WASHINGTON – How much has the world changed in 14 years?
You will get some clues from watching a recently unearthed syndicated TV show from 2002 called “.com” in which actor Mark Hamill of Luke Skywalker fame introduces “WorldNetDaily,” the first independent online news service to the world.
“It’s a little campy,” says WND co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Joseph Farah. “It’s a little grainy. It’s a little dated, but it’s a whole lot of fun.”
There’s Elizabeth Farah, co-founder and chief marketing officer, with a tightly cropped hairdo not seen since the early part of the 21st century. Her interview was shot while her last baby was entertained by crew outside the studio. She’s now a grandma of three and her “baby” is 14.
“The neat thing about this video piece, which was recorded in VHS format and converted to a digital file, is that it really explains the unique editorial philosophy of WND,” said Joseph Farah. “From the very beginning – and, for us, that means 19 years ago – it was about earnestly carrying out the central role of a free press in a free society, namely serving as a watchdog on government and other powerful institutions.”
Today, noted Farah, that notion is actually controversial – virtually unheard of in a media world that often seems to be more of a “lapdog” for the expansionist state.
“It’s very interesting that back then, this notion of watchdogging government didn’t seem controversial to anyone we encountered in the making of this promotional video,” said Farah. “The idea of an independent news agency created just for the Internet was new and exciting to everyone we encountered. Today, WND is often treated by our media colleagues as a subversive and dangerous institution to the journalistic establishment – and maybe it is. It’s funny, back then, when WND was virtually alone as an enterprising pioneer in Internet news, we were doing just what we do today. But the cultural perception and the attitude of our media colleagues was totally different.”
The lost VHS recordings were recently found in a dusty filing cabinet in the WND corporate office – just about the time “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” began smashing box office records this holiday season.
Mark Hamill is best known for his role as Luke Skywalker in the “Star Wars” film series
The Farahs launched WND, or WorldNetDaily as it was known then, as the first independent online news service in 1997. Back then, the name “Google” was unknown. There was no Facebook, Twitter or social media of any kind. The DrudgeReport was brand new – though looking very similar to the way it looks today.
Joseph Farah had spent the previous 15 years doing everything one can do in the “mainstream media,” from investigative reporting, serving as a foreign correspondent, running the newsroom of a major market daily and being part of the elite club with the title “editor in chief” of big-city daily newspapers – the last one being the historic Sacramento Union in the California capital.
“I was very close to the Silicon Valley and was witnessing the emerging technologies,” recalls Farah. “By 1992, I could see we were on the verge of a digital communications revolution, only no one called it that back them. But that awareness persuaded me to launch some early experiments with the creation of web sites and, eventually, to launch WND as the very first news totally online news company.”
Farah tells the whole story in his biography, “Stop the Presses! The Inside Story of the New Media Revolution.”
But, says Farah, “One thing I didn’t include in that book was how my world intersected with the world of Luke Skywalker in 2002. Now people can see that for themselves.”
See the video:
from PropagandaGuard https://propagandaguard.wordpress.com/2016/01/11/see-mark-hamills-secret-wnd-infomercial/
from WordPress https://toddmsiebert.wordpress.com/2016/01/10/see-mark-hamills-secret-wnd-infomercial/
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