Havana, Friday, October 28, 2011. Year 15 / Number 301 John Reed: Journalist and Revolutionary ISELA MARTÍNEZ SOLARES - ARMANDO FRANCISCO HIGUERA DEL REYO A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann. To remember John Reed on his 124th birthday is to acknowledge the fundamental role of journalism in society (Photo) JOHN REED WRITING HIS BOOK TEN DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD The writer and journalist John Reed was born on October 22nd, 1887 in Oregon. His activities took him to Mexico while he was still a very young man. He soon achieved great prestige for his writing about the Mexican Revolution. His outstanding career reached the heights with Insurgent Mexico which describes a revolutionary people in arms following Pancho Villa as one of its main leaders. The oppressed laborers hoisted the flags of revolt and John Reed rode with them. John Reed's talent and convictions made him write his second masterpiece where he presents the truth about a Russia that decided to take to the streets and transform the reality it was living, shaking the planet and successfully driving Lenin's Bolsheviks in the famous Great Socialist October Revolution of 1917. Reed's book Ten Days that Shook the World has been read by millions of people. John Reed was a main founder of the United States of America Communist Party. As a delegate representing his country, he was elected to the Executive Committee of the Third International. He also took part as a revolutionary leader in the important Congress of the Peoples of the East held in Baku. For his work as a chronicler of historical and social events he was considered the best war correspondent of his time, but because of his revolutionary ideas he was threatened and harassed by the US government and practically expelled from his country. He received asylum in the Soviet Union. John Reed is considered one of the greatest journalists of all times. Danger never stopped him. He was always in the front line of the trenches. That's how he travelled around the world, from one front to another, from one extraordinary adventure to another. But John Reed was not just an adventurer or an indifferent spectator; he was a journalist, an observer of human suffering: a suffering he made his own. Bloodshed hurt his feelings for justice and decorum. He had revolutionary blood in his veins. So, with intelligence, courage and honesty, John Reed clearly taught us how to practice journalism with dignity and to respect the right of human beings to information so they could understand reality better and transform it to live in peace and harmony. This is why he is remembered together with all those who followed his example like Julius Fucik and those that keep alive the essence of a profession so necessary in today's world. (Taken from ARGENPRESS) http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/2011/10/28/interna/artic03.html |
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