Happy World Press Freedom Day!

There is power in words. Already when I grew up, I was taught this and enabled to search and find my voice in writing early. My dad, who is an author and journalist, bought me my first typewriter at the age of ten, which also is when I first had a small short story published at the youth section in a local Swedish newspaper. My dad brought me there to see how it was printed and the process for its becoming.

When I was 15 years old, I nagged my way into getting a job after school at another local Swedish newspaper's office. I ran errands, and archived photos and papers. In my last year of High School when I was 17, I got to experience first hand how what I wrote could make an impact. I wrote about the bad work environment at our high school and how both teachers and students often suffered from headaches and some had breathing problems. We concluded that there must be mold. A couple of days later, the editor came down to my desk in the basement, all excited. His phone had rung non-stop and there were meetings with the school board and town, and the school was shut down and renovated during summer!

While I later pursued copywriting and worked as one in advertising for some five years, I didn't forget how I can improve society.

In 1999, when the Swedish social welfare workers tried to screw me over by first forcing me to sell my computer, so I couldn't work from home, and then refused to pay me eventhough I was found right to by court, I was featured in the news and part of a live morning show on TV.

A couple of weeks into my US detention 2011, I knew it was my destiny to write about my experiences and send to the UN. Not only for my own and the other immigrants' sake, but for my mother's who jad been a teacher for immigrants in Sweden and had been an exchange student too in the United States as a young adult. And for my grandmother's sake, who had endured two prison camps during WWII, just on the basis of being Polish, before she was rescued and came to Sweden.

But with this ability, comes responsibility. While I'm really grateful to the ones now documenting ICE by camera recordings, since I've been refused interviews by media about it for fourteen years. But while I'm grateful of citizen journalists in general, we can't forget that our sources must be valid and truthful. I always let people I've written about read my texts before publication. If nothing else, so to know beforehand. And of course to have a say about any necessary edits needed. This way, I become a true voice also for others.

Unfortunately, there seem to be a trend that much of the reporting in mainstream media nowadays becomes based on what is shown and said on social media. All bias content, with lots of opinionated people ranting and raving, with little consideration of objectively to share both sides. We should always be allowed to share our own experience, but never allowed to defame and libel people we've never met or talked to. Someone doing that to me, is nothing but a gossip hag. A person with a narrow perspective and too self-absorbed, with no respect for what the masses are entitled to know. It's been the most horrible thing to have been subjected to in Sweden. I could smear her right back, but I don't. I would never jeopardize my professional integrity that way.

What do you write, post and share online? Are you grateful to be able to, and do you honor and respect those you include in your storytelling?