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CBS’ 60 Minutes Exposes the Biden Administration’s Complicity in Gaza Genocide, Interviews the Whistleblowers

Here is the segment on YouTube:

Biden policy on Israel-Gaza sparks warnings, dissent, resignations | 60 Minutes

Juan Cole, 01/13/2025 Ann Arbor (Informed Comment)  https://www.juancole.com/2025/01/administrations-complicity-whistleblowers.html

– The amazingly brave Cecilia Vega at CBS’ 60 Minutes did a groundbreaking segment on Sunday in which she interviewed US government officials involved with the Israeli war on Gaza, who resigned in protest either explicitly or implicitly. She also screened the sort of horrific footage of the aftermath of Israeli attacks in Gaza, with the gory parts left in. Here is the transcript.

American television news has almost completely ignored Israeli (and US) war crimes in Gaza, which have been taking place daily, but are not apparently deemed “news” at CNN, MSNBC, Fox, CBS, ABC, etc.

Here let me just excerpt some statements by the former US government officials:

Hala Rharrit was an American diplomat working on human rights: “What is happening in Gaza would not be able to happen without U.S. arms. That’s without a doubt.”

“I would show the complicity that was indisputable. Fragments of U.S. bombs next to massacres of– of ch– mostly children. And that’s the devastation. It’s been overwhelmingly children.” (Emphasis added.)

“I would show images of children that were starved to death. In one incident, I was basically berated, “Don’t put that image in there. We don’t wanna see it. We don’t wanna see that the children are starving to death.”

Hala Rharrit: The level of anger throughout the Arab world, and I– I’ll say beyond the Arab world– is palpable. Protests began erupting in the Arab world, which I was also documenting, with people burning American flags. This is very significant because we worked so hard after the war on terror to strengthen ties with the Arab world.

[Cecilia Vega: You believe that this has put a target on America’s back, you’ve said.]

Hala Rharrit: 100%.

Hala Rharrit: Yes. I don’t say them lightly. And I say it as someone that myself has survived two terrorist attacks. My first assignment was in the U.S. Embassy in Yemen. I survived a mortar attack. I say it as someone who has worked intensely on these issues and has intensely monitored the region for two decades.

After three months of the Gaza War in 2023, she was told her reports were no longer needed.

Josh Paul spent 11 years as a director in the State Department’s Bureau of Political – Military Affairs.

Josh Paul: Most of the bombs come from America. Most of the technology comes from America. And all of the fighter jets, all of Israel’s fixed-wing fleet– comes from America.

Josh Paul: There is a linkage between every single bomb that is dropped in Gaza and the U.S. because every single bomb that is dropped is dropped from an American-made plane.

Josh Paul: After October 7th, there was no space for debate or discussion. I was part of email chains where there were very clear directions saying, “Here are the latest requests from Israel. These need to be approved by 3:00 p.m.”

Josh Paul: “This came from the president, from the secretary and from those around them.”

Josh Paul: I would argue exactly the opposite. I think the moment of October 7th was a moment of incredible worldwide solidarity with Israel. And had Israel leveraged that moment to press for a real, just and lasting peace, I think we would be in a very different place now in which Israel would not be facing this increasing isolation around the world and in which its hostages would be free.

Andrew Miller was the deputy assistant secretary of state for Israeli-Palestinian affairs.

Andrew Miller: The Israelis were using those bombs in some instances to target one or two individuals in densely packed areas. And in enough instances, we saw that was in question, how Israel was using it. And those weapons were suspended.

Andrew Miller: There were conversations from the earliest days about U.S. desires and expectations for what Israel would do. But they weren’t defined as a red line.

Andrew Miller: I’m unaware of any red lines being imposed beyond the normal language about complying with international law, international humanitarian law, the law of armed conflict.

Andrew Miller: I believe the message that Prime Minister Netanyahu received is that he was the one in the driver’s seat, and he was controlling this, and U.S. support was going to be there, and he could take it for granted.

Andrew Miller: There is a danger– that if the U.S. was not providing support to Israel, Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran would see that as an opportunity to go after Israel. However, we could have said, we are taking this step because we believe this class of weapons– is being used inappropriately. But if you use this moment to accelerate your attacks against Israel, then we are going to immediately lift our prohibition.

Andrew Miller: Yes. I think it’s fair to say Israel does get the benefit of the doubt. There is a deference to Israeli accounts of what’s taken place.

Here is the segment on YouTube:

Biden policy on Israel-Gaza sparks warnings, dissent, resignations | 60 Minutes

January 15, 2025 Posted by | Gaza, media, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Amazon Is Censoring My Most Recent Magazine Issue

Caitlin Johnstone Jan 14, 2025

Without explanation Amazon has blocked and unpublished my last issue of JOHNSTONE magazine which features my painting of Luigi Mangione on the cover. The link to order it is now dead. When I asked for an explanation or appeal they just sent a template response referring me back to their publishing rules.

So that’s annoying. The pay-what-you-want ebook of the issue is still available for anyone who wants it.

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In her bid to secure her confirmation as Trump’s next Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard is now pledging to support Section 702 of the FISA Act. This notorious law allows for the warrantless surveillance of Americans, and in congress Gabbard had previously fought to repeal it.

This is how the national security state works. You don’t change the machine, the machine changes you. Anyone who starts off opposing the imperial status quo of authoritarianism, warmongering and corruption either finds themselves excluded from the halls of power or adapts new positions in favor of the status quo.

The Australian political-media class has been rending its garments over a ridiculously fake incident of antisemitic graffiti at a synagogue in Sydney, which features both swastikas and the words “Free Palestine” right next to each other.

It’s weird how few people I see calling this what it so obviously is. Apparently we’re all supposed to take very seriously the idea that either (A) Nazis are spray painting the words “Free Palestine” next to their swastikas, or (B) that supporters of Palestinian rights are spray painting Nazi symbols next to their pro-Palestinian slogans. Apparently we’re all truly expected to pretend we don’t know some Israel supporter did this themselves to provide political cover for the genocide in Gaza.

It is always okay to express skepticism about dubious incidents of “antisemitism” in today’s political environment. Israel’s supporters are shitty, evil people who support genocide, and faking antisemitic incidents is a standard hasbara tactic with a well-documented history…………………………………… https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/amazon-is-censoring-my-most-recent?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=154758013&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

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January 15, 2025 Posted by | media | Leave a comment

BBC staffers reveal editor’s ‘entire job’ to whitewash Israeli war crimes

News editor Raffi Berg reportedly controls online coverage of genocide in Gaza to ensure Israeli crimes are ‘watered down’ or ignored

News Desk, DEC 28, 2024,  https://thecradle.co/articles/bbc-staffers-reveal-editors-entire-job-to-whitewash-israeli-war-crimes

BBC editor Raffi Berg has almost complete control of the British broadcaster’s online coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza and is ensuring that all events are reported with a pro-Israel bias, according to a new report published on 28 December by Drop Site News.

“This guy’s entire job is to water down everything that’s too critical of Israel,” one former BBC journalist said.

Drop Site News spoke to 13 current and former staffers who stated that the BBC’s coverage consistently devalues Palestinian life, ignores Israeli atrocities, and creates a false equivalence in an entirely unbalanced conflict.

Another BBC journalist said Berg plays a key role in a broader BBC culture of “systematic Israeli propaganda.” 

“How much power he has is wild,” said another journalist.

There was an extreme fear at the BBC, that if you ever wanted to do anything about Israel or Palestine, editors would say: ‘If you want to pitch something, you have to go through Raffi and get his signoff,” another journalist explained.

In one case, Berg downplayed Amnesty International’s accusation that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

Berg chose a headline that stated, “Israel rejects ‘fabricated’ claims of genocide,” to describe the Amnesty report and failed to post the story for 12 hours after it was written to suppress its online reach.

