Media
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Corporate Media Have Second Thoughts About Exiling Julian Assange From Journalism
“Democracy dies in darkness,” reads the Washington Post slogan—though apparently sometimes it’s good to put people in prison for exposing government wrongdoing (4/11/19). Continue reading
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The Western Media Is Key to Syria Deceptions By Jonathan Cook
By any reckoning, the claim made this week by al-Qaeda-linked fighters that they were targeted with chemical weapons by the Syrian government in Idlib province – their final holdout in Syria – should have been treated by the western media with a high degree of scepticism. Continue reading
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Australian Federal Police raid journalists over exposures of government spying, war crimes By Oscar Grenfell
Over the past 24 hours, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) have carried out two raids targeting separate media organisations, for their publication of articles exposing government spying plans and war crimes committed by Australian troops in Afghanistan. Continue reading
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More Police Raids As War On Journalism Escalates Worldwide by Caitlin Johnstone
The Australian Federal Police have conducted two raids on journalists and seized documents in purportedly unrelated incidents in the span of just two days. Continue reading
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After Assange’s Espionage Act Indictment, Police Move Against More Journalists for Publishing Classified Material
Less than two months after the arrest of journalist Julian Assange, and two weeks after his indictment under the Espionage Act, emboldened governments have sent the police after journalists who’ve challenged the state. Joe Lauria reports. Continue reading
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Next ORG London event 17 June
Join us Monday 17 June at Goldsmith’s University of London for a talk by Open Rights Group’s Executive Director Jim Killock about the Government’s new plan to address “online harms” on social media and other online platforms. Continue reading
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BBC, Sky News Have Hidden Their Interviews With UN Expert On The Torture Of Assange By Cailin Johnson
UN Special Rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer has said that on the 31st of May he gave video interviews with both Sky News and the BBC on his findings that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is the victim of psychological torture. As of tis writing, footage of those interviews is nowhere to be found. Continue reading
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French bloggers feel like in Orwellian novel as Brussels teaches them to promote ‘EU angles’
French news and political bloggers were left unimpressed after the EU officials condemned “Russian disinformation” and encouraged online influencers to stick to a pro-EU narrative during a promo trip to the European Commission. Continue reading
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Reporters Without Borders accepts prize from journalist-killing regime By Ali Abunimah
Reporters Without Borders is facing sharp criticism for accepting a prize from a regime that murders journalists. Continue reading
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Robert Stuart vs the BBC
It’s a David vs Goliath story. A former local newspaper reporter, Robert Stuart, is taking on the British Broadcasting Corporation. Stuart believes that a sensational video story about an alleged atrocity in Syria “was largely, if not entirely, staged.” The BBC would like it all to just go away. But like David, Stuart will not… Continue reading
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“Yellow Vest” Facebook group with 350,000 members frozen on European election day By Will Morrow
On Sunday, polling day in the European elections, the largest Facebook group associated with the “yellow vest” protests in France, with more than 350,000 members, was frozen so that members could not publish or share information in it. Continue reading
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New York Times Supports False Trump Claims About An “Iranian Nuclear Weapons Program” That Does Not Exist
The Trump administrations hostility to Iran has nothing to do with anything nuclear. The U.S. wants hegemony over the Persian Gulf region. Iran rejects such imperial desires. The U.S. wants to control the flow of hydrocarbon resources to its competitors, primarily China. Iran does not allow such controls over its exports. The U.S. wants that… Continue reading
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Abuses show Assange case was never about law By Jonathan Cook
It is astonishing how often one still hears well-informed, otherwise reasonable people say about Julian Assange: “But he ran away from Swedish rape charges by hiding in Ecuador’s embassy in London.” Continue reading
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There’s Far More Diversity in Venezuela’s ‘Muzzled’ Media Than in US Corporate Press
The international corporate media have long displayed a peculiar creativity with the facts in their Venezuela reporting, to the point that coverage of the nation’s crisis has become perhaps the world’s most lucrative fictional genre. Ciara Nugent’s recent piece for Time (4/16/19), headlined “‘Venezuelans Are Starving for Information’: The Battle to Get News in a Country in… Continue reading
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Media Setting Up Iran as New ‘Threat’ That Must Be Confronted By Janine Jackson
The Washington Post editorial’s headline (5/14/19) had the US “drifting” toward war with Iran—another example, as analyst Nima Shirazi quipped, of the “world’s superpower somehow having no agency over its own imperialism.” Continue reading
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‘How Does the US Compensate the World for the Damage It Has Done?’ – CounterSpin interview with Basav Sen on beyond the Paris Accord
Janine Jackson interviewed Basav Sen about going beyond the Paris Climate Accord for the May 3, 2019, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript. Continue reading
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ACTION ALERT: WaPo Must Acknowledge CIA Role in Pakistan Polio Crisis by Adam Johnson
In commenting on what’s holding back the conquest of polio, the Washington Post(5/10/19) didn’t mention the humans at the CIA. Continue reading
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Distorting ‘Democracy’ in Venezuela Coverage By Gregory Shupak
Writing of the failed US-sponsored coup attempt in Venezuela on April 30, Uri Friedman of The Atlantic (5/1/19) referred to the Venezuelan branch of the coup as Juan “Guaidó’s pro-democracy movement.” The logical contradiction could scarcely be more pronounced: A wave of Friedman’s wand transforms a political force seeking the military overthrow of Venezuela’s elected government into… Continue reading
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The West: Full Spectrum Dementia By Stephen Sefton
Journalism has never been free of propaganda. News has always been produced and marketed like any other commodity, satisfying and shaping consumers’ opinions, loyalties and taste. Over the last thirty years, the US elites and their allies have effectively eliminated conventional journalism in favor of propaganda and counter-propaganda serving their relentless war on the majority… Continue reading
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World Press Freedom Day Is a Joke in the Middle East as the West Continues to Destroy Journalism There By Martin Jay
British and Canadian diplomats hijacking World Press Freedom Day is a really bad joke. But that’s what happened recently in Beirut when this not so auspicious day passed, leaving some in the Middle East wondering if journalism can play any role whatsoever in improving governance, holding states to account and emboldening democracy. Continue reading
The New Dark Age 