Tag: censorship

Twitter Targets Accounts of MintPress and Other Outlets Covering Unrest in Bolivia

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29 June 2020 — Mint Press

MintPress News, along with a number of independent Bolivian news outlets and journalists covering the unrest there, were all targeted for suspension at the same time.

Social media giant Twitter took the step of suspending the official account of MintPress News on Saturday. Without warning, the nine-year-old account with 64,000 followers was abruptly labeled as “fake” or “spam” and restricted. This move is becoming a frequent occurrence for alternative media, especially those that openly challenge U.S. power globally.

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Meet Wikipedia’s Ayn Rand-loving founder and Wikimedia Foundation’s regime-change operative CEO

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11 June 2020 — Grayzone
Wikipedia Jimmy Wales Katherine Maher US government

Wikipedia has become a bulletin board for corporate and imperial interests under the watch of its Randian founder, Jimmy Wales, and the veteran US regime-change operative who heads the Wikimedia Foundation, Katherine Maher.

By Ben Norton and Max Blumenthal

This is part 2 in a series of investigative reports on the systemic problems with Wikipedia. Read part 1 here: “Wikipedia formally censors The Grayzone as regime-change advocates monopolize editing“

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New laws to criminalise public interest information

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2 June 2020 — True Publica

New laws to criminalise public interest information

By TruePublica Editor: A new Declassified report published only a few days ago goes to show the situation we find our selves in right now. In the midst of a crisis, while the commentariat are lobbing rocks at each other over the endless scandals and the media are focused on the pandemic – the government continues to act as if democracy doesn’t really exist.

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New UK laws could criminalise journalism

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30 May 2020 — Daily Maverick

By Richard Norton-Taylor

The British government is pushing ahead with “espionage legislation” that could criminalise the release of public information and impose even stricter controls on the UK media as part of an “epidemic of secrecy”.

British journalists and their sources are facing an unprecedented assault on freedom of speech, including the prospect of criminal prosecution. Threats aimed at whistleblowers and journalists were evident before the coronavirus crisis struck, but went largely unnoticed.

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Emily Maitlis is no media hero. She simply forgot what she and the BBC are there to do

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29 May 2020 — Jonathan Cook

The wrong conclusions are being drawn about Emily Maitlis’s comments on Dominic Cummings on the BBC flagship Newsnight show this week. Her remarks are not evidence of her courage, or that journalists are being gagged, or that the BBC is suddenly capitulating to the government.

The Inevitable Coronavirus Censorship Crisis is Here

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3 May 2020 — Matt Taibbi

As the Covid-19 crisis progresses, censorship programs advance, amid calls for China-style control of the Internet

Matt Taibbi

Earlier this week, Atlantic magazine – fast becoming the favored media outlet for self-styled intellectual elites of the Aspen Institute type – ran an in-depth article of the problems free speech pose to American society in the coronavirus era. The headline:

Internet Speech Will Never Go Back to Normal

In the debate over freedom versus control of the global network, China was largely correct, and the U.S. was wrong.

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More journalists barred from Gov’t daily press briefings – for asking wrong questions

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30 April 2020 — True Publica

More journalists barred from Gov't daily press briefings - for asking wrong questions

By TruePublica: On 3 February, (remember how long ago that was) political journalists walked out of a Downing Street press briefing en masse after a Dominic Cummings associate attempted to ban selected reporters from attending. The Prime Minister’s Director of Communications, Lee Cain, tried to prevent journalists from the Independent, the i, the Mirror, HuffPost, PoliticsHome, and others from covering the briefing, on the grounds that they had not been specifically invited. A handful of media had received invitations to a “No10 technical background briefing on the UK’s future relationship with the EU;” however, the journalists who had been invited walked out in protest to the barring of access for their colleagues.

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Britain: the capitalist press – “a great keyboard on which the government can play”

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24 April 2020 — In Defence of Marxism

Ben Gliniecki

Image: Socialist Appeal

This article was written before the coronavirus pandemic, but with the press spending weeks subjecting the Tories to nothing but uncritical “wartime” coverage, and now fawning over the establishment-friendly Labour leader Keir Starmer, the points it makes are more valid than ever.

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Scandal-Ridden OPCW Now Using Twitter’s “Hide Replies” Function

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19 February 2020 — Caitlin Johnson

When Twitter first implemented its “hide replies” function last year I published an article warning that it could be used by establishment narrative managers to marginalize dissident voices and diminish the relatively egalitarian nature of the platform. When I wrote it I was imagining the function being used by overt manipulators like cable TV pundits and Washington Post columnists, and think tank operatives like Neera Tanden who vocally supported the implementation of the function.

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