Subject: 'Freedom of the press is not just important to democracy, i

Comment:

See Original Content on OpEdNews in article titled "Paradise Found"

"Freedom of the press is not just important to democracy, it is democracy." Walter Cronkite

Indeed, Kathy, I was watching Vice News--one of places where one can count on the REAL news, when I saw the 'breaking news' -- the release by the journalists of the ICIJ,representing 100 news organizations in an international collaboration , to break the news of their YEAR LONG , SECRET research as they laboriously, and personally examined over more than 13 million leaked documents from a law firm, an offshore services company and corporate registries from tax havens.

The Vice News hour-long documentary, focused less on the revelations and more on the incredible work of the journalists, who ensured secrecy from the start, so as to avoid all the 'fake news' propaganda that would attend any leak. Their intentions was to open up the shadow world where the billionaires hide their money.

These journalists established a code of silence, not to talk to anyone, not family, friends, or colleagues as they searched through the data-- an enormous task as they could not use computers for fear of revealing what they were doing.

It was exhaustive work, looking thorough mundane and prosaic lists as they looked for names that they could identify, looking for tidbits of information -- the crumbs that became the trails that led to the holdings of certain billionaires in the companies and banks, which they were then able to trace and to connect to Russian companies, Russian banks and directly to the Russian Oligarchs.

Now, they are writing a series of stories that reveal the offshore financial dealings of some of the world's biggest corporations and wealthiest people, and already the stories are emerging like this one: The Seven Republican super-donors who keep money in tax havens | News | The Guardian

But the real story is how these writers, AUTHENTIC journalists (as opposed to MEDIA PUNDITS) worked to inform, rather than to confuse!

Freedom of the press, or, to be more precise, the benefit of freedom of the press, belongs to everyone -- to the citizen as well as the publisher" The crux is not the publisher's 'freedom to print'; it is, rather, the citizen's 'right to know.' -- Arthur Hays Sulzberge

In a second comment, I will post some of the links to the stories that hit the news after this release!!!