Jason Mojica

Jason Mojica (born 1974) is an American journalist, film producer, and musician. He is the co-founder and treasurer of IXNAY PAC, a super PAC devoted to "getting Donald Trump and his cronies out of office." Previously, he was the founding editor-in-chief of VICE News, and in 2013 became one of the first Americans to meet Kim Jong Un when he led the team that brought Dennis Rodman and the Harlem Globetrotters to North Korea. In November 2017, Vice Media fired Mojica after allegations made by several women that he had sexually harassed them surfaced.

Early life and education Jason Mojica was born in Cicero, Illinois, in 1974. He attended Southern Illinois University in Carbondale for one year before dropping out, although he later earned a degree in Political Communication from George Washington University in Washington, D.C. at the age of 34. After commencing his studies, however, Mojica explained that he never felt part of the university community: "I'm a 31-year-old male. Do you really want me living in a dorm?" Mojica said in offering an "awkward explanation" as to why he had decided to live off-campus. Mojica further described himself during his time in college as "'that grumpy man' who doesn't want students to distract others trying to learn."

Mojica had originally dropped out of college to become the front man of The Fighters, a punk rock band he formed with high school friends. Mojica also began his own indie record label, Rocco Records, and opened his own coffee house, Jinx Cafe, and bought a video rental store. He explained that the decision to return to college was an "attempt to think inside the box and learn how to write a business letter."

In 2006, Mojica and two friends crowdfunded, produced and directed the documentary Christmas in Darfur? with their company, 77 International. It was one of the first feature-length documentaries to be distributed online for free.

In 2009, Mojica became a producer and correspondent for The Listening Post, a weekly media review and analysis program airing on Al Jazeera English.

Career

Rocco Entertainment Group While he was a sophomore in high-school, Mojica started a small press that initially published photocopied minicomics, but later grew into a magazine publisher and record label. The company was active from 1989 to 1999.

Rocco Comics In 1989, at the age of 15, Mojica started publishing comic books written and drawn by him and his friends under the moniker Rocco Comics. The comics were predominantly in the minicomic format and printed in runs of 100 to 500. Titles included Hamster Man, Mundane Tales, and Hey Shakey Jake, Are You Out of Your Fuckin’ Crazy!?. Over time the circle of contributors grew to include such established underground and indie cartoonists Jay Lynch, Grass Green, Terry Laban, Carole Sobocinski, Matt Feazell, Reed Waller, and Jim Siergy.

Rocco Publishing

In 1992, while attending Southern Illinois University, Mojica started to expand Rocco's scope beyond comics with the publication of pop culture-oriented zine called No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service. In 1994, Mojica organized a team of volunteers to compile info about DIY punk bands, venues, record labels, and zines when Rocco Publishing teamed up with Maximum Rocknroll to publish the third edition of resource guide Book Your Own Fuckin’ Life, which has been called “the DIY publication that kept bands on the road for decades". The premiere of Shake! spoofed Playboy’s iconic first issue, swapping Marilyn Monroe for Hugh Hefner on the cover and the centerfold. Mojica’s accompanying story about the Playboy empire was less-than-flattering, so when someone at the company got a hold of it and sent it to Hefner, Mojica was “sure he would either sue us or try to destroy us."

Rocco Records In 1993, Mojica launched the midwest-centric punk rock record label, Rocco Records. The label, which predominantly released 7” vinyl EPs, released records by 88 Fingers Louie, The Bollweevils, The Mushuganas, Apocalypse Hoboken, Cap’n Jazz, The Parasites, The Volatiles, Winepress, and Mojica's own band, The Fighters.

VICE Media Mojica joined VICE Media in 2011, and contributed segments for "The Vice Guide to Everything," which Mojica described as "60 Minutes meets Jackass.... Hard hitting international news meets damaged genitals." The New York Times media critic David Carr wrote at the time: "Vice gained a share of infamy by getting access to the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and the notoriously secretive country he leads through a caper involving Dennis Rodman and the Harlem Globetrotters, a stunt that drew attention, invective and clicks." At one point Rodman stood up at the banquet and told Kim, "Sir, you have a friend for life." The New Yorker went on to say that in the context of "recent reports of cannibalism among a starving population, those remarks and current headline on the Vice Web site that ‘North Korea has a friend in Dennis Rodman and Vice’ seem a bit, well, tasteless.” Mojica has called such criticism "sanctimonious."

