Journalism

Police To Al Jazeera Journalist Near Ferguson: ‘I’ll Bust Your Head’

August 22, 2014 Aaron Ernst, www.aljazeera.com Educate! Ferguson, Journalism, Police, Violence

It’s not every day that a police officer tells you he’s going to bust your head open. The most exasperating thing about almost being arrested near Ferguson, Missouri, for doing my job as a journalist — reporting on tensions among citizens and law enforcement here — was my complete inability to fight back against what was an obvious abuse of police authority. The incident began on Thursday night when “America Tonight” director of photography Jung Park, anchor Joie Chen and I hopped in a taxi to interview Umar Lee, a cab driver and columnist who knows the racial history of North St. Louis County, which has become the focus of worldwide media attention. As we drove near Ferguson’s border with the neighboring town of Kinloch, JP was recording Lee, and I was recording Joie. When the interview was over, we got out of the cab to record a shot of it driving by. Two Kinloch officers in a patrol car stopped and asked what we were doing. I identified JP and myself as a cameraman and producer working for Al Jazeera America for “America Tonight.” The officer who was driving told us to leave the area. When we asked why, he said only that it wasn’t safe to be there and we had to leave. Puzzled, we got in the cab and did as requested. A little farther down the road, we saw a sign that JP wanted to shoot for our story, so we stopped and again got out.

Ferguson Deploys New Protest Control Tactics

August 21, 2014 Eric Blair, www.activistpost.com Educate! Journalism, Militarization, Police, Protest, Surveillance

It seems like the police state is using protests in Ferguson as a testing ground for all of their crowd-control weapons. Many are obvious like the curfew enforced by platoons of soldiers, armored tanks mounted by snipers, stun, tear and smoke grenades, no-fly zone, sound cannons, and designated free speech zones and media zones (apparently they're different now). However, some weapons are less obvious like technology to kill livestream feeds during questionable police activity. And that's precisely what happened last night according to Ferguson's most prolific livestreamer Argus Radio. The GIF above, taken from the final seconds of Argus Radio feed from last night, shows the moment the police bum rush the crowd and create mass panic in an attempt to catch someone. Moments later the livestream feed was cut and registered a network error, according to Argus Radio. The Argus livestream has been filming the protests non-stop for the last week manned by volunteer University of Missouri post-grad student Mustafa Hussein.

More War In Reaction To Foley Murder Will Fuel ISIS

August 21, 2014 Owen Jones, www.theguardian.com Educate! ISIS, Journalism, Terrorism, Wars and Militarism

The first defeat for the alleged killers of James Foley would be for him to be remembered as a courageous journalist. Reporting from a war zone is riskier than ever: over 200 media workers died in the Iraq war, more than any other conflict; at least 70 journalists were killed in global conflicts last year; and Agence France-Presse estimates that at least 30 have died this year. Foley had already spent 44 days in captivity at the hands of Gaddafi’s forces in Libya, but that did not deter him from seeking to uncover the truth about Syria. His apparent killers want him to be remembered as a tool to spread terror; celebrating his work would be an act of defiance. Everything about the video seemingly of Foley’s murder is intended to chill. It is unlikely that Islamic State (Isis) selected an executioner with a strong London accent for no reason. It was the Iraq war that first popularised the execution video, but hearing the blood-curdling threats and dogma of Isis recited in tones that are all too familiar is itself a message. Terrorism by definition aims to spread terror to achieve its political ends. One of the reasons Isis has outmanoeuvred its rivals is because it has embraced social media so effectively. By publicising its atrocities online, it tells would-be opponents what will happen if it is resisted, and this partly explains why so many have fled rather than confront Isis forces. The ruthless use of social media has proved instrumental in the toppling of entire cities. This operation is being gladly assisted by those in the west who portray Isis as a unique, undiluted evil that needs to be bombed out of existence, granting the militant group the mystique it clearly craves and relies on.

