Banishing Truth by Chris Hedges (TruthDig)
Showing posts with label free press. Show all posts
Showing posts with label free press. Show all posts
The exile of America's greatest living journalist
"The later part of [Seymour] Hersh’s career is the most distressing. He was writing for The New Yorker when Barack Obama was elected president. David Remnick, the magazine’s editor, socialized with Obama and was apparently wary of offending the president. When Hersh exposed the fictitious narrative spun out by the Obama administration about the killing of Bin Laden, the magazine killed the story, running instead a report about the raid, provided by the administration, from the point of view of one of the SEALs who was on the mission. Hersh resigned. He published the account of the raid in the London Review of Books, the beginning of his current exile to foreign publications. When we most urgently need Hersh and good investigative reporters like him, they have largely disappeared. A democracy, at best, tolerates them. A failed democracy, like ours, banishes them, and when it does, it kills its press."
The rest of the story:
Banishing Truth by Chris Hedges (TruthDig)
Banishing Truth by Chris Hedges (TruthDig)
See no evil
"The U.S. government agreed to a police request to restrict more than 37 square miles of airspace surrounding Ferguson, Missouri, for 12 days in August for safety, but audio recordings show that local authorities privately acknowledged the purpose was to keep away news helicopters during violent street protests." -- AP news report
The Internets: A net loss of freedom
That a nebulous complaint by a rightwing thinktanker persuaded an ISP to take down a Spinwatch site sets a disturbing precedent. (Guardian UK 2010-07-06).
That a nebulous complaint by a rightwing thinktanker persuaded an ISP to take down a Spinwatch site sets a disturbing precedent. (Guardian UK 2010-07-06).
Some Journalism Deserves Respect
Writing in the New Yorker, George Packer reminds us that, every year, the Committee to Protect Journalists holds a fund-raising gala at the Waldorf-Astoria in midtown Manhattan to raise the budget it needs to "continue for another year doing its job of defending journalists around the world — calling attention to murders, threats, attacks, and imprisonments, lobbying for journalists’ safety and release, supporting endangered journalists and their families and survivors."
Murders, threats, attacks and imprisonments. This litany of intimidation goes on, in part, because in most places where journalists suffer such mistreatment either no government exists or the government itself is violent, corrupt and autocratic. The CPJ dinner is a reminder that behind many stories it honors are "brave, humorous, quietly defiant men and women, rarities and eccentrics who nonetheless seem to exist in every country, upholding high journalistic standards in the world’s most dangerous places, with no powerful backers, and almost no one paying attention except government thugs or anonymous gunmen."
The rest of the story: Annual Reminder: Some Journalism Deserves Respect! by George Packer (The New Yorker 2009-11-30).
In thinking about the situation of these brave writers, editors, researchers, photographers and videographers, it occurred to me that digital technology might enable a mechanism that would provide more support and protection. Many of these abuses are possible, inevitable even, because they take place in the metaphorical dark. What if there existed an organization pledged to carry on the work of a journalist who is intimidated, imprisoned or killed even after the original reporter has been eliminated? That an act of violence or intimidation intended to silence a reporter would only assure that an even brighter light would shine on his or her investigation?
It might work like this: a secure website is established where journalists can store copies of notes, phone books, appointment calendars, documentary evidence, audio, video and image files, drafts, manuscripts, and so on. These reporters let it be known to their contacts, subjects, bosses, etc., that this cache of information exists, and that it will be followed up on if anything untoward happens. Professional journalists in safer parts of the world, volunteering to pair up with the at-risk reporters, commit either to continuing the work themselves or making sure that the research is handed over to reporters in the field who can finish the job. With communication around the planet now virtually instantaneous, this website will also provide a trail of cookie crumbs behind reporters when their work carries them into dangerous situations. To take an example from within our own shores, isn't it likely that the goons from the Black Muslim Bakery might have had second thoughts about gunning down Chauncey Bailey if they'd known that the Oakland Post editor's notes and other materials would be instantly in the hands of other investigators at the Chronicle, the Bee or the Times dedicated to carrying on with the story? In addition, wouldn't it provide a small measure of security if a reporter going into a dangerous situation -- a meeting with an informant in a remote location, say -- could leave a real-time record of who, when & where so that immediate action could be taken if he or she didn't check in at a designated time?
