Sebastien Lai has sought a meeting with Starmer for more than two years to advocate for the release of his father, 77-year-old Jimmy Lai, who founded Apple Daily. His health is deteriorating and he risks dying in jail.

Lai has been imprisoned for over 1,600 days, mostly in isolation, while awaiting the outcome of a long-delayed trial for sedition and conspiring to collude with foreign forces under the Beijing-imposed National Security Law. After Lai’s arrest in 2020, Apple Daily was shuttered on June 24, 2021, following police raids and the freezing of the paper’s assets.

Read the full joint letter here.

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

“The fatal shooting of Juan Dayang, one of the Philippines’ most prominent news publishers, shows that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s government hasn’t done enough to stop the killers of journalists,” said Shawn Crispin, CPJ’s senior Southeast Asia representative. “Authorities must leave no stone unturned in identifying his killers, uncovering their motive, and bringing them to justice.”

Dayang was the publisher of the local Philippines Graphic magazine in the 1990s and of the now defunct Headline Manila daily newspaper and headed the Publishers Association of the Philippines Incorporated for two decades.

On April 29, Dayang was watching television in Kalibo, capital of central Aklan Province, when three shots were fired through his window by an assailant in a black jacket and full-face helmet, who escaped on a motorcycle, possibly with an accomplice, according to news reports. Dayang was rushed to a local hospital but was declared dead on arrival from gunshot wounds to the neck and back, those sources said.

Western Visayas region police chief Brigadier General Jack Wanky said police had identified a person of interest but could not yet confirm a motive and were reviewing CCTV footage, The Philippine Star reported.

The Presidential Task Force on Media Security, a state body tasked with investigating media murders, described the attack as a “heinous act” and said it was coordinating with “all concerned agencies” to resolve the case.  

Dayang also served as president of the Manila Overseas Press Club and was mayor of Kalibo soon after the country’s 1986 People Power Revolution, news reports said.

The Philippines ranked ninth on CPJ’s most recent Impunity Index, a global ranking of countries where journalists’ murderers are most likely to go free. The country has appeared on the index every year since it was first launched in 2008.

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

Jeff Danziger (1/20/25)

“Watch your step,” says the soldier as he and a medic lead a hostage over a mound of corpses labeled “Over 40,000 Palestinians killed…” The caption reads, “Some Israeli Hostages Are Home After Years of Merciless War.” This cartoon by Jeff Danzinger (Rutland Herald, 1/20/25) was selected by editorial page editor Tony Doris to run in the Palm Beach Post (1/26/25).

After the cartoon ran last month, a local Jewish activist group took offense at the perceived antisemitic nature of the anti-war cartoon. The Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County was so upset it purchased a full-page ad condemning the cartoon to run in the Sunday edition (2/9/25).

That Doris and Danzinger are both of Jewish descent did not deter the complainers. Neither did their politics. Doris (Stet News, 3/2/25) describes himself as pro-Israel, as well as the Post‘s “only Jewish editor.” Danzinger told comics scholar Kent Worcester (Comics Journal, 11/05) that he agreed “with a great many things that the Republicans have been traditionally for,” and that he voted for George H.W. Bush twice.

For his temerity to run an anti-war cartoon acknowledging the Palestinian dead, Doris was fired by Gannett, the conglomerate that owns hundreds of newspapers across the country, including the Post. Gannett issued a statement that the cartoon “did not meet our standards” and “would not have been published if the proper protocols were followed.” “We sincerely regret the error,” said the spokesperson for the Post, “and have taken appropriate action to prevent this from happening again.” Doris (New York Times, 3/2/25) remarked that Gannet executives are “afraid of their shadow.”

The Palestine exception

Rob Rogers (8/7/14)

Doris’ ordeal was similar to the one cartoonist Rob Rogers suffered ten years ago. Rogers drew Palestinians huddled in a tiny prison, beset on all sides by missiles and Israeli soldiers. “Why do they hate us so much?” one trooper muses (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 8/7/14).

This cartoon, too, was characterized by pro-Israel readers as antisemitic. Richard Krugel of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Metropolitan Detroit proclaimed it something “out of the Nazi propaganda sheet Der Shturmer [sic]” (Oakland Press, 8/8/14). Rogers’ career survived the incident, but as the editorial page of Rogers’ home paper shifted right, he found himself out of a job (New York Times, 6/15/18; Extra!, 7/18).

The experiences of Doris and Rogers are clear examples of what civil rights lawyer Michael Ratner termed the “Palestine exception to free speech” (Real News Network, 4/27/15). Support for Palestinian rights is deemed to be an antisemitic attack on Israel, and therefore outside the boundaries of acceptable speech. The Palestine exception is glaringly apparent if a survey is conducted of how Palestinians are treated in political cartoons, and what consequences cartoonists suffer for these artistic choices.

‘We side with evil’

Kirk Walters (10/18/23)

Political cartoonists routinely compare Palestinians and the Palestinian cause to Nazis and Nazism. Henry Payne drew Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress, as pro-Nazi, with bumper stickers reading “From Rhine River to the North Sea” and “Stop German Genocide” and “Beware Elders of Zion”  (GoComics, 6/4/24). Kirk Walters showed pro-Palestine protesters as tiki-torch wielding white supremacists. One protester looked identical to Adolf Hitler (King Features, 10/18/23).

Gary Varvel drew a student returning home for Thanksgiving dinner clothed in an “I Heart Hamas” sweater and donning a Hitler mustache. “Son,” his father frets, “your mother and I are concerned about how much college has changed you!” (Creators Syndicate, 11/1/23).

Symbols of Palestinian identity are equated with nefariousness. Two-time Pulitzer winner Michael Ramirez (Las Vegas Review-Journal, 5/2/24) explicitly placed the Palestinian flag at a rally side by side with a sign reading “We Side With Evil.” Other signs read “We Heart Terrorists” and “We Support Hamas.” Three days later, Ramirez (Las Vegas Review-Journal, 5/5/24) pinned a button reading “Hate” on a keffiyeh-wearing protester.