The journalists interviewed by Drop Site also noted that the Amnesty report was not covered on the BBC’s flagship news programs—BBC One’s News At One, News At Six, or News At Ten or its flagship current affairs program, BBC Two’s Newsnight.

“Anyone who writes on Gaza or Israel is asked: ‘Has it gone to edpol [editorial policy], lawyers, and has it gone to Raffi?'” another journalist said.

Raffi Berg, who wrote a book praising clandestine Mossad operations, wields great power to influence perceptions of Israel’s war on Gaza because the BBC news website is the most-visited news site on the internet, with over 1.1 billion visits in May alone.

Israel’s war on Gaza has killed over 45,000 Palestinians, the majority women and children, and flattened large swathes of the besieged enclave.

The pro-Israel bias imposed by Berg is evident in the language used to cover the war.

While stories “prominently” used words like “massacre,” “slaughter,” and “atrocities” to refer to Hamas, they “hardly, if at all,” used them “in reference to actions by Israel,” wrote Rami Ruhayem, a Beirut-based BBC Arabic correspondent.

In another case, the BBC published a story with a headline that hid Israel’s responsibility for killing an entire family in a missile strike.

“Israel Gaza: Father loses 11 family members in one blast,” the headline stated.

Drop Site notes that when the BBC does mention Israel as the perpetrator, it uses the caveat “reportedly.”

The BBC also uses euphemisms preferred by the Israeli army to hide its soldiers’ war crimes. For example, the BBC describes the forcible transfer or ethnic cleansing of Palestinian civilians as “evacuations.”

In one case, the BBC described Israel’s total siege on Gaza with a headline stating, “Israel aims to cut Gaza ties after war with Hamas.”

Defense minister Yoav Gallant’s public vow to impose a “full siege” on Gaza while calling Palestinians “human animals” received just one mention in any BBC online content.

The journalists speaking with Drop Site said they made specific requests to BBC management to balance its coverage, but their requests have been ignored.

“Many of us have raised concerns that Raffi has the power to reframe every story, and we are ignored,” one journalist said.

 “Almost every correspondent you know has an issue with him,” one stated. “He has been named in multiple meetings, but [BBC management] just ignore it.”

The journalist said they demanded that stories should “emphasize that Israel had not granted the BBC access to Gaza, that the network should end the practice of presenting the official Israeli versions of events as fact, and that the BBC should do more to offer context about Israeli occupation and the fact that Gaza is overwhelmingly populated by descendants of refugees forcibly driven from their homes beginning in 1948.” 

January 4, 2025 Posted by | Israel, media, UK | Leave a comment

Examining Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War: A Scenario.

Aileen Mejia explores the power of grassroots action, the flaws of nuclear deterrence, and the vital role of local movements in Scotland in shaping a world free from nuclear weapons

secure scotland, Dec 31, 2024

 Annie Jacobsen’s chilling, well researched book
Nuclear War: A Scenario explores what a nuclear strike on the United States
may entail. By presenting a hypothetical, yet deeply plausible series of
events, Jacobsen explores the fragility of global security and the
devastating consequences of failing to prioritize de-escalation and
disarmament.

The book highlights issues that are extremely pertinent to the
grassroots groups in Scotland that relentlessly advocate for nuclear
disarmament and the application of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear
Weapons, including Secure Scotland and the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear
Disarmament (SCND), which are part of the International Campaign to Abolish
Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). https://substack.com/home/post/p-153802524

January 2, 2025 Posted by | media, UK | Leave a comment

The legal decision on the Murdoch media – what does it mean for us?

NOEL WAUCHOPE, DEC 13, 2024,  https://theaimn.com/the-legal-decision-on-the-murdoch-media-what-does-it-mean-for-us/

There is nothing either good or bad, but only thinking makes it so.

Shakespeare’s profound idea applies to that recent legal case, about the Murdoch Family Trust, in the Probate Court in Nevada.

The 93 year-old Rupert Murdoch sought to change the existing “irrevocable trust” which is to govern the arrangements of his media empire, after his death. The issue was that the trust should be in “the best interests” of the Murdoch children.

Rupert Murdoch argued that after his death, his children would benefit best if control of his media empire were to be changed from the existing trust arrangement which gives control to four of his children – Lachlan, Elizabeth, James and Prudence. Murdoch wanted that changed to control by only eldest son Lachlan. The other three disagreed, and took the case to court.

Rupert Murdoch’s given reason was that the whole media enterprise would thus be more profitable, – so all four children would get more money. That way, Elizabeth, James, and Prudence would not have control, but would be richer, and this would be “in their best interest”. Under the present unchanged “irrevocable” trust arrangement, they would share the control with Lachlan, but they would be less rich.

Many commentators are arguing that Rupert Murdoch’s real goal is power and influence – so that is why he wanted the very right-wing Lachlan to be in charge of the media show. Perhaps this is true.

The case was heard in a secret court, but the core of Rupert Murdoch’s argument was that the children’s monetary gain was in their best interest, rather than them having any control of the media and its content.

Apparently the three did not think so, and neither did Commissioner Edmund J Gorman, who ruled in the children’s favour, concluding that Murdoch and his son Lachlan, had acted in “bad faith”, in a “carefully crafted charade”.

Lachlan shares the same right-wing views as his father does, even more so,- while Elizabeth, James and Prudence are reported as having more moderate views. Murdoch has controlling interests in Fox News and News Corp , the Wall Street Journal, in the UK the Times and the Sun, the Australian and others. Apparently it is assumed by all, that the media empire will continue its current record profits only under Lachlan’s leadership. In 2023–24 the Fox Corporation’s net income was US$1.5 billion (A$2.35 billion).

This case raises the question – what is the purpose of the news media ?

According to the Murdoch argument, the purpose is to enrich the owners of the media. That would include all the shareholders, too, I guess. The means by which this is done is to provide entertainment and information to the public. And this is central to Rupert Murdoch’s stated argument.

Some people, including many journalists, and perhaps the Murdoch children, might see the informational role of the news media as its main purpose, with excessive profitability as a secondary concern.

Apparently Elizabeth, James and Prudence preferred to have some control in the media empire, even if that meant less money for them. They thought that “having a say” in the business was in their best interest. It is possible that they might take some pride in news journalism that would be more accurate and balanced than the Murdoch media is now.

Only thinking makes it so

The best example of “Murdoch media thinking” -is in its coverage of climate change. For decades, the Murdoch view was pretty much climate denialism – climate concern seen as a “cult of the elite” and the “effects of global warming have so far proved largely benign”. But more recently, this view was moderated, towards concern that some action should be taken to limit global warming – coinciding with the new right-wing push for nuclear power as the solution to climate change.

In the USA, Murdoch media has a powerful influence, supported by the big corporations, and the right wing in general, and by the Trump publicity machine, but it does have some competition from other right wing outlets like Breitbart and the Daily Wire, and in talk radio, and blogs. It has lost some influence in the UK, following its phone hacking scandal in 2011.

That Murdoch interpretation contradicts the view of thousands of scientists, yet is welcomed by the fossil fuel industries, the nuclear industry, and the right-wing governments that they support. Similarly, the Murdoch media’s view on international politics generally favours military action that the USA supports – on Ukraine’s side, by Israel, and now in Syria. All this is seen to be good – by the USA weapons manufacturers and salesmen, US and UK politicians, and presumably by the public.

In the USA, Murdoch media has a powerful influence, supported by the big corporations, and the right wing in general, and by the Trump publicity machine, but it does have some competition from other right wing outlets like Breitbart and the Daily Wire, and in talk radio, and blogs. It has lost some influence in the UK, following its phone hacking scandal in 2011.

