In 2017, we founded CitJourno.org to fill the glaring gaps in mainstream media’s coverage of the Trump era. The intention of CitJourno.org is to shore up our Fourth Estate. Because, we love it.

We love great investigative journalism. We love fair, informed editorial pages. We love press free from propaganda. Free from partisan spin. Free from religious doctrine. Free from the iron rule of autocracies. Free.

For us, America’s free press is the greatest tenet of our democracy.

To publish our first piece, “Poke The Bear”, we spent months researching and crowd-sourcing publicly available documents. Just to get it right. And, we accomplished our goal. We filled in one, big, mighty gap by exposing Trump’s long history of money-laundering for organized crime, primarily the Russian mafia. We established the history and motives that drove a money-laundering criminal to run for the Presidency.

There were frustrating moments researching that story. Mainly because of how glaringly obvious the facts of it were – and how much of it we uncovered in old articles by our media outlets. The whole story was there, just below the surface – in their own archives. Yet we heard next-to-nothing about Trump’s history and ties to the mafia during the 2016 campaign. We heard, “emails, emails, emails” instead – with a little pussy-grabbing on the side for good measure.

In the end, we accepted our frustration. We learned to live with it. We channeled our anger into action because we understand the assault that our free press has been under by this administration. The minute-by-minute deluge of outrages, the systematic tearing down of our Democratic institutions, attacks on our federal law enforcement agencies and our allies… it’s a dizzying news cycle to keep up with. We get it. That’s WHY we founded CitJourno.org.

And we won’t let our free press succumb to this assault. We won’t let them be torn under by this administration’s constant attack on their outlets – and the individual journalists themselves.

We love our free press. We need our free speech. These two things for us are one and the same, and we will not let them fall.

So, it brings us no pleasure to have to expose the rot within the free press itself. Especially, within one of our greatest and most prestigious news outlets.

How can we defend the Fourth Estate without calling out its own corruption?

There are many houses that will need to be cleaned by the end of the Trump era, if we’re ever going to fully restore our Democratic institutions. The Fourth Estate is no exception, and we need them in order to get to the finish line. Without them, we lose it all. So, now is the moment…

We’re looking at you, The New York Times.

You have something sinister brewing inside your house, and we’re bringing daylight to it.

We’re here to remind you of the darkest moment of your past – your most horrific mistake.

That time, when you served as apologists for the bloody horrors of a mass-murdering dictator, because you valued access to power over journalistic integrity.

We’re here to remind you of that mistake, New York Times, because you’re making it again.