But there is a method and mad dash of hope in this formula of once-a-month tributes to hard work, that is, highlighting the hard work of “heroes” in this hard land of penury and disaster and predatory (retaliatory) capitalism.

Today’s piece in my local rag (5/21) is emblematic of my own proof that we can fight the surge of shallow thinking and even shallower writing.

Here, just heading home from assisting at the 60+ Center (senior adult center), I caught this show, on the radio station where I broadcast my own Wednesday show, Finding Fringe. 6 PM, PST, streaming live on kyaq.org.

Hard work of reporting: Thirsting for Justice: East Orosi’s Struggle for Clean Drinking Water (Encore)

East Orosi hasn’t had safe drinking water in over 20 years. The water is full of nitrates, runoff from industrial agriculture, which is harmful to human health. The community has taken action to find a solution, from lobbying at the state capital to working with neighboring towns.

And they may finally have one. New California laws, passed  in the last five years, have opened up funding to build water infrastructure in small towns like East Orosi. But even as laws and funding develop, implementation has been challenging.

We visit East Orosi and talk to Berta Diaz Ochoa about what it’s like living without clean drinking water and the solutions on the horizon in part one of a two part series. — Listen.

Learn More:

• Community Water Center
• Self Help Enterprises
• State Water Resources Control Board

So, imagine, a sound bite around the issues of field workers pulling up crops that are destroying healthy water systems, forcing them to have to drink that toxic water or paying for bottled water to survive. Is water a human right? In California is it.

So, take ANY community, not just the fenceline ones, the communities that are in the sights of the perveyors of criminal capitalism because they are poor and probably BIPOC, and then find how infrastructure and services and even bloody retail enterprises like pharmacies or grocery stores are being gutted by Capitalism, pre-Trump/post-Trump.

You have any axes to grind? You live in a flyover state or rural community?

Here,

Stop trying to save Rural America.

Efforts to write it off as “disappearing” are complicated by the 60 million Americans who call a rural community home.

We must recognize that innovation, diversity of ideas and people, and new concepts don’t need to be imported to rural communities – they’re already there. Rural entrepreneurs and community leaders have always, by necessity, been innovative.

Rural communities have faced some harsh realities in the last generation: they’ve seen manufacturing move overseas, farming monopolized by big outfits with only 5% of rural residents working in agriculture, generational migration to bigger cities, school consolidation, and the absence of basic community resources such as health care and broadband, and, more recently, threats to the lifeline that is the U.S. Postal Service. This, and the pandemic.

Every brightly lit corporate store on the edge of town is a monument to a system that does not build community or advance a healthy entrepreneurial ecosystem.

And before the super out-of-touch elite from err, New York City call us bumkins, get over it: Don’t Blame Rural Residents for a Broken Political System

While noting the decades of gerrymandering to enhance the power of rural officials, New York magazine author Ed Kilgore concludes, “Underlying it all are real differences in outlook between different parts of the country, made more important by the distinct institutional features of a constitutional system designed to protect the interests of small, largely nonmetropolitan states.”

Sorry, Ed; the values of citizens of rural areas have as much to do with school violence and immigration resistance as do video games. In fact, Kilgore undermines his own argument by citing Ronald Brownstein’s analysis in the Atlantic of the red-blue divide. Alas, the same Ronald Brownstein reported on CNN just one week later that a prosperity gap was the source of the split between Democrats and Republicans. “Observers in both parties agree that the sense of economic displacement in recent years has intensified the long-standing movement toward the GOP among small-town and rural communities initially rooted in unease over cultural and demographic change.” It’s fair to observe that gun-loving nativists did not create the dismal economic prospects that drove them to vote for candidate Trump.

It is true that after years of civic disengagement, rural voters turned out in record numbers to elect the only coastal elitist who showed up in their communities and asked for their votes. So, Trump won and Clinton lost. Beyond that, any generalization about the impact of rural citizens on national politics is just horsepucky. Rural citizens didn’t create the electoral system that permits unlimited campaign donations to state officials who draw Congressional districts to favor entrenched wealth. In fact, rural citizens are the victims of gerrymandering as much as any disenfranchised cohort that ends up in a noncompetitive legislative district.

Alas, here’s the Google Gulag AI response to “all the problems in rural America”:

Rural communities face numerous interconnected challenges that can be described as “broken systems” due to a combination of historical disinvestment, geographic isolation, and economic shifts.

Here’s a breakdown of some key broken systems in rural communities:
1. Healthcare:

Limited Access: Rural areas often have a shortage of healthcare providers, specialists, and hospitals, forcing residents to travel long distances for care.

Hospital Closures: Rural hospitals are closing at an alarming rate due to financial difficulties and staffing shortages, further limiting access to care.

Lack of Services: Rural areas may lack crucial services like mental health care, substance abuse treatment, and specialized medical care.

2. Economic Systems:

Job Losses: Rural communities have experienced significant job losses due to the decline of manufacturing and agriculture, leading to higher unemployment and poverty rates.

Limited Opportunities: A lack of diverse industries and businesses can limit economic opportunities for residents, particularly young people.
Brain Drain: Young, educated individuals often leave rural areas for better opportunities in urban centers, further weakening the local economy.

3. Infrastructure:

Poor Broadband Access: Many rural areas lack access to reliable, high-speed internet, hindering economic development, education, and access to telehealth.

Inadequate Transportation: Limited public transportation options can isolate residents and make it difficult to access jobs, healthcare, and other essential services.

Aging Infrastructure: Rural areas may have aging infrastructure, including roads, bridges, and water systems, which require significant investment to repair and upgrade.

4. Education:

School Consolidation: Rural schools have been consolidated, leading to longer commutes for students and the loss of local schools as community anchors.

Funding Challenges: Rural schools often face funding challenges, which can impact the quality of education and available resources.

Teacher Shortages: Rural schools may have difficulty attracting and retaining qualified teachers, impacting student outcomes.

5. Social Systems:

Social Isolation: Geographic isolation and limited social opportunities can contribute to social isolation and mental health challenges for residents.

Lack of Community Resources: Rural areas may lack access to essential community resources such as libraries, childcare facilities, and recreational opportunities.

It’s important to note: These “broken systems” are interconnected and often exacerbate each other. The challenges faced by rural communities vary depending on location, demographics, and economic conditions.
Addressing these challenges requires a multi-faceted approach involving government, businesses, non-profit organizations, and community members.

+–+ Here is May 21st’s piece.

Identify, Diversify, and Harmonize How We Think this May

By Paul Haeder/Lincoln County (Oregon) Leader
One may wonder how the heck did we get all these national and international days of celebration. It is a feature of Homo sapiens to celebrate accomplishments and honor causes and individuals who make the world, well, theoretically a better place.

May is no exception, and of course, the International Workers’ Day is May 1. In this time of rampant hatred of so many professions by Trump and Company, it goes without saying that his shallow but deeply narcissistic persona just will never grasp the value of the worker.

His entire raison d’être is about tearing down and imploding institutions and attacking individuals for which he deems “the enemy.”

The billionaire classless cabal sees workers as the enemy. And the goals of the International Workingmen’s Association in 1864 were clear: Shorter work hours; safer work environment; fair wages; elimination of child labor; the ability for the state to regulate labor conditions.

Ironically, I was in Ashland on International Firefighters Day, talking to two captains in the city’s two fire stations. I was told that a few years ago firefighters responded to 1,600 calls annually. Last year, Ashland’s stations went out over six thousand times.

Aging in place and lack of family and support precipitates many of the EMT calls. And a fire engine they are waiting for is still four years out, to the tune of $2 million once it’s completely outfitted.

If you watch the milquetoast mainstream media, you will have recalled the Accused Sexual Predator Trump made a mockery of National Teacher Day by laughing at all the cuts to the hundreds of educational initiatives smart and reasoned individuals over decades had initiated for the betterment of society through the intellectual progress of our youth.

Another group of workers in the bulls eye of Musk, Thiel, Stephen Miller and Vance/Trump is nursing professionals. We see the almost total breakdown of nursing and doctoring in Lincoln County because of the hard reality of a for-profit health care system putting profits over patients. Add to that the lack of affordable housing, and rural counties throughout the land are suffering massive nursing and doctor shortages.

Which then brings us to National Day of Reason, where groups of people see the value in enlightened thinking. You know, valuing the separation of church and state, which for all intents and purposes under this fascist regime has been imploded into a crusade against reasoned thinkers who do not see prayer or faith as central to their lives.

Humanists and Secularists created this National Day in response to the national day of prayer.

Celebrations have taken the form of blood drives, secular events and activities, and in some cases, protests against the National Day of Prayer. Imagine Trump and Company having the wherewithal to wrap their heads around this celebration – the Secular Week of Action when people volunteer to make the world a better place.

Two not necessarily different international recognition days in May include World Day for Cultural Diversity and International Day for Biological Diversity. Did you get the memo yet that Trump-Vance are on the attack against affirmative action and ecological health.

In fact, on the biodiversity front, Trump and Company have “redefined” harm as it is applied to the Endangered Species Act. This pinhead thinking is just the tip of the iceberg of clownish but dangerous moves.

Defenders of Wildlife explains:

“Trump administration is hell-bent on destroying the ESA  to further line the pockets of industry. The vast majority of imperiled wildlife listed as endangered or threatened under the ESA are there because of loss of habitat. This latest salvo to redefine ‘harm’ to eliminate protection for wildlife from habitat destruction, if successful, will further imperil threatened and endangered species. We will fight this action and continue to protect the wildlife and wild places we hold dear as a nation.”

Are you seeing the pattern carried out by billionaires such as Miriam Adelson, Larry Fink and Larry Ellison? Given the fact half of American cities are under air advisories, we have International Asthma Day to lend pause to how destructive these executive actions have been and will continue to be decades from now.

‘Harm’ is what unchecked air pollution in many forms continues to do to young and old. Harmful air advisories come in daily, and the fear is that Trump will just ban the notifications as a way to say, “See, I have cleaned up the air since there are no more warnings.”

Maybe we can pray the polluted air away.

The backers of Trump’s ideal America will see our “secular humanist” society based on science and reason destroyed. The Ten Commandments will form the basis of the legal system.

Finally, we have World Press Freedom Day. If you have any deep regard for the so-called Fourth Estate, then shivers should be running up your spine under this anti-journalist regime.

Mickey Huff of Project Censored states press freedom succinctly:

“We have to remember that it’s the independent media that is often the grassroots voice of the people. It is often the independent press that is operating on ethical standards and principles, and it is the independent press that is reporting in the public interest, not the corporate media.”

Diversify your news media diets. Find independent outlets, and for journalists, we need to reform the media and create better avenues for news reporting, including better accuracy and what we call “solutions journalism,” which creates truly constructive dialogue in our communities.

*****

Footnote: And not one mention of the genocide in Gaza, the trillions stolen from Arab nations’ populations, the trillions stolen from citizens of Canada, EU, USA, for the starvation and immolation and rape of a people.

There are no other topics to write about with the same amount of importance that Palestine conveys, from every aspect of War Terror of the Capitalists of both Jewish and Goyim descent.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Paul Haeder.

Experts warned Sunday that the practice of Twitter adding official blue check marks to high-profile users on the social media platform without their consent could be a violation of FTC guidelines meant to prevent fraud.

