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The AIW Freedom to Write Fund (FWF) is a new non-profit charitable organization dedicated to education and public advocacy on behalf of the community of writers, whose work is essential to a democratic society. Re-launched in 2005 (based on the prior AIW Legal and Education Fund), FWF is currently developing a wide range of innovative approaches to:
- Providing educational and support services for writers;
- Establishing a Writers Action Group (WAG) to address the shrinkage of traditional reporting media; and
- Championing issues that threaten free gathering and dissemination of information and opinion, including free expression, access to government information, and ownership of written content.
Please join us in our important work!!
Click here is see our full Mission Statement.
Click here to see our full list of current and planned initiatives.
Click here to make a tax-deductible contribution to FWF.
INDEPENDENT WRITERS GROUP SAYS FREEING SABERI GOOD FIRST STEP
WASHINGTON—American Independent Writers and the organization’s Freedom to Write Fund today applauded the release last week of journalist Roxana Saberi by the Irani government, but acknowledged that the efforts of Americans cannot stop with her.
“While one journalist is free, many languish in prisons around the globe,” said Cecilia Sepp, AIW’s president and member of the Board of Directors of the Freedom To Write Fund. She cited research by the Committee to Protect Journalists which indicated that about 125 journalists worldwide remain in prison. more
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FREE ROXANA SABERI, SAY WRITERS GROUPS
The Freedom To Write Fund (FWF), a non-profit foundation supporting the rights to writers to free expression and access to information, and American Independent Writers (AIW), a national professional society of freelance writers, jointly called today for the release of Roxana Saberi, the Iranian-American reporter recently sentenced to eight years in prison.
"The ability of writers to pursue the truth and share information with the public is a basic tenet of American policy," said David O. Stewart, President of FWF. “In every society, in every nation, we must support writers who tell us about our world and bring wrongs to light."
Saberi, raised in North Dakota, was charged by the Iranian government with an escalating list of transgressions, beginning with purchasing wine, then accused of reporting without government-approved journalism credentials, and ultimately accused of spying for the United States. Saberi, who had reported for National Public Radio, is still being held after a closed one-day trial, despite repeated messages from the Obama Administration to the Iranian government that Saberi is not now nor ever has been a spy.
"It's obvious from the spaghetti throwing method of pressing charges that Ahmedinijad's government was throwing out accusations without any basis in fact," said Cecilia Sepp, President of AIW. "Saberi was reporting on what is REALLY happening in Iran, and the Iranian government is doing whatever it can to silence her."
Both FWF and AIW support Saberi, an American journalist reporting on her ancestral country of Iran. Allowing her to remain in prison as a political pawn of the Ahmedinijad government undermines freedom of press and speech everywhere in the world.
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Google Settlement to Pay Lawyers Up Front, Authors Eventually
Opinions on Settlement Differ, But Negotiations Cloaked in Secrecy by Non-Disclosure Agreements
By Andrea Foster, Freedom to Write Fund
The $125 million out-of-court settlement of a lawsuit authors and publishers brought against Google over the company's digitizing of millions of books promises eventual compensation for the creators but an immediate pay-out of up to $45.5 million to the lawyers who negotiated the landmark agreement. more
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IN THE NEWS
Google's Book Settlement is a Ripoff for Authors
Wall Street Journal
March. 28, 2009