Artist-Writer launches FeeSpeech.us, an experiment in Self-Sponsored media.

Lowell Thompson wrote an article about the EuroCentric casting of Mel Gibson's new movie, The Passion of the Christ. But when he submitted it to major media outlets, they all ignored it. His answer? Feespeech.us, a website where writers and readers pay small fees to publish and read ideas the major media doesn't want us to hear.

(PRWEB) April 1, 2004 -- When Lowell Thompson read all the articles and saw all the images promoting Mel Gibson's new movie, The Passion of the Christ, he thought he was seeing a movie made decades ago.

Why?

Because, although Gibson had made claims about its authenticity, the casting made no attempt to represent the most likely racial and ethnic features of inhabitants of the MiddleEast in biblical times.

So Thompson wrote an article pointing out the obvious "snow job". But when he submitted it to media outlets, including The New York Times, Newsweek, U.S.A. Today, Time Magazine and others, they ignored it.

That's when Thompson decided to launch FeeSpeech.us. "The idea is simple", Thompson says. "When it comes to speech that counts, we don't have meaningful free speech in America, we have fee speech. The only speech that's really free is that which has no chance of reaching and influencing anyone beyond the immediate friends and family within the sound of your voice. If we want our ideas to be heard beyond that, we have to sponsor them ourselves."

Thompson continues, "People who have something to say can pay a small fee to have their work distributed through FeeSpeech.us. The difference between it and a website or weblog is that you don't have to become a techie or webmaster to get your work out. All you have to do is submit it to FeeSpeech.us and we do the rest."

Thompson has launched a minimal one-page site just to get a feel for how many people are interested. He says once he gets enough people who express an interest, he'll begin adding pages and expanding the site. "Like I said, this is a test. I repeat, this is a test", Thompson says with a smile.

Interested? Go to Feespeech.us