Journalism

Saudi Dictator’s Death Shows NYT As Pawn Of Power

January 27, 2015 Keane Bhatt, www.fair.org Educate! Journalism, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela

To put into context the paper's impressive feat--laundering the Saudi dictator into a forward-thinking reformer--consider the Times' treatment of an actually elected leader who was not a stalwart US ally, but rather the target of ongoing US attempts at regime change. In 2013, the New York Times (3/5/13) published a harsh portrait of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez upon his death. "A Polarizing Figure Who Led a Movement," by Times reporter Simon Romero, posthumously characterized Chávez as a man who had been "consolidating power," "strutting like the strongman in a caudillo novel." Chávez "was determined to hold onto and enhance his power," continued Romero, arguing that he "grew obsessed with changing Venezuela's laws and regulations to ensure that he could be re-elected indefinitely and become, indeed, a caudillo."

Bad, Bad Barrett Brown

January 26, 2015 Gabriella Coleman, www.slate.com Educate! Barret Brown, Journalism, Law, Media, NSA

Among both American and British law-enforcement communities, the temptation runs strong to treat hackers and hacktivists in simplistic terms. The public was offered a rare glimpse of this reductive tendency by a published cache of leaked NSA and GCHQ documents. In a presentation slide evaluating various uses of the anonymizing tool Tor, hacktivists like Anonymous are slotted firmly and unambiguously into the “bad” category—immediately adjacent to both pedophiles and criminals. Screen Shot 2015-01-26 at 6.42.35 AM On Thursday, this moral binary was once again rehashed in a Dallas courthouse, when Judge Samuel Lindsay handed down a stiff sentence to journalist and rabble-rousing activist Barrett Brown.

The Anti-Empire Report #136: Murdering journalists, Them & Us

January 21, 2015 William Blum, www.williamblum.org Educate! Freedom of Press, History, Journalism

After Paris, condemnation of religious fanaticism is at its height. I’d guess that even many progressives fantasize about wringing the necks of jihadists, bashing into their heads some thoughts about the intellect, about satire, humor, freedom of speech. We’re talking here, after all, about young men raised in France, not Saudi Arabia. Where has all this Islamic fundamentalism come from in this modern age? Most of it comes – trained, armed, financed, indoctrinated – from Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. During various periods from the 1970s to the present, these four countries had been the most secular, modern, educated, welfare states in the Middle East region. And what had happened to these secular, modern, educated, welfare states?

Why Selma’s Critics Are Wrong About Civil Rights History

January 19, 2015 Jim Naureckas, www.inthesetimes.com Educate! Journalism, Media, MLK

Even before it was released on Christmas Day, Selma was under attack. In Politico's “What Selma Gets Wrong,” LBJ Presidential Library director Mark Updegrove charged that the fictional film's depiction of the epic voting-rights battle in the Alabama town “misses mightily in faithfully capturing the pivotal relationship—contentious, the film would have you believe—between [Martin Luther] King and President Lyndon Baines Johnson.” This served, Updegrove scolded, to “bastardize one of the most hallowed chapters in the civil rights movement by suggesting that the president himself stood in the way of progress.” Johnson adviser Joseph Califano struck next in the Washington Post, complaining that the film “falsely portrays President Lyndon B. Johnson as being at odds with Martin Luther King Jr.”

Today’s Media Language A Little Too Much Like 1984’s Newspeak

January 12, 2015 Nick Fillmore, www.rabble.ca Educate! Canada, Journalism, Media

Newspeak is the fictional language in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, written by George Orwell. It is a controlled language created by the totalitarian state as a tool to limit freedom of thought and concepts that pose a threat to the regime. Canada is not Orwell's imaginary society where peoples' every thoughts and ideas are controlled by The Party, but our own powerful elite has pushed our media closer to censorship and a propaganda-feeding machine than I ever imagined possible. Our elite include the wealthy, corporate executives, private media and the Harper government. As Orwell wrote in his novel, the elite understand that if they have strong influence over media they can limit serious criticism of the tremendous changes they impose on ordinary people.