Such a website would not be terribly difficult or expensive to create and could be operated with a very small staff. An operating budget would have to be found, but in that respect it would be no different than any other non-profit. The greatest difficulty would be in finding journalists with the wherewithal to genuinely provide the back up, although it wouldn't be a surprise if aggressive media operations like the BBC, Reuters, CNN, McClatchy, the Washington Post and the New York Times would find it in their interest to provide institutional support to employees inclined to participate.
Murders, threats, attacks and imprisonments. This litany of intimidation goes on, in part, because in most places where journalists suffer such mistreatment either no government exists or the government itself is violent, corrupt and autocratic. The CPJ dinner is a reminder that behind many stories it honors are "brave, humorous, quietly defiant men and women, rarities and eccentrics who nonetheless seem to exist in every country, upholding high journalistic standards in the world’s most dangerous places, with no powerful backers, and almost no one paying attention except government thugs or anonymous gunmen."
Since 1992, almost eight hundred journalists have been killed for doing their job, and the graph of the annual total rises steadily upward over time. Many thousands more have been imprisoned, including — just to put one name on the statistic — Thet Zin, an editor of the Myanmar Nation weekly in Rangoon, who was arrested shortly before I was to meet him on a trip to Burma last year, and who is serving a seven-year sentence for possessing a report issued by the United Nations special envoy to Burma for human rights. The one organization that can be counted on to keep alive the names and fates of these easily forgotten men and women is the Committee to Protect Journalists.As Packer writes, the CPJ carries on its crucial work on the shoestring budget it manages to scrape together at its annual dinner: here's a link to information on how to help the CPJ to help at-risk journalists.
The rest of the story: Annual Reminder: Some Journalism Deserves Respect! by George Packer (The New Yorker 2009-11-30).
In thinking about the situation of these brave writers, editors, researchers, photographers and videographers, it occurred to me that digital technology might enable a mechanism that would provide more support and protection. Many of these abuses are possible, inevitable even, because they take place in the metaphorical dark. What if there existed an organization pledged to carry on the work of a journalist who is intimidated, imprisoned or killed even after the original reporter has been eliminated? That an act of violence or intimidation intended to silence a reporter would only assure that an even brighter light would shine on his or her investigation?
It might work like this: a secure website is established where journalists can store copies of notes, phone books, appointment calendars, documentary evidence, audio, video and image files, drafts, manuscripts, and so on. These reporters let it be known to their contacts, subjects, bosses, etc., that this cache of information exists, and that it will be followed up on if anything untoward happens. Professional journalists in safer parts of the world, volunteering to pair up with the at-risk reporters, commit either to continuing the work themselves or making sure that the research is handed over to reporters in the field who can finish the job. With communication around the planet now virtually instantaneous, this website will also provide a trail of cookie crumbs behind reporters when their work carries them into dangerous situations. To take an example from within our own shores, isn't it likely that the goons from the Black Muslim Bakery might have had second thoughts about gunning down Chauncey Bailey if they'd known that the Oakland Post editor's notes and other materials would be instantly in the hands of other investigators at the Chronicle, the Bee or the Times dedicated to carrying on with the story? In addition, wouldn't it provide a small measure of security if a reporter going into a dangerous situation -- a meeting with an informant in a remote location, say -- could leave a real-time record of who, when & where so that immediate action could be taken if he or she didn't check in at a designated time?
Such a website would not be terribly difficult or expensive to create and could be operated with a very small staff. An operating budget would have to be found, but in that respect it would be no different than any other non-profit. The greatest difficulty would be in finding journalists with the wherewithal to genuinely provide the back up, although it wouldn't be a surprise if aggressive media operations like the BBC, Reuters, CNN, McClatchy, the Washington Post and the New York Times would find it in their interest to provide institutional support to employees inclined to participate.
