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Obama’s Gift to Donald Trump: A Policy of Cracking Down on Journalists and Their Sources

April 7, 2016

OBAMA’S GIFT TO DONALD TRUMP: A POLICY OF CRACKING DOWN ON JOURNALISTS AND THEIR SOURCES

ONE OF THE intellectual gargoyles that has crawled out of Donald Trump’s brain is the idea that we should “open up” libel laws to make it easier to punish the media for negative or unfair stories. Trump also wants top officials to sign nondisclosure agreements, so they never write memoirs that upset the boss. Trump is so disdainful of free speech that he has even vowed to use the Espionage Act to imprison anyone who says or leaks anything to the media that displeases him.

Actually, that last bit is made up; Trump hasn’t talked about the Espionage Act. Instead, the Obama administration has used the draconian 1917 law to prosecute more leakers and whistleblowers than all previous administrations combined. Under the cover of the Espionage Act and other laws, the administration has secretly obtained the emails and phone records of various reporters, and declared one of them — James Rosen of Fox News — a potential “co-conspirator” with his government source. Another reporter, James Risen of the New York Times, faced a jail sentence unless he revealed a government source (which he refused to do).

Obama has warned of the imminent perils of a Trump presidency, but on the key issue of freedom of the press, which is intimately tied to the ability of officials to talk to journalists, his own administration has established a dangerous precedent for Trump — or any future occupant of the Oval Office — to use one of the most punitive laws of the land against some of the most courageous and necessary people we have. One section of the Espionage Act even allows for the death penalty.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Kick Turkey Out of NATO

March 7, 2016

Kick Turkey Out of NATO

There’s a Petition at Change.org to suspend Turkey’s membership in NATO.

Why kick Turkey out of NATO?

Because:

  • Turkey just shut down the largest Turkish newspaper using tear gas, water canons and brutality:


  • After reporters, local police and Turkish generals caught a weapons shipment from Turkey into Syria, they were all arrested on “treason” charges for exposing the shipment
  • Turkey provided the chemical weapons used in the famous attacks which killed hundreds in Syria. Pulitzer-prize winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh – who uncovered the Iraq prison torture scandal and the Mai Lai massacre in Vietnam  – previously reported that high-level American sources tell him that the Turkish government carried out the chemical weapons attacks blamed on the Syrian government

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Democracy Ends in Turkey

March 6, 2016

Democracy Ends in Turkey

On Saturday March 5th, Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten (German Economic News) headlined “Turkish Police Storm Newspaper Office Zaman” and reported that, “Turkish police entered the editorial offices of critical newspaper Zaman on Friday night.” Accompanying videos there showed a police-state in which ‘security’ forces stormed through a crowd of protesters (readers of the newspaper) outside, into Turkey’s leading opposition newspaper, which is also Turkey’s leading English-language newspaper, Zaman, and arrested staffers there, taking them away, to who-knows-what fates.

There’s nothing like Zaman  in just about any country: for examples, the New York Times, Washington Post, London Times, and Guardian, aren’t “opposition newspapers,” though they used to cover the opposition in a moderately fair way, prior to the George W.  Bush Administration, 9/11, and “regime change in Iraq.” By contrast, Zaman  has constantly been very bold in exposing truths that the regime doesn’t want the public to know. But that’s all past history now — it’s at least as radical a change for Turkey as occurred in America with the Bush regime, which controlled the media as effectively as its successor-regime, Obama’s, has done, and which never needed to employ such blatantly police-state methods as Turkey now is clearly doing.

On Thursday March 4th, Tayyip Erdoğan, the Islamist President of U.S. ally and NATO member-nation Turkey, took over Zaman  or Today’s Zaman, where the headline on Friday was: “Court appoints trustees to take over management of Zaman, Today’s Zaman.” Until after that report was filed, this was only a court matter, not a blatantly police-state one — using physical forms of force, including armed ‘security’ forces inside, and water-cannons against demonstrators outside.

