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As ‘Oppenheimer’ leads Oscar nominees, Sentor Hawley wants spotlight on nuclear testing victims

Rachel Looker, USA TODAY, 26 Jan 24,  https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2024/01/26/josh-hawley-oscars-oppenheimer-nuclear-testing/72368363007/

WASHINGTON − Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., is pushing for the Oscars to acknowledge victims of nuclear testing after the Academy announced that “Oppenheimer” leads in nominations.

Hawley sent a letter Friday urging the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to include programming that pays tribute to the victims of nuclear testing ahead of the 2024 Academy Awards.

“Oppenheimer,” directed by Christopher Nolan, chronicles the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the American physicist whose stewardship of the Manhattan Project led to the atomic bomb. The Manhattan Project‘s scientists built and deployed two bombs that were dropped on Japanese cities, leading to the country’s surrender in World War II.

“Oppenheimer” leads this year with 13 nominations.

“The ‘Oppenheimer’ film tells a compelling story of these test programs. But it does not tell the story of the Americans left behind—still reckoning with the health and financial consequences of America’s nuclear research, after all these years,” Hawley wrote in the letter.

The Missouri lawmaker pointed to Americans, like those in his home state, who suffer from cancer or other medical conditions because of radiation exposure from the radioactive waste that was not cleaned up as part of the Manhattan Project.

“Congress stands poised to allow what limited compensation the government has offered victims to expire. That cannot be allowed to happen,” he wrote. “These victims deserve justice through fair compensation from their government—and you can help by telling their stories.”

Hawley has long been an advocate for those impacted by government-caused nuclear contamination.

In December, Hawley called upon his colleagues in Congress to reauthorize the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act in the 2024 annual defense spending bill. The legislation compensates victims of government-caused radiation in the St. Louis region.

He created a procedural hurdle as the Senate worked to pass the defense bill and voted against the bill after the compensation program was not included in its final version

January 28, 2024 Posted by | media, USA | Leave a comment

In Assange’s Darkest Hour, Committee To Protect Journalists Yet Again Excludes Him From Jailed Journalist Index

for another year, CPJ excluded the imprisoned former WikiLeaks editor-in-chief from their database of jailed journalists. 

Assange is a member of the International Federation of Journalists, which is the world’s largest federation of journalists.

if Assange was brought to trial that it would “effectively criminalize journalists everywhere.”

Assange is and will always be a detained journalist so long as the Justice Department pushes onward with this political case. It is too bad CPJ staff cannot get past their professional hangups and include him in their annual index. It would strengthen their opposition to the prosecution in a way that would give their advocacy even more clarity.

Kevin Gosztola, 20 Jan 24,  https://thedissenter.org/assange-darkest-hour-cpj-yet-again-excludes-jailed-journalist-index/

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released its census report for 2023. Three hundred and twenty detained or imprisoned journalists were counted by the press freedom organization, as of December 1, 2023.  

As indicated, that number is not far from the record high of 360 jailed journalists that was set in 2022.

The 2023 census takes on greater significance given the Israeli government’s war on Gaza and the military attacks and crackdown on Palestinian journalists. Seventeen journalists were jailed by Israel, the “highest number of arrests” since CPJ began tracking arrests in 1992. It is the first time that Israel has “ranked among the top six offenders.”  

But at this moment, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and his legal team are preparing for a major hearing on February 20 before the High Court of the Justice in the United Kingdom. They view the hearing as a final opportunity to save him from extradition to the United States, where he was charged with violating the Espionage Act in 2019.

Assange needs press freedom organizations, especially those with U.S. headquarters, to strengthen their stand against the charges from the Justice Department. However, for another year, CPJ excluded the imprisoned former WikiLeaks editor-in-chief from their database of jailed journalists. 

I emailed CPJ a request for comment and asked why Assange remains excluded from the organization’s annual jailed journalist census, especially given CPJ’s methodology. The response that a CPJ communications person sent me was disappointing.

“After extensive research and consideration, CPJ chose not to list Assange as a journalist, in part because his role has just as often been as a source and because WikiLeaks does not generally perform as a news outlet with an editorial process,” CPJ answered. 

The statement was copied-and-pasted from a 2019 post that then-CPJ executive editor Robert Mahoney authored, where he defended the exclusion of Assange.

I pointed out to CPJ that this “extensive research and consideration” was completed in 2019, and I did so because perhaps it is time for CPJ to reassess their determination. To that, CPJ replied, “Yes, there have been many articles about our position on Assange. While you’re free to disagree, our position has been clear, transparent, and consistent for years.”

Indeed, CPJ’s position has been clear. The organization has been consistent in their exclusion of Assange from the press freedom organization’s annual census.

It is debatable whether the organization has been transparent. To my knowledge, the “extensive research and consideration” that they did to decide that Assange is not a journalist has never been shared with the public.

Also, it remains puzzling how a press freedom organization led primarily by journalists with experience in newsgathering can insist that Assange is a source. He has never held a security clearance or a position in the U.S. government that would give him access to classified documents.

The source of the documents at issue in the Espionage Act prosecution against Assange was a U.S. Army intelligence analyst known as Chelsea Manning. She had access to the classified military and government documents, submitted over 700,000 files to WikiLeaks, and Assange published them in 2010 and 2011.

My request for comment mentioned CPJ’s own methodology for labeling someone a journalist, however, CPJ ignored this part of my question.

According to CPJ, a journalist is someone who covers the news or comments on public affairs through any media—including in print, in photographs, on radio, on television, and online.”

Between 2010 and 2017, Assange appeared numerous times on news networks, such as CNN and Al Jazeera English, to comment on WikiLeaks publications as well as public affairs, like National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden, NSA surveillance, and internet freedom. He frequently appeared on the independent news program “Democracy Now!” to discuss Google, corruption within U.S. security agencies, and even the Catalonia independence movement in Spain.

Assange is a member of the International Federation of Journalists, which is the world’s largest federation of journalists. Twenty affiliates of the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), including France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom, granted Assange honorary membership.

Since 2010, Assange has also been a member of the Media, Entertainment, and Arts Alliance, a trade union in Australia. 

CPJ partnered with various civil liberties, human rights, and press freedom organizations in December 2022 to send a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland demanding that the Justice Department drop all charges against Assange.