The mysterious application of the blue checks—indicating that people had voluntarily paid to be members of the new Twitter Blue premium plan controversially launched by billionaire owner Elon Musk—was a source of endless online conversation over the weekend after living celebrities like basketball star LeBron James and novelist Stephen King as well as deceased people like food writer Anthony Bourdain and slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi had the checks applied to their accounts.

On Friday, Musk confirmed he was paying "personally" to keep the checks on at least some of these accounts.

The so-called "purge" began last week, when many institutions, organizations, and individuals discovered that the traditional "blue check" verifications they'd enjoyed for years—which indicated they were who they said they were and came at no cost—disappeared. (Full disclosure: Common Dreams, a nonprofit and independent news outlet, was stripped of its blue check verification last week.)

Over the weekend others who said they did not sign up for the new Twitter Blue program started noticing new checks appearing on their accounts without warning.

According to Timothy Karr, senior director of strategy and communications for the media advocacy group Free Press, what Musk is doing with the blue checks is a violation of rules set up by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

"Musk has 'gifted' checks to celebrity Twitter accounts and other influencers without first seeking permission," said Karr. But because the blue checks "act like endorsements of Twitter Blue," the new paid program that charges $8 for premium access and status on the platform, this is where the violation comes in.

"False endorsements violate FTC rules, legally exposing Musk," argued Karr.

Alejandra Caraballo, a clinical instructor at Harvard Law School's Cyberlaw Clinic, backed up this legal assessment.

"Considering that the blue check states that someone is subscribed to and paying for a product, falsely adding that to large accounts may constitute a deceptive trade practice," said Caraballo in an online post. "Paging the FTC."

Unverified reports indicate that voluntary and paid signups for Twitter Blue have been meager, with estimates in the low double-digits or maybe several hundred. Either way, a far-cry from what would be needed to generate any meaningful profit from the program, which Musk indicated was the goal.

Writing for Mashable on Saturday, Chance Townsend detailed the mess of the whole episode:

Musk appears to have mistaken the past prestige associated with ID verification for something that can be commodified. But it now looks like that bubble has burst. With legacy accounts having had their checkmarks removed, and the platform's only ID verification system now saddled with stigma, the platform is facing a bad impersonation problem — a complication that spurred major advertisers to back out of Twitter in previous months.

Meanwhile, with others online citing Section 43(a) of the Lanham Act, which covers rules about trademark and false endorsements, Caraballo argued that Stephen King or others who were “gifted” the check marks could bring legal challenges to Musk under the statute.

"Anyone given this without their approval could have grounds to bring a false endorsement claim," she said. "That would be separate from a FTC investigation over deceptive trade practices."

Earlier this month, one of Twitter's top lawyers, Christian Dowell, who had been directly involved with the company's ongoing discussions with the FTC over privacy and data issues, resigned.

In his Sunday thread on Twitter, Karr mentioned Dowell's departure and then remarked, "Seems Musk never hired someone to fill that position."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jon Queally.

The late Sir Rabbie Namaliu’s character and his humble leadership featured well in one of Australia’s top news organisations –– News Corp Australia and its executive chairman Michael Miller has paid a tribute.

Businessman Frank Kramer, reading out a special eulogy from the business point of view reflecting on the life of Sir Rabbie at the National Haus Krai on Sunday night repeatedly echoed the man he was.

In his address, he read out Miller’s condolence message sent to the family and friends of the late Sir Rabbie among others.

• READ MORE: PNG’s Sir Rabbie blessed at birth – ‘he’ll be a big man, clever’
• Other Sir Rabbie Namaliu reports

Sir Rabbie joined the Post-Courier board as a director on February 2013 and had been there until he died on March 31, 2023.

Miller’s message read: “On behalf of everyone at News Corp Australia, I’d like to express our deepest condolences to Sir Rabbie’s family, friends and colleagues at this sad time.

“Sir Rabbie lived a rich life dedicated to public service and to the people of PNG.

“He will be missed but never forgotten and will, especially, be remembered for the quiet authority he brought to PNG’s often robust political scene and for the strong, eloquent and unflinching advocacy made on behalf of his people as prime minister and in many other roles in government and public life.

“Sir Rabbie was a patriot, a good friend to many and as a director of the board of the Post-Courier, [he] did much to further the cause of free speech and the importance to his country’s fledgling democracy of a free and fearless media.”

Gorethy Kenneth is a senior PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Even billionaires get things wrong.

But none more so than Elon Musk, who, a year after announcing his bid to buy Twitter, has squandered every opportunity he’s had to make the social-media company a success.

Musk’s mistakes have been many. He’s spent most of the past year behaving like a preschooler on a finger-load of frosting, and his childishness has affected the platform’s bottom line and alienated potential business allies. After announcing plans to buy out Twitter investors at an overinflated $54.20 a share, he quickly reversed course with an erratic campaign to scuttle his own deal.

But shareholders forced Musk to honor his initial offer and he took up residence in the company’s San Francisco headquarters, announcing immediate and drastic plans to cut staff rolls by 75 percent.

In the cold calculus of profit and loss, that move might have made sense to some. Musk took on $13 billion in debt to purchase Twitter. Servicing that will require nearly a billion dollars in annual payments to the banks — money Twitter is struggling to generate.

But Musk’s mistakes didn't end with the deal and the need to pay off the debt it generated. Early mass layoffs included many of those charged with keeping the social network up and running; in the months since, Twitter has suffered an increasing number of technological malfunctions.

A banner year of bad decisions

He then moved to introduce a pay-for-verification plan that would cost subscribers $8 per month. This fell apart almost immediately, after the heads of Twitter’s security, privacy and compliance teams quit. Twitter’s lawyers had warned that the mass verification push could jeopardize user privacy and expose the company to billions in government fines for violating a Federal Trade Commission consent decree. (While the blue-check verification scheme is back on track, scheduled to relaunch on April 20 — get it? — it’s not likely to generate anything close to the revenue Twitter needs to survive.)

By the end of the year, Musk reneged on his pledge to make Twitter “a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner.” He began binging on right-wing memes, giving prominent space on the network to Twitter “investigations” — a series he dubbed the #TwitterFiles — that sought to prove MAGA conspiracy theories about alleged censorship of conservative voices, and supposed coverups of anti-vaccine and Hunter Biden-related news.

Never mind that the writers Musk cherry-picked to reveal the files had their own reactionary agendas, or that the Musk hype surrounding the files has turned Twitter into an even more divisive political echo-chamber. The highly partisan #TwitterFiles were a Musk miscalculation that alienated half of the users Musk once claimed he wanted to welcome into “healthy” discussions with their ideological others.

The worst decision of all

The list of Musk mistakes goes on: There’s his reckless suspension of journalists whose reporting he doesn’t like; his demand that the platform’s algorithms be manipulated to prioritize his posts above all others; his shutdown of independent researchers’ ability to access Twitter data; his censoring of critics of India’s conservative government; and his refusal to abide by a poll where a majority of users said he should step down as head of the platform.

It’s been a banner year of bad moves — so bad that the estimated value of Twitter has plummeted by tens of billions of dollars, making it arguably the most costly deal in the entire history of media acquisitions.

But Musk’s most damaging decision was one he made early on.

Shortly after taking the helm at Twitter headquarters, Musk called a meeting of civil-rights leaders to discuss Twitter’s commitment to community standards, election integrity and content moderation. Free Press Co-CEO Jessica J. González joined Musk on a Zoom call alongside representatives from the ADL, the Asian American Foundation, Color Of Change and the NAACP.

Following the meeting, Musk tweeted that the platform would “continue to combat hate and harassment and enforce its election integrity policies.”

“Twitter will not allow anyone who was de-platformed for violating Twitter rules back on [the] platform until we have a clear process for doing so, which will take at least a few more weeks,” he added. “Twitter’s content moderation council will include representatives with widely divergent views, which will certainly include the civil rights community and groups who face hate-fueled violence.”

But no sooner had he made this pledge than Musk started to decimate the trust and safety and human rights teams that were charged with combating the spread of hate.

Researchers at the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that the number of tweets containing one of several different racial slurs soared in the week after Musk bought Twitter. Research by CASM Technology and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue has found a major and sustained uptick in antisemitic posts on Twitter since Musk’s takeover.

After his meeting with the civil-rights leaders, Musk announced a “general amnesty” for banned accounts on Twitter. He reinstated thousands of accounts belonging to prominent neo-Nazis, white nationalists, misogynists, anti-immigrant and transphobic figures. The BBC analyzed more than 1,000 previously banned accounts that Musk had restored, and found that over a third of them had since spread abuse or misinformation on the platform.

Musk then eliminated COVID-related content moderation and — to no one’s surprise — the volume of lies about the virus and vaccines jumped alarmingly, according to analysis by the Queensland University of Technology.

Content moderation is key

The deluge of online hate and lies sent Twitter’s biggest revenue line into a tailspin: Advertisers, fearing damage to their brands, have left Twitter in droves.

After Musk ditched his promises to civil-rights leaders, Free Press, Accountable Tech and Media Matters for America launched the #StopToxicTwitter campaign, which has called on companies to stop advertising on the platform unless and until Musk enforces common-sense guardrails that will protect the health and safety of users.

More than 600 of Twitter’s top-1,000 advertisers have abandoned the platform, fearing that their brands wouldn’t be safe under Musk’s unsteady leadership. Their departure resulted in a 70-percent drop in Twitter’s December revenue over the previous year, according to Standard Media Index.

Musk chose to ignore a fundamental truth for social-media ventures: Effective content moderation is essential to growing healthy online communities and protecting brand safety. As Musk’s Twitter barrels toward insolvency, he has only himself to blame for lacking this basic business sense about social networks.

“It’s kind of a rite of passage for any new social media network,” writes Mike Masnick about the content-moderation learning curve. “They show up, insist that they’re the ‘platform for free speech’ without quite understanding what that actually means, and then they quickly discover a whole bunch of fairly fundamental ideas, institute a bunch of rapid (often sloppy) changes … and in the end, they basically all end up in the same general vicinity.”

Musk has yet to arrive in this vicinity and likely never will. The proof for Twitter is in its bottom line. Before Musk took charge, advertising sales made up 90 percent of Twitter’s revenues. Brands get nervous when they see their ads run adjacent to some of the most toxic posts. The companies that have left Twitter have put their money where their values are. And they aren’t likely to return until Twitter can make assurances that their ad buys aren’t helping underwrite the amplification of hate and lies.

We hoped Musk would have learned this lesson at the beginning: Twitter’s business will live or die on the decisions he makes or doesn’t make about content moderation.

But one year after Musk first announced his bid to take over Twitter — all of his decisions have been wrong.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Tim Karr.

NPR on Wednesday announced plans to leave Twitter—the social media platform now owned by billionaire Elon Musk—after being branded last week with a "state-affiliated media" label that, after backlash, was replaced with "government-funded media."

"NPR's organizational accounts will no longer be active on Twitter because the platform is taking actions that undermine our credibility by falsely implying that we are not editorially independent," the media organization said in a statement.