14 Journalists Have Been Arrested In Ferguson

August 21, 2014 Runa A. Sandvik, www.pressfreedomfoundation.org Educate! Ferguson, Free Speech, Journalism, Police

On Aug. 13, 2014, police in Ferguson, Missouri, assaulted and arrested two journalists for allegedly failing to exit a McDonald's quickly enough while on a break from covering the protests. Since then, police actions against journalists in Ferguson have escalated in severity and frequency. Many have been tear gassed and shot with rubber bullets and at least nine more have been arrested. It should go without saying that these arrests are a gross violation of the reporters' First Amendment rights, and attempts to prevent journalists from lawfully doing their job on the streets of Ferguson are downright illegal. We will be documenting each journalist arrest below and are filing public records requests for the arrest records of the journalists who have been assaulted, detained, and arrested in Ferguson. All requests are publicly available on MuckRock. We insist that the St. Louis County Police Department, Ferguson Police Department, and Missouri Highway Patrol cease and desist from violating the Constiutional rights of reporters covering the protests, and respect the court document they all signed agreeing that the media and members of the public have a right to record public events without abridgement.

Daniel McGowan, Jailed For HuffPost Blog

August 21, 2014 Matt Sledge, www.huffingtonpost.com Resist! Environment, Free Speech, Journalism, Prison

Daniel McGowan may have been the first person thrown in solitary confinement for writing a HuffPost blog. Now he'll be the first person to sue the Bureau of Prisons over it. The environmental activist and former prisoner filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against the prison system over an April 2013 incident in which U.S. Marshals threw him in a Brooklyn federal jail -- ironically, for criticizing earlier violations of his free speech. "The Bureau of Prisons does not like criticism and their reaction was unsurprisingly to try and crush someone who stepped out of line," McGowan told HuffPost Tuesday in an email. After a federal judge labeled him a terrorist in 2007 for arson committed with the Earth Liberation Front, McGowan spent years in some of the federal prison system's most restrictive prisons, the communication management units (CMUs). The Bureau of Prisons denies it, but internal prison files strongly suggest McGowan was placed there because of his continued outspoken association with the environmental movement.

James Risen: Obama Is ‘Greatest Enemy To Press Freedom’

August 18, 2014 Katherine Fung, www.huffingtonpost.com Educate! Barack Obama, Journalism, Whistleblowers

Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter James Risen is not mincing words about President Barack Obama. Risen has been fighting the Obama administration's efforts to get him to testify about his sources for six years. The Department of Justice has ordered him to testify against former CIA agent Jeffrey Sterling, who it believes leaked information about a failed CIA operation in Iran that Risen reported on in his book. Risen recently lost his bid to have the Supreme Court revisit his case. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd spoke to Risen for her Sunday column "Where’s the Justice at Justice?" "How can he [Obama] use the Espionage Act to throw reporters and whistle-blowers in jail even as he defends the intelligence operatives who 'tortured some folks,' and coddles his C.I.A. chief, John Brennan, who spied on the Senate and then lied to the senators he spied on about it?" Dowd wrote. Risen had one word to describe Obama's actions: "hypocritical."

Ferguson Case Poses Test For Corporate Media

August 16, 2014 Janine Jackson, www.fair.org Educate! Journalism, Mass Media, Missouri, Police

The killing of Michael Brown, an African-American man, by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, posed a test for corporate media. The story was hard to avoid once the local community came out in protest, still ongoing, and were met harshly by police. Probably more significant for the press corps, the online community–in this case largely black social media–erupted in pain and anger, with some of their criticism directed at the press itself. Some media have hewed to troubling practices that privilege police accounts and play up the specter of unruly mobs, as with the USA Today story (8/14/14) that rhetorically balanced "angry calls for reform and tear gas lobbed at protesters," in a piece that glossed the use of dogs, submachine guns and riot gear as police "seek[ing] order." And some will always choose to bland it out, like the L.A. Times' reference (8/13/14) to "an unsettled national conversation over race and policing." The surprise, then, has been the extent to which some media seem to be taking the outcry seriously, talking about the militarization of police–brought home by the rough treatment given to reporters covering the story–and the criminalization of black people.

Ferguson: WP Reporter Wesley Lowery Recounts His Arrest

August 15, 2014 Wesley Lowery, www.washingtonpost.com Educate! Journalism, Missouri, Police

For the past week in Ferguson, reporters have been using the McDonald’s a few blocks from the scene of Michael Brown’s shooting as a staging area. Demonstrations have blown up each night nearby. But inside there’s WiFi and outlets, so it’s common for reporters to gather there. That was the case Wednesday. My phone was just about to die, so as I charged it, I used the time to respond to people on Twitter and do a little bit of a Q&A since I wasn’t out there covering the protests. As I sat there, many armed officers came in — some who were dressed as normal officers, others who were dressed with more gear. Initially, both Ryan Reilly of the Huffington Post and I were asked for identification. I was wearing my lanyard, but Ryan asked why he had to show his ID. They didn’t press the point, but one added that if we called 911, no one would answer. Then they walked away. Moments later, the police reemerged, telling us that we had to leave. I pulled my phone out and began recording video. An officer with a large weapon came up to me and said, “Stop recording.” I said, “Officer, do I not have the right to record you?”

