Press Freedom

Swiss Official Who Jailed Journalist Ali Abunimah Is Pro-Israel Fanatic

February 13, 2025 Wyatt Reed, The Grayzone. Educate! Ali Abunimah, Censorship, Israel, Journalists, Palestine, Press Freedom, Switzerland, Zionism

The Swiss official who ordered the arrest of renowned Palestinian-American journalist Ali Abunimah justified doing so on the false and defamatory basis that Abunimah is “an Islamist Jew-hater.” Mario Fehr, the head of Zurich’s Department of Security, made the bogus accusation in a recent comment to the Swiss publication NZZ, which also falsely characterized Abunimah as an “Islamist” and an “extremist.” Swiss authorities detained Abunimah on Jan. 25, after they initially allowed him entry into Switzerland following an hour-long interrogation.

Austrian Police Detain Richard Medhurst; Accuse Him Of Being Hamas

February 8, 2025 Joe Lauria, Consortium News. Educate! Austria, Hamas, Journalists, Press Freedom, Richard Medhurst, United Kingdom (UK)

British independent journalist Richard Medhurst said Thursday he was detained this week by Austrian police and intelligence agents and accused of being a member of Hamas. Medhurst, who lives in Austria and is a fierce critic of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, said police raided his home on Monday, took his devices and interrogated him. “They essentially lured me into a trap,” he said on a video posted on X. The journalist said immigration authorities called him to a meeting where they threatened to revoke his residency because of his reporting on Palestine and Lebanon.

Switzerland Deports Electronic Intifada’s Ali Abunimah

January 29, 2025 The Electronic Intifada. Educate! Ali Abunimah, Censorship, Journalists, Media, Palestine, Press Freedom, Switzerland

The Electronic Intifada’s executive director Ali Abunimah was deported by Switzerland on Monday after spending two nights in jail. Abunimah described his experience in a statement he made upon arrival to Istanbul airport late Monday. He said that he was “cut off from communication with the outside world” and “not even permitted to contact my family.” He said that police accused him of “offending against Swiss law” but was not presented with any charges. Abunimah added that he was questioned “by Swiss defense ministry intelligence agents without the presence of my lawyer, and they again refused to allow me to contact her or my family.”

Switzerland: Another Journalist Arrested For Wrongthink About Israel

January 26, 2025 Caitlin Johnstone, Consortium News. Educate! Ali Abunimah, Censorship, Israel, Journalism, Palestine, Press Freedom, Switzerland

They’ve arrested another pro-Palestinian journalist, this time in Switzerland. The Electronic Intifada’s executive director Ali Abunimah has reportedly been detained by Swiss police in Zurich, after having been interrogated for an hour and released the previous day when entering the country. Abunimah, who is Palestinian-American, has played a leading role in exposing and critiquing the apartheid abuses of Israel for many years. In October of last year, Electronic Intifada’s associate editor Asa Winstanley saw his home raided by British “counterterrorism” police in response to his social media posts about Israel’s western-backed abuses in the middle east.

Biden’s Legacy: The World Is More Unsafe For Journalists

January 20, 2025 Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter. Educate! Joe Biden, Journalism, Journalists, Press Freedom, State Violence

President Joe Biden’s administration proclaimed numerous times that “journalism is not a crime” and that the United States government supports “free and independent media around the world.” Biden said the “free press is crumbling” in his farewell address. But the reality is that Biden and his administration helped make the state of the free press more fragile. Over 200 journalists in Gaza were killed by Israeli military forces armed by the Biden administration. Other client states, like India and Saudi Arabia, trampled on the human rights of reporters without fearing much criticism.

Journalists Thrown Out Of Antony Blinken’s Final Briefing

January 17, 2025 Eloise Goldsmith, Common Dreams. Resist! Antony Blinken, Genocide, Journalists, Press Freedom

Two journalists were removed from Secretary of State Antony Blinken's final news conference on Thursday after interrupting Blinken's remarks to heckle him about the United States' policy toward Gaza, a day after a cease-fire deal between Hamas and Israel was announced. One of the reporters, independent journalist Sam Husseini, was physically carried out of the briefing room by security. Less than two minutes into Blinken's remarks, as he was thanking the reporters in the attendance for "asking tough questions," Max Blumenthal, the editor in chief of The Grayzone—an independent news—addressed Blinken, saying loudly in reference to the cease-fire deal:"300 reporters in Gaza were on the receiving end of your bombs.

Judge Orders CPS To Come Clean On Deleted Assange Documents

January 11, 2025 Joe Lauria, Consortium News. Educate! Journalism, Julian Assange, Press Freedom, Transparency, United Kingdom (UK)

Italian journalist Stefania Maurizi has been waging a legal battle for seven years against the Crown Prosecution Service to discover the truth about a CPS claim that it deleted a number of documents Maurizi has sought in a Freedom of Information request about the case of Julian Assange. Now a judge on the London First-tier Tribunal has ruled that the CPS must explain to Maurizi what it knows about when, why and how the documents were allegedly destroyed. The Jan. 2 ruling was first reported by Maurizi’s newspaper il Fatto Quotidiano on Friday.

Asheville Blade Journalists Sue Over Illegal Arrests

January 7, 2025 Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter. Resist! Journalists, Legal System, North Carolina, Press Freedom

A news co-op in North Carolina and two journalists convicted of trespassing offenses filed a federal lawsuit alleging that their constitutional rights were violated by Asheville Police Department officers. In December 2021, residents in the Asheville community gathered at Aston Park for five evenings to urge the City of Asheville to leave people without any shelter alone in the park after it closed at 10 p.m. They took a stand on Christmas, refusing to disperse. Police responded by sweeping the encampment and arresting six people. Two of the people arrested were reporters for the Asheville Blade—Matilda Bliss and Veronica Coit.