"We are not putting our journalism on platforms that have demonstrated an interest in undermining our credibility and the public's understanding of our editorial independence," the statement added. "We are turning away from Twitter but not from our audiences and communities. There are plenty of ways to stay connected and keep up with NPR's news, music, and cultural content."

After the platform's initial decision last week, NPR president and CEO John Lansing said that "we were disturbed to see... that Twitter has labeled NPR as 'state-affiliated media,' a description that, per Twitter's own guidelines, does not apply to NPR."

Others also criticized applying that specific label to NPR—including Liz Woolery, PEN America's digital policy leader, who called it "a dangerous move that could further undermine public confidence in reliable news sources."

In an email exchange, an NPR reporter informed Musk that—like other U.S. public media—only about 1% of NPR's budget comes from the government, while about 40% is from corporate sponsors and 31% is from local stations' programming fees.

Musk reportedly wrote to the journalist that "the operating principle at new Twitter is simply fair and equal treatment, so if we label non-U.S. accounts as [government], then we should do the same for U.S., but it sounds like that might not be accurate here."

Twitter then updated the label on NPR's main account—which has 8.8 million followers—to government-affiliated, a label that has also been applied to the BBC, which has disputed the platform's decision.

"The BBC operates through a Royal Charter agreed with the U.K. government, which states the corporation 'must be independent,'" the British outlet explained Wednesday. "Its public service output is funded by U.K. households via a TV license fee, as well as income from commercial operations."

In a wide-ranging Tuesday interview with the BBC, Musk said: "We want [the tag] as truthful and accurate as possible. We're adjusting the label to [the BBC being] publicly funded. We'll try to be accurate."

Since Musk finalized his $44 billion purchase of Twitter in October, when he was the world's richest man, "it has been quite a rollercoaster," Musk admitted to the BBC. "It's been really quite a stressful situation."

The billionaire has come under fire for various platform policy and business decisions, from suspending journalists reporting on the movements of his private jet to laying off Twitter staff. While there was an initial exodus of advertisers, Musk said Tuesday that "I think almost all advertisers have come back or said they are going to come back."

However, the battle over how or even whether to label publicly funded media and NPR's decision to become the first major media outlet to ditch Twitter have some users, such as the U.S.-based advocacy group Free Press, asking, "Should we all join them?"

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

More than five dozen advocacy organizations on Friday implored U.S. President Joe Biden to swiftly select a Federal Communications Commission candidate who will serve the public interest, not the telecommunications industry.

The coalition's letter stresses that a fifth commissioner is urgently needed to end the current 2-2 deadlock and enable the FCC to "increase digital equity and media diversity, bolster online privacy and safety protection, and reassert its rightful authority over broadband to ensure everyone in the United States has access to this essential service."

The message to Biden comes after Gigi Sohnremoved herself from consideration last week, citing the "legions of cable and media industry lobbyists, their bought-and-paid-for surrogates, and dark money political groups with bottomless pockets" who distorted her "over 30-year history as a consumer advocate into an absurd caricature of blatant lies."

"We call on you to immediately put forth a new nominee—specifically, one who has a history of advocacy for the public interest and is free of industry conflicts of interest."

Sohn, the new letter states, "was eminently qualified to serve as a commissioner. But after 16 months of organized and well-funded attacks by dark-money groups—which were carried out by lobbyists, enabled by complicit elected leaders, and amplified in partisan media—Sohn made the understandable decision to withdraw from consideration."

Organizations behind the letter—including Common Cause, Demand Progress Education Fund, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Fight for the Future, Free Press Action, Our Revolution, Public Knowledge, Revolving Door Project, and RootsAction.org—were outraged over both the telecom industry smear campaign against Sohn and top Democrats' refusal to fiercely defend the nomination. Her withdrawal has sparked fears that Biden will choose an industry-friendly candidate.

"Now, we call on you to immediately put forth a new nominee—specifically, one who has a history of advocacy for the public interest and is free of industry conflicts of interest; demonstrates a clear commitment to championing the rights of low-income families and communities of color; and supports Title II oversight and laws that ensure the FCC the authority to prevent unjust discrimination and promote affordable access," the coalition wrote to Biden.

"We ask you to actively press the Democratic majority in the Senate to swiftly confirm your nominee," the groups added. "We cannot permit senators to prevent forward progress any longer at the behest of the very corporations the FCC is meant to regulate."

Free Press Action president and co-CEO Craig Aaron similarly argued in a Common Dreams opinion piece last week:

We must oppose and reject any return to business as usual that furthers industry capture of the FCC.

Instead, we need to demand an independent candidate with public-interest bona fides and a clear commitment to racial justice and civil rights. They must show they're willing to stand up to lies. They must be unequivocal in their support for restoring the FCC's authority, and making sure that the internet is open, affordable, available, and reliable for everyone. They must demonstrate a commitment to engaging the public, not just meeting with lobbyists.

Sohn's defeat also "has implications that go far beyond the FCC," Aaron noted. "The Republicans and their Democratic enablers are setting out markers for who's allowed to serve in government."

"They made clear that public servants will be pilloried while ex-corporate lobbyists sail through," he wrote. "Women and LGBTQIA+ folks—Sohn would have been the first lesbian to serve as an FCC commissioner—will be slandered. Tweeting about police violence can be disqualifying (in the Senate, retweets do equal endorsements). Questioning the propriety of Fox News—even as it's being exposed for aiding and abetting election lies and insurrection—is unacceptable. A basic understanding of U.S. history and racism may be disqualifying."

Sohn "deserved better," Aaron tweeted. "But I hope we—and the White House and Democratic Party, especially—can learn so it doesn't happen again."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

On Tuesday, Gigi Sohn withdrew her nomination to the Federal Communications Commission.

This ends a two-year fight to put an accomplished public servant in the important fifth seat on the FCC. In the —after nearly 500 days, multiple confirmation hearings, and a relentless industry-orchestrated campaign against her—Sohn didn't have enough votes in the Senate to move forward.

I'm furious—and determined to make sure this doesn't happen again.

The dirty campaign to stop Gigi Sohn

They're celebrating today at Comcast and Fox, where their lobbyists deserve most of the credit for concocting lies to derail Sohn's nomination. They falsely portrayed her as radical and divisive, even though her years of experience tell a different story—about a highly regarded expert who has reached across political divides to support communications policies that help people.

Republicans who willfully spread those lies are thrilled, too. Their campaign of vile dog whistles, homophobic innuendo and false outrage worked. In fact, it was too easy.

But they're not the only ones to blame: The failure of Democratic leaders to defend their nominee cost the agency—and the nation—a true public servant. Their missteps and unforced errors were many.

From the start, infighting in the Biden administration delayed the nomination of a new FCC chair and commissioner for months—meaning Sohn wasn't nominated until late October 2021 and then got little time during debates around the infrastructure bills. Instead of moving on this nomination right away when the Biden team had the most political capital—they did it when they had the least.

While the GOP ganged up on her, most Democrats sat back, either using their time on the dais to ask questions about their home states or repeat industry-written talking points.

Then Senate leaders made Sohn endure an unprecedented three confirmation hearings, giving the right-wing noise machine numerous opportunities to badger her while extracting zero concessions from the other side. Despite her composure in the hot seat, this stage let Sohn's opponents test out numerous lines of attack. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) got endless opportunities to fulminate about her random retweets, while Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) cosplayed as a culture warrior from his new perch on the Commerce Committee.

While the GOP ganged up on her, most Democrats sat back, either using their time on the dais to ask questions about their home states or repeat industry-written talking points. (Notable and laudable exceptions who came to Sohn's defense include Sens. Ed Markey and Tammy Baldwin.)

Unfortunately, the failure of more Democratic senators to advocate for their own nominee means that companies like Comcast and Fox will likely only double-down in the future on the kinds of deceitful and dirty tactics they deployed against Sohn. What other lessons could they draw from how easily senators folded in the face of easily fact-checked lies and slanders? And what potential FCC nominee would want to subject themselves to this kind of character assassination?

A leadership failure

Neither the White House nor Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer succeeded in getting the votes Sohn needed when she got through committee and to the verge of a floor vote last year. They didn't put enough pressure on holdout senators or create any real political costs for the holdouts' refusal to back the administration's nominees. Worse still, President Biden and Vice President Harris actually feted ISP execs in the Rose Garden—even as those same companies were sabotaging Sohn.

It says a lot about who they're willing to fight for—and who they won't.

Without real pressure from the top, rank-and-file Democrats invented excuses for why they couldn't vote before the midterms—and, once those were over, immediately recycled the same rationalizations about the 2024 election. As much as I might wish the FCC were a top-tier election issue, exactly zero swing voters are going to the polls thinking about Gigi Sohn. Yet multiple senators acted like a vote for their own party's nominee could sink their reelection chances.

Politicians who should know better all of a sudden took seriously the disingenuous pay-to-slay attacks by sock-puppet front groups (including one led by former North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, now on the corporate payroll). I'm not sure what's worse: If they just made these excuses to placate corporate donors, or if they actually believed them.

What does it say when Democratic senators—like Sens. Cortez-Masto, Kelly, Rosen, and Tester, who all failed publicly support Sohn—take the specious claims of a disreputable group like the Fraternal Order of Police more seriously than they do the support of 400 of the nation's largest civil-rights, civil-liberties, labor and public-interest groups? What does it mean when they don't just let the lies fester but actually promote them? It says a lot about who they're willing to fight for—and who they won't.

The next battle

This defeat has implications that go far beyond the FCC. The Republicans and their Democratic enablers are setting out markers for who's allowed to serve in government. They made clear that public servants will be pilloried while ex-corporate lobbyists sail through. Women and LGBTQIA+ folks—Sohn would have been the first lesbian to serve as an FCC commissioner—will be slandered. Tweeting about police violence can be disqualifying (in the Senate, retweets do equal endorsements). Questioning the propriety of Fox News—even as it's being exposed for aiding and abetting election lies and insurrection—is unacceptable. A basic understanding of U.S. history and racism may be disqualifying.

Of course, this is bad news for the FCC, too.

At a moment when media and tech are intertwined with every facet of our lives, our politics and the very state of our democracy, this vital agency cannot fully do its job. Which is just how the industry wants it.

One of the best things the Biden administration has done since 2021 is securing $65 billion for broadband expansion. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel has been making the most of the hand she was dealt, but a deadlocked FCC makes it harder to implement and maintain those programs and spend those funds in the best way possible. Net Neutrality and the restoration of Title II will remain in limbo without a fifth vote at the agency. As Sohn herself wrote in the statement announcing her withdrawal: "It means that the FCC will not have a majority to adopt strong rules which ensure that everyone has nondiscriminatory access to broadband, regardless of who they are or where they live."

At a moment when media and tech are intertwined with every facet of our lives, our politics and the very state of our democracy, this vital agency cannot fully do its job. Which is just how the industry wants it.

The next test is already here. The Biden administration needs to come up with a new nominee to the FCC, and it may be tempted to nominate an industry-friendly choice—someone who can "get through" and avoid a larger political fight. We must oppose and reject any return to business as usual that furthers industry capture of the FCC.

Instead, we need to demand an independent candidate with public-interest bona fides and a clear commitment to racial justice and civil rights. They must show they're willing to stand up to lies. They must be unequivocal in their support for restoring the FCC's authority, and making sure that the internet is open, affordable, available, and reliable for everyone. They must demonstrate a commitment to engaging the public, not just meeting with lobbyists.