The Media: Amy Goodman
by Bill Moyers (truthout 2009-10-27)
This is Bill Moyers's introduction to Amy Goodman's latest book, "Breaking the Sound Barrier," published by Haymarket Books.
You can learn more of the truth about Washington and the world from one week of Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now!" than from a month of Sunday morning talk shows.
Make that a year of Sunday morning talk shows.
That's because Amy, as you will discover on every page of her new book, "Breaking the Sound Barrier", knows the critical question for journalists is how close they are to the truth, not how close they are to power. Like I. F. Stone, she values the facts on the ground; unlike the Sunday beltway anchors, she refuses to take the official version of reality as the definition of news, or to engage in Washington's "wink-wink" game, by which both parties to an interview tacitly understand that the questions and answers will be framed to appear adversarial when in fact their purpose is to avoid revealing how power really works. Quick: recall the last time you heard a celebrity journalist on any of the Sunday talk shows grill a politician on what campaign contributors get for their generosity. Try again: name any of those elite interrogators who skewered any politician for saying that "single-payer" wasn't on the table in the debate over health care reform because "there's no support for it." OK, one last chance: recall how often you have heard any of the network stars insist that Newt Gingrich reveal just who is funding his base as the omnipresent expert on everything.
See?
Now read "Breaking the Sound Barrier" for a reality check. And tune in to "Democracy Now!" to hear and see the difference an independent journalist can make in providing citizens what they need to know to make democracy work.
It takes the nerves, stamina and willpower of an Olympic triathlete to do what Amy Goodman does. That's just who she is, this quiet-spoken tornado of muckraking journalism: Edward R. Murrow with a twist of Emma Goldman, a Washington Post reporter once noted - willing to take on the powers that be to get at truth and justice, then spreading the word of those two indispensable gospels to the republic and the world beyond. Amy Goodman goes where angels fear to tread. Beaten by Indonesian troops while she and a colleague - also beaten - were covering East Timor's fight for independence. Hiking dangerous African deltas to get to the bottom of Chevron Oil's collusion with the Nigerian military. Or closer to home, in New Orleans or Appalachia or facing down the police when her colleagues were arrested in Minneapolis during the 2008 Republican National Convention (they threw her in the slammer, too).
Through her reporting, we hear from people who scarcely exist in news covered by the corporate-owned press. We learn about issues of war and peace and social wrong. She is impervious to government subterfuge or spin. "Goodman is the journalist as uninvited guest," that Washington Post reporter wrote. "You might think of the impolitic question; she asks it." And once it's been asked, she refuses to take "no comment" for an answer. She returns to a story time and again, continually digging, refusing to let her audience or investigative target forget how important it is to nail down just who's responsible and what needs to be done.
On top of everything else, she finds time to take her message out to a broad public with speeches and books and a weekly newspaper column, from which her collection of essays, "Breaking the Sound Barrier," has been selected. I'd be envious if it didn't appear unseemly. Let's just say I'm in awe. Read this collection and revel in the truth-telling. Be outraged by what you learn from it and renew your oath as a citizen. "We stand with journalists around the world who deeply believe that the mission of a journalist is to go where the silence is," Amy Goodman said in December 2008 when she accepted the Right Livelihood Award for personal courage and transformation. "The responsibility of a journalist is to give a voice to those who have been forgotten, forsaken, beaten down by the powerful." And, at a time when the future of journalism is in question, this ringing rationale for our embattled but essential craft: "It's the best reason I know for us to carry our pens, our microphones, and our cameras, both into our own communities and out to the wider world."
Right on.
"As an organization, truthout works to broaden and diversify the political discussion by introducing independent voices and focusing on undercovered issues and unconventional thinking."
This is Bill Moyers's introduction to Amy Goodman's latest book, "Breaking the Sound Barrier," published by Haymarket Books.
You can learn more of the truth about Washington and the world from one week of Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now!" than from a month of Sunday morning talk shows.
Make that a year of Sunday morning talk shows.