Here was that Zaman  news-report’s opening:

An İstanbul court has appointed trustees to take over the management of the Feza Media Group, which includes Turkey’s biggest-selling newspaper, the Zaman daily, as well as the Today’s Zaman daily and the Cihan news agency, dealing a fresh blow to the already battered media freedom in Turkey.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Japanese Government Cracks Down Hard on the Media Amid Pitiful Economic Performance

February 19, 2016

Japanese Government Cracks Down Hard on the Media Amid Pitiful Economic Performance

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Their imminent departure from evening news programmes is not just a loss to their profession; critics say they were forced out as part of a crackdown on media dissent by an increasingly intolerant prime minister, Shinzo Abe, and his supporters.

Only last week, the internal affairs minister, Sanae Takaichi, sent a clear message to media organizations. Broadcasters that repeatedly failed to show “fairness” in their political coverage, despite official warnings, could be taken off the air, she told MPs.

Momii caused consternation after his appointment when he suggested that NHK would toe the government line on key diplomatic issues, including Japan’s territorial dispute with China. “International broadcasting is different from domestic,” he said. “It would not do for us to say ‘left’ when the government is saying ‘right’.”

From the Guardian article: Japanese TV Anchors Lose Their Jobs Amid Claims of Political Pressure

I’ve commented on the spectacular failure of Japan’s “Abenomics” several times in the past, most recently in last summer’s post, Japan’s Economic Disaster – Real Wages Lowest Since 1990, Record Numbers Describe “Hard” Living Conditions. Here’s what we learned:

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe came to power vowing to drag Japan out of deflation and stagnation. His logic was that rising prices would drive higher salaries and increased consumption. More than two years on, prices are rising, but wages adjusted for inflation have sunk to the lowest since at least 1990.

A record 62 percent of Japanese households described their livelihoods as “hard” last year in a survey on incomes. A sales-tax increase in 2014 helped drive up living costs faster than wage gains.  At the same time, the Bank of Japan’s quantitative easing drove down the currency, boosting the cost of imported energy.

Fast forward a few months and things aren’t getting any better.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Propaganda “Has Rendered the Constitutional Right of Free Press Ineffectual”

January 19, 2016

Propaganda “Has Rendered the Constitutional Right of Free Press Ineffectual”

Americans’ trust of the media is at an all-time low.

But most Americans still don’t understand that the U.S. mass media is untrustworthy because  it’s completely manipulated to promote propaganda.

Noam Chomsky points out that big status quo-loving corporations own the media, cater to other big status quo-loving advertisers, and filter out stories which question the status quo.

Extreme media consolidation has made the problem worse than ever before.

As many have documented, the media presents a very tiny range of opinions, but then pretends that it is giving the full spectrum of opinions on topics … as a way to dumb down the population.

Lawrence Davidson – history professor at West Chester University in Pennsylvania – notes:

So well does this process work that it is probably the case that many news editors and broadcasters and most of the public taking in their reporting do not understand that their reductionism has rendered the constitutional right of free press ineffectual.

Really meaningful contrary opinion and reporting (particularly of the progressive persuasion) is so infrequent and marginalized that it stands little chance of competing with the orthodox point of view.

***

President Obama makes speeches critiquing foreign governments, such as that in Egypt, for limiting freedom of the press and speech. There is no doubt that the governments he targets are guilty of gross violations of these rights and many more besides.

But what is equally true is that the vast majority of Americans can listen to the President castigate these governments with no sense of cognitive dissonance. They do not know that they too are victims of propaganda and manipulation.

How could they? They are culturally conditioned to believe that their country is the foundation of freedom and truth. And, beyond their local area, they haven’t the knowledge, or often the interest, to fact-check what their leaders and media agents tell them. That is why it is accurate to describe the U.S. information environment as closed.

Newly Published Clinton Email Reveals How Government Manipulates Media

October 2, 2015

Newly Published Clinton Email Reveals How Government Manipulates Media

A Hillary Clinton staffer planted questionsin a CBS 60 Minutes interview with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, according to email records released this week. At the time of the interview in early 2011, Assange had already leaked sensitive, embarrassing information from the State Department. The unclassified staff email to Clinton, released amid her ongoing email scandal, demonstrates not only that the former Secretary of State and her staff were out to discredit Assange, but that the government manipulates media and wields heavy influence over it.