Michael Ramirez (5/2/24)

Editorial cartoonists often make a false connection between pro-Palestine activism and antisemitism. After the first wave of protests on college campuses in Fall 2023, Dana Summers (Tribune Content Agency, 10/18/23) drew a Halloween cartoon featuring a Frankenstein’s Monster labeled “Antisemitism” and a Dr. Frankenstein labeled “College Campuses,” shouting “It’s alive!”

Bob Gorrell (Creators Syndicate, 4/30/24) had Joe Biden informing readers about “all those antisemitic, pro-Hamas demonstrations on college campuses.” Echoing President Trump’s description of the 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Biden declared, “There are very fine people on both sides!”

At Chip Bok’s “Back to School Sale for Your Pro-Hamas Student” (Creators Syndicate, 9/5/24) the title “Antisemitism for Dummies” was sold.

Nor is this solely a quirk of the US: Canadian cartoonist Malcolm Mayes (Edmonton Journal, 11/23) depicted students chanting, “From the river to the sea/killing Jews is fine with me.”

‘Make Gaza great again!’

Henry Payne (9/19/24)

In one anti-Palestinian cartoon, the cartoonist made light of assassinating a member of Congress. After the Israeli pager attack on Hezbollah, Henry Payne (National Review, 9/19/24) drew an exploding pager on the desk of Rashida Tlaib, also naming her a member of Hamas.

Tlaib described this as “racism” that would incite “hate and violence against Arab and Muslim communities,” and Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud argued it showed that “anti-Arab bigotry and Islamophobia have become normalized in our media.” Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, herself not an Arab or Muslim, was less direct, although she also condemned the cartoon. “It further stokes the divide in our politics and does absolutely nothing to move us forward on the issues that matter,” she said (Metro Times, 9/20/24).

Chip Bok (2/7/25)

After Trump revealed his plan to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip, cartoonists lined up to endorse this proposed violation of international law. Dana Summers (Tribune Content Agency, 2/7/25) had a beaming Trump announcing, “Make Gaza Great Again!” Chip Bok (Creators Syndicate, 2/7/25) showed Trump’s future casino and riviera as an improvement over United Nations administered refugee camps. Cheekily, it was labeled “Two State Solutions.” Payne (GoComics, 2/6/25) advertised a “Mar-a-Gaza” that will be “Hamas-free”—as well as Palestinian-free—once construction is finished.

No mainstream American cartoonist would draw Israeli soldiers as Nazis, as Varvel, Gorrell and Payne did with Palestinians. It would be considered beyond the pale for an anti-war or pro-Palestinian cartoonist to crack a joke about assassinating a leading pro-Israel politician, as Payne did with Tlaib. Cartoon endorsements of ethnic cleansing of virtually any nationality other than Palestinian would be met with quite accurate comparisons to the oeuvre of Philipp Rupprecht (“Fips”), cartoonist for the pro-Nazi Der Stürmer.

‘Missed something profound’

Michael Ramirez (11/6/23)

The consequences for the two approaches to cartooning could not be more different. When Varvel lost his spot at the Toronto Sun (12/21/23), it was not for his drawings of Palestinians, but rather a take on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (12/20/23) that Jewish groups found offensive. Payne’s cartoons still run in the National Review, and he kept his post as auto critic for the Detroit News.

One of Ramirez’s cartoons (Las Vegas Review-Journal, 11/6/23), showing a snarling hook-nosed Arab labeled “Hamas,” was removed from the Washington Post after reader backlash. Editorial page editor David Shipley said that reader reactions calling the cartoon “racist” and “dehumanizing” showed that the Post “missed something profound, and divisive” (Washington Post, 11/8/23). Ramirez continues to be published at the Post.

Because of syndication and the absorption of many newspapers into chains like Gannett, some media markets are only exposed to one side, cartoon-wise. In Detroit, for example, the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News publish under a joint operating agreement that ensures that the editorial cartoons in the News run in both newspapers. The most prominent syndicated cartoonist in the News is Ramirez, who declared Palestinians ontologically evil. This means that in the metro area with the largest Arab population in America, the political cartoons in both papers are overwhelmingly dominated by a virulently anti-Palestinian viewpoint.

Steve Benson (6/27/82)

Tony Doris (New York Times, 3/2/25) expressed concerns that limiting the range of acceptable opinion in editorial pages is bad for democracy. “Democracy needs journalists who care about the mission and not just about page views,” he said.

Not only is it bad for democracy, it trivializes antisemitism and allows promoters of racism and ethnic cleansing off the hook. Indeed, despite acting as defenders of Jewish people, these cartoonists indulge in many of the same tropes that antisemitic caricaturists use. Editorial cartoonists may have progressed past depicting Yasser Arafat as a rodent caught in a Star of David–shaped mousetrap (Arizona Republic, 6/27/82), but there are still images of anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian racism on the editorial pages.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Hank Kennedy.

Jeff Danziger (1/20/25)

“Watch your step,” says the soldier as he and a medic lead a hostage over a mound of corpses labeled “Over 40,000 Palestinians killed…” The caption reads, “Some Israeli Hostages Are Home After Years of Merciless War.” This cartoon by Jeff Danzinger (Rutland Herald, 1/20/25) was selected by editorial page editor Tony Doris to run in the Palm Beach Post (1/26/25).

After the cartoon ran last month, a local Jewish activist group took offense at the perceived antisemitic nature of the anti-war cartoon. The Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County was so upset it purchased a full-page ad condemning the cartoon to run in the Sunday edition (2/9/25).

That Doris and Danzinger are both of Jewish descent did not deter the complainers. Neither did their politics. Doris (Stet News, 3/2/25) describes himself as pro-Israel, as well as the Post‘s “only Jewish editor.” Danzinger told comics scholar Kent Worcester (Comics Journal, 11/05) that he agreed “with a great many things that the Republicans have been traditionally for,” and that he voted for George H.W. Bush twice.