That's because Amy, as you will discover on every page of her new book, "Breaking the Sound Barrier", knows the critical question for journalists is how close they are to the truth, not how close they are to power. Like I. F. Stone, she values the facts on the ground; unlike the Sunday beltway anchors, she refuses to take the official version of reality as the definition of news, or to engage in Washington's "wink-wink" game, by which both parties to an interview tacitly understand that the questions and answers will be framed to appear adversarial when in fact their purpose is to avoid revealing how power really works. Quick: recall the last time you heard a celebrity journalist on any of the Sunday talk shows grill a politician on what campaign contributors get for their generosity. Try again: name any of those elite interrogators who skewered any politician for saying that "single-payer" wasn't on the table in the debate over health care reform because "there's no support for it." OK, one last chance: recall how often you have heard any of the network stars insist that Newt Gingrich reveal just who is funding his base as the omnipresent expert on everything.
See?
Now read "Breaking the Sound Barrier" for a reality check. And tune in to "Democracy Now!" to hear and see the difference an independent journalist can make in providing citizens what they need to know to make democracy work.
It takes the nerves, stamina and willpower of an Olympic triathlete to do what Amy Goodman does. That's just who she is, this quiet-spoken tornado of muckraking journalism: Edward R. Murrow with a twist of Emma Goldman, a Washington Post reporter once noted - willing to take on the powers that be to get at truth and justice, then spreading the word of those two indispensable gospels to the republic and the world beyond. Amy Goodman goes where angels fear to tread. Beaten by Indonesian troops while she and a colleague - also beaten - were covering East Timor's fight for independence. Hiking dangerous African deltas to get to the bottom of Chevron Oil's collusion with the Nigerian military. Or closer to home, in New Orleans or Appalachia or facing down the police when her colleagues were arrested in Minneapolis during the 2008 Republican National Convention (they threw her in the slammer, too).
Through her reporting, we hear from people who scarcely exist in news covered by the corporate-owned press. We learn about issues of war and peace and social wrong. She is impervious to government subterfuge or spin. "Goodman is the journalist as uninvited guest," that Washington Post reporter wrote. "You might think of the impolitic question; she asks it." And once it's been asked, she refuses to take "no comment" for an answer. She returns to a story time and again, continually digging, refusing to let her audience or investigative target forget how important it is to nail down just who's responsible and what needs to be done.
On top of everything else, she finds time to take her message out to a broad public with speeches and books and a weekly newspaper column, from which her collection of essays, "Breaking the Sound Barrier," has been selected. I'd be envious if it didn't appear unseemly. Let's just say I'm in awe. Read this collection and revel in the truth-telling. Be outraged by what you learn from it and renew your oath as a citizen. "We stand with journalists around the world who deeply believe that the mission of a journalist is to go where the silence is," Amy Goodman said in December 2008 when she accepted the Right Livelihood Award for personal courage and transformation. "The responsibility of a journalist is to give a voice to those who have been forgotten, forsaken, beaten down by the powerful." And, at a time when the future of journalism is in question, this ringing rationale for our embattled but essential craft: "It's the best reason I know for us to carry our pens, our microphones, and our cameras, both into our own communities and out to the wider world."
Right on.
"As an organization, truthout works to broaden and diversify the political discussion by introducing independent voices and focusing on undercovered issues and unconventional thinking."
Change Watch: White House Proposes Changes in Bill Protecting Reporters’ Confidentiality
Sounding like Bush-Cheney never left the building,
[t]he Obama administration has told lawmakers that it opposes legislation that could protect reporters from being imprisoned if they refuse to disclose confidential sources who leak material about national security, according to several people involved with the negotiations.The rest of the story: White House Proposes Changes in Bill Protecting Reporters’ Confidentiality by Charlie Savage (New York Times 2009-09-30)
The administration this week sent to Congress sweeping revisions to a “media shield” bill that would significantly weaken its protections against forcing reporters to testify.