On World Press Freedom Day in 2023, CPJ CEO Jodie Ginsberg spoke at an event hosted by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) at the UN headquarters in New York. 

Ginsberg called out lawfare targeting journalists and clearly stated, “One thing that the United States could concretely do is drop the charges against Julian Assange.” She noted if Assange was brought to trial that it would “effectively criminalize journalists everywhere.”

So, why the refusal to label Assange a journalist?

I asked CPJ if they have come under pressure from officials within the U.S. government and that is why they will not acknowledge Assange is a jailed journalist. After all, if the Chinese or Russian governments detained someone like Assange, that person would almost certainly be included in CPJ’s index.

The press freedom organization disregarded this portion of my request for comment.

Continue reading

January 26, 2024 Posted by | civil liberties, media | Leave a comment

URANIUM FILM FESTIVAL MARATHON ACROSS THE USA

EIN Presswire Oct 28, 2023,  https://fox5sandiego.com/business/press-releases/ein-presswire/664773439/uranium-film-festival-marathon-across-the-usa/

The International Uranium Film Festival will embark on a marathon tour of the United States next year, including Vancouver in Canada.LOS ANGELES, CA, USA, October 28, 2023 /EINPresswire.com/ — The schedule for the American edition of the International Uranium Film Festival is almost set. From March 2nd to May 10th, 2024, the world’s only film festival on nuclear dangers will embark on a marathon tour across the USA and take place in 10 states and more than 12 cities including Vancouver in Canada – www.uraniumfilmfestival.org.

“We will be showing important, eye-opening films about risks and consequences of uranium mining, the use nuclear power, nuclear arms and uranium weapons,” says festival’s director and co-founder Norbert G. Suchanek. The IUFF will start in March in Albuquerque and Window Rock, the capital of the Navajo (Diné) Nation. From there, the festival will go on its marathon like round tour. Cities already included with fixed dates are Tucson, Santa Fe, Ashville (NC), Seattle, Portland, Salem, Irvine, Santa Barbara and Las Vegas.

One highlight shall be Washington DC. Here the International Uranium Film Festival (IUFF) will focus on documentaries about the use of Depleted Uranium (DU) Weapons. “It will be the first International Gathering to stop Depleted Uranium Weapons use in Washington DC held in conjunction with the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons (ICBUW),” says Damacio A. Lopez, the IUFF director of the American Southwest.

In California, the festival will be held in several cities with the participation of Libbe HaLevy, Ambassador of the IUFF to the USA. Libbe is producer of the weekly radio show Nuclear Hotseat – www.nuclearhotseat.com.

Last May this year, the 12th IUFF of Rio de Janeiro at the famous Modern Art Museum Cinematheque showed 15 atomic films from around the globe including the new US productions “Radioactive: The Women of Three Mile Island” by Heidi Hutner and “Downwind” by Mark Shapiro and Douglas Brian Miller. Heidi Hutner’s film received the Best Investigative Documentary Award and “Downwind” the Best Documentary Feature Award of the festival in Rio.

In addition Students of the State School FAETEC Adolpho Bloch presented at MAM Rio a special Dance performance remembering the terrible accident with blue shining highly radioactive Cesium 137 in Goiânia in 1987: “The blue shine of death”.

Libbe HaLevy: “For the dance, about 30 students, dressed all in white, presented themselves miming normal actions – brushing hair, putting on make-up, talking, hugging in friendship. I have never thought of how dance might address nuclear issues. So to see this was both shocking and deeply moving. It challenged me, and all the audience. The cheers at the end went on for several minutes.“

“We wish we could take the FAETEC dance group with us on the tour of the USA. But for that we would need a lot more donations and sponsors,” says FAETEC teacher and IUFF executive director Márcia Gomes de Oliveira. The Uranium Film Festival depends mainly on hard and a lot of voluntary work and donations from individuals. Márcia: “We thank all volunteers and festival partners Anna Rondon from the New Mexico Social Justice Equity Institute (NMSJEI) and the Navajo Nation, Veterans for Peace in Santa Fe and Albuquerque, Jesse Andrewartha from the Atomic Photographers Guild (APG) and Cineworks Independent Filmmakers Society in Vancouver, Jad Baaklini from Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility (WPSR) in Seattle, PSR Oregon in Portland, Principal Man Ian Zabarte from the Western Bands of the Shoshone Nation in Las Vegas, Leslie Poplawski from WNC-PSR in Ashville and Kathy Altman from PSR-Az in Tucson just to name a few.“

January 24, 2024 Posted by | media, Resources -audiovicual, USA | Leave a comment

Documentary ‘Downwind’ shows deadly consequences of nuclear testing on tribal lands

OPB, By Lillian Karabaic (OPB) and Winston Szeto (OPB), Jan. 22, 2024

Western Shoshone Principal Man Ian Zabarte, who lost his family members to diseases caused by radiation exposure, says it amounts to racism against Native Americans that the U.S. government detonated more than 900 atomic bombs on his ancestors’ land in secret from 1951 to 1992.

On Jan. 7, the film “Oppenheimer” snagged five Golden Globe awards. It’s a blockbuster directed by Christopher Nolan about the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in 1945.

But flying under the radar is a documentary called “Downwind,” another movie about nuclear weapons.

Mark Shapiro is the co-director of “Downwind,” he lives in Portland.

Ian Zabarte from Las Vegas is the Principal Man of the Western Bands of the Shoshone Nation of Indians, and is featured in the documentary.

They joined OPB’s “Weekend Edition” host, Lillian Karabaic, to discuss “Downwind” and the tragedy that inspired the documentary.

TRANSCRIPT.

Mark Shapiro: So we came across a pretty remarkable story. We found out that during the Cold War and into the nineties, from 1951 to 1992, the United States detonated 928 nuclear weapons at the Nevada Test Site, which is about an hour from Las Vegas. And we found that to be remarkable, and the radiation from all those tests impacted communities downwind.

Lillian Karabaic: You co-produced this documentary with Douglas Brian Miller. The documentary came out last summer around the same time as “Oppenheimer.” Can you tell me how you both came up with the idea to make the film and explore that connection?

Shapiro: Both of our families had cancer in our families and were impacted deeply by cancer. And, we felt like this shouldn’t be breaking news, that people should really know that for 40 years in one location, they tested a hundred nuclear weapons larger than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined in some cases, and then over 800 underground weapons tests that also vent into the communities. And I think the biggest thing that surprised us, too, was this giant swath of land the size of Rhode Island, 1,350 square miles, is deeded Shoshone land. So that was another topic that we thought the government really took part in an unforgivable era, and we wanted to expose that.