What Barrett Brown’s Charges Mean For Journalism

January 8, 2015 Sean Nevins, www.mintpressnews.com Educate! Barret Brown, Journalism, Law, Media

On Jan. 22, journalist, activist and author Barrett Brown, 33, is scheduled to be sentenced by U.S. District Judge Sam A. Lindsay in Dallas for threatening an FBI agent, hiding evidence during an FBI raid, and attempting to negotiate on behalf of a person wanted by the FBI — two felonies and a misdemeanor, respectively. Facing a maximum sentence of eight-and-a-half years in prison, Brown’s predicament is the result of his work as a journalist and his connections to sources engaged in revealing surveillance activities by public and private intelligence agencies. In 2011, Brown started a website called Project PM, an encyclopedic website with data about the intelligence contracting industry, which likely made him a target of the federal government.

Defiant On Witness Stand, Times Reporter Says Little

January 6, 2015 Matt Apuzzo, www.nytimes.com Resist! Freedom of Press, James Risen, Journalism, Law, Media

After losing a seven-year legal battle, James Risen, a reporter for The New York Times, reluctantly took the witness stand in federal court here on Monday, but refused to answer any questions that could help the Justice Department identify his confidential sources. Mr. Risen said he would not say anything to help prosecutors bolster their case against Jeffrey A. Sterling, a former C.I.A.officer who is set to go on trial soon on charges of providing classified information to Mr. Risen for his 2006 book, “State of War.” The Justice Department first subpoenaed Mr. Risen to testify in the case against Mr. Sterling in 2008, and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. authorized the subpoena again in 2011. The attempt to force Mr. Risen to disclose his sources has come to symbolize the Obama administration’s crackdown on government officials who talk to reporters about national security matters.

Egypt Court Orders Retrial For Peter Greste & Al-Jazeera Colleagues

January 3, 2015 Patrick Kingsley, www.theguardian.com Educate! Egypt, Freedom of Press, Journalism, Law

Three al-Jazeera English journalists jailed in Egypt have been sent for retrial after a New Year’s Day appeal hearing in Cairo, dashing their families’ hopes of a release on bail, but opening the door for two of the trio to be deported. After more than a year in jail, Canadian-Egyptian Mohamed Fahmy, Australian Peter Greste and Egyptian Baher Mohamed now face several further months behind bars, with no date for a new hearing set. Fahmy and Greste could still be deported under the terms of a recent presidential decree that allows foreign nationals to serve sentences in their home countries, but President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s office did not respond to a request for comment about his intentions.

Protests Mark 1 Year Since Al Jazeera Journalists Jailed

December 30, 2014 Tim Chester, www.mashable.com Resist! Egypt, Freedom of Press, Journalism

Friends, colleagues and supporters of the three Al Jazeera journalists who were arrested in Egypt exactly one year ago have gathered outside the Egyptian embassy to protest against their incarceration. Staff from Channel 4, CNN and other organisations held banners bearing the hashtag #FreeAJStaff and taped their mouths shut during the silent protest to draw attention to the trio's ongoing sentence, at the start of a week that could see their case up for a retrial. Baher Mohamed, Mohamed Fahmy and Peter Greste were arrested in Cairo on Dec. 29, 2013, and convicted on terrorism-related charges in June. Mohamed, an Egyptian producer, received a sentence of 10 years in prison while Egyptian-Canadian Fahmy, Al Jazeera's Cairo bureau chief, and Australian Greste, a former BBC correspondent, were sentenced to seven years each.

The 2014 P.U.-litzers: Some Of The Stinkiest Reporting

December 25, 2014 FAIR, www.fair.org Educate! Journalism, Media

It's that time of year again, when FAIR looks back at the year and recalls some of the stinkiest media moments. There were, of course, many contenders-- but only a select few can make the list. So without further ado, we present the 2014 P.U.-litzers: -We Are Awesome Award: Andrea Tantaros, Fox News Channel: "The United States of America is awesome, we are awesome. We’ve closed the book on it, and we’ve stopped doing it. And the reason they want to have this discussion is not to show how awesome we are. This administration wants to have this discussion to show us how we’re not awesome." --Fox host Andrea Tantaros (12/9/14), on the release of the Senate investigation of CIA torture.