In Australia, Murdoch media is far more pervasive, and has been described as a virtual monopoly – with the only national newspaper, newspapers in each state, (often the only newspaper), and News Corp controls radio and television in Australia through a number of assets.

So – what now, after this remarkable probate court decision?

Commissioner Gorman’s recommendation could still be rejected by a district judge. Murdoch’s lawyers can appeal the decision. Even if the decision is finally upheld, it will be a complicated process to rearrange the control of the media in the event of Rupert Murdoch’s death – and that might not happen for a decade or more. News Corp has a dual-class share structure which gives the family 41% of company votes, despite having just 14% of an overall stake in the company. Shareholders might change this arrangement.

In the meantime – fertile ground for endless speculation on what it all might mean – for the share price, for the future direction of the media, for the Murdoch family relationships.

Only thinking makes it so

Some see this legal decision as such a blow to the Murdoch empire – leading to its fatal collapse. And that thought can be viewed as a bad outcome. Even if Rupert Murdoch overturns the decision on appeal, it might have dealt a big blow to the empire.

Some welcome it, visualising a change in direction, with a more progressive media, directed by the three siblings with their more moderate opinions. For Australians who don’t like Donald Trump, and fear a Peter Dutton election win in 2025, well, it really doesn’t matter much. For the foreseeable future, the political right wing is still hanging on to its grip on news and information across this continent, thanks to the Murdoch empire.

December 12, 2024 Posted by | legal, media, USA | Leave a comment

Why Murdoch’s succession case could be major blow to his rightwing legacy

Edward Helmore in New York, 11 Dec 24  https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/dec/09/murdoch-succession-case-rightwing-legacy

Court ruling could mean that more liberal Murdochs may have say in content from world’s most powerful conservative media empire.

A Nevada court dealt nonagenarian media mogul Rupert Murdoch a major blow on Monday. And one that could – potentially – shatter his plans to secure his rightwing legacy.

Behind closed doors, Murdoch has been involved in a legal battle for control of the family’s media assets, pitching the mogul and Lachlan Murdoch, his political protege and heir apparent, against the patriarch’s three other oldest children.

The battle isn’t about money – it’s about power. The senior Murdoch wanted to change the family’s trust to ensure that Lachlan, CEO of Fox Corporation and chairman of News Corp, would control the empire after his death rather than sharing power with his siblings James, Elisabeth and Prudence.

But a 96-page ruling obtained by the New York Times blasted the scheme as a “carefully crafted charade” designed to “permanently cement” Lachlan’s control.

The spat will not end here but by failing to secure his eldest as his rightwing successor, Murdoch now faces the prospect that following his death – more liberal Murdochs may want a say in the the content flowing from what is now the world’s most powerful conservative media empire.

That Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the Times, the Sun, the Australian and others under the News Corp umbrella could move in a different political direction would be bad for business, as Murdoch’s attorneys are believed to have argued in court. Fox News is the most-watched cable news show in the US and reported revenues of $14bn for fiscal year 2024. But while that may or may not happen, the business won’t benefit from replacing a media titan like Murdoch with squabbling siblings.

“This is the end of News Corp,” said a former high-level Murdoch lieutenant speaking on condition of anonymity. “The whole point is that unless one person runs it they can’t make decisions so they will fight over the direction of Fox News. Who is the editor of the Wall Street Journal? It will be controlled by the kids, become directionless, and lose its rightwing focus,”

“The trust was obviously rock-tight and the children had good lawyers,” they said. “Now Lachlan won’t be able to run it and that was the whole point.”

But whether James and Elizabeth Murdoch can force Fox News to take a progressive bent against News Corp CEO Lachlan, with eldest daughter Prudence a likely floating vote, is open to question. More likely, said the former lieutenant, News Corp leadership direction would devolve under a power-sharing arrangement.

If this all sounds like an episode of Succession, spare a thought for the Murdochs. Astonishingly, the legal drama had been kicked off when Murdoch’s children watched an episode of the hit HBO show in which the fictional heir of the fictional media empire discussed their PR strategy in the event of the patriarch’s death “where the patriarch of the family dies, leaving his family and business in chaos”.

According to the Times, Elizabeth Murdoch’s lawyer wrote a “‘Succession’ memo” to the trust hoping to prevent fiction turning into reality. Ironically, the memo, and the legal challenge that followed, may have created just that.

The ruling is unlikely to be the final word. Gorman acts as a “special master” who weighs the testimony and evidence and submits a recommended resolution to the probate court. A district judge could still reject Gorman’s recommendation, extending the legal wrangling far into the future.

But shareholders are already unhappy with this small S succession drama. In September, the hedge fund Starboard Value sent a letter to News Corp shareholders calling for the company to eliminate its dual-class share structure – which gives the family 41% of company votes, despite having just 14% of an overall stake in the company.


“This transition of power from Rupert Murdoch to his children has allowed for complicated family dynamics to potentially impact the stability and strategic direction of News Corp”, Starboard CEO Jeffrey Smith argued.

Four Murdoch children with voting rights, Smith said, “could be paralyzing to the strategic direction… the company could face real challenges and it becomes a very bumpy road for the other investors who are not part of the drama.”

News Corp’s dual-class voting structure that gives Rupert Murdoch control of the company might not function under equal control of four children with shifting alliances, Charles Elson, a leading authority on US corporate governance issues, told the Guardian in September.

Passing that power on generationally, Elson said, could be problematic. “How do you know the talent is genetic? Simply because they’re the children doesn’t mean they have the same business acumen as the father and it’s not how you pick the leader of a company or a country.”

December 12, 2024 Posted by | media | Leave a comment

Rupert Murdoch loses his legal battle, leaving future of media empire in the balance

The Conversation, Matthew Ricketson and Andrew Dodd, December 10, 2024

In the seemingly never-ending psychodrama surrounding Rupert Murdoch and his family, life has imitated art. Again.

A report on December 9 in The New York Times revealed details of the recent secret hearing in a Nevada probate court that was literally prompted by the epic HBO drama Succession…………………………..

The probate commissioner in Nevada who heard Rupert Murdoch’s application, Edmund Gorman “resoundingly” ruled against his attempt to change his family trust in a way that would have secured Lachlan’s position atop the global media empire.

Gorman was scathing in his ruling, saying father and son had acted in “bad faith” in their bid to change an “irrevocable” family trust that divides control of Fox News and News Corporation equally among Murdoch’s four eldest children from his first and second marriages: Prudence, Elisabeth, Lachlan and James.

In the 96-page ruling, Gorman described the plan to change the trust as a “carefully crafted charade” to permanently consolidate Lachlan’s executive roles inside News, “regardless of the impacts such control would have over the companies or the beneficiaries” of the family trust……………………………………….

Gorman’s ruling is not the end of the matter, however. It’s technically a recommendation to the Probate Court, which a district judge will ratify or reject.

Whatever the judge decides is open to appeal, which a lawyer for Rupert and Lachlan has already said they plan to do. Meanwhile, the other three siblings have released a statement welcoming the decision and expressing hope that “we can move beyond this litigation to focus on strengthening and rebuilding relationships among all family members”.

Good luck with that. The strongly worded ruling seems likely only to drive the parties further apart………………………………………………………………………………….

Lachlan’s description of James as the trust’s “troublesome beneficiary”.

By “troublesome” the plan was obliquely referring to the split in the family between Lachlan and Rupert – who are wedded to a media empire that is both right-wing and profitable – and James, who severed all ties with the company over its denialist coverage of climate change and its credulous reporting of baseless conspiracy theories about the result of the 2020 US presidential election………………………………………………………………………………….