Karabaic: Ian, one of the things that Mark just mentioned was that the Nevada Test Site sits right on your ancestors’ land, and the U.S. government launched more than 900 tests there. How could that happen?

Ian Zabarte: Well, the United States entered into treaty relationships with the Western Shoshone, the Western bands of Shoshone Nation of Indians in 1863. And that was a time when America’s need was great. So we all ourselves with the union, with the North, to help prosecute the war against the South, our lands, and our resources continue to make this nation the great land it is. Our lands bind this nation together, not just Shoshone, but all tribes and the treaties we entered into.

So, what happened was the United States came into our country in secret. They developed the US nuclear facilities, and they came to our country to test the bombs that they built, and they did this in secret. They didn’t ask our consent. They didn’t tell us what was happening, and we didn’t know the problem. That secrecy is counter to democracy, and we’re all not just the Shoshone; we’re all downwinders, and we’re all living with the burden of the adverse health effects that are known to be plausible from exposure to radiation, in this case, from radioactive fallout……………………………………………………………………………………………….. more https://www.opb.org/article/2024/01/21/documentary-downwind-nuclear-test-site-nevada-mark-shapiro-shoshone-nation-ian-zabarte/

January 24, 2024 Posted by | indigenous issues, media | Leave a comment

Scary simulator shows what could happen in the event of a nuclear disaster

Poppy Bilderbeck 21 Jan 24 (Videos on the original site)

Researchers have revealed what it would look like if a nuclear explosion occurred.

You may’ve seen – or heard, if you were in a different room watching Barbie – the sound of an atomic bomb going off in Oppenheimer, but do you know what effect one could have on its surroundings if it went off today?

Well, a team of researchers have harnessed the power of technology to predict what could happen.

A team of researchers from the University of Nicosia (UNIC) in Cyprus looked into what would happen in the event of a nuclear explosion, and how it could impact surrounding buildings and people.

Titled Nuclear explosion impact on humans indoors, the paper investigated what would happen if an intercontinental ballistic missile caused an atomic bomb explosion.

Using advanced computer modeling, the team created two videos showing how such an explosion would alter the temperature of its surroundings, alongside how the sheer force of the air the explosion would generate could impact buildings and people.

And if you wanted to see a simulation of what it looks like from a person’s point of view on the ground, well another video has been shared to X – formerly known as Twitter – by Historic Vids (@historyinmemes), and it’s pretty horrifying………………………………………………………. more https://www.unilad.com/news/world-news/nuclear-explosion-simulator-scary-670922-20240117

January 21, 2024 Posted by | media, Resources -audiovicual | Leave a comment

How the Gaza War Can Be Big News and Invisible at the Same Time

coverage of the Gaza war by the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times “showed a consistent bias against Palestinians.” Those highly influential papers “disproportionately emphasized Israeli deaths in the conflict” and “used emotive language to describe the killings of Israelis, but not Palestinians.”

what actually happens to people being terrorized, massacred, maimed and traumatized — has remained close to invisible for the U.S. public. Extensive surface coverage seems repetitious and increasingly normal, as death numbers keep rising and Gaza becomes a routine topic in news media.

By Norman Solomon, World BEYOND War, January 18, 2024,  https://worldbeyondwar.org/how-the-gaza-war-can-be-big-news-and-invisible-at-the-same-time/

Zen wisdom tells us that the finger pointing at the moon is not the moon. Yet it’s easy to fall into the illusion that when we see news about the Gaza war, we’re really seeing the war.

We are not.

What we do routinely see is reporting that’s as different from the actual war as a pointed finger is from the moon.

The media words and images reach us light years away from what it’s actually like to be in a war zone. The experience of consuming news from afar could hardly be more different. And beliefs or unconscious notions that media outlets convey war’s realities end up obscuring those realities all the more.

Inherent limitations on what journalism can convey are compounded by media biases. In-depth content analysis by The Intercept found that coverage of the Gaza war by the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times “showed a consistent bias against Palestinians.” Those highly influential papers “disproportionately emphasized Israeli deaths in the conflict” and “used emotive language to describe the killings of Israelis, but not Palestinians.”

What is most profoundly important about war in Gaza — what actually happens to people being terrorized, massacred, maimed and traumatized — has remained close to invisible for the U.S. public. Extensive surface coverage seems repetitious and increasingly normal, as death numbers keep rising and Gaza becomes a routine topic in news media. And yet, what’s going on now in Gaza is “the most transparent genocide in human history.”

With enormous help from U.S. media and political power structures, the ongoing mass murder — by any other name — has become normalized, mainly reduced to standard buzz phrases, weaselly diplomat-speak and euphemistic rhetoric about the Gaza war. Which is exactly what the top leadership of Israel’s government wants.

Extraordinary determination to keep killing civilians and destroying what little is left of Palestinian infrastructure in Gaza has caused extremes of hungerdisplacementdestruction of medical facilities, and expanding outbreaks of lethal diseases, all obviously calculated and sought by Israeli leaders. Thinly reported by U.S. media outlets while cravenly dodged by President Biden and the overwhelming majority of Congress, the calamity for 2.2 million Palestinian people worsens by the day.

“Gazans now make up 80 per cent of all people facing famine or catastrophic hunger worldwide, marking an unparalleled humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip amid Israel’s continued bombardment and siege,” the United Nations declared this week. The UN statement quoted experts who said: “Currently every single person in Gaza is hungry, a quarter of the population are starving and struggling to find food and drinkable water, and famine is imminent.”

Israel is waging a war toward extermination. But for the vast majority of Americans, no matter how much mainstream media they consume, the war that actually exists — in contrast to the war reporting by news outlets — remains virtually invisible.

Of course, Hamas’s Oct. 7 murderous attack on civilians and its taking of hostages should be unequivocally condemned as crimes against humanity. Such condemnation is fully appropriate, and easy in the United States.

“Deploring the crimes of others often gives us a nice warm feeling: we are good people, so different from those bad people,” Noam Chomsky has observed. “That is particularly true when there is nothing much we can do about the crimes of others, so that we can strike impressive poses without cost to ourselves. Looking at our own crimes is much harder, and for those willing to do it, often carries costs.”