Slimy Baltimore FOX Affiliate Caught Faking “Kill A Cop” Protest Chant

December 23, 2014 Miserable Shitehawk, www.gawker.com Educate! Journalism, Media, police brutality, Police the Police

Last night, Baltimore's WBFF aired a video of protesters chanting "kill a cop"– evidence, it claimed, of murderously violent rhetoric on the part of anti-brutality protesters in Washington, D.C. The only problem? The protesters weren't chanting "kill a cop" at all, and there's video evidence to prove it. The current national pastime appears to be constructing elaborate ways of laying responsibility for recent police shootings at the feet of anti-police-brutality protesters. This, of course, is bullshit. Faced with the daunting task of shifting blame for broad and escalating distrust of police away from the murderous bastards themselves and onto mostly non-violent activists, our insanely cynical news media has been forced to dig deep into their bag of tricks.

The Latest Twist In The Bizarre Prosecution Of Barrett Brown

December 23, 2014 Michelle Garcia, www.firstlook.org Educate! Freedom of Press, Journalism, Media

Wearing a prison-issued orange uniform, the 33-year-old Brown scribbled for hours as a federal prosecutor attempted to portray him, not as a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in The Guardian, Vanity Fairand the Dallas-based Dmagazine, but instead as a spokesman, strategist and contributor to the hacktivist collective Anonymous. It was the final phase of a criminal prosecution that at one point threatened Brown with more than 100 years in prison, as a result of his work on thousands of files hacked by Anonymous from the servers of HBGary Federal and Stratfor, security intelligence firms and government contractors. Through the online collective he founded, called Project PM, Brown analyzed and reported on the thousands of pages of leaked documents. The HBGary hack revealed a coordinated campaign to target and smear advocates for WikiLeaks and the Chamber of Commerce, while the Stratfor hack provided a rare window into the shadowy world of defense contractors.

Secrecy In Barrett Brown Case Continues

December 15, 2014 Free Barrett, www.tumblr.freebarrettbrown.org Educate! Journalism, Political Prisoner

Ahead of the sentencing of Barrett Brown, which is due to happen next Tuesday, December 16th, the DOJ is opposing the public’s right to know about a case with extraordinary implications for the public and for the practice of journalists. On November 19th, Brown’s defense attorneys filed their final sentencing memorandum, which is a thorough legal argument in favor of time served for the defendant, including many letters submitted by friends, family and supporters on his behalf. Because the government’s pleadings arguing for a 8 ½ year sentence were made under seal, the defense’s filing in response was also sealed, like much of the case. Arbitrary and inexplicable secrecy, including protective orders and gag orders have abounded in USA v. Barrett Lancaster Brown from the very start.

Media Tries To Avoid Saying ‘Torture’

December 13, 2014 Jim Naurekas, www.fair.org Educate! Freedom of Expression, Journalism, Media, Torture

National Public Radio, following the lead of theWashington Post (FAIR Blog, 12/9/14) (and in contrast to the New York Times–FAIR Blog,8/8/14), tries to avoid applying the word "torture" in its own voice to the tortures described in the recent Senate Intelligence Committee report. Here's host Robert Siegel (All Things Considered, 12/9/14): In the years after 9/11, the CIA conducted harsh interrogations, more brutal and widespread than many realized. And worse, those interrogations did not produce any intelligence that we could use in any significant way to fight terrorism. Those are the conclusions of a report partially released today by the Democratic chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Reactions to what's known as the torture report show a country divided.

Oil Pipelines Are So Last Year, Says Wall Street Journal

December 12, 2014 Heather Smith, www.grist.org Organize! Energy, Environment, Journalism, Keystone XL, Media, Oil & Gas

What a difference a year makes. At the end of 2013, Keystone XL looked like a done deal. KXL South (a.k.a. the Gulf Coast Pipeline) was already built and weeks away from being turned on. Now, a year later, that renowned pinko/green publication known as the Wall Street Journal writes that the fight against Keystone XL has been so successful that it’s become the training model for at least 10 other anti-pipeline fights. Seriously. There’s a slideshow and everything. National groups provide access to money and tactical knowledge, while local groups can deliver on-the-ground pipeline opponents, including farmers, ranchers, and tribal leaders.

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