For his temerity to run an anti-war cartoon acknowledging the Palestinian dead, Doris was fired by Gannett, the conglomerate that owns hundreds of newspapers across the country, including the Post. Gannett issued a statement that the cartoon “did not meet our standards” and “would not have been published if the proper protocols were followed.” “We sincerely regret the error,” said the spokesperson for the Post, “and have taken appropriate action to prevent this from happening again.” Doris (New York Times, 3/2/25) remarked that Gannet executives are “afraid of their shadow.”

The Palestine exception

Rob Rogers (8/7/14)

Doris’ ordeal was similar to the one cartoonist Rob Rogers suffered ten years ago. Rogers drew Palestinians huddled in a tiny prison, beset on all sides by missiles and Israeli soldiers. “Why do they hate us so much?” one trooper muses (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 8/7/14).

This cartoon, too, was characterized by pro-Israel readers as antisemitic. Richard Krugel of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Metropolitan Detroit proclaimed it something “out of the Nazi propaganda sheet Der Shturmer [sic]” (Oakland Press, 8/8/14). Rogers’ career survived the incident, but as the editorial page of Rogers’ home paper shifted right, he found himself out of a job (New York Times, 6/15/18; Extra!, 7/18).

The experiences of Doris and Rogers are clear examples of what civil rights lawyer Michael Ratner termed the “Palestine exception to free speech” (Real News Network, 4/27/15). Support for Palestinian rights is deemed to be an antisemitic attack on Israel, and therefore outside the boundaries of acceptable speech. The Palestine exception is glaringly apparent if a survey is conducted of how Palestinians are treated in political cartoons, and what consequences cartoonists suffer for these artistic choices.

‘We side with evil’

Kirk Walters (10/18/23)

Political cartoonists routinely compare Palestinians and the Palestinian cause to Nazis and Nazism. Henry Payne drew Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress, as pro-Nazi, with bumper stickers reading “From Rhine River to the North Sea” and “Stop German Genocide” and “Beware Elders of Zion”  (GoComics, 6/4/24). Kirk Walters showed pro-Palestine protesters as tiki-torch wielding white supremacists. One protester looked identical to Adolf Hitler (King Features, 10/18/23).

Gary Varvel drew a student returning home for Thanksgiving dinner clothed in an “I Heart Hamas” sweater and donning a Hitler mustache. “Son,” his father frets, “your mother and I are concerned about how much college has changed you!” (Creators Syndicate, 11/1/23).

Symbols of Palestinian identity are equated with nefariousness. Two-time Pulitzer winner Michael Ramirez (Las Vegas Review-Journal, 5/2/24) explicitly placed the Palestinian flag at a rally side by side with a sign reading “We Side With Evil.” Other signs read “We Heart Terrorists” and “We Support Hamas.” Three days later, Ramirez (Las Vegas Review-Journal, 5/5/24) pinned a button reading “Hate” on a keffiyeh-wearing protester.

Michael Ramirez (5/2/24)

Editorial cartoonists often make a false connection between pro-Palestine activism and antisemitism. After the first wave of protests on college campuses in Fall 2023, Dana Summers (Tribune Content Agency, 10/18/23) drew a Halloween cartoon featuring a Frankenstein’s Monster labeled “Antisemitism” and a Dr. Frankenstein labeled “College Campuses,” shouting “It’s alive!”

Bob Gorrell (Creators Syndicate, 4/30/24) had Joe Biden informing readers about “all those antisemitic, pro-Hamas demonstrations on college campuses.” Echoing President Trump’s description of the 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Biden declared, “There are very fine people on both sides!”

At Chip Bok’s “Back to School Sale for Your Pro-Hamas Student” (Creators Syndicate, 9/5/24) the title “Antisemitism for Dummies” was sold.

Nor is this solely a quirk of the US: Canadian cartoonist Malcolm Mayes (Edmonton Journal, 11/23) depicted students chanting, “From the river to the sea/killing Jews is fine with me.”

‘Make Gaza great again!’

Henry Payne (9/19/24)

In one anti-Palestinian cartoon, the cartoonist made light of assassinating a member of Congress. After the Israeli pager attack on Hezbollah, Henry Payne (National Review, 9/19/24) drew an exploding pager on the desk of Rashida Tlaib, also naming her a member of Hamas.

Tlaib described this as “racism” that would incite “hate and violence against Arab and Muslim communities,” and Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud argued it showed that “anti-Arab bigotry and Islamophobia have become normalized in our media.” Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, herself not an Arab or Muslim, was less direct, although she also condemned the cartoon. “It further stokes the divide in our politics and does absolutely nothing to move us forward on the issues that matter,” she said (Metro Times, 9/20/24).

Chip Bok (2/7/25)

After Trump revealed his plan to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip, cartoonists lined up to endorse this proposed violation of international law. Dana Summers (Tribune Content Agency, 2/7/25) had a beaming Trump announcing, “Make Gaza Great Again!” Chip Bok (Creators Syndicate, 2/7/25) showed Trump’s future casino and riviera as an improvement over United Nations administered refugee camps. Cheekily, it was labeled “Two State Solutions.” Payne (GoComics, 2/6/25) advertised a “Mar-a-Gaza” that will be “Hamas-free”—as well as Palestinian-free—once construction is finished.

No mainstream American cartoonist would draw Israeli soldiers as Nazis, as Varvel, Gorrell and Payne did with Palestinians. It would be considered beyond the pale for an anti-war or pro-Palestinian cartoonist to crack a joke about assassinating a leading pro-Israel politician, as Payne did with Tlaib. Cartoon endorsements of ethnic cleansing of virtually any nationality other than Palestinian would be met with quite accurate comparisons to the oeuvre of Philipp Rupprecht (“Fips”), cartoonist for the pro-Nazi Der Stürmer.

