Think what you will,
@Smoked Salmon; I won't try to change your opinion of my work. It speaks for itself and whatever conclusions you choose to draw from it are, of course, your own. But your estimation of my "agenda" should at least be drawn from facts rather than supposition. Namely:
I've never had any "brushes" with Alec Peters. Ever. My time in fan films concluded before his began; I left Star Trek New Voyages in 2009 to begin working on the first of three independent feature films. Naturally, Peters and I know a lot of people in common but I've never met him.
I'm not a "reinvented" journalist. My degree is in journalism, and I was a working journalist for many years, including at The Associated Press, as well as the deputy press secretary for the governor of Washington state.
I've been up front from Day 1 about my perspective in covering this case; it appears in the About section of the AxaMonitor homepage: "AxaMonitor aims to inform readers about what’s at stake in this suit, and its possible impact on fan productions and U.S. copyright law."
Obviously, I believe the stakes are high or I wouldn't dedicate the amount of time to this case that I have. This case has always had an important precedent-setting aspect to it, and CBS' promulgation of restrictive fan film guidelines because of what Axanar has done has, as blogger Bjorn Munson put it in his commentary the other day, "helped decimate an entire ecosystem of fan productions."
Fan films were how I got my start as a professional screenwriter and producer. I've made cherished lifetime friendships and professional connections having been part of the community. Axanar and its lawsuit hurt a community I'm proud to have been a part of, and people I'm proud to call colleagues and friends.
Perhaps such sentiments give me something of a personal stake in this story but demeaning them as a mere "axe to grind" is unfairly reductive, particularly since Peters has never done anything to me that I believe would warrant such a characterization. As I mentioned, we've never met. I was not an Axanar donor. Other than his public denunciations of my work, that's about it.
I started AxaMonitor almost a year ago because I saw fans' increasingly vitriolic debates about Axanar were generally ill-informed about what fan films are and how they operate, and about copyright law in general. My intent was to offer an information resource that could inform such discussions. I freely admit that my bent as a journalist has been to call out inaccuracy, particularly when it's deliberate. And I think the record is pretty clear Axanar engages in such behavior in an effort to control the public narrative about the case.
In large measure, Peters has been successful. Given not one but two PR professionals at his command, his hundred thousand Twitter followers, tens of thousands of fans on Facebook, claimed 14,000 donors and the national (even international) positive news articles from such outlets as Space.com, Newsweek, Bloomberg, the Washington Post, and Wired, you might understand why I've become so passionate as a voice in such a media wilderness.
Finally, I admit I was offended by how thoroughly Peters hides or squashes dissent — even simple questions about his actions. And I'm not talking about me. Since the lawsuit was filed more than a year ago, Peters has purged hundreds of former fans from his various Facebook pages, blocked many from Axanar's Twitter feed and, after failing to silence critics with a combination of refunds and non-disclosure agreements, forced refunds on backers in order to delete their critical posts in Axanar’s Kickstarter comment section and posted dozens of spam messages on Kickstarter in order to obscure critics’ comments by moving them down the web page.
Yes, this got my dander up, and yes, it does color the manner in which I cover the case. But I have only ever been absolutely committed to purveying only facts (opinion, analysis and commentary on AxaMonitor are explicitly labeled as such). I firmly believe that facts pose the greatest threat to Axanar, not whatever measly opinions I may hold.
Your accusation that I have an axe to grind implies that I have done ill service to the facts in favor of my so-called agenda. In a year, not one Axanar supporter has pointed to an inaccuracy on AxaMonitor that I haven't corrected. Instead they seek to discredit the work only through personal attacks and name-calling. When confronted on the facts, they reliably deflect or ignore them.
I appreciate your admiration of the effort I expend, but I'm not trying to "seem neutral"; I'm trying to inform and provide perspective. Readers get to decide how effectively I do that, and I won't try to change whatever conclusions they come to. But they should get to do that without intimations that somehow my motivations are anything less than honorable and without having me lumped together with anti-Axanar people out there with their own agendas likely quite different from mine.
Good day.
