnam War how that propaganda process can lead to unspeakable horrors, including the unnecessary deaths of millions of people and the devastation of entire nations and regions.<\/p>\n

The Vietnam War \u2013 and the U.S. government\u2019s lies that justified it \u2013 taught Stone a powerful lesson that is as true now as it was then, that a healthy democracy should encourage a diversity of viewpoints, appreciate all sides of a conflict, and have the courage to engage in serious self-criticism, not simply assume that what the authorities are saying is true.<\/p>\n

Stone\u2019s documentaries have included close-up studies of Latin American leftist leaders challenging U.S. hegemony in the hemisphere, including Cuba\u2019s Fidel and Raul Castro, Venezuela\u2019s Hugo Chavez, Bolivia\u2019s Evo Morales, Ecuador\u2019s Rafael Correa, the Kirschners of Argentina, Brazil\u2019s Lula da Silva and Paraguay\u2019s Fernando Lugo.<\/p>\n

Stone recently produced a documentary on the Ukraine crisis, entitled \u201cUkraine on Fire,\u201d which offered a nuanced understanding of Ukraine\u2019s modern history as well as explaining the behind-the-scenes story of the violent overthrow of elected President Viktor Yanukovych and the secret U.S. hand in turning Ukraine into a flashpoint for a new Cold War.<\/p>\n

In June, Showtime is scheduled to release Stone\u2019s series of interviews with Russian President Vladimir Putin, spanning two years, entitled \u201cThe Putin Interviews.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because of his courage and tenacity in presenting sides of important stories that many powerful interests in the United States would prefer the American people not hear, the Board of Directors for the Consortium for Independent Journalism (which publishes Consortiumnews.com) presents Oliver Stone with the Gary Webb Freedom of the Press Award for 2016.<\/p>\n

Background of Award<\/strong><\/p>\n

The award is named in honor of investigative reporter Gary Webb who in 1996 courageously revived interest in one of the darkest scandals of the 1980s, the Reagan administration\u2019s tolerance of cocaine trafficking by the CIA-organized Nicaraguan Contra rebels who were fighting to overthrow Nicaragua\u2019s leftist Sandinista government.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Journalist Gary Webb holding a copy of his Contra-cocaine article in the San Jose Mercury-News.<\/p><\/div>\n

The Contra-Cocaine scandal was originally exposed by Associated Press reporters Robert Parry and Brian Barger in 1985, but the major U.S. newspapers accepted the Reagan administration\u2019s denials and treated the story as a \u201cconspiracy theory.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, when Webb revived the story in 1996 for the San Jose Mercury News and described how some of the Contra cocaine fueled the spread of crack across urban America, the major newspapers again rallied to the defense of the Contras and the Reagan administration\u2019s legacy.<\/p>\n

The assault on Webb was led by The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times \u2013 and was so ferocious that Webb\u2019s editors at the Mercury News sacrificed him to protect their own careers. Webb found himself cast out from the profession that he loved.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t even matter that an internal CIA investigation by Inspector General Frederick Hitz confirmed, in 1998, that the CIA was aware of the Contra cocaine trafficking but had put its goal of ousting the Sandinistas ahead of any responsibility to expose the Contra criminality.<\/p>\n

Because of the false impression that Webb had manufactured a fake story, he remained unemployable in mainstream journalism. In 2004, with his life in tatters and his financial resources spent, Webb took his own life, a tragic casualty in the difficult fight for a truly free press in America, a press that doesn\u2019t just rubber stamp government propaganda and accept official lies as truth.<\/p>\n

[For more on that history, see \u201cThe Sordid Contra-Cocaine Saga<\/a><\/u>.\u201d]<\/em><\/p>\n

______________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Investigative Reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the <\/em>Associated Press and<\/em> Newsweek. His book, <\/em>Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush<\/a>, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat. His two previous books are <\/em>Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq<\/a> and<\/em> Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth’<\/a>.<\/em> You can buy his latest book, <\/em>America\u2019s Stolen Narrative, either in\u00a0print here<\/a>\u00a0or as an e-book (from Amazon<\/a> and barnesandnoble.com<\/a>).<\/em><\/p>\n

William Oliver Stone<\/em> (born Sep 15, 1946) is an American screenwriter, film director, and producer. Stone won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay as writer of <\/em>Midnight Express<\/a> (1978). He also wrote the acclaimed gangster movie <\/em>Scarface<\/a> (1983). As a director, Stone achieved prominence as director\/writer of the war drama <\/em>Platoon<\/a> (1986), for which Stone won the Academy Award for Best Director; the film was awarded Best Picture. Platoon was the first in a trilogy of films based on the Vietnam War, in which Stone served as an infantry soldier. He continued the series with <\/em>Born on the Fourth of July<\/a> (1989)\u2014for which Stone won his second Best Director Oscar\u2014and <\/em>Heaven & Earth<\/a> (1993). Stone’s other notable works include the Salvadoran Civil War-based drama <\/em>Salvador<\/a> (1986); the financial drama <\/em>Wall Street<\/a> (1987) and its 2010 sequel <\/em>Money Never Sleeps<\/a>; the <\/em>Jim Morrison<\/a> biopic <\/em>The Doors<\/a> (1991); and a trilogy of films based on the American Presidency\u2014<\/em>JFK<\/a> (1991), <\/em>Nixon<\/a> (1995) and W.<\/a> (2008). His latest film is <\/em>Snowden<\/a> (2016).<\/em> (Wikipedia<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 consortiumnews.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

4 May 2017 – Though most people know Oliver Stone as a famous screenwriter and movie director, he has also lent his talents and resources to a number of documentary films that embrace the core journalistic idea that there are usually two sides \u2013 if not more \u2013 to a story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91889\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}