International Organization of Journalists

The International Organization of Journalists was one of the standard Soviet-line international communist fronts.

According to the Yearbooks of International Communist Organizations (Munich: Saur), this Prague-based entity had affiliates in 90 countries during 1995-2000 but had become defunct as of June 2008. According Granma (Havana) on 4 Feb 95, which noted an IOJ ongress or Assembly recently concluded in Amman. For years the organization was almost synonomous with its Czech secretary general, Jiri Kubka, and that its magazine was called The Democratic Journalist.

Operations

The IOJ was funding of about 100 organizations with which it had formal partnerships. It also had extensive training sites in the Eastern Bloc.

Its mission was to create alternative media organizations to attack the mainstream media that were anti-Soviet during the Cold War; to train third world journalists for propaganda work; to propagandize for the Soviet Bloc; and to engage in dividing the societies of the Western Bloc along cultural warfare lines (race against race; class against class; ethnic body against ethnic body.

Soviet front

The International Organization of journalists was a Soviet front operation.

It was based in Prague until its expulsion by the Czech government in 1995.

A summary of a paper by Bob Nowell entitled "The Role of the International Organization of Journalists in the Debate about the "New International Information Order," 1958-1978" states;

This paper examines the International Organization of Journalists (IOJ), which it identifies as a Soviet-dominated organization. The paper suggests that the IOJ has capitalized on "Third World" countries' discontent with Western news media by offering itself as the ideological leader and trainer of anti-Western journalists. It then examines the function and methods of the IOJ in the context of post-World War II communist international front organizations; reviews the IOJ's structure, publications, and training centers; and explores its role in shaping "Third World" arguments in the debate about the New Information Order. The paper argues that the IOJ's efforts generally have served Soviet foreign policy on international communications.

Funding

From a book titled The Soviet Propaganda Network (1988). Publisher Pinter Publishers, London and St. Martins Press, New York. (from the dust jacket) Author: Clive Rose. Rose was the British Ambassador to NATO, and lately Chairman, Royal United Services Institute for Defense Studies.

p. 114. "The IOJ claims to be financed by affiliation fees established by the Execituve Committee. In practice accounts are almost never published, although affiliation fees as believed to raise US$75,000 annually..Some ten percent of these fees are devoted to an International solidarity Fund (which also claims the proceeds of the IOJ's Solidarity Lottery ...)

The Sub-Committee on Oversight of the US House of Representatives asserted in February 1980 that, at that time the IOJ was in receipt of a Soviet subsidy estimated at US$515,000."

Alice Palmer elected North American VP

Alice Palmer, editor of the Black Press Review was elected International Organization of Journalists vice president for North America at the organization's 10th Congress, October 20-23 1986, in Prague Czechoslovakia. She also traveled to the Soviet Union and Bulgaria during the same trip. Alice Palmer's IOJ duties were to include co-ordinating the activities of IOJ chapters in the US, Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean..

Other U.S. attendees included Jan Carew of Black Press Institute, Simon Gerson and Jose Soler of the U.S. branch of International Organization of Journalists OJ and Gwen McKinney and Leila McDowell of the National Alliance of Third World Journalists.

Birthday greetings to Si Gerson from the IOJ

In February 1989, the Communist Party USA, organized an 80th birthday celebration for Simon Gerson in New York. Joseph Walker, president of the U.S. chapter of the International Organization of Journalists, brought messages for Gerson from the IOJ's international president, and the German Democratic Republic, and spoke of Gerson's long membership of the Newspaper Guild, and his leadership of the IOJ's U.S. chapter.