Why The Baltimore Informer Was Created

My name is Adam Reuter and I’m the founder/editor-in-chief of the Baltimore County Informer. My very distant relative Paul Reuter founded the Reuters news agency back in the year 1851. Currently, I’m a professional multimedia specialist and journalism has been apart of my life since high school.

After running for the Baltimore County Executive seat in the year 2022, I realized there was a severe lack of news coverage in Baltimore County. Gatekeepers at the major media outlets choose to selectively provide media coverage to wealthy political candidates, Hollywood entertainment and big franchise businesses. I was a target of that “media blacklisting“, as evidenced by this WJZ-TV article where CBS Baltimore Staff labeled me “Ivan Reuter” instead of my actual name…you know, the one listed on the Board of Elections’ web site? But I digress…

State-sponsored media (watch their daily news broadcasts…government agencies runs commercials during their news hours) tend to turn a blind eye to a lot of what happens in Towson and healthcare/legal concerns went largely ignored during the years 2020 – 2022. To be blunt, legacy media outlets do not want to bite the hand that feeds. They don’t want to be denied access to interviews–and more importantly, that sweet campaign marketing money. Upsetting the political apple cart could put them out of business.

They have to figuratively sell their souls in order to survive. Independent media outlets like this one don’t, however. We can write and speak the truth, without hesitation. Ultimately, instead of complaining to those major news outlets’ reporters/news anchors until I was blue in the face/my fingers hurt from typing, the decision to start this news web site was made.

Previously, I created a web site titled the Baltimore County Government Accountability Project. Voluntarily covering every little detail of the local government became overwhelming, so it was shut down. The Baltimore County Informer has risen from those ashes, but admittedly I must do a better job at covering the County Council’s actions.

Another reason this web site was started is because of social media censorship. I’ve been thrown in “Facebook Jail” far too many times to count. Twitter’s word detection algorithm, before Elon Musk took over and was renamed to X, suppressed my account’s reach significantly. YouTube issued “community guideline strikes” on multiple videos, all because I dared to question the COVID “official” (read: government approved) narrative! No amount of evidence to dispute the self-appointed “fact checkers” from the “Trusted News Initiative” was enough to overturn the censorship. This is such a big problem that it resulted in a Supreme Court case.

On top of the corporate policy censorship, politicians like former Governor Larry Hogan and former Baltimore County Councilwoman Cathy Bevins (or their unnamed faceless staff members who do their dirty work) either outright blocked me or hid my comments. I’m not the only first amendment victim…most recently many people were blocked from MD State Delegate Ric Metzgar’s Facebook page because of the large amounts of criticism he received for voting to increase state taxes. But, they can’t stop this news operation so easily! This is my virtual property and the ground rent has been paid for!

Yet another problem with state sponsored legacy media outlets is they report crimes, but usually only from one side: the government’s side. “Police say” is one of their favorite phrases to use, but you will rarely hear them utter the words “the suspect said”. Why is that? This goes against the Society of Professional Journalists’ ethics, but you see it all the time on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) licensed state-sponsored media outlets.

Solely providing coverage to wealthy elites’ words and actions does a disservice to society at-large. The media’s priority is amplifying government agents’ messages and the Baltimore County Informer is here to fill that big void. The official name is Baltimore Informer because eventually we may cover Baltimore City news….plus it’s easier to type baltimoreinformer.com instead of baltimorecountyinformer.com into an internet browser!