This loss stings. Gigi Sohn deserved better. But we cannot let the industry pick its own regulators ever again.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Craig Aaron.

"I could not have imagined that legions of cable and media industry lobbyists, their bought-and-paid-for surrogates, and dark money political groups with bottomless pockets would distort my over 30-year history as a consumer advocate into an absurd caricature of blatant lies," Sohn said in a statement. "The unrelenting, dishonest, and cruel attacks on my character and my career as an advocate for the public interest have taken an enormous toll on me and my family."

While her announcement came just after U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), a frequent obstacle to his own party's priorities, confirmed Tuesday that he would not support the nomination, Sohn's lengthy statement—shared with The Washington Post—signaled that she decided to bow out after speaking with her family on Monday.

According to Sohn:

Unfortunately, the American people are the real losers here. The FCC deadlock, now over two years long, will remain so for a long time. As someone who has advocated for my entire career for affordable, accessible broadband for every American, it is ironic that the 2-2 FCC will remain sidelined at the most consequential opportunity for broadband in our lifetimes. This means that your broadband will be more expensive for lack of competition, minority, and underrepresented voices will be marginalized, and your private information will continue to be used and sold at the whim of your broadband provider. It means that the FCC will not have a majority to adopt strong rules which ensure that everyone has nondiscriminatory access to broadband, regardless of who they are or where they live, and that low-income students will continue to be forced to do their school work sitting outside of Taco Bell because universal service funds can't be used for broadband in their homes. And it means that many rural Americans will continue the long wait for broadband because the FCC can't fix its Universal Service programs.

It is a sad day for our country and our democracy when dominant industries, with assistance from unlimited dark money, get to choose their regulators. And with the help of their friends in the Senate, the powerful cable and media companies have done just that.

After thanking Biden—who first nominated her to the post in October 2021 and has stood by the choice—as well as the hundreds of organizations and advocates who have supported her throughout the process, Sohn said that "I hope the president swiftly nominates an individual who puts the American people first over all other interests. The country deserves nothing less."

During a media briefing Tuesday afternoon, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre praised Sohn.

"We appreciate Gigi Sohn's candidacy for this important role. She would have brought tremendous intellect and experience, which is why the president nominated her in the first place. We also appreciate her dedication to public service, her talent, and her years of work as one of the nation's leading public advocates on behalf of American consumers and competition," said Jean-Pierre, who declined to comment on what's next.

"The abject failure of Democratic leaders to stand up and advocate for their own nominee means that these companies will likely only double down on the kinds of deceitful and dirty tactics they deployed against Sohn."

Meanwhile, advocacy groups that rallied behind Sohn not only expressed disappointment that she won't be on the FCC but also took aim at Democratic leadership for failing to adequately stand up for her in the face of dishonest attacks.

"Gigi would have provided the final key vote needed to move forward on major White House priorities including net neutrality, digital discrimination, privacy, network competition, broadband maps, and the digital divide," said Demand Progress communications director Maria Langholz. "Sohn's nomination was marred by right-wing extremist attacks that centered on misinformation and politics of division and hate rather than her record and role at the FCC. While it would be easiest to blame the right-wing for her nomination failing, there was missing urgency and commitment from Democrats in the White House and Senate."

"With Sohn now out of consideration, we expect the White House to provide a strong nomination in the immediate future," Langholz added. "The American people cannot afford to have this stalemate at the FCC any longer. President Biden must expeditiously move forward a nominee who will be a champion on net neutrality and privacy, and avoid delivering big telecommunications companies a victory in the form of an industry-friendly pick."

Free Press president and co-CEO Craig Aaron similarly said that "they're probably celebrating at Comcast and Fox today, and their lobbyists deserve most of the credit for concocting lies to derail her nomination. Republicans who willfully spread those lies must be thrilled, too. But they're not the only ones to blame: The failure of Democratic leaders to stand up to industry-orchestrated smears cost the agency—and the nation—a true public servant."

"The abject failure of Democratic leaders to stand up and advocate for their own nominee means that these companies will likely only double down on the kinds of deceitful and dirty tactics they deployed against Sohn," he warned. "We're angry about how Sohn was treated, and we're disturbed that Democratic leaders by and large failed to speak out against the lies, bigotry, and innuendo surrounding her nomination. But the answer here is not going back to the way things used to be at the FCC, when the industry got to hand-pick commissioners. Going backward would be a terrible mistake."

"There will be temptation in the weeks ahead to put forward an industry-friendly nominee to avoid a larger political fight. That's how the agency has worked in the past," Aaron added. "But the public—now more than ever—needs an independent voice at this crucial agency, one who won't cave to the industries they are supposed to regulate. Though Gigi Sohn deserved much, much better, we can only hope this moment will finally serve as a wake-up call to the Biden administration and the Democratic Party."

"Democrats promised to restore net neutrality and FCC oversight of telecom monopolies, and instead they caved to corporate interests and homophobic smears."

Fight for the Future director Evan Greer also expressed concern that the development will be followed by an industry-backed pick.

"Let's be perfectly clear: Democrats promised to restore net neutrality and FCC oversight of telecom monopolies, and instead they caved to corporate interests and homophobic smears. The same telecom companies that were caught red-handed funding a flood of fraudulent comments to the FCC and paying for misleading robocalls to senior citizens to kill net neutrality rules now will seemingly get to pick their own regulator, just as they did with Ajit Pai," Greer said, referring to a former FCC chair.

Internet service providers (ISPs) "are under immense pressure to censor legitimate content, including websites with accurate information about abortion care and LGBTQ issues, with state legislatures passing bills demanding ISPs block entire websites," she noted. "Meanwhile, lack of FCC oversight has enabled collection and sale of cel phone location data that puts vulnerable communities at risk of stalking, harassment, and surveillance. A fully staffed FCC could address these issues. Biden's deadlocked FCC is utterly impotent. And marginalized communities will pay the price for Democrats' incompetence and cowardice."

As for Biden's next nominee, Greer said that "we will fight tooth and nail to ensure that they don't pick another Ajit Pai clone. We demand an FCC commissioner that will fight for the public interest, and one that has no ties to the telecom industry that the agency is supposed to regulate."

This post has been updated with comment from Fight for the Future.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

More than 50 years on, it's easy to wonder what went wrong with the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, the legislation that created public media as we've come to know it in the United States. Despite the popular understanding that a healthy democracy requires a free press, the U.S. Congress remains reluctant to offer public subsidies for any journalism that doesn't operate under the dictates of the commercial marketplace.

Nowhere is this more evident than in news from earlier this week that NPR plans to cut 10% of its staff to make up a budget shortfall of $30 million. The reason NPR's chief executive gives for the layoffs is not the routine failure of Congress to fund public radio journalism at the level it needs, but a "sharp decline in our revenues from corporate sponsors."

Say what?

"Despite being the wealthiest nation on the planet, the United States impoverishes its public media infrastructures," writes professor Victor Pickard, co-director of the Media, Inequality, and Change Center at the University of Pennsylvania (and Free Press' board chair). This has left nominally public media outlets to fend for themselves in the marketplace. Outlets like NPR and PBS—as well as the many local stations affiliated with them—receive the "bulk of their funding in the form of private capital from individual contributors, foundations, and corporations," he adds.

The net effect of this private sector dependency is a public media system that is by definition not noncommercial. And that affects not just the future of journalism in the United States but our democracy as well.

The Public Broadcasting Act is very clear on the matter: It amends a section of the 1934 Communications Act by inserting the word "noncommercial" to describe the type of radio and television outlets that would receive public funding from the newly created Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

It's an insertion that underscores the act's goals: to set up a free and functional noncommercial media sector that could counterbalance the market-driven media that dominated the public sphere then as it dominates it now.

The poor antidote

The CPB was supposed to fund this antidote to profit-driven news and information. In the words of President Johnson, who signed the Public Broadcasting Act, this was about offering public support for media that serve "great and not the trivial purposes."

But such greatness is hard to achieve with Congress' paltry annual offering to the CPB: At $465 million in FY 2022, the public allocation boils down to a little more than $1.40 per capita in the United States. By comparison, the United Kingdom spends more than $81 per person, and France more than $75. Head further north and the numbers head north as well: Denmark's per-person spending is more than $93, Finland's more than $100, and Norway's more than $110. And it isn't just a European trend: Japan (+$53/capita) and South Korea (+$14) show their appreciation for publicly funded media at levels that put the U.S. outlay to shame.

This bleak math is all too familiar to those who follow public media policy in the United States. Lawmakers here continue to believe that publicly funded media should remain subordinate to its corporate counterpart—and that the work of journalism is best suited to the private sector.

That doesn't make sense. Commercial journalism has been in crisis for decades now, as popular news consumption habits have changed and advertisers have had to find new ways to reach these consumers—including ways that don't help fund the sorts of journalism democracies need to stay healthy. Between 2008 and 2020, more than 1,000 U.S. newspapers ceased printing, and the number of newspaper newsroom employees shrank by more than half.

As the commercial model for news production falters, the last thing we should be doing is funding public interest journalism at levels that force noncommercial outlets like NPR to mimic the for-profit news business. "Allowing our public media to become so dependent on advertising revenue (and other sources of private capital and 'enhanced underwriting') was always bad social policy," Pickard wrote in response to my online comments about NPR's current dilemma.

A 2021 study co-authored by Pickard and professor Timothy Neff of the University of Leicester finds that more robust funding for public media strengthens a given country's democracy—with increased public knowledge about civic affairs, more diverse media coverage, and lower levels of extremist views.

Conversely, the loss of quality local journalism and investigative reporting has far-reaching societal harms. Josh Stearns of the Democracy Fund (and a former Free Press staff member) has cataloged the growing body of evidence showing that declines in local news and information lead to drops in civic engagement. "The faltering of newspapers, the consolidation of TV and radio, and the rising power of social media platforms are not just commercial issues driven by the market," Stearns writes. "They are democratic issues with profound implications for our communities."

Innovations in noncommercial media are poised to help fill the massive local news-and-information gap that the collapse of market-driven news models has created. But these innovative outlets require help via local, state, and federal policies.

Global policies, local examples

As a start, Free Press Action has called for a quadrupling of public funds for noncommercial news and information. This kind of congressional commitment would recognize that depending on the private sector and emulating commercial models isn't a viable approach for the longevity of local news and information. To get there at the federal level, Free Press Action has proposed a new tax on digital advertising to fund the kinds of innovative news production that are now needed. A tax of 2% would generate more than $2 billion annually, enough to support new noncommercial media models, and lessen any dependence on corporate underwriters for revenue.

Dramatically increasing public investment in locally engaged reporting would help support the wide array of new nonprofit outlets that are focused on meeting the information needs of communities that commercial media too often ignore. Many of these new models are profiled in The Roadmap for Local News, an actionable plan to ensure that every U.S. community has access to necessary public interest news and information.

Co-authored by Elizabeth Green of Chalkbeat, Darryl Holliday of City Bureau, and Mike Rispoli of Free Press, The Roadmap expands journalism's forms into new and previously underserved communities while sharpening the definition of what it is for. It calls on lawmakers to cultivate and pass public policies that support the expansion of civic information while maintaining editorial independence.