The bill includes safeguards that would require prosecutors to exhaust other methods for finding the source of the information before subpoenaing a reporter, and would balance investigators’ interests with “the public interest in gathering news and maintaining the free flow of information.”
But under the administration’s proposal, such procedures would not apply to leaks of a matter deemed to cause “significant” harm to national security. Moreover, judges would be instructed to be deferential to executive branch assertions about whether a leak caused or was likely to cause such harm, according to officials familiar with the proposal.
The Media: Top Censored Stories of 2009/2010
Project Censored, founded by Carl Jensen in 1976, is a media research program working 
in cooperation with independent media groups in the US. Project Censored’s principle objective is to train Sonoma State University students in media research. First Amendment issues and the advocacy for, and protection of, free press rights in the United States are central to its mission. Each year, Project Censored publishes a ranking of the top 25 national news stories that are under-reported, ignored, misrepresented, or censored by the US corporate media in Censored: Media Democracy in Action, a yearbook released each September.
in cooperation with independent media groups in the US. Project Censored’s principle objective is to train Sonoma State University students in media research. First Amendment issues and the advocacy for, and protection of, free press rights in the United States are central to its mission. Each year, Project Censored publishes a ranking of the top 25 national news stories that are under-reported, ignored, misrepresented, or censored by the US corporate media in Censored: Media Democracy in Action, a yearbook released each September.1. US Congress Sells Out to Wall Street
2. US Schools are More Segregated Today than in the 1950s
3. Toxic Waste Behind Somali Pirates
4. Nuclear Waste Pools in North Carolina
5. Europe Blocks US Toxic Products
6. Lobbyists Buy Congress
7. Obama’s Military Appointments Have Corrupt Past
8. Bailed out Banks and America’s Wealthiest Cheat IRS Out of Billions
9. US Arms Used for War Crimes in Gaza
10. Ecuador Declares Foreign Debt Illegitimate
11. Private Corporations Profit from the Occupation of Palestine
12. Mysterious Death of Mike Connell—Karl Rove’s Election Thief
13. Katrina’s Hidden Race War
14. Congress Invested in Defense Contracts
15. World Bank’s Carbon Trade Fiasco
16. US Repression of Haiti Continues
17. The ICC Facilitates US Covert War in Sudan
18. Ecuador’s Constitutional Rights of Nature
19. Bank Bailout Recipients Spent to Defeat Labor
20. Secret Control of the Presidential Debates
21. Recession Causes States to Cut Welfare
22. Obama’s Trilateral Commission Team
23. Activists Slam World Water Forum as a Corporate-Driven Fraud
24. Dollar Glut Finances US Military Expansion
25. Fast Track Oil Exploitation in Western Amazon
quote unquote: Lord Northcliffe
"News
is what someone, somewhere
is trying to suppress;
the rest is just advertising."
-- British press magnate
Alfred Harmsworth, Lord Northcliffe
Re: True Majority's petition vs "ABC's Upcoming 9/11 Propaganda Film"
Not a few of us on the Left, it appears, have decided to pursue the same kind of prior censorship based on rumor and innuendo that is routinely engaged in by the Right. Perhaps I'd be more offended by ABC's alleged dishonesty and partisanship in its fictional account (if fictional it is: I have no idea, having seen it no more than anyone else accusing it of bias) of the run-up to 9-11, if it was a surprise -- ABC? making up stuff to discredit Clinton and the Democrats? imagine that -- but I do expect more of progressives. So don't count this as a vote in favor of trying to shut down ABC's propaganda machine; it's a free country, still, despite the best efforts of the ABCs, Murdochs, and their sorry political cohort to make it otherwise (plus, it's worth keeping in mind, to brighten the darkest hours of our paranoia, that the Right thinks the networks, including ABC, are in league with Al Franken, Hugo Chavez, and Satan). If the series is as biased as it is said to be, it's ABC's credibility that will suffer. The American people are willing to put up with a lot of crap from the media barons, but using an iconic national tragedy for partisan advantage, the network may come to find, is probably not included in the pass. In any event, it is never the Left that benefits from a narrowing of the field of debate.
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