‘Missed something profound’

Michael Ramirez (11/6/23)

The consequences for the two approaches to cartooning could not be more different. When Varvel lost his spot at the Toronto Sun (12/21/23), it was not for his drawings of Palestinians, but rather a take on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (12/20/23) that Jewish groups found offensive. Payne’s cartoons still run in the National Review, and he kept his post as auto critic for the Detroit News.

One of Ramirez’s cartoons (Las Vegas Review-Journal, 11/6/23), showing a snarling hook-nosed Arab labeled “Hamas,” was removed from the Washington Post after reader backlash. Editorial page editor David Shipley said that reader reactions calling the cartoon “racist” and “dehumanizing” showed that the Post “missed something profound, and divisive” (Washington Post, 11/8/23). Ramirez continues to be published at the Post.

Because of syndication and the absorption of many newspapers into chains like Gannett, some media markets are only exposed to one side, cartoon-wise. In Detroit, for example, the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News publish under a joint operating agreement that ensures that the editorial cartoons in the News run in both newspapers. The most prominent syndicated cartoonist in the News is Ramirez, who declared Palestinians ontologically evil. This means that in the metro area with the largest Arab population in America, the political cartoons in both papers are overwhelmingly dominated by a virulently anti-Palestinian viewpoint.

Steve Benson (6/27/82)

Tony Doris (New York Times, 3/2/25) expressed concerns that limiting the range of acceptable opinion in editorial pages is bad for democracy. “Democracy needs journalists who care about the mission and not just about page views,” he said.

Not only is it bad for democracy, it trivializes antisemitism and allows promoters of racism and ethnic cleansing off the hook. Indeed, despite acting as defenders of Jewish people, these cartoonists indulge in many of the same tropes that antisemitic caricaturists use. Editorial cartoonists may have progressed past depicting Yasser Arafat as a rodent caught in a Star of David–shaped mousetrap (Arizona Republic, 6/27/82), but there are still images of anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian racism on the editorial pages.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Hank Kennedy.

Jeff Danziger (1/20/25)

“Watch your step,” says the soldier as he and a medic lead a hostage over a mound of corpses labeled “Over 40,000 Palestinians killed…” The caption reads, “Some Israeli Hostages Are Home After Years of Merciless War.” This cartoon by Jeff Danzinger (Rutland Herald, 1/20/25) was selected by editorial page editor Tony Doris to run in the Palm Beach Post (1/26/25).

After the cartoon ran last month, a local Jewish activist group took offense at the perceived antisemitic nature of the anti-war cartoon. The Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County was so upset it purchased a full-page ad condemning the cartoon to run in the Sunday edition (2/9/25).

That Doris and Danzinger are both of Jewish descent did not deter the complainers. Neither did their politics. Doris (Stet News, 3/2/25) describes himself as pro-Israel, as well as the Post‘s “only Jewish editor.” Danzinger told comics scholar Kent Worcester (Comics Journal, 11/05) that he agreed “with a great many things that the Republicans have been traditionally for,” and that he voted for George H.W. Bush twice.

For his temerity to run an anti-war cartoon acknowledging the Palestinian dead, Doris was fired by Gannett, the conglomerate that owns hundreds of newspapers across the country, including the Post. Gannett issued a statement that the cartoon “did not meet our standards” and “would not have been published if the proper protocols were followed.” “We sincerely regret the error,” said the spokesperson for the Post, “and have taken appropriate action to prevent this from happening again.” Doris (New York Times, 3/2/25) remarked that Gannet executives are “afraid of their shadow.”

The Palestine exception

Rob Rogers (8/7/14)

Doris’ ordeal was similar to the one cartoonist Rob Rogers suffered ten years ago. Rogers drew Palestinians huddled in a tiny prison, beset on all sides by missiles and Israeli soldiers. “Why do they hate us so much?” one trooper muses (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 8/7/14).

This cartoon, too, was characterized by pro-Israel readers as antisemitic. Richard Krugel of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Metropolitan Detroit proclaimed it something “out of the Nazi propaganda sheet Der Shturmer [sic]” (Oakland Press, 8/8/14). Rogers’ career survived the incident, but as the editorial page of Rogers’ home paper shifted right, he found himself out of a job (New York Times, 6/15/18; Extra!, 7/18).

The experiences of Doris and Rogers are clear examples of what civil rights lawyer Michael Ratner termed the “Palestine exception to free speech” (Real News Network, 4/27/15). Support for Palestinian rights is deemed to be an antisemitic attack on Israel, and therefore outside the boundaries of acceptable speech. The Palestine exception is glaringly apparent if a survey is conducted of how Palestinians are treated in political cartoons, and what consequences cartoonists suffer for these artistic choices.

‘We side with evil’

Kirk Walters (10/18/23)

Political cartoonists routinely compare Palestinians and the Palestinian cause to Nazis and Nazism. Henry Payne drew Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress, as pro-Nazi, with bumper stickers reading “From Rhine River to the North Sea” and “Stop German Genocide” and “Beware Elders of Zion”  (GoComics, 6/4/24). Kirk Walters showed pro-Palestine protesters as tiki-torch wielding white supremacists. One protester looked identical to Adolf Hitler (King Features, 10/18/23).

Gary Varvel drew a student returning home for Thanksgiving dinner clothed in an “I Heart Hamas” sweater and donning a Hitler mustache. “Son,” his father frets, “your mother and I are concerned about how much college has changed you!” (Creators Syndicate, 11/1/23).

Symbols of Palestinian identity are equated with nefariousness. Two-time Pulitzer winner Michael Ramirez (Las Vegas Review-Journal, 5/2/24) explicitly placed the Palestinian flag at a rally side by side with a sign reading “We Side With Evil.” Other signs read “We Heart Terrorists” and “We Support Hamas.” Three days later, Ramirez (Las Vegas Review-Journal, 5/5/24) pinned a button reading “Hate” on a keffiyeh-wearing protester.