Climate Contrarians Overrepresented In Media, New Survey

August 13, 2014 John H. Cushman Jr., www.insideclimatenews.org Educate! Climate Change, Journalism, Mass Media

There is an overwhelming consensus among expert scientists studying climate change that man-made pollution is the main cause of global warming. But the media may be skewing its coverage of the issue by persistently seeking out the views of a contrarian minority, according to a new study. In an opinion survey of nearly 1,900 scientists, 90 percent of the respondents with more than 10 peer-reviewed articles to their name "explicitly agreed with anthropogenic greenhouse gases being the dominant driver of recent global warming," the study found. It was written by scientists in the Netherlands and Australia, and published in Environmental Science and Technology. The degree of the consensus was not surprising, as scientists said they basically agreed with findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, which has itself generated exhaustive consensus documents. Surveys of published literature have likewise demonstrated the breadth of the scientific consensus on man-made climate change. "We are confident that most of the main players in climate science were invited" to respond to the survey, the authors said.

NY Times Tries To Under-report Gaza Body Count

August 13, 2014 Patrick Connors, www.mondoweiss.net Educate! Israel, Journalism, Mass Media, New York Times (NYT), Palestine

On August 5, The New York Times published a highly problematic article “Civilian or Not? New Fight in Tallying the Dead from Gaza Conflict”, that presented information supporting dubious Israeli government claims that 900 Palestinians killed by Israel in Gaza, or around half of all Palestinian killed in Gaza in Israel’s current offensive, were “terrorists.” This assertion flies in the face of consensus reporting over the last month indicating much higher Palestinian civilian casualty figures. Yet another example of bad New York Times’ reporting on Gaza, the article by Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief Jodi Rudoren deserves debunking on many levels. It is built on unsupported claims by the Israeli government about whom Israel killed. Rudoren’s article fails to explain consensus positions in international law on who is a combatant, or explain Israel’s position on them. It also presents information in a way that profiles all Palestinian males age 15 – 60 as possible terrorists potentially deserving of death, and inappropriately limits the age of children to 0-14 years. More broadly, Jodi Rudoren’s article supports an Israeli government PR push to revise the history of Israel’s attack on Gaza to make Israel look better by asserting that Israel killed far more combatants and far fewer children than has been widely reported.

The Wall Street Journal: The Funny Papers Of Modern Journalism

August 12, 2014 Paul Buchheit, www.nationofchange.org Educate! Inequality, Journalism, Wall Street Journal

Funny, in a sad sort of way. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) gets respect from the mainstream because it speaks for the money interests. To many of those outside its golden circle, the commentary of its writers is generally suspect, occasionally frightening, and often unintentionally humorous. Delusion: Middle-class Americans have more buying power than ever before. WSJ compares the present day to the 1950s, ignoring changes in education costs, health care expenses, debt repayment and financial fees. The Journal built on the delusion by printing the insensitive headline What Recession? and by counseling its readers, Don't be alarmedby high rates of "economic insecurity." The Journal's "prosperity for all" fantasy includes their assurance that cutbacks in food stamps don't hurt children, even though in real life almost half of food stamp recipients are children. Denial: We shouldn’t be building windmills and all that rubbish. That comes from WSJ boss Rupert Murdoch, who continued as if only rich people matter: "The Maldives might disappear...we just have to stop building vast houses on seashores."

Protests As New Arm Of ALEC Is Announced

August 6, 2014 Candice Bernd, www.truth-out.org Resist! ALEC, Journalism, Politics, Privatization, Texas

Two grassroots activists from North Texas locked themselves inside the lobby of the Hilton Anatole in Dallas, Thursday morning, as another two dropped a banner from the upper stories of the hotel to greet lawmakers and corporate officials gathered for the 41st annual meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Protesters Whytney Blythe and Joshua Carmona were removed by hotel security, within about an hour after they chained themselves inside, and released without charges. State legislators and corporate lobbyist members from across the country will sit on task forces designed to review and vote on conservative "model" legislation that will likely travel from the Dallas Hilton Anatole's luxury conference rooms to official state house chambers, as lawmakers often pass off ALEC model bills as their own. ALEC has generated legislation that advances the interests of its corporate members throughout state legislatures in the United States, as has been well documented, by organizations such as the Center for Media and Democracy. More than 98 percent of the organization's funding comes from corporations and corporate foundations, with the infamous petrochemical billionaire brothers, Charles and David Koch of Koch Industries, serving as some of the organization's largest donors.