With the U.S.-backed war on Gaza now in its fourth month, “looking at our own crimes” can lead to clearly depicting and challenging the role of the U.S. government in the ongoing huge crimes against humanity in Gaza. But such depicting and challenging is distinctly unpopular if not taboo in the halls of government power — even though, and especially because, the U.S. role of massively arming and supporting Israel is pivotal for the war.

“For the narcissist, everything that happens to them is a huge deal, while nothing that happens to you matters,” scholar Sophia McClennen wrote last week. “When that logic translates to geopolitics, the disproportionate damage only magnifies. This is why Israel is not held to any standards, while those who question that logic are told to shut up. And if they don’t shut up, they are punished or threatened.”

Further normalizing the slaughter are the actions and inaction of Congress. On Tuesday evening, only 11 senators voted to support a resolution that would have required the Biden administration to report on Israel’s human-rights record in the Gaza war. The sinking of that measure reflects just how depraved the executive and legislative branches are as enablers of Israel.

The horrors in Gaza are being propelled by the U.S. war machine. But you wouldn’t know it from the standard U.S. media, pointing to the moon and scarcely hinting at the utter coldness of its dark side.

_____________________________________

Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of many books including War Made Easy. His latest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, was published in 2023 by The New Press.

January 21, 2024 Posted by | media | Leave a comment

The threat of catastrophe is assessed in Nuclear Armageddon: How Close Are We? — review

Ft.com, 19 Jan 24,

BBC documentary surveys experts in international security, diplomacy and military science to shed light on current reality

………………………………….. Nuclear Armageddon: How Close Are We?, a BBC documentary tied to the Doomsday Clock update, asks why the hands have ominously ticked to within 90 seconds of a catastrophic “midnight”, the shortest time recorded since the clock’s inception in 1947. The title strikes an alarmist tone but the show itself is built on the reporting of journalist and filmmaker Jane Corbin and insightful interviews with experts in international security, diplomacy and military science. They include a Nobel Prize winner and a physicist who has been given rare access to North Korea’s nuclear facilities……………………………………………….

Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.comT&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found here.
https://www.ft.com/content/64d5c035-b1de-480a-95d6-06ce7b07b9ae

The documentary is balanced and informative yet it can only scratch the surface in a single hour. A longer runtime would have left room for a more thorough analysis of how the conflict in the Middle East could shape Iran’s uncertain nuclear future, and what the re-election of a man accused of keeping classified domestic documents in the bathroom of his private residence might mean for the US and the world. As Bronson notes at one point, all it takes are careless “accidents and misperceptions” to plunge us into midnight darkness.  https://www.ft.com/content/64d5c035-b1de-480a-95d6-06ce7b07b9ae

January 20, 2024 Posted by | media, Resources -audiovicual, UK | Leave a comment

Cancelling the Journalist: The Australian ABC’s Coverage of the Israel-Gaza War

What a cowardly act it was. A national broadcaster, dedicated to what should be fearless reporting, cowed by the intemperate bellyaching of a lobby concerned about coverage of the Israel-Gaza war. The investigation by The Age newspaper was revealing in showing that the dismissal of broadcaster Antoinette Lattouf last December 20 was the nasty fruit of a campaign waged against the corporation’s management. This included its chair, Ita Buttrose, and managing director David Anderson.

The official reason for that dismissal was disturbingly ordinary. Lattouf had not, for instance, decided to become a flag-swathed bomb thrower for the Palestinian cause. She had engaged in no hostage taking campaign, nor intimidated any Israeli figure. The sacking had purportedly been made over sharing a post by Human Rights Watch about Israel that mentioned “using starvation of civilians as a weapon of war in Gaza”, calling it “a war crime”. It also noted the express intention by Israeli officials to pursue this strategy. Actions are also documented: the deliberate blocking of the delivery of food, water and fuel “while wilfully obstructing the entry of aid.” The sharing by Lattouf took place following a direction not to post on “matters of controversy”.

Human Rights Watch might be accused of many things: the dolled up corporate face of human rights activism; the activist transformed into fundraising agent and boardroom gaming strategist. But to share material from the organisation on alleged abuses is hardly a daredevil act of dangerous hair-raising radicalism.

Prior to the revelations in The Age, much had been made of Lattouf’s fill-in role as a radio presenter, a stint that was to last for five shows. The Australian, true to form, had its own issue with Lattouf’s statements made on various online platforms. In December, the paper found it strange that she was appointed “despite her very public anti-Israel stance” (paywalled). She was also accused of denying the lurid interpretations put upon footage from protests outside Sydney Opera House, some of which called for gassing Jews. And she dared accused the Israeli forces of committing rape.

It was also considered odd that she discuss such matters as food and water shortages in Gaza and “an advertising campaign showing corpses reminiscent of being wrapped in Muslim burial cloths.” That “left ‘a lot of people really upset’.” If war is hell, then Lattouf was evidently not allowed to go into quite so much detail about it – at least when concerning the fate of Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli war machine.

What also transpires is that the ABC managers were not merely targeting Lattouf on their own, sadistic initiative. Pressure of some measure had been exercised from outside the organisation. According to The Age, WhatsApp messages had been sent to the ABC as part of a coordinated campaign by a group called Lawyers for Israel.

The day Lattouf was sacked, Sydney property lawyer Nicky Stein buzzingly began proceedings by telling members of the group to contact the federal minister for communication asking “how Antoinette is hosting the morning ABC Sydney show.” Employing Lattouff apparently breached Clause 4 of the ABC code of practice on impartiality.

Stein cockily went on to insist that, “It’s important ABC hears from not just individuals in the community but specifically from lawyers so they feel there is an actual legal threat.” She goes on to read that a “proper” rather than “generic” response was expected “by COB [close of business] today or I would look to engage senior counsel.”

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Did such windy threats have any basis? No, according to Stein. “I know there is probably no actionable offence against the ABC but I didn’t say I would be taking one – just investigating one. I have said that they should be terminating her employment immediately.” Utterly charming, and sufficiently so to attract attention from the ABC chairperson herself, who asked for further venting of concerns.

Indeed, another member of the haranguing clique, Robert Goot, also deputy president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, could boast of information he had received that Lattouf would be “gone from morning radio from Friday” because of her anti-Israeli stance.