Michael Ramirez (5/2/24)

Editorial cartoonists often make a false connection between pro-Palestine activism and antisemitism. After the first wave of protests on college campuses in Fall 2023, Dana Summers (Tribune Content Agency, 10/18/23) drew a Halloween cartoon featuring a Frankenstein’s Monster labeled “Antisemitism” and a Dr. Frankenstein labeled “College Campuses,” shouting “It’s alive!”

Bob Gorrell (Creators Syndicate, 4/30/24) had Joe Biden informing readers about “all those antisemitic, pro-Hamas demonstrations on college campuses.” Echoing President Trump’s description of the 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Biden declared, “There are very fine people on both sides!”

At Chip Bok’s “Back to School Sale for Your Pro-Hamas Student” (Creators Syndicate, 9/5/24) the title “Antisemitism for Dummies” was sold.

Nor is this solely a quirk of the US: Canadian cartoonist Malcolm Mayes (Edmonton Journal, 11/23) depicted students chanting, “From the river to the sea/killing Jews is fine with me.”

‘Make Gaza great again!’

Henry Payne (9/19/24)

In one anti-Palestinian cartoon, the cartoonist made light of assassinating a member of Congress. After the Israeli pager attack on Hezbollah, Henry Payne (National Review, 9/19/24) drew an exploding pager on the desk of Rashida Tlaib, also naming her a member of Hamas.

Tlaib described this as “racism” that would incite “hate and violence against Arab and Muslim communities,” and Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud argued it showed that “anti-Arab bigotry and Islamophobia have become normalized in our media.” Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, herself not an Arab or Muslim, was less direct, although she also condemned the cartoon. “It further stokes the divide in our politics and does absolutely nothing to move us forward on the issues that matter,” she said (Metro Times, 9/20/24).

Chip Bok (2/7/25)

After Trump revealed his plan to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip, cartoonists lined up to endorse this proposed violation of international law. Dana Summers (Tribune Content Agency, 2/7/25) had a beaming Trump announcing, “Make Gaza Great Again!” Chip Bok (Creators Syndicate, 2/7/25) showed Trump’s future casino and riviera as an improvement over United Nations administered refugee camps. Cheekily, it was labeled “Two State Solutions.” Payne (GoComics, 2/6/25) advertised a “Mar-a-Gaza” that will be “Hamas-free”—as well as Palestinian-free—once construction is finished.

No mainstream American cartoonist would draw Israeli soldiers as Nazis, as Varvel, Gorrell and Payne did with Palestinians. It would be considered beyond the pale for an anti-war or pro-Palestinian cartoonist to crack a joke about assassinating a leading pro-Israel politician, as Payne did with Tlaib. Cartoon endorsements of ethnic cleansing of virtually any nationality other than Palestinian would be met with quite accurate comparisons to the oeuvre of Philipp Rupprecht (“Fips”), cartoonist for the pro-Nazi Der Stürmer.

‘Missed something profound’

Michael Ramirez (11/6/23)

The consequences for the two approaches to cartooning could not be more different. When Varvel lost his spot at the Toronto Sun (12/21/23), it was not for his drawings of Palestinians, but rather a take on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (12/20/23) that Jewish groups found offensive. Payne’s cartoons still run in the National Review, and he kept his post as auto critic for the Detroit News.

One of Ramirez’s cartoons (Las Vegas Review-Journal, 11/6/23), showing a snarling hook-nosed Arab labeled “Hamas,” was removed from the Washington Post after reader backlash. Editorial page editor David Shipley said that reader reactions calling the cartoon “racist” and “dehumanizing” showed that the Post “missed something profound, and divisive” (Washington Post, 11/8/23). Ramirez continues to be published at the Post.

Because of syndication and the absorption of many newspapers into chains like Gannett, some media markets are only exposed to one side, cartoon-wise. In Detroit, for example, the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News publish under a joint operating agreement that ensures that the editorial cartoons in the News run in both newspapers. The most prominent syndicated cartoonist in the News is Ramirez, who declared Palestinians ontologically evil. This means that in the metro area with the largest Arab population in America, the political cartoons in both papers are overwhelmingly dominated by a virulently anti-Palestinian viewpoint.

Steve Benson (6/27/82)

Tony Doris (New York Times, 3/2/25) expressed concerns that limiting the range of acceptable opinion in editorial pages is bad for democracy. “Democracy needs journalists who care about the mission and not just about page views,” he said.

Not only is it bad for democracy, it trivializes antisemitism and allows promoters of racism and ethnic cleansing off the hook. Indeed, despite acting as defenders of Jewish people, these cartoonists indulge in many of the same tropes that antisemitic caricaturists use. Editorial cartoonists may have progressed past depicting Yasser Arafat as a rodent caught in a Star of David–shaped mousetrap (Arizona Republic, 6/27/82), but there are still images of anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian racism on the editorial pages.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Hank Kennedy.

Four researchers and authors from the Asia-Pacific region have provided diverse perspectives on the media in a new global book on intercultural communication.

The Sage Handbook of Intercultural Communication published this week offers a global, interdisciplinary, and contextual approach to understanding the complexities of intercultural communication in our diverse and interconnected world.

It features University of Queensland academic Dr Mairead MacKinnon; founding director of the Pacific Media Centre professor David Robie; University of Ottawa’s Dr Marie M’Balla-Ndi Oelgemoeller; and University of the South Pacific journalism coordinator associate professor Shailendra Singh.

• READ MORE: Daily use of Indigenous languages in intercultural communication boosts social justice
• Other intercultural communication reports

Featuring contributions from 56 leading and emerging scholars across multiple disciplines, including communication studies, psychology, applied linguistics, sociology, education, and business, the handbook covers research spanning geographical locations across Europe, Africa, Oceania, North America, South America, and the Asia Pacific.