In an email from January 28, 2011, Philip J. Crowley, then Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, alerted Hillary Clinton that 60 Minutes conducted an interview with Assange set to air on the 30th. As Crowley informed her, “We had made a number of suggestions for outside experts and former diplomats to interview to ‘balance’ the piece.” This statement alone shows the access to media that powerful government agents enjoy.

He goes on to further reveal that influence: “60 Minutes assures me that they raised a number of questions and concerns we planted with themduring the course of the interview,” Crowley said, suggesting the interview would not be embarrassing to Clinton or the State Department: “We will be prepared to respond to the narrative Assange presents during the program.”

The 2011 interview features a younger looking Assange with interviewer Steve Kroft.

Several minutes into the conversation, Kroft asks Assange point-blank if he is a “subversive.” Interestingly, the only politician Assange names directly in his response is Clinton herself: “I’m sure there are certain views among Hillary Clinton and her lot that we are subverting their authority. But you’re right, we are subverting illegitimate authority. The question is whether the authority is legitimate or whether it is illegitimate.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

‘Media Is Our Last Line of Defence’: Mohamed Fahmy

September 26, 2015

‘Media Is Our Last Line of Defence’: Mohamed Fahmy

Newly pardoned journalist Mohamed Fahmy has ”many thank yous” for fellow Canadians who stood by him through his 411-day imprisonment and two-year legal battle in Egypt.

But though he’s grateful for the efforts of Canada’s ambassador and foreign minister on his behalf, the former Al Jazeera bureau chief said the federal government needs to more aggressively advocate for citizens jailed abroad.

”There are things that could be done to improve how the government in Canada dealt with my situation,” he said in a phone interview from Cairo on Friday, adding how, on return, he hopes to start a constructive debate on what Canada can learn from his case.

The Conservative government welcomed Fahmy’s pardon this week by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, along with that of fellow Al Jazeera staffer Baher Mohamed. The two had been sentenced to seven years in prison — convicted of offences including fabricating news and undermining national security in a trial that was widely denounced by human rights groups. In late August, their sentences were reduced to three years following an appeal. A third Al Jazeera staffer, Peter Greste, was earlier deported to Australia.

”Canada has consistently called at the highest level for Mr. Fahmy’s release and return to Canada,” said Lynne Yelich, Canada’s foreign affairs and consular Minister of State in a Sept. 23 statement. ”The Government of Canada will continue to provide Mr. Fahmy with consular assistance and will assist in facilitating his departure from Egypt.”

With a University of British Columbia journalism school job waiting for him, Fahmy said he is looking forward to starting ”a whole new life” in Vancouver. He’s also launched the Fahmy Foundation for a Free Press to advocate for journalists and bloggers jailed or persecuted overseas.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

China Loses All Control: Arrests Journalist, Financial Executive Over Market Crash

August 26, 2015

China Loses All Control: Arrests Journalist, Financial Executive Over Market Crash

For two months, China has been on a quest to control both the stock market itself and the narrative around the stock market.

After an unwind in the CNY1 trillion back alley margin lending complex sparked a late June selloff, China cobbled together a plunge protection team run by China Securities Finance (an arm of CSRC) and began intervening in the market.

That effort has cost an estimated CNY900 billion so far.

On July 20, Caijing magazine suggested that CSF was setting up to scale back the market interventions which many believed had kept the SHCOMP from collapsing altogether. Here’s what happened next:

That suggestion caused futures to slide in China and in short order, the “rumor” was denied by CSRC. Now, the reporter who penned that story has been arrested for, as Bloomberg put it earlier today, “spreading fake stock and futures trading information.”

This comes on the heels of a move by Beijing earlier this week to suppress discussion of Monday’s market rout, which, along with the selloffs it triggered in bourses across the globe, was dubbed “Black Monday.”