In New Jersey, Free Press Action helped conceive and create the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium, an independent nonprofit funded by a state budget appropriation. The consortium, whose board includes representatives from public colleges and universities across the state, supports inventive local news projects like the Newark News & Story Collaborative and the Bloomfield Information Project, which train local residents to report the news from their own perspectives.

In California, Free Press Action supported state legislation that dedicated $25 million to fund local reporting in underserved and underrepresented communities statewide. The money will be distributed through a fellowship program housed at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. (Free Press' Rispoli will serve on the program's Advisory Board).

More than 50 years after the Public Broadcasting Act, Free Press is also looking 50 years into the future. Through the work of the Media 2070 project, Free Press envisions ways the media can serve as levers for racial justice. This includes engaging policymakers in the repair and reconciliation needed to redress centuries of harm news outlets have inflicted on Black communities.

As NPR struggles to find the revenue to keep its reporters on their beats, it shouldn't see the problem as a failure to raise advertising revenue from corporate underwriters. It's a failure to advocate for policies that would increase the public funding it and other noncommercial media outlets need to thrive.

If we're serious about the future of journalism and civic information in the United States, we need to look locally for innovations in not-for-profit news production, and abroad for examples of more robust ways to fund it.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Tim Karr.

The U.S. Senate's refusal to confirm Gigi Sohn in the nearly 500 days since President Joe Biden first nominated her to the Federal Communications Commission stands in stark contrast to the chamber's treatment of other candidates, including Ajit Pai.

Sohn on Tuesday attended her third U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation hearing—during which Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), the panel's ranking member, took aim at not only the candidate but also digital rights group Fight for the Future.

Meanwhile, advocacy groups supporting Sohn in the face of a telecommunications industry smear campaign and homophobic attacks yet again blasted the Senate's delay—which has not deterred Biden, who renominated Sohn last month.

Caitlin Seeley George, Fight for the Future's campaigns and managing director, compared the stalled votes for Sohn to the Senate's confirmation of GOP commissioners Ajit Pai and Nathan Simington under former President Donald Trump.

"It is absolutely absurd that Gigi Sohn, a dedicated advocate for the public interest, has gone through three hearings in front of the Senate Commerce Committee," she argued, "when controversial nominees with massive conflicts of interest like Ajit Pai and Nathan Simington sailed through Senate approval (almost as absurd as Sen. Cruz calling out Fight for the Future because we hold lawmakers from both sides of the aisle accountable!)."

Sohn, an attorney who co-founded the advocacy group Public Knowledge, previously served as counselor to former FCC Chair Tom Wheeler, who was appointed in 2013 by then-President Barack Obama.

Pai—an ex-Verizon attorney who destroyed net neutrality rules—was initially nominated to the FCC in 2011 by Obama and unanimously confirmed by the Senate the next year. After Trump took office in January 2017, he picked Pai as FCC chair, then renominated him to the leadership role that March, which the Senate confirmed that October.

The month after Trump lost to Biden in 2020, the Senate confirmed the outgoing president's nomination of Nathan Simington to the FCC, despite critics' warnings. Fight for the Future's Evan Greer said at the time that he was "even worse than Ajit Pai." Simington remains at the FCC, along with Republican Brendan Carr and Democrats Geoffrey Starks and Jessica Rosenworcel, the current chair. Sohn addressed the impact of the vacancy for the fifth commissioner post in her testimony Tuesday.

"The FCC has been without a majority for the entirety of the Biden administration—over two years—at a time when closing the digital divide is front and center," she said. "There are too many important issues in front of the commission to lack a full complement of members, including improving the broadband maps, fixing the Universal Service Fund, closing the homework gap, ensuring fair access to broadband, and protecting consumers' privacy. Americans deserve a full FCC where I could play a critical role in addressing every one of these, but time is of the essence."

Sohn also said that "I believe deeply that regulated entities should not choose their regulator. Unfortunately, that is the exact intent of the past 15 months of false and misleading attacks on my record and my character. My industry opponents have hidden behind dark money groups and surrogates because they fear a pragmatic, pro-competition, pro-consumer policymaker who will support policies that will bring more, faster, and lower-priced broadband and new voices to your constituents."

Rights groups echoed Sohn's criticism of industry attacks on her and agreed that the Senate needs to act urgently. As Seeley George put it: "There is no question that Gigi Sohn is qualified to sit on the FCC. The only reason we are going through yet another hearing is because telecom companies, and the lawmakers shilling for them, know that when she is appointed she will put what's best for the American people over industry profits."

"The opposition to Sohn has been unprecedented, and has included personal, blatantly homophobic attacks (something we're disappointed Democratic lawmakers did not condemn during the hearing). But, as Sohn said today, regulated entities should not get to pick their regulator," she continued. "Over the past year and a half the FCC could have been getting to work to restore net neutrality, ensure universal access to affordable broadband, address unregulated use of cellphone location data and the risk it poses to abortion rights, and protect the public from the abuses of telecom monopolies."

Free Press Action general counsel and vice president of policy Matt Wood similarly asserted that "confirming Gigi Sohn to serve at the FCC is the best thing the Senate can do to ensure media, tech, and broadband policy actually serves the public. No other nominee in the FCC's history has had to wait so long for a confirmation vote. She is obviously and supremely qualified to serve as a watchdog for ordinary people across the country."

He continued:

As commissioner, Sohn will fight on behalf of working families trying to pay their high monthly phone and internet bills. She will work to ensure that the benefits of broadband reach everyone, and to curb the runaway media consolidation that has decimated local journalism and harmed Black and Brown communities in particular. Without Sohn's crucial fifth vote at the agency, the FCC cannot fully accomplish its mission.

Sohn's impeccable credentials are the very things that have compelled the telecom and broadcast industry to hold her nomination in limbo. We've had to wait for far too long—with endless delays and bigoted attacks that have prevented the deadlocked agency from adopting some crucial policies that would help people connect and communicate.

After calling out Cruz for "aiding and abetting the smear campaign designed to benefit the massive communications firms subject to FCC oversight," Wood declared that "the Commerce Committee and then the full Senate should advance this nomination without further delays, which only benefit those big companies orchestrating this impasse."

According to Wood, "If the Senate genuinely wants to improve the lives of internet users, cellphone customers, TV watchers, and radio listeners—aka, everyone—it can start by confirming this excellent public servant to the FCC immediately."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

All year long CounterSpin brings you a look, as we say, behind the headlines of the mainstream news. We hope both to shine some light on aspects of news events—perspectives of those out of power, relevant but omitted history—important things that might be pushed to the side or off the page entirely in elite media reporting. But it’s also to remind us to be mindful of the practices and policies of corporate news media that make it an unlikely arena for an inclusive, vital debate on issues that matter—that we need.

CounterSpin is thankful to all of the activists, researchers, reporters and advocates who appear on the show. They help us see the world more clearly as well as the role we can play in changing it. This is just a small selection of some of them.

Rakeen Mabud

“Supply Chain Mayhem Will Likely Muck Up 2022”—that New York Times headline got us off to a start of a year of actual hardship, and a lot of obfuscation about that hardship’s sources (2/1/22). The pandemic threw into relief many concerns that it did not create—and offered an opportunity to address them in a serious and not a stopgap way. Rakeen Mabud is chief economist and managing director of policy and research at Groundwork Collaborative. We talked with her early in the year.

Bryce Greene

The ease with which US media step into saber-rattling mode, the confidence as they soberly suggest people other than themselves might just need to be sent off to a violent death in service of something they can only describe with vague platitudes, should be disturbing. Bryce Greene’s piece, “What You Should Really Know About Ukraine,” got more than 3,000 shares on FAIR.org. 

The Peace Corps issued a press release warning that African Americans looking to support Ukrainians should accept that they might face racism—because of sooprise, sooprise of how we’re portrayed in US media.

Layla A. Jones

We talked about the basic story the world and the US hears about Black people, thanks to journalism—with Layla A. Jones, reporter at the Philadelphia Inquirer. She’s part of the papers’ “A More Perfect Union” project, online at Inquirer.com. 

As US media showed there is no playbook too dusty to pull out with their anti-Asian Covid coverage, we talked with Helen Zia, co-founder of American Citizens for Justice, and author of, among other titles,  Asian-American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People,  the 40th remembrance and rededication at VincentChin.org. 

Jeannie Park

Of a piece with elite media’s denial that racist harm is still meaningfully happening is the flicking away of efforts—decades long, thoughtful, inclusive efforts—to address that harm. We talked with  Coalition for a Diverse Harvard‘s Jeannie Park about affirmative action at Harvard University. 

Sumayyah Waheed

In September of this year, CNN hired John Miller as “chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst,”—a clear message to Muslim communities and anyone who cares about them—given that as deputy commissioner of intelligence and counter-terrorism for the New York Police Department, Miller told a New York City Council meeting that “there is no evidence” that the NYPD surveilled Muslim communities in the wake of September 11, 2001—”based,” he said, “on every objective study that’s been done.” We listened, instead, to Sumayyah Waheed, senior policy council at Muslim Advocates. 

CounterSpin listeners understand that the news media situation in this country works against our democratic aspirations. There are so many problems crying out for open, inclusive conversation, in which those with the most power don’t get the biggest megaphone, leaving the vast majority outside of power to try and shout into the dominant noise, or try to find the space to talk around it.

Corporate media work hard, will always work hard, to tell us that it’s their way or the highway….it’s just not true.

Mike Rispoli

One of many projects we should know about that show us a way forward is one in New Jersey—that didn’t talk about shoring up old media outlets, which are for sure suffering… but about instead about invigorating community information needs—a very different thing! The New Jersey Civic Information Consortium uses public funding to support more informed communities. We talked with an early mover on the project Mike Rispoli, senior director of journalism policy Mike Rispoli at Free Press. 

The post Best of CounterSpin 2022 appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by CounterSpin.

Since last week, Russian authorities have slowed and restricted access to Facebook and Twitter throughout the country, according to the country’s media regulator, Roskomnadzor, and statements by those companies.

On Tuesday, March 1, the Russian prosecutor general’s office ordered Roskomnadzor to take independent broadcasters Echo of Moscow and Dozhd TV off the air and block access to their websites, according to news reports and reports by both outlets. The outlets’ websites were inaccessible in Russia shortly after that order was announced, those reports said.

“Russian authorities’ restricting of social media platforms and independent media outlets is clear censorship and undermines the free flow of information,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna, in New York. “Authorities must allow Echo of Moscow, Dozhd TV, and all other independent outlets to report freely, and should cease hampering access to Facebook and Twitter.”

On February 25, Roskomnadzor published a statement saying that it would slow access to Facebook throughout the country after the social media network “restricted” the pages of Russian state-funded outlets Zvezda TV, RIA Novosti, Lenta.ru, and Gazeta.ru.

Nick Clegg, the president of global affairs at Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, posted on Twitter that the social media company had refused Russian authorities’ requests to stop publishing independent fact-checks and using labels to mark content published by state-owned groups.

On February 26, the internet monitoring group NetBlocks reported that Facebook would not load or worked “extremely slowly making the platforms unusable.” That report also said that access to Twitter had been restricted in Russia, and Twitter posted that its service was restricted for “some people in Russia.”