It focuses on specific contexts such as the workplace, education, family, media, crisis, and intergroup interactions. Each chapter takes a contextual approach to examine theories and applications, providing insights into the dynamic interplay between culture, communication, and society.

One of the co-editors, University of Queensland’s associate professor Levi Obijiofor, says the book provides an overview of scholarship, outlining significant theories and research paradigms, and highlighting major debates and areas for further research in intercultural communication.

“Each chapter stands on its own and could be used as a teaching or research resource. Overall, the book fills a gap in the field by exploring new ideas, critical perspectives, and innovative methods,” he says.

Refugees to sustaining journalism
Dr MacKinnon writes about media’s impact on refugee perspectives of belonging in Australia; Dr Robie on how intercultural communication influences Pacific media models; Dr M’Balla-Ndi Oelgemoeller examines accounting for race in journalism education; and Dr Singh unpacks sustaining journalism in “uncertain times” in Pacific island states.

Dr Singh says that in research terms the book is important for contributing to global understandings about the nature of Pacific media.

“The Pacific papers address a major gap in international scholarship on Pacific media. In terms of professional practice, the papers address structural problems in the regional media sector, thereby providing a clearer idea of long term solutions, as opposed to big measures and knee-jerk reactions, such as harsher legislation.”

Dr Robie, who is also editor of Asia Pacific Report and pioneered some new ways of examining Pacific media and intercultural inclusiveness in the Asia-Pacific region, says it is an important and comprehensive collection of essays and ought to be in every communication school library.

He refers to his “talanoa journalism” model, saying it “outlines a more culturally appropriate benchmark than monocultural media templates.

“Hopefully, this cross-cultural model would encourage more Pacific-based approaches in revisiting the role of the media to fit local contexts.”

Comprehensive exploration
The handbook brings together established theories, methodologies, and practices and provides a comprehensive exploration of intercultural communication in response to the challenges and opportunities presented by the global society.

From managing cultural diversity in the workplace to creating culturally inclusive learning environments in educational settings, from navigating intercultural relationships within families to understanding the role of media in shaping cultural perceptions, this handbook delves into diverse topics with depth and breadth.

It addresses contemporary issues such as hate speech, environmental communication, and communication strategies in times of crisis.

It also offers theoretical insights and practical recommendations for researchers, practitioners, policymakers, educators, and students.

The handbook is structured into seven parts, beginning with the theoretical and methodological development of the field before delving into specific contexts of intercultural communication.

Each part provides a rich exploration of key themes, supported by cutting-edge research and innovative approaches.

With its state-of-the-art content and forward-looking perspectives, this Sage Handbook of Intercultural Communication serves as an indispensable resource for understanding and navigating the complexities of intercultural communication in our increasingly interconnected world.

• More information about the Sage Handbook of Intercultural Communication

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.

We look at the unfolding ethics scandal at The Washington Post that has rocked one of the nation’s leading news outlets and raised questions about its future. The controversy centers on CEO and publisher Will Lewis, who has reportedly pressured journalists inside and outside the newsroom not to run unflattering stories about him. His efforts to reshape the newsroom in the face of steep financial losses have also alarmed staff, and British editor Robert Winnett, Lewis’s pick for a top editorial role, withdrew amid concern over his history of using fraudulently obtained information in newspaper articles. Lewis is also implicated in the long-running U.K. phone hacking scandal. Both Lewis and Winnett are veterans of conservative British papers owned by Rupert Murdoch, and The Guardian recently revealed that Lewis advised then-U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson on how to cover his tracks amid public outrage over violations of COVID precautions at the height of the pandemic. “At the most basic level of how journalism should operate, executives in charge of news in the public interest should not be suppressing news. It’s a pretty simple bar, and Will Lewis has failed to clear it,” says Chris Lehmann, D.C. bureau chief for The Nation.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Alabira, a correspondent for privately owned broadcaster Citi FM, told CPJ he was covering the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) parliamentary primaries on January 27 in the northern town of Yendi when an unidentified man approached the counting area and accused an electoral official of destroying ballot papers. The man’s allegation resulted in an uproar among NPP party supporters, who began destroying ballot papers and electoral equipment, according to Alabira and a colleague, who witnessed the incident and spoke to CPJ on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisal. 

When Alabira approached Farouk Aliu Mahama, an NPP member of parliament, for comment, the politician slapped the journalist’s face and kicked his leg, according to Alabira and his colleague. Mahama’s security guard then grabbed Alabira by the neck and seized his phone before several party supporters began hitting and punching the journalist on his head and back.

The attack on Alabira lasted about three minutes, during which an attacker smashed Alabira’s phone screen before police intervened and pulled Alabira to safety, according to those sources and video of the incident reviewed by CPJ.

CPJ recently documented the attack on another Ghanaian journalist, David Kobbena, a morning show host with the privately owned broadcaster Cape FM, at the office of the Central Regional Minister, who is a member of the NPP, in the central Cape Coast region on January 4. 

“Authorities in Ghana must ensure a comprehensive investigation into the January 27 attack on journalist Mohammed Aminu M. Alabira, hold those responsible to account, and guarantee that journalists feel safe to report on political activities ahead of national elections later this year,” said Angela Quintal, head of CPJ’s Africa program, from New York. “Repeated attacks against the press in Ghana by politically affiliated individuals are concerning and suggest an unacceptable disrespect for journalists’ crucial role in democracy.”  

Alabira and his colleague said police officers took Alabira in their van to a nearby police station, where officers took his statement and gave him a form for a medical professional to complete. Alabira was examined at the local hospital, where he was given medication for a headache and chest pains.

The journalist said that police had told him they were referring the case to the attorney general’s office.

Alabira told CPJ on February 1 that he still suffers from a headache and chest pain from the incident and could not use his phone until repairing the screen on January 30. On February 5, he told CPJ that he still experiences occasional pain, but it had become less frequent.