Of course this isn’t the first time – and it probably won’t be the last – that China has cracked down on the media for “subversive” coverage of financial markets. Early last month, Beijing reportedly banned the use of the phrases “equity disaster” and “rescue the market.” That said, throwing reporters in jail marks a new escalation in the war on financial reporters, or, as the managing editor of The South China Morning Post put it, “you already know it’s risky to be political journalists in China – Now financial reporter is risky job too.”

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Mexico’s War on Journalists

August 14, 2015

Mexico’s War on Journalists

Earlier this summer, Ruben Espinosa fled Mexico’s Gulf coast state of Veracruz after receiving death threats. His work as a photojournalist there had made him an enemy of the state’s governor, who presides over one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a reporter.

On July 31, Espinosa was found beaten and shot dead in a Mexico City apartment.

Eight months ago, Nadia Vera, a student activist and cultural worker,looked boldly into a camera lens and told an interviewer that if anything happened to her, Veracruz governor Javier Duarte and his cabinet should be held responsible. She also fled Veracruz to the nation’s capital after suffering attacks.

On July 31, Nadia Vera was found sexually tortured and murdered, shot point-blank in the same apartment.

Three more women were assassinated in the normally tranquil, upper-middle class neighborhood that afternoon — an 18 year-old Mexican named Yesenia Quiroz, a Colombian identified only as “Nicole,” and a 40 year-old domestic worker named Alejandra. The press generally refers to the case as “the murder of Ruben Espinosa and four women,” relegating the women victims to anonymity even in death.

At a recent demonstration of journalists and human rights defenders, the sense of dread was palpable. As communicators in Mexico, we’re angry and intensely frustrated at how so many of our ranks have been killed, disappeared, displaced, or censored with no repercussions.

 

For many, including me, this crime especially hit home. For a long time, whenever I was asked if I was afraid to speak out critically in Mexico, I answered that fortunately Mexico City was relatively safe. Drug cartels and their allies in government only kept close tabs on reporters in more disputed areas.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

 

 

 

Washington Post Reporter Charged with “Trespassing” in Ferguson, Missouri as the “War on Journalism” Continues

August 12, 2015

Washington Post Reporter Charged with “Trespassing” in Ferguson, Missouri as the “War on Journalism” Continues

A year ago, Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowery, was arrested in a McDonald’s in Ferguson Missouri. The fast-food establishment had been used as a staging area for several reporters, including theHuffington Post’s Ryan Rilley, who was also arrested. Here’s last year’s video clip of Mr. Lowery being harassed by a paramilitary police officer.

Although the men were later released without charges, a year later, they are being charged with “trespassing” by St. Louis County. TheWashington Post reports:

A Washington Post reporter who was arrested at a restaurant last year while reporting on protests in Ferguson, Mo., has been charged in St. Louis County with trespassing and interfering with a police officer and ordered to appear in court.

Wesley Lowery, a reporter on The Post’s national desk, was detained in a McDonald’s while he was in Missouri covering demonstrations sparked by a white police officer fatally shooting an unarmed black 18-year-old.

“Charging a reporter with trespassing and interfering with a police officer when he was just doing his job is outrageous,” Martin Baron, executive editor of The Post, said in a statement Monday. “You’d have thought law enforcement authorities would have come to their senses about this incident. Wes Lowery should never have been arrested in the first place. That was an abuse of police authority.

According to the summons, Lowery is being charged with trespassing on private property despite being asked to leave. He is also charged with interfering with a police officer’s performance of his duties because, the summons alleges, he failed to comply with “

These counts carry a possible fine of $1,000 and up to a year in a county jail, according to the St. Louis County municipal code.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

The New York Times Warns About the Pentagon Labeling Journalists “Unprivileged Belligerents”

August 11, 2015

The New York Times Warns About the Pentagon Labeling Journalists “Unprivileged Belligerents”

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This post is a follow up to a piece I published in June titled: New Thousand Page Pentagon War Manual Potentially Lumps Journalists in with “Unprivileged Belligerents.” Here’s an excerpt:

A 1,176 page Pentagon war manual was recently released that hasn’t received the attention it deserves. The book of combat instructions, titled “Department of Defense Law of War Manual,” apparently covers rules of war for all branches of the U.S. military.

