Interview With Timothy Karr of Free Press

While meeting with Tim we learned about some new things and had our views of current things we knew expanded. With ease we found Tim and went to a place to sit and chat. The first thing we asked him was about his background and how he got to where he is today. He explained how he had traveled to Vietnam as a journalist during the war and lived there for five years. During that time he would write articles speculating on the war and would publish them, but before he was allowed to publish he would have to go brutal upstairs from his office to a censor and have a lot of his articles refined before it would be open to the public. This was because of the strict free speech legislation pertaining to Vietnam. He was restricted from showing his personal views of the war. After the war he returned to the United States, but was surprised to see that his once free country was now a fraction of what it was when he left.

He also touched on net neutrality and media consolidation. He has written multiple articles on media consolidation and is considered an expert. He explained how media consolidation is when a few big companies own most of the media channels. Therefore they have the ability to control the news in a way.

Tim joined Free Press 11 years ago, 1 year after it started. They have now grown to almost one million members and have an annual budget of over 5 million dollars. They are one of the biggest free press advocates and groups. For more information on free press you can visit them online at freepress.org