While in Pyongyang, Mojica and the other members of the Vice crew attended a lavish dinner hosted by Kim. "It was the most surreal experience of my life," Mojica said. "Um... so Kim Jong Un just got the #VICEonHBO crew wasted... no really, that happened," Mojica later tweeted. The piece's on-air correspondent Ryan Duffy told the Associated Press, "Dinner was an epic feast. Felt like about 10 courses in total. I'd say the winners were the smoked turkey and sushi, though we had the Pyongyang cold noodles earlier in the trip and that's been the runaway favorite so far." Mojica, Duffy, and the others were criticized on social media and on news sites for their tweets and comments praising the celebration, in lieu of the fact that millions of North Koreans have died of starvation. The website Gawker intermingled Mojica's tweets with images of starving infants and children on the verge of death. New York magazine commented: "Aside from the brutal slave-labor camps, the routine rape and torture of political prisoners, mass starvation extreme enough to induce episodes of cannibalism... North Korea sounds like a blast!" Shane Smith complained that a State Department official reprimanded him, saying: "We would have hoped they would have taken the food from the banquet and given it to the starving people."

The trip was severely criticized by the Obama administration, leading White House press secretary Jay Carney to say that, "Instead of spending money on celebrity sporting events to entertain the elites of that country, the North Korean regime should focus on the well-being of its own people who have been starved, imprisoned, and denied their human rights." A State Department spokesperson said: "Clearly you've got the regime spending money to wine and dine foreign visitors, when they should be feeding their own people."

Launch of VICE News After the first season of the Vice show on HBO, Mojica became the founding Editor-in-Chief and Executive Producer of the company's stand-alone digital news platform, Vice News. The site launched in March 2014 with coverage of the conflict and unrest in Afghanistan Crimea, Gaza, Kyrgyzstan, South Sudan, and Venezuela. One media critic noted that "the trailer for the forthcoming news channel gives a clear look at what Vice is interested in: unrest, conflict, revolution, persecution."

Such work led the New York Times then-media critic David Carr, who had previously been severely critical of Vice, to write: "Being the crusty old-media scold felt good at the time, but recent events suggest that Vice is deadly serious about doing real news that people, yes, even young people, will actually watch." Carr wrote of the ISIS documentary in particular, "The ISIS story scans as both propaganda and remarkable journalism, some of it filmed in Syria, the most dangerous place in the world to be a reporter right now." More broadly, Carr wrote, he was "glad that someone's willing to do the important work of bearing witness, the kind that can get you killed if something goes wrong." Kevin Sutcliffe, who headed Vice's programming in Europe, told The Huffington Post that its filmmakers "hadn't been able to travel freely during his reporting trip inside Syria and [were] always accompanied by a minder from the Islamic State." an independent expenditures-only anti-Trump political action committee." During the 2020 United States presidential election, IXNAY launched a podcast produced by Mojica and hosted by Crutchfield. Guests have included former Trump administration official Anthony Scaramucci, former member of the Weather Underground Bill Ayers, and Dead Kennedys frontman Jello Biafra.

According to documents filed with the FEC, Mojica serves as the PAC's treasurer. As of the committee's pre-general election filing in October of 2020, the PAC had raised just over $10,000.

Awards and nominations 2016: Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards Selfie Soldiers

2016: National Magazine Award Selfie Soldiers

2015: National Magazine Award The Islamic State

2015; News & Documentary Emmy Award (Nominee, Outstanding Coverage of a Breaking News Story in a News Magazine) - Russian Roulette, The Invasion of Ukraine

2015; News & Documentary Emmy Award (Nominee, Outstanding Coverage of a Breaking News Story in a News Magazine) - Outstanding Interview, "The Architect"

2014: Peabody Award Last Chance High

2014: Peabody Award The Islamic State

2014: IDA Award (Nominee, Best Short Form Series) Last Chance High

2014: IDA Award (Nominee, Best Short Form Series) The Islamic State

2013: Webby Award (Online Film & Video: News & Politics, Series) VICE News

2013: Webby Award, People's Choice (Online Film & Video: News & Politics, Series) VICE News

2012: Webby Award (Online Film & Video: Documentary, Individual Episode) The Rebels of Libya

2012: Webby Award (News and Politics: Individual Episode) The VICE Guide to Congo