There has been something of a journalistic exodus from the ABC of late. Nour Haydar, an Australian journalist also of Lebanese descent, resigned expressing her concerns about the coverage of the Israel-Gaza conflict at the broadcaster. There had been, for instance, the creation of a “Gaza advisory panel” at the behest of ABC News director Justin Stevens, ostensibly to improve the coverage of the conflict. “Accuracy and impartiality are core to the service we offer audiences,” Stevens explained to staff. “We must stay independent and not ‘take sides’.”

This pointless assertion can only ever be a threat because it acts as an injunction on staff and a judgment against sources that do not favour the accepted line, however credible they might be. What proves acceptable, a condition that seems to have paralysed the ABC, is to never say that Israel massacres, commits war crimes, and brings about conditions approximating to genocide. Little wonder that coverage on South Africa’s genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice does not get top billing on in the ABC news headlines.

Palestinians and Palestinian militias, on the other hand, can always be written about as brute savages, rapists and baby slayers. Throw in fanaticism and Islam, and you have the complete package ready for transmission. Coverage in the mainstays of most Western liberal democracies of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as the late Robert Fisk pointed out with pungency, repeatedly asserts these divisions.

After her signation Haydar told the Sydney Morning Herald that, “Commitment to diversity in the media cannot be skin deep. Culturally diverse staff should be respected and supported even when they challenge the status quo.” But Haydar’s argument about cultural diversity should not obscure the broader problem facing the ABC: policing the way opinions and material on war and any other divisive topic is shared. The issue goes less to cultural diversity than permitted intellectual breadth, which is distinctly narrowing at the national broadcaster.

Lattouf, for her part, is pursuing remedies through the Fair Work Commission, and seeking funding through a GoFundMe page, steered by Lauren Dubois. “We stand with Antoinette and support the rights of workers to be able to share news that expresses an opinion or reinforces a fact, without fear of retribution.”

Kenneth Roth, former head of Human Rights Watch, expressed his displeasure at the treatment of Lattouf for sharing HRW material, suggesting the ABC had erred. ABC’s senior management, through a statement from managing director David Anderson, preferred the route of craven denial, rejecting “any claim that it has been influenced by any external pressure, whether it be an advocacy group or lobby group, a political party, or commercial entity.” They would, wouldn’t they?

January 18, 2024 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, civil liberties, media | Leave a comment

Screams without proof: questions for NYT about shoddy ‘Hamas mass rape’ report

The public now knows that many Israeli noncombatants were killed by their country’s military on October 7. They know this largely thanks to the work of The Grayzone and other independent outlets. We were initially attacked for our work, but now Israeli media is demanding answers as well. Major legacy media organizations like yours continue to ignore serious political scandals like these while pursuing factually-challenged, shamefully unethical journalistic efforts aimed at legitimizing the Israeli government’s public relations objectives. 

Haaretz reported on January 4, “The police are having difficulty locating victims of sexual assault from the Hamas attack, or people who witnessed such attacks, and decided to appeal to the public to encourage those who have information on the matter to come forward and give testimony. Even in the few cases in which the organization collected testimony about sexual offenses committed on October 7, it failed to connect the acts with the victims who were harmed by them.”

Were you aware, as The Grayzone documented, that Landau’s previous claims of having seen beheaded babies and a fetus cut from a dead woman’s womb on October 7 have been discredited not only by the Israeli newspaper by Haaretz, but by the Biden White House, which retracted the president’s claim that he had seen photographs of beheaded babies? In fact, only one baby is recorded among those killed on October 7, which means any claim to have seen multiple dead babies must be dismissed out of hand.

MAX BLUMENTHAL AND AARON MATÉ·JANUARY 10, 2024, https://thegrayzone.com/2024/01/10/questions-nyt-hamas-rape-report/

After dismantling a New York Times front page feature alleging “a broader pattern of gender-based violence on Oct. 7” by Hamas, The Grayzone is demanding answers of the paper for its journalistic malpractice.

The following was submitted to New York Times editors and lead author, Jeffrey Gettleman. 

The Grayzone has identified  serious issues with the credibility of key sources quoted in the New York Times’ December 28 story, “Screams Without Words: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on October 7.” Authored by Jeffrey Gettleman, Anat Schwartz, and Adam Sella, the article purports to prove “a broader pattern of gender-based violence on Oct. 7” than even Israeli authorities have been willing to allege . However, the Times report is marred by sensationalism, wild leaps of logic, and an absence of concrete evidence to support its sweeping conclusion.

The Times has come under fire from family members of Gal Abdush, the so-called “girl in the black dress” who features as Exhibit A in Gettleman and company’s attempt to demonstrate a pattern of rape by Hamas on October 7. Not only have Abdush’s sister and brother-in-law each denied that she was raped, the former has accused the Times of manipulating her family into participating by misleading them about their editorial angle. Though the family’s comments have sparked a major uproar on social media, the Times has yet to address the serious breach of journalistic integrity that its staff is accused of committing.

The Israeli police have also issued a statement since the publication of the Times’ article asserting that they themselves are unable to locate eyewitnesses of rape on October 7, or to connect the testimonies published by outlets like the Times with anything remotely resembling evidence.   

We call on the New York Times to publicly address the comments by the Abdush family accusing Times reporters of misleading them and lying about the circumstances of her death. The Times must also address the statement issued by Israel’s police subsequent to the article’s publication and explain why Gettleman and his co-authors apparently omitted it.

Further, we demand a response to our thoroughly sourced debunking of testimony by key witnesses quoted in the story, as well as the documented record of discredited claims and ethically dubious activity by those same witnesses. 

We have provided several questions for your consideration. If you are unable to furnish responses which satisfactorily address the issues we have raised about the credibility of your article, we believe it must be retracted in full.

Family of “the girl in the black dress” accuses NYT of having “invented” rape claim

Continue reading

January 17, 2024 Posted by | Israel, media, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Mainstream media covers up Israeli calls to drive two million Palestinians into permanent exile

The mainstream U.S. media is almost totally ignoring incendiary statements by powerful Israeli officials who say openly they want to push Palestinians out of Gaza forever.