If Prudence, Elisabeth and James can assert control, sideline Lachlan, and settle on a unified path forward, they can potentially reshape the company and redefine its journalism.

If they have already war-gamed it, and surely by now they have, the three siblings would know their greatest risk is alienating their current audiences, subscribers and advertisers.

In Australia, News operates in a virtual monopoly, so it can shapeshift with fewer consequences. But the US market is awash with emerging right-wing alternatives, each of which is eager to steal a share of the Fox audience. These viewers are the people who make Fox such a valuable commodity, and they’re the reason why it’s been so hard to stand up to Trump and his anti-democratic tactics, even on the odd occasions when Rupert and Lachlan wanted to.

The challenge is to somehow bring those audiences along for whatever transition the siblings envisage for the company. Can it be done, and if so, how?

The company’s own history suggests editorial change can happen quickly and audiences do tend to retain some loyalty. Murdoch’s takeover of The New York Post in the 1970s shows it is possible to radically change a masthead’s editorial position while expanding its audience, in that case from a mostly Democrat-leaning readership to a larger and more conservative one. But that was a moribund newspaper due for a radical makeover. There’s no guarantee it would work in reverse.

Fox News is arguably at the peak of its powers. The incentive to impose change has everything to do with journalistic standards and nothing to do with finances. In 2023–24 the Fox Corporation’s net income was US$1.5 billion (A$2.35 billion).

Even so, it must be possible to introduce incremental changes that reacquaint Fox viewers with more considered and ethical journalism without scaring them off. This wouldn’t work universally. Some of the demagogues who couldn’t cope would have to go – Sean Hannity springs to mind, as does former Fox firebrand Tucker Carlson.

Under new management, News could reintroduce some of the elements lost to Talk-TV in the mid-1980s, when the US scrapped the fairness doctrine that guaranteed balance and greater civility on the airwaves. It could ensure programs canvas different views, ask devil’s-advocate questions, and investigate issues without fear or favour.

Change of this nature wouldn’t be easy. News Corp has an echelon of editors across its global mastheads, most of whom are culture warriors and battle-hardened loyalists. They can and probably would work together to undermine progressive change.

During his tenure as the Australian head of News Corp, well before he became chair of the ABC, Kim Williams saw how the editors sneeringly white-anted his efforts to introduce reform. Even Lachlan Murdoch discovered that senior staff could undercut him. Paddy Manning recounts in his 2022 biography of Lachlan Murdoch, The Successor, that the infamous Roger Ailes did just this as Lachlan was learning the ropes at Fox in the early 2000s.

The three siblings will need resolve to dispense with those who get in their way, and they’ll need to introduce firm but gradual changes that don’t unduly scare their audiences or the market. But if Prudence, James and Elizabeth do share such a vision and are up for a fight, the world could soon be in for a fascinating media transition. more https://theconversation.com/rupert-murdoch-loses-his-legal-battle-leaving-future-of-media-empire-in-the-balance-245665?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20December%2011%202024%20-%203195432592&utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20December%2011%202024%20-%203195432592+CID_9d007a3b0e7578f878c65cbd5b463722&utm_source=campaign_monitor&utm_term=Rupert%20Murdoch%20loses%20his%20legal%20battle%20leaving%20future%20of%20media%20empire%20in%20the%20balance

December 12, 2024 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, media, USA | Leave a comment

War Crimes in Lebanon: Human Rights Watch Says Israel Used U.S. Arms to Kill 3 Journalists

November 26, 2024

Since October 2023, Israel has killed over 3,700 people in Lebanon, with most of the deaths occurring over the past 10 weeks. The attacks have forced more than 1 million people to flee their homes in Lebanon, where Israel has also repeatedly targeted journalists. In a new report, Human Rights Watch has accused Israel of committing an apparent war crime by killing three journalists and injuring four others last month, when it bombed the Hasbaya Village Resort in southern Lebanon, where more than a dozen journalists had been staying. The attack killed Ghassan Najjar and Mohammad Reda, both from Al Mayadeen TV, and Wissam Kassem, a cameraman from Al-Manar TV. Human Rights Watch has revealed Israel used an airdropped bomb equipped with a U.S.-produced Joint Direct Attack Munition guidance kit. “Journalists are civilians, and deliberately targeting journalists is a war crime,” says Human Rights Watch researcher Ramzi Kaiss.

Transcript

AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show in Lebanon, where Israel has killed at least 31 people over the past 24 hours, ahead of a possible ceasefire. Israel’s security cabinet is expected to vote today on a ceasefire proposal. ………………………………………………………………………………… more https://www.democracynow.org/2024/11/26/israel_lebanon

November 29, 2024 Posted by | Israel, media, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Nuclear is not really back

Think the Cop29 climate summit doesn’t matter? Here are five things you should know,

Adam Morton in Baku, Guardian, Sat 23 Nov 2024 

…………………………………………………..Some media outlets went to great lengths this week to claim that nuclear energy was at the centre of Cop29 talks, and Bowen had been embarrassed by Australia not signing up to a UK-US civil nuclear deal.

Take it from a reporter on the ground: this has no basis in fact.

The UK made a mistake by listing on a press release Australia and another nine countries that it said it expected would sign up to a Generation IV International Forum on nuclear. That sentence were quickly removed once it was pointed out that no one had checked and it wasn’t true. Instead, Australia will continue as an observer, as it was in the forum’s previous iteration.

The slip-up had no obvious impact on the relationship between the countries – Bowen and his UK counterpart, Ed Miliband, held an event to sign a renewable energy agreement shortly after the story broke. And nuclear has been barely visible as an issue at the talks. 

Thirty-one countries have signed up to a side pledge to triple nuclear power capacity by 2050, with six new countries joining at Cop29. But the global focus is renewable energy. Cop28 agreed global investment in renewables needs to be tripled by 2030, and the bulk of the non-fossil energy investment is going that way.

Only one country that signed the pledge to triple nuclear, Slovakia, has started work on planning a new plant in the past year. And those plants take about 20 years to build………………………………………………………….  fact.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/22/think-the-cop29-climate-summit-doesnt-matter-heres-five-things-you-should-know

November 25, 2024 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, media | Leave a comment

NY Times killed investigation of Israeli hooligans, internal email reveals

Asa Winstanley Media Watch 18 November 2024,  https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/ny-times-killed-investigation-israeli-hooligans-internal-email-reveals

The New York Times has killed an investigation by one of its own reporters into Israeli mob violence in Amsterdam earlier this month.

In an internal Times email inadvertently shared with The Electronic Intifada, Dutch reporter Christiaan Triebert explained to a manager that he had pitched “a visual investigation I was conducting into the events of [6-8 November] in Amsterdam.”

“Unfortunately, that story was killed,” he wrote. “I regret that the planned moment-by-moment visual investigation was not further pursued.”

“This has been very frustrating, to say the least,” Triebert wrote.

The email was addressed to senior Times manager Charlie Stadtlander – a former senior press officer for the US National Security Agency and for the US army.

Triebert appeared interested in carrying out reporting that would set the record straight, remediating the false narrative insistently advanced by his own newspaper – that the Israeli fans were victims of mob violence motivated by anti-Jewish hatred.

The correspondence between Triebert and Stadtlander on Friday was triggered by The Electronic Intifada’s requests for comment to The Times regarding the paper’s highly misleading reporting of Israeli mob violence in Amsterdam.

As this reporter explained on The Electronic Intifada livestream on Wednesday, the paper actually inverted reality

You can watch the full livestream segment in the video above, where we break down the evidence in detail.

There is still precisely zero evidence that even one anti-Semitic attack took place in Amsterdam – let alone the “pogrom” that Israeli government officials immediately claimed had happened.

