London, UK – April 5, 2018 – A European journalist frustrated with old and new media over their demands that articles adhere to their individual agendas has launched his own website to publish his work.
The newly launched site, furneytimes.com, is dedicated to what the journalist, William J. Furney, says is a diet of “reportage, commentary on international affairs and more”. The first article follows a recent trip the long-time reporter took to Turkey and examines the current state of the country almost two years since a failed coup to topple President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and a subsequent widescale crackdown.
“If you’re in Turkey and wanted to look up some facts about the tumultuous events in the summer of 2016, on, say, Wikipedia, you’d have a hard time. The global online encyclopedia has been blocked in Turkey since last year, for what the authorities said was ‘content creating a perception that Turkey is supporting terrorist organizations’,” Furney writes.
“Of course, that’s not really a problem, because you do as I did, and people all over the Great Firewall of China do, and turn on your virtual private network app to get access,” he says in the article.
Furney Times has also worked on a story with UK digital agency Exposure Ninja and is preparing a piece about animal-rights organisation PETA. Also in the works is reportage on the so-called “forgotten territory” of Western Sahara, a largely desert region claimed by Morocco and Polisario Front rebels, who are attempting to wrest control of the arid area. Furney is currently in African desert regions conducting in-depth research and interviews.
Spinning: Out of Control
The journalist, formerly Indonesia correspondent for Spanish international news agency EFE and, later, owner and editor of newspaper The Bali Times, as well as having extensive editorial experience with newspapers and newsmagazines in Europe and Asia, said he was working to report the truth about important international affairs and “not spin it”.
“Everyone knows the media has an agenda, which is usually in line with the interests of a paper or website’s corporate owner — trying to gain power and influence people,” Furney said from the Spanish enclave of Gran Canaria, off the coast of Western Sahara.
“And now we have a slew of new publications that are attempting to ‘fix the broken news’, but actually it’s just the same old story,” he said. “After I visited Istanbul, Turkey, earlier this year and wrote about what’s happening there in the post-coup era, the publications I offered the story to wanted it skewed to their own agendas, and I wasn’t about to let that happen,” Furney said. “People need, and deserve, the truth, not propaganda,” he added.
Out of Asia
Furney, who sold his newspaper in Asia and returned to his native Europe “for family reasons”, said he became despondent at various Western newspapers’ attempts to bend the truth according to their own desires and in doing so, he said, they were betraying their readers’ trust.
“I’ll be reporting on what’s really happening around the world, and I invite fellow journalism professionals to join me. I’ll also be writing analysis of various situations, but this will represent informed views and not writing about something because you want the world to be a certain way,” he said.
Furney said recent elections in the United States and the equally tumultuous “Brexit” vote in the United Kingdom were largely based on misinformation peddled to the voting public by different sectors of the media, and that, he said, had to end, in order to bring about more just societies.
“These days, no one has a monopoly on the news — not the big media nor the small sites. And actually, it’s the large news outlets that have especially come under scrutiny for their peddling of fake news to meet their ideologies. They seem to think that just because they’ve been around a long time and have huge budgets that people will believe what they print or put online. But trust in large news organisations is at an all-time low.”
Furney said he was “trying to do [his] bit” to present real news by creating Furney Times. “I am answerable to no one except myself,” he said.
For more information, visit furneytimes.com or email wjfurney@outlook.com.
Media Contact
Company Name: Furney Times
Contact Person: William J. Furney
Email: Send Email
Phone: +353860740785
Country: United Kingdom
Website: http://furneytimes.com