Also on February 26, Roskomnadzor sent letters to 10 news organizations warning that access to the outlets would be restricted if they did not remove “false information” about the war in Ukraine, according to reports and CPJ documentation. Those outlets included Echo of Moscow and Dozhd TV, as well as the independent news websites InoSMI, Mediazona, New Times, Novaya Gazeta, Free Press, The Journalist, and Linizdat, and the U.S. Congress-funded Krym.Realii, those reports said.

In its notice blocking access to Echo of Moscow and Dozhd TV, the prosecutor general’s office accused the outlets of spreading “information calling for extremist activity, violence” and “deliberately false information about the actions of Russian military personnel,” reports said.

Both outlets have recently covered Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, quoting anti-war figures and calling it an “invasion” instead of the Russian government’s official phrasing as a “special military operation.”

Previously, Russian authorities slowed access to Twitter in late 2021 after the company failed to remove banned content, according to Reuters; in December, a Russian court fined Google nearly $100 million for failing to remove content, according to the The Washington Post.

CPJ emailed Roskomnadzor for comment but did not receive any reply.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

At least five journalists are facing charges and dozens more were detained across Russia following their coverage of anti-war protests, which have sprung up across the country since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine on February 24.

Separately, on February 26, Russia’s state internet regulator Roskomnadzor said media organizations can only publish official government reports about the conflict in Ukraine. If outlets fail to comply, Roskomnadzor has threatened to block their websites. 

In the same statement, Roskomnadzor announced an administrative investigation into at least 10 independent media outlets for their alleged mischaracterization of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The investigations could result in fines up to 5 million rubles, currently the equivalent of US $48,000. (Russia’s currency in flux as international sanctions against the country take hold.)

“Russian authorities should stop employing draconian tactics against independent media as a way to control the narrative around the country’s invasion of Ukraine,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna, in New York. “It is essential that the few remaining independent voices in Russia do not become a casualty in this conflict.”

Roskomnadzor said it is investigating the radio station Echo of Moscow (Эхо Москвы); television station TV Rain (Дождь); independent news websites InoSMI (ИноСМИ), Medizona (Медиазона), New Times, Free Press (Свободная Пресса), Novaya Gazeta (Новая Газета), The Journalist (Журналист), Linizdat (Лениздат), and the U.S. Congress-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty website Crimea.Realities. CPJ emailed Roskomnadzor’s press office for comment but did not receive a reply.

The following journalists are facing charges after being arrested while covering anti-war protests across Russia: 

• Gleb Sokolov, a correspondent with independent news website Sota.Vision, was detained by law enforcement in Moscow on February 25. He was released and charged under Part 5, Article 20.2 of the federal Administrative Code for allegedly participating in the demonstration, according to Sokolov’s editor, Alexei Obukhov, who corresponded with CPJ by messaging app. The charge carries a penalty of between 10,000 rubles (US$93) and 20,000 rubles (US$186) or compulsory work for up to 40 hours.
• Nika Samusik, a photographer for Sota.Vision, was detained by law enforcement officials in St. Petersburg on February 24. She was held in police custody for two nights and was charged under Part 2, Article 20.2 of the Administrative Code for allegedly organizing the protest, according to Obukhov. The charge carries a fine of 20,000 (US$186) to 30,000 (US$280) rubles, 15 hours of labor, or up to 10 days of administrative arrest.
• Viktoria Avdeeva, a reporter with local news website Simirsk.City, was detained by law enforcement in the city of Ulyanovsk, approximately 500 miles east of Moscow, on Sunday, February 27. She was also charged under Part 5, Article 20.2 of the Administrative code, according to Radio Svoboda, the Russian Service of RFE/RL. CPJ was unable to independently confirm Avdeeva’s detention. 
• Igor Ulitin, a reporter for local newspaper Narodnaya Gazeta, was detained by law enforcement in Ulyanovsk on Sunday and charged under Part 5, Article 20.2, according to Radio Svoboda. CPJ was unable to independently confirm Ulitin’s detention.
• Maksim Kuznetsov, a reporter for the online news website 73 online, was detained by law enforcement in Ulyanovsk on Sunday. He was charged under Part 5, Article 20.2, according to Radio Svoboda. CPJ was unable to independently confirm Kuznetsov’s detention.

CPJ is working to confirm reports that 31 other reporters have been detained by law enforcement across Russia and determine who is facing charges. CPJ’s Facebook and WhatsApp messages to Narodnaya Gazeta and 73 online, and emails to Simirsk.City went unanswered.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Hong Kong independent media Stand News has announced it has shut down following the arrest last week of six current and former members of its team.

The Paris-based global media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has called for the release of all journalists detained and urges democracies to react and defend what is left of the free press in the territory.

On the morning of December 29, six current and former team members of Chinese-language news site Stand News were arrested by the police force’s National Security Department on allegations of “conspiracy to publish seditious publications”, a colonial-era crime that bears a maximum sentence of two years in prison.

• READ MORE: Other Hong Kong democracy reports

The detainees are acting chief editor Patrick Lam Shiu-tung, former chief editor Chung Pui-kuen, and four former board members: Denise Ho Wan-see, Margaret Ng Ngoi-yee, Chow Tat-chi and Christine Fang Meng-sang.

Next day, December 30, the four board members — Denise Ho Wan-see, Margaret Ng Ngoi-yee, Chow Tat-chi and Christine Fang Meng-sang — were released on a bail, while chief editors Patrick Lam Shiu-tung and Chung Pui-kuen will stay in custody until the trial.

Simultaneously on the day of the arrests, a total of 200 police officers raided the Stand News office and searched the house of Stand News’ deputy assignment editor, Ronson Chan Long-sing.

Chan, who is also the chair of Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA), was taken away and later released after questioning.

Defend ‘what’s left of free press’
“Exactly six months after the dismantling of the Next Digital group and its flagship newspaper Apple Daily, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam once again shows her determination to terminate press freedom in the territory by eliminating Stand News in a similar fashion”, said Cédric Alviani, RSF East Asia bureau head, who called for the release of all journalists and urges democracies “to act in line with their own values and obligations and defend what’s left of the free press in Hong Kong before China’s model of information control claims another victim”.

Stand News, an independent, non-profit, news website in Chinese founded in 2014, provided in-depth coverage of all trials related to the National Security Law, and was a nominee for the 2021 RSF Press Freedom Awards.

In June, Chief Executive Lam also used the National Security Law as pretext to shut down Apple Daily, the territory’s largest Chinese-language opposition newspaper, and to prosecute at least 12 journalists and press freedom defenders, 10 of whom are still detained.

In a report titled “The Great Leap Backwards of Journalism in China”, published on 7 December 2021, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) revealed the system of censorship and information control established by the Chinese regime and the global threat it poses to press freedom and democracy.

Hong Kong, once a bastion of press freedom, has fallen from 18th place in 2002 to 80th place in the 2020 RSF World Press Freedom Index.

The People’s Republic of China, for its part, has stagnated at 177th out of 180.

Republished with permission. Asia Pacific Report collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

First, the commission’s headline verdict – though you would never know it from reading the media’s coverage – was that no case was found that Labour suffered from “institutional antisemitism”.

That, however, was precisely the claim that had been made by groups like the Jewish Labour Movement, the Campaign Against Antisemitism, the Board of Deputies and prominent rabbis such as Ephraim Mirvis. Their claims were amplified by Jewish media outlets such as the Jewish Chronicle and individual journalists such as Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian. All are now shown to have been wrong, to have maligned the Labour party and to have irresponsibly inflamed the concerns of Britain’s wider Jewish community.

My latest: In making an overtly partisan attack on Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis is actually likely to stoke very real antisemitism on the right https://t.co/ia7CbpRTUc

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) November 27, 2019

Not that any of these organisations or individuals will have to apologise. The corporate media – from the Mail to the Guardian – are continuing to mislead and misdirect on this issue, as they have been doing for the best part of five years. Neither Jewish leadership groups such as the Board of Deputies nor the corporate media have an interest in highlighting the embarrassing fact that the commission’s findings exposed their campaign against Corbyn as misinformation.

Breaches of procedure

What the report found instead were mainly breaches of party protocol and procedure: that complaints about antisemitism were not handled promptly and transparently.

But even here the issue was not really about antisemitism, as the report indicates, even if obliquely. Delays in resolving complaints were chiefly the responsibility not of Corbyn and his staff but of a party bureaucracy that he inherited and was deeply and explicitly hostile to him.

Senior officials stalled antisemitism complaints not because they were especially antisemitic but because they knew the delays would embarrass Corbyn and weaken him inside the party, as the leaked report of an Labour internal inquiry revealed in the spring.

My latest: Labour's explosive leaked report, showing how party officials plotted to destroy Corbyn, including by weaponising antisemitism, is being quietly swept under the carpet by the media and Labour's new leader Keir Starmer https://t.co/1m7WfRobhn

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) April 16, 2020

But again, neither the media nor Jewish leadership groups have any interest in exposing their own culpability in this false narrative. And the new Labour leadership, under Keir Starmer, has absolutely no incentive to challenge this narrative either, particularly as doing so would be certain to revive exactly the same kind of antisemitism smears, but this time directed against Starmer himself.

Too hasty and aggressive

The corporate media long ago styled Labour staff who delayed the complaints procedure to harm Corbyn as antisemitism “whistleblowers”. Many of them starred in last year’s BBC Panorama programme on Labour in which they claimed they had been hampered from carrying out their work.

My latest: With last night's Panorama programme on supposed 'institutional anti-semitism' in Labour, the BBC demonstrated that it has become a media attack dog in the hands of the ruling Conservative party https://t.co/dSDaaLBY0S

— Jonathan Cook (@Jonathan_K_Cook) July 11, 2019

The equalities commission’s report subtly contradicts their claims, conceding that progress on handling complaints improved after senior Labour staff hostile to Corbyn – the “whistleblowers” very much among them – were removed from their posts.

Indeed, the report suggests the very opposite of the established media narrative. Corbyn’s team, far from permitting or encouraging delays in resolving antisemitism complaints, too often tried to step in to speed up the process to placate the corporate media and Jewish organisations.

In an example of having your cake and eating it, the commission castigates Corbyn’s staff for doing this, labelling it “political interference” and terming these actions unfair and discriminatory. But the unfairness chiefly relates to those being complained against – those accused of antisemitism – not those doing the complaining.

If Labour had an identifiable problem in relation to antisemitism complaints, according to the report, it seems to have occurred mostly in terms of the party being too hasty and aggressive in tackling antisemitism, in response to relentless criticism from the media and Jewish organisations, rather than being indulgent of it.

Again, no one in the media, Jewish leadership organisations, or the new Labour leadership wants this finding to be highlighted. So it is being ignored.

Flawed approach

The second conclusion, which I lacked the space to deal with properly in my Middle East Eye piece, relates more specifically to the commission’s own flawed approach in compiling the report rather than the media’s misrepresentation of the report.

As I explained in my earlier piece, the commission itself is very much an establishment body. Even had it wanted to, which it most certainly did not, it was never going to stick its neck out and rubbish the narrative presented by the establishment media.