The Times has come under fire for using a video of Israeli football hooligan violence in Amsterdam last week to claim the exact opposite of what the video actually showed.

The Times claimed footage shot by a Dutch photojournalist showed “anti-Semitic attacks” on Israelis – even though it actually showed Israeli mob violence against a Dutch citizen.

For several days, the footage was attached to the top of the paper’s 8 November report about events in Amsterdam the night before.

But on Tuesday the paper was forced to issue a correction, after the video’s creator – Dutch photojournalist Annet de Graaf – publicly condemned international media for mislabeling her video as evidence of “anti-Semitic attacks” against Israeli football supporters.

In fact, the video shows a mob of dozens of Israeli hooligans attacking someone, after their team Maccabi Tel Aviv lost an away game 5-0 to Dutch club Ajax on 7 November.

Times manager Stadtlander claimed to The Electronic Intifada in a statement on Friday that after the correction, the newspaper had “removed the video at the creator’s request.”

But de Graaf insisted that was untrue. “I haven’t said that at all,” she told The Electronic Intifada by phone on Friday. “It’s not true what the chief editor [Stadtlander] is saying to you in the email. Not true.”

Asked to comment, Stadtlander declined to respond to that, writing only that “my statement to you last night constitutes our comment on the matter.”

Downplaying genocidal Israeli violence

None of the four authors of the article – John Yoon, Christopher F. Schuetze, Jin Yu Young and Claire Moses – responded to requests for comment from The Electronic Intifada.

Stadtlander denied playing any role in the commissioning or editing of the article.

After The Electronic Intifada received Triebert’s “inadvertently copied” email, Stadtlander sent a follow-up email in what appears to have been an attempt at damage control.

He claimed that “the valuable work Christiaan [Triebert] and others on his team were doing did not become a standalone piece” because “much of the material was incorporated” into another article the Times had published.

But the piece that Stadtlander linked to is yet another whitewash of the Israeli mob violence in Amsterdam – one of a number published by the Times.

It obfuscates or outright reverses cause and effect and downplays the Israeli attacks on Dutch citizens while relying almost entirely on the Israeli hooligans’ claims.

It also downplays a video of Maccabi hooligans returning from Amsterdam to Tel Aviv airport chanting an openly genocidal slogan gloating that there are “no children left” in Gaza as merely “incendiary chants against Arabs and Gazans.”

Anti-Palestinian agenda

That the Times newsroom had a pro-Israel agenda from the outset of its coverage of the incident is apparent from reading the earliest version of the piece still available in online archives.

That version did not include the video by Annet de Graaf, and contained no evidence – or even allegation – of anti-Semitism, aside from the baseless claims of Israeli government officials.

One of the main sources quoted in that version was Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right police minister, who wants to expel all Palestinians. “Fans who went to see a football game encountered anti-Semitism and were attacked with unimaginable cruelty just because of their Jewishness,” the article quoted Ben-Gvir as saying.

However, all references to Ben-Gvir were removed from the article, within less than two hours.

To date, The New York Times has published more than a dozen articles substantially focused on the violence in Amsterdam.

This is an astonishingly high number compared, say, to how the newspaper has ignored or consistently downplayed grave crimes perpetrated by Israelis in Palestine, including systematic and well-documented sexual assaults and rapes of Palestinian prisoners by Israeli forces.

The Times coverage not only includes numerous news articles baselessly spinning the Amsterdam violence as “anti-Semitic,” but opinion columns with inflammatory headlines such as “Amsterdam Is About Jew Hatred – and Gaza,” “A Worldwide ‘Jew Hunt’” and “The Age of the Pogrom Returns.”

The willingness of the Times to falsely portray Israel and Israelis as victims in this case is reminiscent of how it has insistently advanced the debunked narrative of “mass rapes” by Palestinian fighters on 7 October 2023, including false reporting by its star correspondent Jeffrey Gettleman.

Such atrocity propaganda masquerading as journalism has been used to justify Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

A new front in Israel’s genocidal war?

In his internal Times email to Stadtlander, reporter Christiaan Triebert explained that, after a conversation with de Graaf, “I reached out to the authors of the article to address the factual inaccuracies it contained.”

Triebert wrote that he had been unsure “what the rationale was for deleting the video rather than including the detail in the article. I think it would have been helpful to have the video in there with the context that it showed Israeli fans attacking a man.”

De Graaf has repeatedly clarified as much herself, as even the Times’ correction admits.

“What I explained to several media channels is that the Maccabi supporters deliberately started the riot in front of central station returning from the game,” de Graaf wrote on X, also known as Twitter.

And footage of the same incident shared on an Israeli Telegram channel shows the Maccabi hooligans’ attack from a different angle, apparently shot by one of the hooligans themselves.

The channel falsely claimed in Hebrew that the video showed Maccabi Tel Aviv fans being “violently attacked in the last hour by dozens of Palestinian rioters.”

A full video report of the Israeli hooligans’ rampage by popular Dutch YouTuber Bender also shows footage of the same incident.

Israeli football hooliganism in Europe seems to have become Israel’s latest global front in its genocidal war in Gaza.

On Thursday night, Israeli football hooligans attacked supporters of France at a European Nations League match in Paris between the two sides.

British journalist Peter Allen reported witnessing “horrendous violence” by the Israelis. He said he “spoke to three off-duty soldiers who were over from Tel Aviv, while one openly wore” an Israeli army T-shirt.

Based in Paris for many years, Allen is a contributor of reporting to many international media outlets, including occasionally to The Electronic Intifada.

Despite the attendance of French President Emmanuel Macron, the match was heavily boycotted, with Reuters reporting that the Stade de France was barely one-fifth full and protests taking place in Paris against the event.

It was the lowest attendance for any home match in the history of France’s national team.

November 22, 2024 Posted by | EUROPE, Israel, media | Leave a comment

New Book. The Scientists Who Alerted Us To The Dangers of Radiation.

The Scientists Who Alerted us to Radiation’s Dangers by Ian Fairlie, PhD
and Beyond Nuclear’s Cindy Folkers, MS, published by The Ethics Press, is
now available in paperback and ebook.

The book profiles 23 radiation scientists over the previous half-century or so, who revealed that radiation risks were higher than thought, but who were victimized by
governments and the nuclear establishments for doing so.

What this book reveals is that the harmful effects of radiation exposure especially from
the nuclear sector, and especially to children, are more pervasive and
worse than thought. These have been known for decades but suppressed by
politically-motivated censorship and overt disparagement/persecution. A big
problem is the exclusion of independent voices and members of the public.


The hegemony of the nuclear elite, backed by their governments, has kept
radiation’s dangers an “inside game”, leaving the public in the dark
and thereby violating their human rights, especially the rights of the
child. “It’s a timely and rewarding book. It’s timely because several
governments are pushing hard for more public exposures to radiation via
nuclear power.

And it’s rewarding as it explains radiation in
easy-to-grasp language which clarifies its dangers and risks. Anyone who
has ever wondered about radiation or its first cousin, radioactivity,
should read it.”

In addition to the profiles of radiation scientists, the
book includes hundreds of references, 14 scientific Appendices, 5 Annexes,
a glossary and an extensive bibliography. “This galaxy of information
will serve to help activists and students counter the misrepresentations,
incorrect assertions, and plain untruths about radiation often disseminated
by the nuclear establishments on both sides of the Atlantic. It will also
serve as a useful up-to-date reference book for academics on the dangers
and risks of radiation and radioactivity.