Journalist Could Face Prison For Refusing To Give Passwords To Police

January 3, 2025 Stefania Maurizi, Il Fatto Quotidiano. Educate! Journalism, Legal System, Police, Press Freedom, Privacy

It is an unprecedented case. And it risks triggering an unprecedented threat to journalism. The UK police have repeatedly tried to obtain the passwords to the phones of the British independent journalist, Richard Medhurst, the first reporter arrested in London under Section 12: his analyses and comments on Israel’s bloodbath in Gaza – which Amnesty International has characterised as genocide – have been interpreted by the police as support for organisations banned from the UK, such as Hamas and Hezbollah. The son of two UN peacekeepers, Medhurst was arrested last August at London’s Heathrow Airport

Appeals Court Upholding TikTok Ban Is A Grim Sign For Press Freedom

December 10, 2024 Ari Paul, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Educate! Censorship, Legal System, Press Freedom, Tiktok

Donald Trump is just weeks away from returning to the White House, and when he gets there, it is all but assured that he will attack press freedom (FAIR.org, 11/14/24; NBC, 12/4/24). But the will and desire to clamp down on free speech and expression isn’t just a Trumpian phenomenon. A US District Court of Appeals panel, with two Republican-appointed judges and one picked by a Democrat, has upheld a law forcing the sale of TikTok because of its alleged Chinese government control (AP, 12/6/24). All corners of government, joined by members of both major parties, concur that national security concerns should allow the government to scrap First Amendment principles.

Leaks Expose Secret British Military Cell Plotting To ‘Keep Ukraine Fighting’

November 19, 2024 Kit Klarenberg, The Grayzone. Educate! Britain, information warfare, Leaks, MI6, Operation Gladio, Press Freedom, Proxy War, Russia, Ukraine, Wars and Militarism

Emails and internal documents reviewed by The Grayzone reveal details of a cabal of British military and intelligence veterans which plotted to escalate and prolong the Ukraine proxy war “at all costs.” Convened under the direction of the British Ministry of Defense in the immediate aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the cell referred to itself as Project Alchemy. As British leadership sabotaged peace talks between Kiev and Moscow, the cell put forward an array of plans “to keep Ukraine fighting” by imposing “strategic dilemmas, costs and frictions upon Russia.”

Keeping Your Data Safe When Reporting From The Field

November 5, 2024 Davis Erin Anderson, Freedom of the Press. Strategize! 2024 US Presidential elections, digital security, Journalism, Journalists, Police, Press Freedom

It’s not uncommon for police to seize cellphones and other equipment from journalists who are covering protests. The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker has documented at least 49 cases of equipment searches and seizures targeting journalists covering protests, and many of those have happened in the last year. One case that I want to highlight is the case of Dilan Gohill. He is a student journalist at Stanford for The Stanford Daily, and he was arrested last June while he was covering a student protest on campus. It was a pro-Palestinian protest in which protesters broke into a campus building and barricaded themselves inside, and Dilan, in his capacity as a reporter, was with them to report on what was happening.

After Police Raid, Journalist Focused On Stopping ‘Digital Strip-Search’

November 3, 2024 Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter. Resist! Britain, Journalism, Journalists, Press Freedom

London-based journalist Asa Winstanley says when British counter-terrorism police raided his home on October 17 they asked which electronic devices were personal and which were used for journalism. “I was very reluctant to do that because it seemed to me that by doing that I would almost set myself up,” Winstanley added during a Space hosted by Sulaiman Ahmed. “It’s a way of stopping me from doing my journalism, if they were going to take those devices away.” But if Winstanley did not identify the devices that he used for journalism, the implicit threat was that they would “basically ransack the whole house.”

United Kingdom Snubs Council Of Europe Over Assange Inquiry

October 26, 2024 Mark Curtis, Consortium News. Educate! Accountability, Europe, Human Rights, Investigation, Julian Assange, Press Freedom, United Kingdom (UK)

Britain’s Home Office is making a “grave mistake” by ignoring a call from the Council of Europe to review its treatment of Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder’s wife has warned. The council’s parliamentary assembly, of which the U.K. is a member, passed a resolution earlier this month designating Assange as a “political prisoner”. Assange endured five years in Belmarsh maximum security prison in London before being released in June, and flying to his native Australia. The U.K. government had incarcerated him while the U.S. pursued extradition proceedings in the British courts. His treatment has outraged the Council of Europe.

Fighting For More Evidence Of Assange’s Political Prosecution

October 24, 2024 Joe Lauria and Mohamed Elmaazi, Consortium News. Resist! Julian Assange, Legal System, Political Prisoner, Press Freedom, Transparency, Wikileaks

A tribunal in Britain is set to decide whether to order the government’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to prove it deleted emails that may have covered up more evidence of a politically motivated prosecution of Julian Assange. The three judges heard arguments on Sept. 24 in the nearly decade-long freedom of information saga regarding the emails that top British prosecutors say were deleted. They involved an exchange with Sweden during a Swedish prosecutor’s attempt, beginning in 2010, to extradite the WikiLeaks publisher from Britain. Assange was wanted in Sweden for questioning during a preliminary investigation into allegations of sexual assault, which was dropped three times, definitively in 2017.

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