On procedural matters, such as how the party handled antisemitism complaints, the equalities commission kept the report as vague as possible, obfuscating who was responsible for those failings and who was supposed to benefit from Corbyn staff’s interference. Both issues had the potential to fatally undermine the established media narrative.

Instead, the commission’s imprecision has allowed the media and Jewish organisations to interpret the report in self-serving ways – ways convenient to their existing narrative about “institutional antisemitism” in Labour.

Scouring social media

But the report misleads not only in its evasion and ambiguity. It does so more overtly in its seemingly desperate effort to find examples of Labour party “agents” who were responsible for the “problem” of antisemitism.

It is worth pondering what it would have looked like had the commission admitted it was unable to find anyone to hold to account for antisemitism in Labour. That would have risked blowing a very large hole in the established media narrative indeed.

So there must have been a great deal of pressure on the commission to find some examples. But extraordinarily – after five years of relentless claims of “institutional antisemitism” in Labour, and of organisations like the Campaign Against Antisemitism and the Jewish Labour Movement scouring through Labour members’ social media accounts – the commission is able to muster sufficient evidence against only two individuals.

Two!

Both are found responsible for “illegal harassment” of Jewish people.

In those circumstances, therefore, it is important to critically examine just what evidence exists that these two individuals exhibited antisemitic attitudes or harassed Jews. Presumably, this pair’s behaviour was so egregious, their antisemitism so unmistakable, that the commission felt it had no choice but to single them out and hold the party responsible for failing to punish them summarily (without, of course, exhibiting at the same time any “political interference”).

I won’t test readers’ patience by examining both examples. In any case, I have dealt with one of them, Ken Livingstone, London’s former mayor, at length in previous blog posts. They can be read here and here, for example.

Outward appearances

Let us focus instead on the other person named: a minor Labour party figure named Pam Bromley, who was then a local councillor for the borough of Rossendale, near Bolton.

First, we should note that the “harassment” she was deemed to have carried out seems to have been limited to online comments posted to social media. The commission does not suggest she expressed any hatred of Jews, made threats against any Jews individually or collectively, or physically attacked anyone Jewish.

I don’t know anything about Bromley, apart from the handful of comments attributed to her in the report. I also don’t know what was going on inside her head when she wrote those posts. If the commission knows more, it does not care to share that information with us. We can only judge the outward appearance of what she says.

One social media post, it is true, does suggest a simplistic political outlook that may have indicated an openness to anti-Jewish conspiracy theories – or what the commission terms a “trope”. Bromley herself says she was making “general criticisms about capitalism”. Determining antisemitic conduct on the basis of that one post – let alone allowing an entire party of 500,000 members to be labelled “institutionally antisemitic” for it – might seem more than a little excessive.

But notably the problematic post was made in April 2018 – shortly after Corbyn’s staff wrestled back control of the complaints procedure from those hostile to his project. It was also the same month Bromley was suspended from the party. So if the post was indeed antisemitic, Corbyn’s Labour lost no time in dealing with it.

Did Bromley otherwise demonstrate a pattern of posting antisemitic material on social media that makes it hard to dispute that she harboured antisemitic motives? Were her comments so obviously antisemitic that the Labour party bureaucracy should have sanctioned her much sooner (even if at the time Corbyn’s staff had no control over the disciplinary process to do so)?

Let us examine the two comments highlighted by the commission in the main section of the report, which they deem to constitute the most clear-cut examples of Bromley’s antisemitism.

Raw emotions

The first was posted on Facebook, though strangely the commission appears not to know when:

Had Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party pulled up the drawbridge and nipped the bogus AS [antisemitism] accusations in the bud in the first place we would not be where we are now and the fifth column in the LP [Labour Party] would not have managed to get such a foothold … the Lobby has miscalculated … The witch hunt has created brand new fightback networks … The Lobby will then melt back into its own cesspit.

The strong language doubtless reflects the raw emotions the antisemitism claims against Corbyn’s supporters provoked. Many members understood only too well that the Labour party was riven by a civil war and that their socialist project was at stake. But where exactly is the antisemitism in Bromley’s tirade?

In the report, the commission says it considered the reference to a “fifth column” as code for Jews. But why? The equalities commission appears to have placed the worst possible interpretation on an ambiguous comment and then advanced it as an “antisemitic trope” – apparently a catch-all that needed no clarification.

But given what we now know – at least since the leaking of the internal Labour report in the spring – it seems far more likely Bromley, in referring to a “fifth column”, was talking about the party bureaucracy hostile to Corbyn. Most of those officials were not Jewish, but exploited the antisemitism claims because those claims were politically helpful.

Interpreted that way – and such an interpretation fits the facts presented in the leaked internal report – Bromley’s comment is better viewed as impolite, even hurtful, but probably not antisemitic.

Joan Ryan, an MP who was then head of Labour Friends of Israel – part of the lobby Bromley is presumably referring to – was not Jewish. But she was clearly very much part of the campaign to oust Corbyn using antisemitism as a stick to beat him and his supporters with, as an Al-Jazeera undercover documentary exposed in early 2017.

Ryan, we should remember, was instrumental in falsely accusing a Labour party member of an “antisemitic trope” – a deception that was only exposed because the exchange was secretly caught on film.

Internecine feud

Here is the second comment by Bromley highlighted by the commission. It was posted in late 2019, shortly after Labour had lost the general election:

My major criticism of him [Corbyn] – his failure to repel the fake accusations of antisemitism in the LP [Labour Party] – may not be repeated as the accusations may probably now magically disappear, now capitalism has got what it wanted.

Again, it seems clear that Bromley is referring to the party’s long-standing internecine feud, which would become public knowledge a few months later with the leaking of the internal report.

Here Bromley was suggesting that the media and anti-Corbyn wing of the party would ease up on the antisemitism allegations – as they indeed largely have done – because the threat of Corbyn’s socialist project had been ended by a dismal election result that saw the Tories gain a commanding parliamentary majority.

It could be argued that her assessment is wrong, but how is it antisemitic – unless the commission believes “capitalism” is also code for “Jews”?

But even if Bromley’s comments are treated as indisputably antisemitic, they are hardly evidence of Corbyn’s Labour party indulging antisemitism, or being “institutionally antisemitic”. As noted, she was suspended by the party in April 2018, almost as soon Corbyn’s team managed to gain control of the party bureaucracy from the old guard. She was expelled last February, while Corbyn was still leader.

Boris Johnson’s racism

It is instructive to compare the certainty with which the commission treats Bromley’s ambiguous remarks as irrefutable proof of antisemitism with its complete disregard for unmistakably antisemitic comments from Boris Johnson, the man actually running the country. That lack of concern is shared, of course, by the establishment media and Jewish leadership organisations.

The commission has repeatedly rejected parallel demands from Muslim groups for an investigation into the ruling Conservative party for well-documented examples of Islamophobia. But no one seems to be calling for an investigation of Johnson’s party for antisemitism.

Johnson himself has a long history of making overtly racist remarks, from calling black people “piccanninies” with “watermelon smiles” to labelling Muslim women “letterboxes”.

Jews have not avoided being stigmatised either. In his novel 72 Virgins, Johnson uses his authorial voice to suggest that Jewish oligarchs run the media and are able to fix an election result.

In a letter to the Guardian, a group of Jewish Corbyn supporters noted Johnson’s main Jewish character in the novel, Sammy Katz, was described as having a “proud nose and curly hair”, and he was painted “as a malevolent, stingy, snake-like Jewish businessman who exploits immigrant workers for profit”.

Nothing in the equalities commission’s report on Labour comes even close to suggesting this level of antisemitism. But then again, Johnson has never argued that antisemitism has been politically weaponised. And why would he? No one, from the corporate media to conservative Jewish leadership organisations, seems to be taking any serious interest in the overt racism demonstrated by either him or his party.

The post It is the Equalities Commission, not Labour, carrying out Political Interference first appeared on Dissident Voice.

The use and misuse of George Orwell’s truth-telling is so widespread that we can easily miss his intended meaning. For example, with perfect (Orwellian) irony, the BBC has a statue of Orwell outside Broadcasting House, bearing the inscription:

‘If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.’

Fine words, but suitably ambiguous: the BBC might argue that it is merely exercising its ‘liberty’ in endlessly channelling the worldview of powerful interests – crass propaganda that many people certainly ‘do not want to hear’.

Orwell’s real intention is made clearer in this second comment:

‘Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.’

In this line attributed to him (although there is some debate about where it originated), Orwell was talking about power – real journalism challenges the powerful. And this is the essential difference between the vital work of WikiLeaks and the propaganda role performed by state-corporate media like the BBC every day on virtually every issue.

On September 6, the Mail on Sunday ran two editorials, side by side. The first was titled, ‘A sinister, shameful attack on free speech’. It decried the Extinction Rebellion action last Friday to blockade three newspaper printing presses owned by Rupert Murdoch’s UK News. The second editorial, as we will see below, was a feeble call not to send Julian Assange to the US, on the eve of his crucial extradition hearing in London.

Extinction Rebellion’s protest, lasting just a few hours, temporarily prevented the distribution of Murdoch newspapers, such as the Sun and The Times, as well as other titles printed by Murdoch’s presses, including the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and the Daily Telegraph.

The Mail on Sunday editorial predictably condemned the protesters’ supposed attempt at ‘censorship’, declaring it:

‘a throwback to the very worst years of trade union militancy, which came close to strangling a free press and which was only defeated by the determined action of Rupert Murdoch.’

The paper fumed:

‘The newspaper blockade was a shameful and dangerous attempt to crush free speech, and it should never be repeated.’

This was the propaganda message that was repeated across much of the ‘mainstream media’, epitomised by the empty rhetoric of Prime Minister Boris Johnson:

‘A free press is vital in holding the government and other powerful institutions to account on issues critical for the future of our country, including the fight against climate change. It is completely unacceptable to seek to limit the public’s access to news in this way.’

Johnson’s comments could have been pure satire penned by Chris Morris, Mark Steel or the late Jeremy Hardy. Closer to the grubby truth, a different Johnson – Samuel – described the ‘free press’ as ‘Scribbling on the backs of advertisements’.

As Media Lens has repeatedly demonstrated over the past 20 years, it is the state-corporate media, including BBC News, that has endlessly ‘limited the public’s access to news’ by denying the public the full truth about climate breakdown, UK/US warmongering, including wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, the arming of Saudi Arabia and complicity in that brutal regime’s destruction of Yemen, UK government support for the apartheid state of Israel even as it crushes the Palestinian people, the insidious prising open of the NHS to private interests, and numerous other issues of public importance.

When has the mythical ‘free press’ ever fully and properly held to account Boris Johnson or any of his predecessors in 10 Downing Street? Who can forget that Tony Blair, steeped in the blood of so many Iraqis, is still held in esteem as an elder statesman whose views are sought out by ‘mainstream’ news outlets, including BBC News and the Guardian? As John Pilger said recently:

‘Always contrast Julian Assange with Tony Blair. One will be fighting for his life in court on 7 Sept for the “crime” of exposing war crimes while the other evades justice for the paramount crime of Iraq.’

Health Secretary Matt Hancock, who has presided over a national public health disaster with soaring rates of mortality during the coronavirus pandemic, had the affront to tweet a photograph of himself with a clutch of right-wing papers under his arm, declaring:

‘Totally outrageous that Extinction Rebellion are trying to suppress free speech by blockading newspapers. They must be dealt with by the full force of the law.’