One passage in particular is generating controversy, where journalists seem to be thrown into a convoluted and opaque category, in which they could be seen as “unprivileged belligerents” as opposed to civilians. Naturally, this has sparked concern that journalists the U.S. government doesn’t like could be lumped into the “unprivileged belligerents” category and subsequently murdered at will.

Now the New York Times is concerned as well, and rightfully so. In an Op-ed today, the paper explains that:

The Defense Department earlier this summer released a comprehensive manual outlining its interpretation of the law of war. The 1,176-page document, the first of its kind, includes guidelines on the treatment of journalists covering armed conflicts that would make their work more dangerous, cumbersome and subject to censorship. Those should be repealed immediately.

Journalists, the manual says, are generally regarded as civilians, but may in some instances be deemed “unprivileged belligerents,” a legal term that applies to fighters that are afforded fewer protections than the declared combatants in a war. In some instances, the document says, “the relaying of information (such as providing information of immediate use in combat operations) could constitute taking a direct part in hostilities.”

The manual warns that “Reporting on military operations can be very similar to collecting intelligence or even spying,” so it calls on journalists to “act openly and with the permission of relevant authorities.” It says that governments “may need to censor journalists’ work or take other security measures so that journalists do not reveal sensitive information to the enemy.”

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Reporter Wins Fifth Amendment Case

August 5, 2015

Reporter Wins Fifth Amendment Case

The U.S. government’s recurring threats to prosecute journalists who receive classified documents may have created an avenue for some reporters to evade testimony at least in civil cases – by asserting a Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, says Marcy Wheeler.

An appellate decision on the long-running dispute between a former prosecutor and the Department of Justice may provide a new way for journalists to protect their government sources. The decision came as a result of former prosecutor Richard Convertino’s effort to sue DOJ for Privacy Act violations tied to a 2004 leak to Detroit Free Press reporter David Ashenfelter, whoreported that Convertino was under investigation by DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility for misconduct on a terrorism trial.

There are no heroes in the underlying suit. Convertino claims DOJ investigated him not for prosecutorial misconduct, but instead to retaliate for criticism of their conduct under the “war on terror” and testimony provided under subpoena to Congress. … But Convertino’s alleged conduct — withholding evidence from defense attorneys — was also inexcusable.

The first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution, known as the Bill of Rights.

 

The dispute has sucked Ashenfelter up in a long-running fight over whether he should have to testify about his sources. He first tried to refuse by invoking reporter’s privilege, which a judge rejected. But when, in 2008, Convertino tried to depose the reporter, Ashenfelter invoked the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination in response to each question.

To defend doing so, Ashenfelter pointed to Convertino’s own claims that he had conspired with criminals at DOJ, as well as to a series of cases (including those under the Espionage Act) and public statements suggesting DOJ might prosecute someone for using documents illegally obtained from the government to do reporting.

 

GCHQ and me: My Life Unmasking British Eavesdroppers

August 3, 2015

GCHQ and me: My Life Unmasking British Eavesdroppers

I stepped from the warmth of our source’s London flat. That February night in 1977, the air was damp and cool, the buzz of traffic muted in this leafy North London suburb, in the shadow of the iconic Alexandra Palace. A fellow journalist and I had just spent three hours inside, drinking Chianti and talking about secret surveillance with our source, and now we stood on the doorstep discussing how to get back to the south coast town where I lived.

Events were about to take me on a different journey. Behind me, sharp footfalls broke the stillness. A squad was running, hard, toward the porch of the house we had left. Suited men surrounded us. A burly middle-aged cop held up his police ID. We had broken “Section 2″ of Britain’s secrecy law, he claimed. These were “Special Branch,” then the elite security division of the British police.