When contacted by phone, Mahama declined to speak to CPJ but shared a document prepared by his lawyers, which accused Alabira of falsely saying in an online publication by his outlet that Mahama had slapped the journalist from behind and threatened legal action if the article wasn’t retracted and Mahama didn’t receive an apology for defamation in seven days. 

Alabira told CPJ that he had never described Mahama as hitting him from behind, only from the front. CPJ’s review of the report on January 31 showed that it did not include Alabira saying Mahama slapped him from behind.

The Ghana Journalists Association called on police to arrest Mahama and his supporters and hold them accountable for the attack.

On February 6, four media rights groups—the Media Foundation for West Africa, the Ghana Journalists Association, the Ghana Independent Broadcasters Association, and the Private Newspapers and Online News Publishers Association of Ghana—issued a statement calling on NPP leaders and police authorities to hold Mahama and his supporters accountable within 10 days or face further actions from the associations, according to CPJ’s review of the statement. The associations also called on media organizations to avoid covering Mahama. 

CPJ called and texted the Ghanaian Minister of Information Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, national police spokesperson Grace Ansah Akrofi, and NPP General Secretary Justin Kodua Frimpong for comment but received no response.

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

The revocation is seen as a warning that the junta is closely watching the publishing industry for any dissent. 

Saturday’s reports said Dr. Phyo Thiha lost the license for his company, Piti Eain Literature, due to his social media posts criticizing the junta.

They said his writing was a threat to national security, the rule of law and public order but did not say what was problematic about the books Piti Eain publishes.

The medical doctor said the proceeds of his company’s book sales went to help victims of the fighting in Myanmar.

“Now that the publishing license has been revoked it means we can no longer publish anything under the name of this book house,” Phyo Thiha told Radio Free Asia. 

“I have been quietly selling old books that I have published before. I live here on that income and donate to war-torn IDPs [internally displaced persons].“

Piti Eain Literature mostly published books on psychology and Buddhist teachings and nothing that could be deemed anti-junta, the doctor said, calling the decision personal.

Another publisher, who wished to remain anonymous, said the revocation of Piti Eain’s license set a dangerous precedent.

“This means [the junta] is monitoring both the publication of books and social media,” they said. 

“If something is wrong they will ban it. It is a warning and threat to the entire publishing community.”

The junta has revoked the licenses of four publishers and two printing houses since the February 2021 coup.

Some 14 media outlets including Democratic Voice of Burma, Mizzima and The Irrawaddy have also lost their licenses.

Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Mike Firn and Elaine Chan.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Burmese.

The number of books on offer at Hong Kong's public libraries has fallen as officials remove books from shelves under a restrictive national security law imposed in the wake of the 2019 protest movement.

Since then, libraries have been required to remove politically sensitive titles from their collections, leading to a cull of books, and less time for staff to invest in new ones, according to the Leisure and Cultural Services Department.

"In order to maintain national security, more time is required to select suitable library materials, meaning that the size of the collection has also been reduced," the department said in a recent comment on an annual review of the city's public library services.

"Inspection of library books to maintain national security is an ongoing effort in Hong Kong's public libraries," it said in a response to a report from the city's audit office. "From time to time, complaints from the public are received, which require inspection of library materials.”

Titles addressing the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, as well as books written by jailed protest leader Joshua Wong and Occupy Central movement founder Benny Tai, have disappeared from library shelves since the law took effect on July 1, 2020, according to local media reports.

Hong Kong is in the throes of a "war on libraries," said current affairs commentator Sang Pu, who called on the government to disclose full details of books that have been removed from the collection, and to reinstate them.

He also called on Hong Kongers overseas to set up a repository of banned titles so future generations would be able to read them and their content wouldn’t be forgotten.

Informers

The general public have been actively encouraged by police to inform on any words or deeds that could be deemed subversive under the law, which criminalizes dissent in the form of words or deeds that "incite hatred" of the Hong Kong or Chinese authorities, leading to more than 40,000 tip-offs last year.

Many of the books quietly disappeared from libraries after denunciations in the government-backed media, which said they broke the national security law, according to reports in pro-democracy news outlets, some of which have themselves been forced to close amid investigation by the national security police.

"Hong Kong public libraries completed its review of [existing] library books that are clearly not conducive to national security, and has removed them from the collection," the Hong Kong Audit Commission said in an annual report released on April 26.

But it added: "As of February 2023, inspections and follow-up actions are ongoing."

It said government guidelines require libraries to "safeguard national security by preventing activities that could endanger it."

"In purchasing library materials, considering book proposals, accepting book donations and adding to collections [by] purchasing books, libraries must ensure that their collections do not prejudice national security," it said, recommending that new acquisitions are processed through the government's Book Registration Unit.

"If content is found in the collection that could violate the national security law, then loans of those materials must be suspended," it said. "The material can only be relisted after libraries have ensured that the content does not violate the law."

‘Not conducive” to creativity

The entire publishing industry is feeling the effects of the law, said published author Johnny Lau.

"It's not just the libraries, but the entire publishing industry," Lau said. "In the current climate, a lot of people are censoring themselves."

"The publishing industry and library collections as a whole are shrinking, and fewer and fewer books are getting published," he said. "The restrictions are affecting some people's desire to write books at all."

"This climate hinders both freedom of speech and publication," Lau said.

Former Hong Kong bookseller Lam Wing-kei, who fled to the democratic island of Taiwan after being detained by mainland Chinese authorities for selling "banned" books to customers in China, said the government has no choice but to censor libraries under the national security law.

"The Leisure and Cultural Services Department must follow the policies of the Hong Kong government, which is now the same as the mainland Chinese government," Lam said. "No book with any kind of ideological issue is going to get published now."

"The current climate in Hong Kong isn't conducive to creative work," he said.