Journalism Groups Rally To Support James Risen

August 5, 2014 Norman Solomon, www.cjr.org Organize! Free Press, Journalism, Whistleblowers

Ten months after the Committee to Protect Journalists issued its scathing report “The Obama Administration and the Press,” journalists and potential whistleblowers continue to face unprecedented surveillance and legal jeopardy. The report, authored by Leonard Downie Jr., former executive editor of The Washington Post, remains grimly up to date as it describes “the fearful atmosphere surrounding contacts between American journalists and government sources.” The US Department of Justice seems determined to intensify that fearful atmosphere—in part by threatening to jail New York Times reporter James Risen, who refuses to name any source for the disclosure in his 2006 book State of War that the CIA bungled a dumb and dangerous operation with nuclear weapons blueprints in Iran. The government is now prosecuting a former CIA employee, Jeffrey Sterling, for allegedly leaking that information to Risen. Attorney General Eric Holder may soon decide whether he wants to imprison Risen for not capitulating. The Freedom of the Press Foundation calls it “one of the most significant press freedom cases in decades.” Almost a year ago, under the letterhead of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, 46 news organizations sent a letter to Holder urging the Justice Department to withdraw the subpoena issued to Risen. Two months ago, the Committee to Protect Journalists put out a new statement again calling on the Justice Department to cancel the subpoena.

Comcast Affiliated News Outlet Censored Article

August 3, 2014 Lee Fang, www.republicreport.org Educate! Censorship, Comcast, Journalism, Mass Media, Net Neutrality

In a move that smacks of censorship, Republic Report has discovered that a telecom industry-affiliated lobbying group successfully persuaded an African American news website to remove an article that reported critically on the groups advocating against Net Neutrality. The order to delete the article came from the website’s parent company, a business partner to Comcast. Last Friday, I reported on how several civil rights groups, almost all with funding from Comcast, Verizon and other Internet Service Providers, recently wrote to the Federal Communication Commission in support of Chairman Tom Wheeler’s plan, which would create Internet fast lanes and slow lanes, an effective death of Net Neutrality. That piece was syndicated with Salon and The Nation, and several outlets aggregated the article. For a short period, NewsOne, a news site geared towards the African American community, posted the piece along with its own commentary. Then, the NewsOne article with my reporting disappeared. If you Google the term ‘MMTC NewsOne,’ the NewsOne article (“Civil Rights Groups Blocking Efforts To Keep Internet Fair?”) still appears in the result list, though if you click it, it’s been deleted off of the web. Luckily, the Internet cache still has a copy.

Israel Makes Censorship Demand Of NY Times

August 2, 2014 Greg Mitchell, www.gregmitchellwriter.blogspot.mx Educate! Censorship, Gaza, Israel, Journalism

UPDATE #2 NYT publishes first story since the "censorship" order and complies by reading section of it over the phone to Israel official. No need--the story is straight stenography anyway from the two reporters in Jerusalem. The Times' public editor, just hours before, had written, "the very idea of censorship or gag orders by a foreign government is a disturbing one, not only for journalists but for all who value the free flow of information. It’s heartening to hear that The Times has not submitted any articles for review, and I hope that that will remain the case as this situation develops." In fact, the Times' international ed had just declared, "we are not submitting NYT articles for prior review by Israeli censors." Whoops. Note complete acceptance of story from IDF, including timeline. And more. Count all the absurdities in this one line: "Israel sent text messages to area residents to remain in their homes as forces rushed farther into Rafah, bombarding it from the ground and air to block the captors’ escape." UPDATE #1 NYT spokeswoman says they'll go along with it, telling Huff Post: “We adhere to the laws of the countries in which we report, including this one. We aren't going into details beyond that at the moment.” You have to wonder: If media hadn't gone along with similar blackout after the three Israeli teens were kidnapped back in June--setting this tragedy in motion--would they have uncovered evidence, only lately emerging, that Hamas may not have been involved, thus short-circuiting crisis?

«1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 »

assetto corsa mods

Daily movement news and resources