For a split second, I thought this was a hustle. I knew that a parliamentary commission had released a report five years earlier that concluded that the secrecy law, first enacted a century ago, should be changed. I pulled out my journalist identification card, ready to ask them to respect the press.

But they already knew that my companion that evening, Time Out reporter Crispin Aubrey, and I were journalists. And they had been outside, watching our entire meeting with former British Army signals intelligence (Sigint) operator John Berry, who at the time was a social worker.

Aubrey and I were arrested on suspicion of possessing unauthorized information. They said we’d be taken to the local police station. But after being forced into cars, we were driven in the wrong direction, toward the center of London. I became uneasy.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

German Journalists Investigated For Treason After Publishing Surveillance Leaks

August 1, 2015

German Journalists Investigated For Treason After Publishing Surveillance Leaks

Two journalists at the prominent German news website Netzpolitik are under investigation for treason after publishing details about the planned expansion of the German Secret Service’s Internet surveillance program.

On Wednesday, the organization received a letter from the Federal Attorney General of Germany confirming ongoing investigations against reporters Markus Beckedahl, Andre Meister (pictured), and an “unknown source” for the articles, one of which was published in February and detailed a secret budget plan for surveillance activities, and another, from April, describing a new surveillance unit for monitoring social networking and online chats. Meister has characterized the plans as being part of Germany’s “post-Snowden” internet surveillance push.

Netzpolitik, which reports on politics and technology, learned within the last several weeks that Federal Attorney General of Germany was investigating the stories, but believed its sources were the target of the investigation rather than its journalists, Meister said in an interview. Only yesterday did it became clear that Meister and Beckedahl were also under investigation.

“This is a direct attack on freedom of the press, such as hasn’t been the case in around 50 years in Germany, since the ‘Spiegel scandal’ in 1962,’” Meister toldThe Intercept, citing an incident in which the German newsweekly Der Spiegelwas searched and some of its journalists were arrested on treason accusations stemming from an article questioning the preparedness of West German armed forces.

“These charges are an intimidation against media and against potential sources — which are an integral part of investigative journalism,” he added. “The public needs whistleblowers to find out about what’s done in their name and with their money. So the original investigations against our sources were already a direct attack on freedom of press and freedom of information.”

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Journalists’ Complicity in Hiding Those Guilty for MH17

July 11, 2015

Journalists’ Complicity in Hiding Those Guilty for MH17

Robert Parry headlined on July 9th, “MH-17 Case Slips into Propaganda Fog,” and he wrote: “Many investigative journalists, including myself, have been rebuffed in repeated efforts to get verifiable proof about the case or even informational briefings.” His phrase “have been rebuffed” was linked to a July 3rd article by nsnbc’s Christof Lehmann, “MH17 — The Methodology of an International Cover-Up,” which included the following:

The Firewall against Transparency

Numerous journalists, the author included, have made considerable efforts to elicit independently verifiable evidence from all of the involved parties. This includes mails and phone calls to relevant ministries in Ukraine, the USA, UK, Russia, Australia, Malaysia, and the Dutch Safety Board in The Netherlands.

All requests to provide independently verifiable data have remained unanswered. That includes requests for a certified copy of radar data released by the Russian Ministry of Defense, certified copies of communications between Ukrainian Air Traffic Controllers and the flight crew on board the downed Boeing 777-200, and not least a certified copy of the Comma Separated Variable (CSV) file from the downed Boeing 777-200’s flight data recorder.

To mention but a few examples that demonstrate the significance of the need for full transparency. The DSB [Dutch Safety Board, which is running the entire investigation] published a “transcript” of ATC – Flight Crew communications. Investigative journalists have, in other words, no possibility to see whether the audio has been tampered with or for that matter, if the voices even are consistent with those of the flight crew.

Lehmann then dropped a bombshell, just in passing, a communication from a representative of the investigation-team, which communication had been made individually to Lehmann:

 

Sara Vernooij from the Dutch Safety Board implicitly provided the key to the puzzling question why non[e] of the involved parties is forthcoming with regards to independently testable and verifiable data end evidence by stating to the author:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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