 Ethics Press 19th Nov 2024
https://ethicspress.com/products/the-scientists-who-alerted-us-to-the-dangers-of-radiation

November 21, 2024 Posted by | media, radiation, resources - print | Leave a comment

A new era dawns. America’s tech bros now strut their stuff in the corridors of power

The era that began with the Great Disruptor’s first term is over. Beware the emerging elite

Carole Cadwalladr, 11 Nov 24, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/11/a-new-era-dawns-americas-tech-bros-now-strut-their-stuff-in-the-corridors-of-power

In hindsight, 2016 was the beginning of the beginning. And 2024 is the end of that beginning and the start of something much, much worse.

It began as a tear in the information space, a dawning realisation that the world as we knew it – stable, fixed by facts, balustraded by evidence – was now a rip in the fabric of reality. And the turbulence that Trump is about to unleash – alongside pain and cruelty and hardship – is possible because that’s where we already live: in information chaos.

It’s exactly eight years since we realised there were invisible undercurrents flowing beneath the surface of our world. Or perhaps I should talk for myself here. It was when I realised. A week before the 2016 US presidential election, I spotted a weird constellation of events and googled “tech disruption” + “democracy”, found not a single hit and pitched a piece to my editor.

It was published on 6 November 2016. In it, I quoted the “technology mudslide hypothesis” a concept invented by Clayton Christensen, a professor at Harvard Business School, who coined the term “disruption” – a process endlessly fetishised in tech circles, in which a scrappy upstart such as Microsoft could overthrow a colossus like IBM.

Whoever wins, I wrote, this election represented “the Great Disruption. With Trump the Great Disruptor.” And, for good measure, I chucked in some questions: “Will democracy survive? Will Nato? Is a free and fair election possible in a post-truth world?”

That article was the beginning of my own Alice in Wonderland tumble down the rabbit hole. And I reread it with the sinking knowledge that this next presidential term may yet provide those answers. If it seems like I’m crowing, I wish. This isn’t a valedictory “I told you so”: it’s an eight-year anniversary reminder for us to wake up. And a serving of notice: the first stage of this process is now complete. And we have to understand what that means.

We’ve spent those eight years learning a new lexicon: “misinformation”, “disinformation”, “microtargeting”. We’ve learned about information warfare. As journalists, we, like FBI investigators, used evidence to show how social media was a vulnerable “threat surface” that bad actors such as Cambridge Analytica and the Kremlin could exploit. PhDs have been written on the weaponisation of social media. But none of this helps us now.

There’s already a judiciary subcommittee on the “weaponisation of the federal government” in Congress to investigate the “censorship industrial complex” – the idea that big tech is “censoring” Republican voices. For the past 18 months, it’s been subpoena-ing academics. Last week, Elon Musk tweeted that the next stage would be “prosecutions”. A friend of mine, an Ivy League professor on the list, texts to say the day will shortly come “where I will have to decide whether to stay or go”.

Trump’s list of enemies is not theoretical. It already exists. My friend is on it. In 2022, Trump announced a “day one” executive order instructing “the Department of Justice to investigate all parties involved in the new online censorship regime … and to aggressively prosecute any and all crimes identified”. And my friends in other countries know exactly where this leads.

Another message arrives from Maria Ressa, the Nobel prize-winning Filipino journalist. In the Philippines, the government is modelled on the US one and she writes about what happened when President Duterte controlled all three branches of it. “It took six months after he took office for our institutions to crumble.” And then she was arrested.

What we did during the first wave of disruption, 2016-24, won’t work now. Can you “weaponise” social media when social media is the weapon? Remember the philosopher Marshall McLuhan – “the medium is the message”? Well the medium now is Musk. The world’s richest man bought a global communication platform and is now the shadow head of state of what was the world’s greatest superpower. That’s the message. Have you got it yet?

Does the technology mudslide hypothesis now make sense? Of how a small innovation can eventually disrupt a legacy brand? That brand is truth. It’s evidence. It’s journalism. It’s science. It’s the Enlightenment. A niche concept you’ll find behind a paywall at the New York Times.

You have a subscription? Enjoy your clean, hygienic, fact-checked news. Then come with me into the information sewers, where we will wade through the shit everyone else consumes. Trump is cholera. His hate, his lies – it’s an infection that’s in the drinking water now. Our information system is London’s stinking streets before the Victorian miracle of sanitation. We fixed that through engineering. But we haven’t fixed this. We had eight years to hold Silicon Valley to account. And we failed. Utterly.

Because this, now, isn’t politics in any sense we understand it. The young men who came out for Trump were voting for protein powder and deadlifting as much as they were for a 78-year-old convicted felon. They were voting for bitcoin and weighted squats. For YouTube shorts and Twitch streams. For podcast bros and crypto bros and tech bros and the bro of bros: Elon Musk.

Social media is mainstream media now. It’s where the majority of the world gets its news. Though who even cares about news? It’s where the world gets its memes and jokes and consumes its endlessly mutating trends. Forget “internet culture”. The internet is culture. And this is where this election was fought and won … long before a single person cast a ballot.

Steve Bannon was right. Politics is downstream from culture. Chris Wylie, the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower, quoted his old boss to me in my first phone call with him. Elections are downstream from white men talking on platforms that white men built, juiced by invisible algorithms our broligarch overlords control. This is culture now.

The Observer’s reporting on Facebook and Cambridge Analytica belongs to the old world order. An order that ended on 6 November 2024. That was the first wave of algorithmic disruption which gave us Brexit and Trump’s first term, when our rule-based norms creaked but still applied.

The challenge now is to understand that this world has gone. Mark Zuckerberg has ditched his suit, grown out his Caesar haircut and bought a rapper-style gold chain. He’s said one of his biggest regrets is apologising too much. Because he – like others in Silicon Valley – has read the runes. PayPal’s co-founder Peter Thiel, creeping around in the shadows, ensured his man, JD Vance, got on the presidential ticket. Musk wagered a Silicon Valley-style bet by going all in on Trump. Jeff Bezos, late to the party, jumped on the bandwagon with just days to go, ensuringhis Washington Post didn’t endorse any candidate.

These bros know. They don’t fear journalists any more. Journalists will now learn to fear them. Because this is oligarchy now. This is the fusion of state and commercial power in a ruling elite. It’s not a coincidence that Musk spouts the Kremlin’s talking points and chats to Putin on the phone. The chaos of Russia in the 90s is the template; billions will be made, people will die, crimes will be committed.

Our challenge is to realise that the first cycle of disruption is complete. We’re through the looking glass. We’re all wading through the information sewers. Trump is a bacillus but the problem is the pipes. We can and must fix this.

November 20, 2024 Posted by | media | Leave a comment

The media’s role in lying about Amsterdam violence just keeps getting darker

Jonathon Cook, 13 November 2024,  https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2024-11-13/media-lying-amsterdam-violence/
News outlets didn’t make a mistake. They knowingly aired disinformation and peddled fake news. Admitting that requires a troubling recalibration of perspective if we’re ever to make sense of the world.

The media’s role in peddling disinformation over last week’s violence in Amsterdam just keeps getting darker.

Owen Jones has interviewed a Dutch woman who shot the footage used by major outlets – from Sky News and the BBC to the Guardian and New York Times – to suggest that locals in Amsterdam carried out “antisemitic attacks” on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans.

In fact, as she has noted on social media, her footage shows the exact reverse: Israeli fans attacking local Dutch residents.

As I noted in my article yesterday, despite her efforts to get these outlets to correct their mistake and issue apologies, none has done so, apart from a German news programme, Taggeschau.

Jones’ interview offers insights as to why.

We know that an early report from the scene by Sky News’ reporter was one of the only ones to correctly describe the video as showing Israeli hooliganism, not antisemitism.

But Sky quickly took down that report, saying it wasn’t “balanced”. The channel then heavily re-edited the segment and issued a new version that presented the footage – quite wrongly – as evidence of Dutch locals attacking Israeli fans.