BY JAMES NORTH    https://mondoweiss.net/2024/01/mainstream-media-covers-up-israeli-calls-to-drive-two-million-palestinians-into-permanent-exile/

Stephanie Nolen, now at the New York Times, is a veteran and excellent overseas reporter. She’s spent many years working in South Asia, Latin America and Africa. Her book 28 Stories of AIDS in Africa is a superb look at how that pandemic devastated large swaths of the continent.

So when you see that the Times is running not one but two of her articles on “looming starvation in Gaza,” you have hopes that some important truths are about to be revealed.

But you would be largely disappointed. Nolen does explain that Palestinians in Gaza are going hungry, and one of her reports goes into painful detail about the actual physical impact of severe malnutrition: she notes, for instance, that “children often fail first.”

But nowhere does she report clearly that plenty of people, both in Israel and elsewhere, charge that Israel’s policy is part of a deliberate campaign of ethnic cleansing, designed to force many of the 2 million Gazans to actually leave their homeland permanently, just as Palestinians were displaced in 1948 and 1967. Nolen’s failure is actually characteristic of the mainstream U.S. media, which is almost totally ignoring incendiary statements by powerful Israeli officials who say openly they want to push Palestinians out of Gaza forever.

(If you read between the lines in one of Nolen’s reports, you can guess what happened behind the scenes at the New York Times. She briefly outlines the “possible starvation,” but then lets an Israeli military spokesman jump in, right at paragraph 7, to “vigorously deny allegations that it is responsible for the shortage of food in Gaza.” He gets six paragraphs to lie and obfuscate, even claiming that “there is a sufficient amount of food in Gaza,” before she can even get back to the real story. There’s no proof, but you can bet that anxious editors butted in and made her add that long section.)

Mainstream media failure extends beyond Stephanie Nolen. This site has long explained that the Times, and other mainstream media, protect Israel by covering up the far-right Jewish supremacists who have been gaining even more power there in recent years. The whitewash should be even harder to maintain now, because Benjamin Netanyahu depends on the extremists, who are now actually in his government, to stay in power, and they certainly don’t keep quiet about their true views.  

Here’s a recent, astonishing example of how the Times tried to hide the Jewish supremacists in the attic. The January 5 headline was: “As Pressure Mounts, Israeli Minister Proposes Plan for Postwar Gaza.” You think you are finally going to see a long report on the calls for ethnic cleansing from Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister, and Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister. 

No such luck. The “Israeli Minister” in the Times headline is actually Yoav Gallant, who has the defense portfolio, and his “plan” is marginally less inhumane: it makes no mention of ethnic cleansing and calls for a “multinational task force” to eventually oversee Gaza. You have to read down to paragraph 6 to find the super extremists quoted. (In a cunning twist, the paper says Ben-Gvir’s views came in a “Facebook post,” insinuating that his opinions are offhand, and actually have little weight.) The Times article successfully diluted Ben-Gvir and Smotrich by sticking them in below Gallant. In fact, the defense minister has no political following; by contrast, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are key elements of the ruling coalition. Without them, Netanyahu’s government will fall; he will lose a new election; and he will probably go on trial. 

One of the paper’s opinion columnists, the excellent Michelle Goldberg, did partly salvage its reputation with a strong article on January 5. Her first sentence got straight to the point:

Two far-right members of Israel’s cabinet — the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich — caused an international uproar this week with their calls to depopulate Gaza. 

Goldberg, who is based in New York, found her way to the truth better than Times reporters who are prowling around on the ground in Israel/Palestine. She heard the “international uproar” that her colleagues somehow missed.

Other mainstream outlets are even worse than the Times. So far, the Washington Post hasn’t mentioned Ben-Gvir and Smotrich at all. National Public Radio has named the two in passing but never quoted their calls to push Gazans out of Gaza permanently. 

The two have never appeared on CNN either. This comprehensive failure by the mainstream is actually astonishing. Ben-Gvir and Smotrich love the limelight and would certainly sing like canaries on TV. They are Israeli versions of Matt Goetz or Marjorie Taylor Greene — except that they are not outside gadflies anymore, but two of the most powerful figures inside the government. 

January 15, 2024 Posted by | media | 1 Comment

Reporters without shame: Top ‘media rights’ organization ignores rampant killings of Gaza journalists

Eva Bartlett, RT, Sun, 07 Jan 2024

At the end of 2023, Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans Frontieres, RSF), the international organization ostensibly advocating for freedom of information, released its annual report. The paper massively downplays the widespread and deliberate targeting of Palestinian journalists in the Israel-Gaza war.

The report’s announcement, titled, “Round-up: 45 journalists killed in the line of duty worldwide – a drop despite the tragedy in Gaza,” excludes most of the Palestinian journalists killed by Israel in 2023, particularly in the past few months. It claims 16 fewer journalists were killed worldwide in 2023 than in 2022. This doesn’t reflect reality.

The report claims that (as of December 1, 2023), only 13 Palestinian journalists were killed while actively reporting, noting separately that 56 journalists were killed in Gaza, “if we include journalists killed in circumstances unproven to be related to their duties.”

Other sources put the overall number of Palestinian journalists killed in the enclave much higher. The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported on December 1 that 73 journalists and media workers had been killed, citing to the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate (PJS).

While The Committee to Protect Journalists’ (CPJ) December 20, 2023 numbers are lower (at least 61 Palestinian journalists killed since October 7), CPJ at least didn’t disregard dozens of slain Palestinian journalists like RSF did.

In fact, in contrast to RSF’s cheerful “things are much better for journalists than previous years” tone, CPJ emphasized that in the first 10 weeks of Israel’s war on Gaza, more journalists have been killed than have ever been killed in a single country over an entire year.” It voiced its concern about, “an apparent pattern of targeting of journalists and their families by the Israeli military.”

It isn’t clear how RSF discerns which circumstances were “unproven to be related” to the duties of slain Gazan journalists, nor who is “actively reporting” when Gaza is under relentless Israeli bombardment and suffers frequent internet cuts. In fact, given the nonstop Israeli bombing (and sniping) throughout the strip, it would be nearly impossible to discern whether journalists were reporting (including from their homes) at the time of their death.

However, in the methodology section near the end of its more detailed report, RSF notes it “logs a journalist’s death in its press freedom barometer when they are killed in the exercise of their duties or in connection with their status as a journalist.”

Many Palestinian journalists in Gaza have received death threats from officers in the Israeli army precisely due to their status as journalists. And many of those threatened have subsequently been killed, along with family members, when Israeli airstrikes targeted their homes or places of shelter.