It is Hancock himself, together with government colleagues and advisers – not least Johnson and his protector, Dominic Cummings – who should ‘be dealt with by the full force of the law’. As Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet medical journal, said of Boris Johnson in May:

‘you dropped the ball, Prime Minister. That was criminal. And you know it.’

Extinction Rebellion (XR) explained succinctly via Twitter their reason for their ‘totally outrageous’ action:

‘Dear Newsagents, we are sorry for disruption caused to your business this morning. Dear Mr. Murdoch, we are absolutely not sorry for continuing to disrupt your agenda this morning.  @rupertmurdoch #FreeTheTruth #ExtinctionRebellion #TellTheTruth’

An article on the XR website, simply titled, ‘We do not have a free press’, said:

‘We are in an emergency of unprecedented scale and the papers we have targeted are not reflecting the scale and urgency of what is happening to our planet.’

One of the XR protesters was ‘Steve’, a former journalist for 25 years who had worked for the Sun, Daily Mail, the Telegraph and The Times. He was filmed on location during the protest. He explained that he was participating, in part, because he is worried about the lack of a future for his children. And a major reason for how we got to this point is that journalists are:

‘stuck inside a toxic system where they don’t have any choice but to tell the stories that these newspapers want to be told.’

He continued:

‘Every person who works on News International or a Mail newspaper knows what story is or isn’t acceptable for their bosses. And their bosses know that because they know what’s acceptable to Murdoch or Rothermere or the other billionaires that run 70 per cent of our media’.

Steve said he left that system because he ‘couldn’t bear the way it worked’.

The most recent report by the independent Media Reform Coalition on UK media ownership, published in 2019, revealed the scale of the problem of extremely concentrated media ownership. Just three companies – Rupert Murdoch’s News UK, Daily Mail Group and Reach (publisher of the Mirror titles) dominate 83 per cent of the national newspaper market (up from 71 per cent in 2015). When online readers are included, just five companies – News UK, Daily Mail Group, Reach, Guardian and Telegraph – dominate nearly 80 per cent of the market.

As we noted of XR’s worthy action:

‘Before anyone denounces this as an attack on the “free press” – there is no free press. There is a billionaire-owned, profit-maximising, ad-dependent corporate press that has knowingly suppressed the truth of climate collapse and the need for action to protect corporate profits.’

Zarah Sultana, Labour MP for Coventry South, indicated her support too:

‘A tiny number of billionaires own vast swathes of our press. Their papers relentlessly campaign for right-wing politics, promoting the interests of the ruling class and scapegoating minorities. A free press is vital to democracy, but too much of our press isn’t free at all.’

By contrast, Labour leader Keir Starmer once again demonstrated his establishment credentials as ‘a safe pair of hands’ by condemning XR’s protest. Craig Murray commented:

‘At a time when the government is mooting designating Extinction Rebellion as Serious Organised Crime, right wing bequiffed muppet Keir Starmer was piously condemning the group, stating: “The free press is the cornerstone of democracy and we must do all we can to protect it.”’

Starmer had also commented:

‘Denying people the chance to read what they choose is wrong and does nothing to tackle climate change.’

But denying people the chance to read what they would choose – the corporate-unfriendly truth – on climate change is exactly what the corporate media, misleadingly termed ‘mainstream media’, is all about.

Media activist and lecturer Justin Schlosberg made a number of cogent observations on ‘press freedom’ in a Twitter thread (beginning here):

‘9 times out of 10 when people in Britain talk about protecting press freedom what they really mean is protecting press power’.

He pointed out the ‘giant myth’ promulgated by corporate media, forever trying to resist any attempt to curb their power; namely that:

‘Britain’s mainstream [sic] press is a vital pillar of our democracy, covering a diversity of perspectives and upholding professional standards of journalism…the reality is closer to the exact inverse of such claims. More than 10 million people voted for a socialist party at the last election (13 million in 2017) and polls have consistently shown that majority of British public oppose austerity’.

Schlosberg continued:

‘The “diversity” of our national press [… ] covers the political spectrum from liberal/centre to hard right and has overwhelmingly backed austerity economics for the best part of the last 4 decades… [moreover] the UK press enjoys an unrivalled international reputation for producing a diatribe of fake, racist and misogynistic hate speech over anything that can be called journalism’.

He rightly concluded:

‘ironically one of the greatest threats to democracy is a press that continues to weave myths in support of its vested interests, and a BBC that continues to uncritically absorb them.’

Assange In The US Crosshairs

Alongside the Mail on Sunday’s billionaire-owned, extremist right-wing attack on climate activists highlighting a non-existent ‘free press’, the paper had an editorial that touched briefly on the danger to all journalists should WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange be extradited from the UK to the US:

‘the charges against Mr Assange, using the American Espionage Act, might be used against legitimate journalists in this country’.

The implication was that Assange is not to be regarded as a ‘legitimate journalist’. Indeed, the billionaire Rothermere-owned viewspaper – a more accurate description than ‘newspaper’ – made clear its antipathy towards him:

‘Mr Assange’s revelations of leaked material caused grave embarrassment to Washington and are alleged to have done material damage too.’

The term ‘embarrassment’ refers to the exposure of US criminal actions threatening the great rogue state’s ability to commit similar crimes in future: not embarrassing (Washington is without shame), but potentially limiting.

The Mail on Sunday continued:

‘Mr Assange has been a spectacular nuisance during his time in this country, lawlessly jumping bail and wasting police time by taking refuge in embassy of Ecuador. The Mail on Sunday disapproves of much of what he has done, but we must also ask if his current treatment is fair, right or just.’

The insinuations and subtle smears embedded in these few lines have been repeatedly demolished (see this extensive analysis, for example). And there was no mention that Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, as well as numerous doctors, health experts and human rights organisations, have strongly condemned the UK’s appalling abuse of Assange and demanded his immediate release.

Melzer has accused the British government of torturing Assange:

‘the primary purpose of torture is not necessarily interrogation, but very often torture is used to intimidate others, as a show to the public what happens if you don’t comply with the government. That is the purpose of what has been done to Julian Assange. It is not to punish or coerce him, but to silence him and to do so in broad daylight, making visible to the entire world that those who expose the misconduct of the powerful no longer enjoy the protection of the law, but essentially will be annihilated. It is a show of absolute and arbitrary power’.

Melzer also spoke about the price he will pay for challenging the powerful:

‘I am under no illusions that my UN career is probably over. Having openly confronted two P5-States (UN security council members) the way I have, I am very unlikely to be approved by them for another high-level position. I have been told, that my uncompromising engagement in this case comes at a political price.’

This is the reality of the increasingly authoritarian world we are living in.

The weak defence of Assange now being seen in even right-wing media, such as the Mail on Sunday, indicates a real fear that any journalist could in future be targeted by the US government for publishing material that might anger Washington.

In an interview this week, Barry Pollack, Julian Assange’s US lawyer, warned of the ‘very dangerous’ precedent that could be set in motion with Assange’s extradition to the US:

‘The position that the U.S. is taking is a very dangerous one. The position the U.S. is taking is that they have jurisdiction all over the world and can pursue criminal charges against any journalist anywhere on the planet, whether they’re a U.S. citizen or not. But if they’re not a U.S. citizen, not only can the U.S. pursue charges against them but that person has no defense under the First Amendment.’

In stark contrast to the weak protestations of the Mail on Sunday and the rest of the establishment media, Noam Chomsky pointed out the simple truth in a recent interview on RT (note the dearth of Chomsky interviews on BBC News, and consider why his views are not sought after):

‘Julian Assange committed the crime of letting the general population know things that they have a right to know and that powerful states don’t want them to know.’

Likewise, John Pilger issued a strong warning:

‘This week, one of the most important struggles for freedom in my lifetime nears its end. Julian Assange who exposed the crimes of great power faces burial alive in Trump’s America unless he wins his extradition case. Whose side are you on?’

Pilger recommended an excellent in-depth piece by Jonathan Cook, a former Guardian/Observer journalist, in which Cook observed:

‘For years, journalists cheered Assange’s abuse. Now they’ve paved his path to a US gulag.’

Peter Oborne is a rare example of a right-leaning journalist who has spoken out strongly in defence of Assange. Oborne wrote last week in Press Gazette that:

‘Future generations of journalists will not forgive us if we do not fight extradition.’

He set out the following scenario:

‘Let’s imagine a foreign dissident was being held in London’s Belmarsh Prison charged with supposed espionage offences by the Chinese authorities.

‘And that his real offence was revealing crimes committed by the Chinese Communist Party – including publishing video footage of atrocities carried out by Chinese troops.

‘To put it another way, that his real offence was committing the crime of journalism.

‘Let us further suppose the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture said this dissident showed “all the symptoms typical for prolonged exposure to psychological torture” and that the Chinese were putting pressure on the UK authorities to extradite this individual where he could face up to 175 years in prison.

‘The outrage from the British press would be deafening.’

Oborne continued:

‘There is one crucial difference. It is the US trying to extradite the co-founder of Wikileaks.

‘Yet there has been scarcely a word in the mainstream British media in his defence.’

In fact, as we have repeatedly highlighted, Assange has been the subject of a propaganda blitz by the UK media, attacking and smearing him, over and over again, often in the pages of the ‘liberal’ Guardian.

At the time of writing, neither ITV political editor Robert Peston nor BBC News political editor Laura Kuenssberg appear to have reported the Assange extradition case. They have not even tweeted about it once, even though they are both very active on Twitter. In fact, the last time Peston so much as mentioned Assange on his Twitter feed was 2017. Kuenssberg’s record is even worse; her Twitter silence extends all the way back to 2014. These high-profile journalists are supposedly prime exemplars of the very best ‘high-quality’ UK news broadcasters, maintaining the values of a ‘free press’, holding politicians to account and keeping the public informed.

On September 7, John Pilger gave an address outside the Old Bailey in London, just before Julian Assange’s extradition hearing began there. His words were a powerful rebuke to those so-called ‘journalists’ that have maintained a cowardly silence, or worse. The ‘official truth-tellers’ of the media – the stenographers who collaborate with those in power, helping to sell their wars – are, Pilger says, ‘Vichy journalists’.

He continued:

‘It is said that whatever happens to Julian Assange in the next three weeks will diminish if not destroy freedom of the press in the West. But which press? The Guardian? The BBC, The New York Times, the Jeff Bezos Washington Post?

‘No, the journalists in these organizations can breathe freely. The Judases on the Guardian who flirted with Julian, exploited his landmark work, made their pile then betrayed him, have nothing to fear. They are safe because they are needed.

‘Freedom of the press now rests with the honorable few: the exceptions, the dissidents on the internet who belong to no club, who are neither rich nor laden with Pulitzers, but produce fine, disobedient, moral journalism – those like Julian Assange.’

This article was posted on Thursday, September 10th, 2020 at 1:22am and is filed under “Free Press”, Activism, Belmarsh Prison, Extinction Rebellion, Extradiction, Global Warming, Julian Assange, Media Censorship, UK Hypocrisy, UK Media, United Kingdom, WikiLeaks.