That was crucial to shoring up the false “antisemitism” and “pogrom” narratives spread by western politicians and the establishment media.

Here’s where it gets even more disturbing. The Dutch photographer interviewed by Jones says she was interviewed by Sky News about her footage before the second, re-edited report was aired.

In other words, not only was Sky’s reporter correct in her first account of the events in Amsterdam, but Sky’s news editors back in London knew exactly what the footage showed too – because the Dutch woman who filmed it had told them.

And yet Sky’s news team still edited a truthful news report to make it untruthful.

The only conclusion one can draw is that they did so to mislead their audience. They didn’t make a mistake. They didn’t act out of ignorance. They knowingly aired disinformation. They intentionally peddled fake news.

That’s something very hard for most of us to accept. It requires a troubling recalibration, a shift of perspective, if we are to understand the world we live in. But doing that is the only way to make sense of some of the most significant events that have unfolded over the past two decades.

Remember the lies we were sold by the western establishment media about “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq to justify a US-UK invasion and get western troops into a key oil-rich Middle Eastern state in gross violation of international law?

Remember the years of evidence-free claims from the entire British establishment media about the most prominent anti-racist politician of his generation, Jeremy Corbyn, who suddenly was outed as an unhinged antisemite the moment he became leader of the Labour party? Corbyn also just happened to be the first democratic socialist to head the party in 40 years.

Remember the entire western media establishment telling us that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was completely “unprovoked” – memory-holing years of warnings from leading western foreign policy advisers and analysts that the West was playing with fire: that Nato’s relentless military advance towards Russia’s borders; its meddling to overthrow in 2014 a Ukrainian government sympathetic to Moscow; and Washington’s tearing up of nuclear arms treaties with Russia leaving the latter exposed to Nato’s expansion to its borders would inevitably trigger a backlash – and Ukraine would be its epicentre?

Remember the entire western media insisting that Israel’s slaughter and maiming of many tens of thousands of children in Gaza, the systematic bombing of the enclave’s hospitals, and the mass starvation of the 2.3 million people there was not textbook genocide? Rather, it was “self-defence”. It was a legitimate war against Hamas.

None of those things should have sounded like they made any sense at the time.

And if they did, we should have noticed that the media’s presentation of the “facts” just happened to coincide precisely with Washington’s interests to prop up its most important client state in the oil-rich Middle East and isolate its one potential military rival, Russia, as part of a strategic policy of “global full-spectrum dominance” – or, expressed another way, its project to be the world’s sole imperial power, to run the planet like some untouchable godfather.

The problem wasn’t, as you feared, you. You weren’t going mad. Your suspicions were justified. You were being lied to. The media was gaslighting you.

The challenge is to find a way to liberate other minds still desperately clinging to a comforting illusion: that the establishment media can be trusted, that it is free, honest and moral.

November 18, 2024 Posted by | media, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Media Coverage of Amsterdam Soccer Riot Erases Zionist Hatred and Violence

Elsie Carson-Holt 15 Nov 24,  https://fair.org/home/media-coverage-of-amsterdam-soccer-riot-erases-zionist-hatred-and-violence/

When violence broke out in Amsterdam last week involving Israeli soccer fans, Western media headlines told the story as one of attacks that could only be explained by antisemitism. This is the story right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants them to tell: “On the streets of Amsterdam, antisemitic rioters attacked Jews, Israeli citizens, just because they were Jews” (Fox News, 11/10/24).

Yet buried deep within their reports, some of these outlets revealed a more complicated reality: that many fans of Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv Football Club had spent the previous night tearing down and burning Palestinian flags, attacking a taxi and shouting murderous anti-Arab chants, including “Death to the Arabs” and “Why is there no school in Gaza? There are no children left there” (Defector, 11/8/24).

As Marc Owen Jacobs of Zeteo (11/9/24) wrote, the media coverage revealed

troubling patterns in how racial violence is reported; not only is anti-Arab violence and racism marginalized and minimized, but violence against Israelis is amplified and reduced to antisemitism.

Buried context

“Israeli Soccer Fans Attacked in Amsterdam,” announced NBC News (11/8/24). That piece didn’t mention until the 25th paragraph the Maccabi fans’ Palestinian flag-burning and taxi destruction, as if these were minor details rather than precipitating events.

Similarly, the Washington Post (11/8/24)—“Israeli Soccer Fans Were Attacked in Amsterdam. The Violence Was Condemned as Antisemitic”—didn’t mention Maccabi anti-Arab chants until paragraph 22, and didn’t mention any Maccabi fan violence.

James North on Mondoweiss (11/10/24) summed up the New York Times article’s (11/8/24) similar one-sided framing:

The Times report, which started on page 1, used the word “antisemitic” six times, beginning in the headline. The first six paragraphs uniformly described the “Israeli soccer fans” as the victims, recounting their injuries, and dwelling on the Israeli government’s chartering of “at least three flights to bring Israeli citizens home,” insinuating that innocent people had to completely flee the country for their lives.

Also at Mondoweiss (11/9/24), Sana Saeed explained:

Emerging video evidence and testimonies from Amsterdam residents (here, here and here, for instance) indicate that the initial violence came from Maccabi Tel Aviv fans, who also disrupted a moment of silence for the Valencia flood victims.

But despite that footage and Amsterdammer testimonies, coverage—across international media, especially in the United States—has failed to contextualize the counter-attacks against the anti-Arab Israeli mob.

Misrepresented video

Several news outlets outright misrepresented video from local Dutch photographer Annet de Graaf. De Graaf’s video depicts Maccabi fans attacking Amsterdam locals, yet CNN World News (11/9/24) and BBC (11/8/24) and other outlets initially labeled it as Maccabi fans getting attacked.

De Graaf has demanded apologies from the news outlets and acknowledgement that the video was used to push false information. CNN World News‘ video now notes that an earlier version was accompanied by details from Reuters that CNN could not independently verify. BBC’s caption of De Graaf’s footage reads “Footage of some of the violence in Amsterdam—the BBC has not been able to verify the identity of those involved.”

The New York Times (11/8/24) corrected its misuse of the footage in an article about the violence:

An earlier version of this article included a video distributed by Reuters with a script about Israeli fans being attacked. Reuters has since issued a correction saying it is unclear who is depicted in the footage. The video’s author told the New York Times it shows a group of Maccabi fans chasing a man on the street—a description the Times independently confirmed with other verified footage from the scene. The video has been removed.

‘Historically illiterate conflation’

Jacobin (11/12/24): “Far from acting like tsarist authorities during a pogrom, the police in Amsterdam seem to have cracked down far harder on those who attacked Maccabi fans than the overtly racist Maccabi hooligans who started the first phase of the riot.”

It is undoubtedly true that antisemitism was involved in Amsterdam alongside Israeli fans’ anti-Arab actions; the Wall Street Journal (11/10/24) verified reports of a group chat that called for a “Jew hunt.” But rather than acknowledging that there was ethnic animosity on both sides, some articles about the melee (Bret Stephens, New York Times, 11/12/24; Fox News, 11/10/24; Free Press, 10/11/24) elevated the violence to the level of a “pogrom.”

Jacobin (11/12/24) put the attacks in the context of European soccer riots:

There were assaults on Israeli fans, including hit-and-run attacks by perpetrators on bicycles. Some of the victims were Maccabi fans who hadn’t participated in the earlier hooliganism. In other words, this played out like a classical nationalistic football riot—the thuggish element of one group of fans engages in violence, and the ugly intercommunal dynamics lead to not just the perpetrators but the entire group of fans (or even random people wrongly assumed to share their background or nationality) being attacked.