We also have the precedent in prior wars (in 2009, 2012, 2014, and 2021) of Israel bombing Gazan media buildings (including one I was in in 2009) with varying severity, damaging and finally destroying two major media buildings in 2021. This is clearly intended to stop the flow of reports from Gaza under Israeli bombs, and so is the killing of journalists.

On December 15, the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate criticized the RSF report, going as far as accusing RSF of complicity with Israel’s war crimes against Palestinian journalists through whitewashing.

This is the same PJS whose statistics the UN’s OCHA cites, statistics which PJS says are “accurate and based on professional and legal documentation that follows the highest standards in documenting crimes against journalists.” This documentation includes journalists who Israeli airstrikes targeted in their homes, killed precisely because they are journalists.

In response, RSF claimed it, “did not yet have sufficient evidence or indications,” to state that any more than 14 journalists in the Gaza Strip (as of December 23, the date of its response) “had been killed in the course of their work or because of it.”…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Israel threatens journalists, kills family members

Many Gaza journalists report being threatened by the Israeli army. CPJ noted it is “deeply alarmed by the pattern of journalists in Gaza reporting receiving threats, and subsequently, their family members being killed.”

One such incident followed a threat to Al-Jazeera Arabic reporter Anas Al-Sharif. CPJ noted he had received multiple phone calls from officers in the Israeli army instructing him to cease coverage and leave northern Gaza. Additionally, he received voice notes on WhatsApp disclosing his location. His 90-year-old father was killed on December 11 by an Israeli airstrike on their home in the Jabalia refugee camp.

On November 13, CPJ noted“eight family members of photojournalist Yasser Qudih were killed when their house in southern Gaza was struck by four missiles. Qudih survived the attack.”

On October 25, an Israel airstrike on the Nuseirat refugee camp in the center of Gaza killed the wife, son, daughter, and grandson of Al-Jazeera’s bureau chief for Gaza, Wael Al Dahdouh.

The popular young independent journalist, Motaz Azaiza, reported receiving multiple threats from anonymous numbers urging him to cease his coverage, CPJ reported, noting that another Al-Jazeera correspondent, Youmna El-Sayed, said her husband received a threatening phone call from a man who identified himself as a member of the IDF and told the family “to leave or die.”

RSF bias: Not only in Palestine

Whereas RSF only reluctantly, as an afterthought, mentioned Palestinian journalists killed in “circumstances unproven to be related to their duties,” in a 2021 report on Syria, it stated, “at least 300 professional and non-professional journalists have been killed while covering artillery bombardments and airstrikes or murdered by the various parties to the conflict,” since 2011, going on to say, “this figure could in reality be even higher.……………………………………………………………………

In 2017, Stephen Lendman wrote of RSF’s attempt to shut down a panel sponsored by the Swiss Press Club in which British journalist Vanessa Beeley would be participating. “An organization that defends freedom of information is asking me to censor a press conference,” the club’s executive director Guy Mettan said at the time. He refused to cancel the event.

RSF’s 2023 roundup also didn’t include two Russian journalists killed this year, one by a Ukrainian cluster bomb strike and the other by a Ukrainian drone attack (targeting journalists).

Sputnik pursued the matter and reported that RSF, “refused to give any comments to Sputnik” citing “editorial policy.”

Journalist Christelle Neant likewise noted RSF’s glaring omission of the Russian journalists. She wrote about the body’s funding from various governments, and more notably from regime change agencies: the Open Society foundation, The Ford Foundation, and the National Endowment for Democracy, funded by the US Congress.

RSF’s notorious funders explain why it cherry picks or inflates its reports. The borderless organization has lines it won’t cross. It reports a grain of truth but otherwise whitewashes the crimes of Israel and Washington. https://www.rt.com/news/590224-gaza-journalists-israel-killed/

January 12, 2024 Posted by | Israel, media, weapons and war | Leave a comment

CNN Admits ‘Disturbing’ Israel-Palestine Coverage Policy ‘Has Been in Place for Years’

“It’s Israel’s way of intimidating and controlling news,” said one critic.

Common Dreams,   JULIA CONLEY, Jan 05, 2024

CNN has long been criticized by media analysts and journalists for its deference to the Israeli government and the Israel Defense Forces in its coverage of the occupied Palestinian territories, and the cable network admitted Thursday that it follows a protocol that could give Israeli censors influence over its stories.

A spokesperson for the network confirmed to The Intercept that its news coverage about Israel and Palestine is run through and reviewed by the CNN Jerusalem bureau—which is subject to the IDF’s censor.

The censor restricts foreign news outlets from reporting on certain subjects of its choosing and outright censors articles or news segments if they don’t meet its guidelines.

Other news organizations often avoid the censor by reporting certain stories about the region through their news desks outside of Israel, The Intercept reported.


“The policy of running stories about Israel or the Palestinians past the Jerusalem bureau has been in place for years,” the spokesperson told the outlet. “It is simply down to the fact that there are many unique and complex local nuances that warrant extra scrutiny to make sure our reporting is as precise and accurate as possible.”

The spokesperson added that CNN does not share news copy with the censor and called the network’s interactions with the IDF “minimal.”

But James Zogby, founder of the Arab American Institute, said the IDF’s approach to censoring media outlets is “Israel’s way of intimidating and controlling news.”

CNN staffer who spoke to The Intercept on condition of anonymity confirmed that the network’s longtime relationship with the censor has ensured CNN‘s coverage of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza and attacks in the West Bank since October 7 favors Israel’s narratives.

“Every single Israel-Palestine-related line for reporting must seek approval from the [Jerusalem] bureau—or, when the bureau is not
staffed, from a select few handpicked by the bureau and senior management—from which lines are most often edited with a very specific nuance,” the staffer said.

Jerusalem bureau chief Richard Greene announced it had expanded its review team to include editors outside of Israel, calling the new policy “Jerusalem SecondEyes.” The expanded review process was ostensibly put in place to bring “more expert eyes” to CNN‘s reporting particularly when the Jerusalem news desk is not staffed.

In practice, the staff member told The Intercept, “‘War-crime’ and ‘genocide’ are taboo words. Israeli bombings in Gaza will be reported as ‘blasts’ attributed to nobody, until the Israeli military weighs in to either accept or deny responsibility. Quotes and information provided by Israeli army and government officials tend to be approved quickly, while those from Palestinians tend to be heavily scrutinized and slowly processed.”

Meanwhile, reporters are under intensifying pressure to question anything they learn from Palestinian sources, including casualty statistics from the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

The Ministry of Health is run by Hamas, which controls Gaza’s government. The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees said in October, as U.S. President Joe Biden was publicly questioning the accuracy of the ministry’s reporting on deaths and injuries, that its casualty statistics have “proven consistently credible in the past.”

Despite this, CNN‘s senior director of news standards and practices, David Lindsey, told journalists in a November 2 memo that “Hamas representatives are engaging in inflammatory rhetoric and propaganda… We should be careful not to give it a platform.”………………………………………….

At least 22,600 people have been confirmed killed in Gaza and 57,910 have been wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7. Thousands more are feared dead under the rubble left behind by airstrikes. In Israel, the death toll from Hamas’ attack stands at 1,139.

Jim Naureckas, editor of the watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting, noted that the Israeli government is controlling journalists’ reporting on Gaza as it’s been “credibly accused of singling out journalists for violent attacks in order to suppress information.”

“To give that government a heightened role in deciding what is news and what isn’t news is really disturbing,” he told The Intercept.

Meanwhile, pointed out author and academic Sunny Singh, even outside CNN, “every bit of reporting on Gaza in Western media outlets has been given unmerited weight which not granted to Palestinian reporters.”

“Western media—not just CNN—has been pushing Israeli propaganda all through” Israel’s attacks, said Singh. https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-cnn-censor


January 12, 2024 Posted by | Israel, media, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Analysis: Record opposition to climate action by UK’s right-leaning newspapers in 2023

 Last year saw a record number of UK newspaper editorials opposing climate
action – almost exclusively from right-leaning titles – new Carbon
Brief analysis shows.

The analysis is based on hundreds of UK national
newspaper editorials, which are the formal “voice” of the publications.
The 354 editorials published in 2023 relating to energy and climate change
add to thousands more collected in a long-running project started by Carbon
Brief. Newspapers such as the Sun and the Daily Mail published 42
editorials in 2023 arguing against climate action – nearly three times
more than they have printed before in a single year.

They called for delays
to UK bans on the sale of fossil fuel-powered cars and boilers, as well as
for more oil-and-gas production in the North Sea. In response to such
demands, prime minister Rishi Sunak performed a “U-turn” in September
on some of his government’s major net-zero policies. Last year also saw a
surge in hostility towards climate protesters, with editorial attacks
doubling compared to recent years.

 Carbon Brief 9th Jan 2024

January 12, 2024 Posted by | climate change, media, UK | Leave a comment

BBC Panorama to feature RAF Lakenheath nuclear weapons saga- BBC Two on Thursday, January 18

Youtube clip above is from My Informant, not from the BBC

 A new BBC Panorama documentary is set to look into the ongoing saga around
nuclear weapons potentially being stored at RAF Lakenheath. Fears have been
mounting that the north Suffolk airbase is set to host nuclear weapons for
the first time in 16 years. The first US nuclear bombs arrived on British
soil in September 1954, and several sources confirmed the withdrawal of the
weapons from Lakenheath in 2008. Panorama’s senior foreign affairs
correspondent Jane Corbin will speak to campaigners in Suffolk in the
documentary that is set to air on BBC Two on Thursday, January 18.

 East Anglian Daily Times 6th Jan 2024

https://www.eadt.co.uk/news/24031890.bbc-panorama-feature-raf-lakenheath-nuclear-weapons-saga/

January 9, 2024 Posted by | media, UK, weapons and war | Leave a comment

All CNN Gaza Coverage Seen by Bureau Monitored by Israeli Defense Force Before Publication

The word “genocide” is “taboo” in the outlet’s newsroom, one staffer said.

SCHEERPOST, By Sharon Zhang / Truthout, 6 Jan 24

CNN has for years maintained a policy of running all of its coverage on Israel and Palestine, including its recent Gaza coverage, past its bureau in Jerusalem, where it is subject to the censorship policies set by Israel’s military, damning new reporting by The Intercept has revealed.

The Jerusalem CNN staff who review the reporting do so under the watchful eye of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which, as The Intercept has previously reported, is maintaining strict media bans around the genocide in Gaza, including censorship of topics and stories that may be embarrassing to the IDF. All reporters in Israel must sign an agreement to abide by such rules set by the IDF, and Israel has reportedly censored thousands of news stories since the beginning of the current massacre in Gaza.

In practice, this means that coverage of Israel and Palestine have a strong pro-Israel bias, as one anonymous staff member explained to The Intercept………………………………………..

Further, the investigation found that CNN leaders have explicitly prescribed policies that favor Israel. 

In an email sent October 26, CNN’s News Standards and Practices sent staff an email directing them to refer to the ministry of health in Gaza as “Hamas-controlled” every time they reference the Palestinian death count — a widespread practice among major outlets, despite numerous human rights groups and war experts maintaining that the Gaza health ministry’s death tolls have historically been accurate and that public health experts have independently found no evidence that the ministry has inflated death counts.

“If the underlying statistics have been derived from the ministry of Health in Gaza, we should note that fact and that this part of the Ministry is ‘Hamas-controlled’ even if the statistics are released by the West Bank part of the ministry or elsewhere,” the memo said.

Then, on November 2, CNN’s Senior Director of News Standards and Practices, David Lindsey, sent another note to staff explicitly saying that statements from Hamas leaders should not be given a platform unless highly contextualized, and that as a rule, Hamas “representatives are engaging in inflammatory rhetoric and propaganda.”…………………………………………………..

The report lends evidence to what advocates for Palestinian rights have long maintained: that major U.S. and many other western outlets have a strong anti-Palestinian bias. This has become especially potent amid the current genocide, as CNN and other major outlets have come under scrutiny for embedding themselveswith the IDF to report on Gaza, meaning that they are escorted and observed by Israeli military forces and must submit coverage to the IDF before publication, all while supposedly reporting with an “objective” lens.  https://scheerpost.com/2024/01/06/all-cnn-gaza-coverage-seen-by-bureau-monitored-by-idf-before-publication/

January 9, 2024 Posted by | media, USA | Leave a comment