But Jacobin pushed back against media using the word “pogrom” in reference to the soccer riots:

Pogroms were not isolated incidents of violence. They were calculated assaults to keep Jews locked firmly in their social place…. Pogroms cannot occur outside the framework of a society that systematically denies rights to a minority, ensuring that it remains vulnerable to the violence of the majority. What happened in Amsterdam, however, bears no resemblance to this structure. These were not attacks predicated on religious or racial oppression. They were incidents fueled by political discord between different groups of nationalists….

Furthermore, using that designation to opportunistically smear global dissent against Israel’s atrocities in Gaza as classically antisemitic only serves to trivialize genuine horrors. This historically illiterate conflation should be rejected by all who truly care about antisemitism.

Breaking with the Netanyahu government’s spin, former Israeli President Ehud Olmert said that the riots in Amsterdam were “not a continuation of the historic antisemitism that swept Europe in past centuries.” Olmert, unlike Western media coverage of the event, seemed to be able to connect the violence in Amsterdam to anti-Arab sentiment in his own country. In a more thoughtful piece than his paper’s news coverage of the event, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman (11/13/24) quoted Olmert extensively:

The fact is, many people in the world are unable to acquiesce with Israel turning Gaza, or residential neighborhoods of Beirut, into the Stone Age—as some of our leaders promised to do. And that is to say nothing of what Israel is doing in the West Bank—the killings and destruction of Palestinian property. Are we really surprised that these things create a wave of hostile reactions when we continue to show a lack of sensitivity to human beings living in the center of the battlefield who are not terrorists?

The events in Amsterdam called for nuanced media coverage that contextualized events and condemned both anti-Jewish and anti-Arab violence. Instead, per usual, world leaders and media alike painted Arabs and Pro-Palestine protesters as aggressors and Israelis as innocent victims.

November 16, 2024 Posted by | Israel, media, spinbuster | Leave a comment

How Trump Will Seek Revenge on the Press

Ari Paul, 14 Nov 24,https://fair.org/home/how-trump-will-seek-revenge-on-the-pres

“Revenge—it’s a big part of Trump’s life,” Mother Jones‘ David Corn (10/19/16) wrote just before Trump was elected to the presidency the first time:

In speeches and public talks, Trump has repeatedly expressed his fondness for retribution. In 2011, he addressed the National Achievers Congress in Sydney, Australia, to explain how he had achieved his success. He noted there were a couple of lessons not taught in business school that successful people must know. At the top of the list was this piece of advice: “Get even with people. If they screw you, screw them back 10 times as hard. I really believe it.”

Knowing this about Trump, Democrats and liberals worry that he will use the Department of Justice, especially if Matt Gaetz is confirmed as attorney general, as an unrestrained vehicle to pursue the prosecution of political enemies.

But given Trump’s constant attacks on media—“the opposition party,” as his ally Steve Bannon called the fourth estate (New York Times, 1/26/17)—journalists fear that he will use the power of the state to intimidate if not destroy the press.

Defunding public broadcasting

Trump called for defunding NPR (Newsweek, 4/10/24) after a long-time editor accused the radio outlet of liberal bias in the conservative journal Free Press (4/9/24). Rep. Claudia Tenney (R–NY) introduced legislation to defund NPR because “taxpayers should not be forced to fund NPR, which has become a partisan propaganda machine” (Office of Claudia Tenney, 4/19/24). With Republicans also holding both houses of congress, bills like Tenney’s become more viable. 

Trump has previously supported budget proposals that eliminate funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (Politico, 3/27/19).

The infamous Project 2025, a conservative policy agenda many see as a blueprint for the second Trump term, calls for the end to public broadcasting, because it is viewed as liberal propaganda:

Every Republican president since Richard Nixon has tried to strip the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) of taxpayer funding. That is significant not just because it means that for half a century, Republican presidents have failed to accomplish what they set out to do, but also because Nixon was the first president in office when National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), which the CPB funds, went on air.

In other words, all Republican presidents have recognized that public funding of domestic broadcasts is a mistake. As a 35-year-old lawyer in the Nixon White House, one Antonin Scalia warned that conservatives were being “confronted with a long-range problem of significant social consequences—that is, the development of a government-funded broadcast system similar to the BBC.”

All of which means that the next conservative president must finally get this done, and do it despite opposition from congressional members of his own party if necessary. To stop public funding is good policy and good politics. The reason is simple: President Lyndon Johnson may have pledged in 1967 that public broadcasting would become “a vital public resource to enrich our homes, educate our families and to provide assistance to our classrooms,” but public broadcasting immediately became a liberal forum for public affairs and journalism.

PBS and NPR, as FAIR (10/24/24) has noted, has for decades caved in to right-wing pressures—PBS by adding conservative programming, NPR by trying to rid itself of political commentary altogether. But the right will never let go of its ideological opposition to media outlets not directly owned by the corporate class.

‘Whether criminally or civilly’ 

Trump also has a well known track record of revoking the credentials of journalists who produce reporting he doesn’t like (Washington Post, 2/24/17, 5/8/19; New Republic, 11/5/24). It is realistic to assume that a lot more reporters will be barred from White House events in the years ahead.

While a bill that would grant the secretary of the treasury broad authority to revoke nonprofit status to any organization the office deems as a “terrorist” organization has so far failed (Al Jazeera, 11/12/24), it is quite possible that it could come up for a vote again. If this bill were to become law, the Treasury Department could use this ax against a great many progressive nonprofit outlets, like Democracy Now! and the American Prospect, as well as investigative outlets like ProPublica and the Center for Investigative Reporting.

The department could even target the Committee to Protect Journalists, which has already said in response to Trump’s victory, “The fundamental right to a free press, guaranteed by the First Amendment of the US Constitution, must not be impaired” (11/6/24).

Margaret Sullivan (Guardian, 10/27/24), an avid media observer, said there is no reason to think Trump will soften his campaign against the free press. She said:

In 2022, he sued the Pulitzer Prize board after they defended their awards to the New York Times and the Washington Post. Both newspapers had won Pulitzer Prizes for investigating Trump’s ties to Russia.

More recently, Trump sued ABC News and George Stephanopoulos for defamation over the way the anchor characterized the verdict in E. Jean Carroll’s sexual misconduct case against him. Each of those cases is wending its way through the courts.

She added:

There is nothing to suggest that Trump would soften his approach in a second term. If anything, we can expect even more aggression.

Consider what one of Trump’s most loyal lieutenants, Kash Patel, has said.

“We’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections,” Patel threatened during a podcast with Steve Bannon. “Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out.”

Trump has already gone after the New York Times and Penguin Random House since Sullivan wrote this. CJR (11/14/24) said:

The letter, addressed to lawyers at the New York Times and Penguin Random House, arrived a week before the election. Attached was a discursive ten-page legal threat from an attorney for Donald Trump that demanded $10 billion in damages over “false and defamatory statements” contained in articles by Peter Baker, Michael S. Schmidt, Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner.

It singles out two stories coauthored by Buettner and Craig that related to their book on Trump and his financial dealings, Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success, released on September 17. It also highlighted an October 20 story headlined “For Trump, a Lifetime of Scandals Heads Toward a Moment of Judgment” by Baker and an October 22 piece by Schmidt, “As Election Nears, Kelly Warns Trump Would Rule Like a Dictator.”

And just before his victory, Trump sued CBS News, alleging the network’s “deceitful” editing of a recent 60 Minutes interview with Vice President Kamala Harris “misled the public and unfairly disadvantaged him” (CBS News, 10/31/24).

Expect more of this, except this time, Trump will have all the levers of the state on his side. And whatever moves the next Trump administration makes to attack the press will surely have a chilling effect, which will only empower his anti-democratic political agenda.

November 16, 2024 Posted by | media, USA | Leave a comment

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