Much as mainland Chinese writers used to get their banned books published in Hong Kong, authors who write about Hong Kong issues are now choosing to publish in Taiwan, where the publishing industry is much freer.

"There are more and more Chinese-language books getting published in Taiwan," Lam said. "Recent works include The Last Concession, which chronicles changes in Hong Kong, and Hong Kong Secret Operations about young people wanted [following the 2019 protests] who fled."

"It's not just social commentary, but literary works as well," Lam said. "Taiwan is the only market for Chinese-language books in the world that remains free and open."

"More and more Hong Kongers are coming to Taiwan to buy books, and they're surprised to see that there are so many being published here with a Hong Kong theme," he added.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Chen Zifei for RFA Cantonese.

The number of books on offer at Hong Kong's public libraries has fallen as officials remove books from shelves under a restrictive national security law imposed in the wake of the 2019 protest movement.

Since then, libraries have been required to remove politically sensitive titles from their collections, leading to a cull of books, and less time for staff to invest in new ones, according to the Leisure and Cultural Services Department.

"In order to maintain national security, more time is required to select suitable library materials, meaning that the size of the collection has also been reduced," the department said in a recent comment on an annual review of the city's public library services.

"Inspection of library books to maintain national security is an ongoing effort in Hong Kong's public libraries," it said in a response to a report from the city's audit office. "From time to time, complaints from the public are received, which require inspection of library materials.”

Titles addressing the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, as well as books written by jailed protest leader Joshua Wong and Occupy Central movement founder Benny Tai, have disappeared from library shelves since the law took effect on July 1, 2020, according to local media reports.

Hong Kong is in the throes of a "war on libraries," said current affairs commentator Sang Pu, who called on the government to disclose full details of books that have been removed from the collection, and to reinstate them.

He also called on Hong Kongers overseas to set up a repository of banned titles so future generations would be able to read them and their content wouldn’t be forgotten.

Informers

The general public have been actively encouraged by police to inform on any words or deeds that could be deemed subversive under the law, which criminalizes dissent in the form of words or deeds that "incite hatred" of the Hong Kong or Chinese authorities, leading to more than 40,000 tip-offs last year.

Many of the books quietly disappeared from libraries after denunciations in the government-backed media, which said they broke the national security law, according to reports in pro-democracy news outlets, some of which have themselves been forced to close amid investigation by the national security police.

"Hong Kong public libraries completed its review of [existing] library books that are clearly not conducive to national security, and has removed them from the collection," the Hong Kong Audit Commission said in an annual report released on April 26.

But it added: "As of February 2023, inspections and follow-up actions are ongoing."

It said government guidelines require libraries to "safeguard national security by preventing activities that could endanger it."

"In purchasing library materials, considering book proposals, accepting book donations and adding to collections [by] purchasing books, libraries must ensure that their collections do not prejudice national security," it said, recommending that new acquisitions are processed through the government's Book Registration Unit.

"If content is found in the collection that could violate the national security law, then loans of those materials must be suspended," it said. "The material can only be relisted after libraries have ensured that the content does not violate the law."

‘Not conducive” to creativity

The entire publishing industry is feeling the effects of the law, said published author Johnny Lau.

"It's not just the libraries, but the entire publishing industry," Lau said. "In the current climate, a lot of people are censoring themselves."

"The publishing industry and library collections as a whole are shrinking, and fewer and fewer books are getting published," he said. "The restrictions are affecting some people's desire to write books at all."

"This climate hinders both freedom of speech and publication," Lau said.

Former Hong Kong bookseller Lam Wing-kei, who fled to the democratic island of Taiwan after being detained by mainland Chinese authorities for selling "banned" books to customers in China, said the government has no choice but to censor libraries under the national security law.

"The Leisure and Cultural Services Department must follow the policies of the Hong Kong government, which is now the same as the mainland Chinese government," Lam said. "No book with any kind of ideological issue is going to get published now."

"The current climate in Hong Kong isn't conducive to creative work," he said.

Much as mainland Chinese writers used to get their banned books published in Hong Kong, authors who write about Hong Kong issues are now choosing to publish in Taiwan, where the publishing industry is much freer.

"There are more and more Chinese-language books getting published in Taiwan," Lam said. "Recent works include The Last Concession, which chronicles changes in Hong Kong, and Hong Kong Secret Operations about young people wanted [following the 2019 protests] who fled."

"It's not just social commentary, but literary works as well," Lam said. "Taiwan is the only market for Chinese-language books in the world that remains free and open."

"More and more Hong Kongers are coming to Taiwan to buy books, and they're surprised to see that there are so many being published here with a Hong Kong theme," he added.

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Chen Zifei for RFA Cantonese.

Internet Archive vowed to appeal after a U.S. district court judge on Friday sided with four major publishers who sued the nonprofit for copyright infringement.

Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, Internet Archives operated a controlled digital lending system, allowing users to digitally check out scanned copies of purchased or donated books on a one-to-one basis. As the public health crises forced school and library closures, the nonprofit launched the National Emergency Library, making 1.4 million digital books available without waitlists.

Hachette, HarperCollins, John Wiley & Sons, and Penguin Random House sued Internet Archive over its lending policies in June 2020. Judge John G. Koeltl of the Southern District of New York on Friday found in Hachette v. Internet Archive that the nonprofit "creates derivative e-books that, when lent to the public, compete with those authorized by the publishers."

A future in which libraries are just a shell for Big Tech's licensing software and Big Media's most popular titles would be awful—but that's where we're headed if this decision stands.

Internet Archive "argues that its digital lending makes it easier for patrons who live far from physical libraries to access books and that it supports research, scholarship, and cultural participation by making books widely accessible on the Internet," the judge wrote. "But these alleged benefits cannot outweigh the market harm to the publishers."

In a statement responding to the ruling, Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle pledged to keep fighting against the publishers.

"Libraries are more than the customer service departments for corporate database products. For democracy to thrive at global scale, libraries must be able to sustain their historic role in society—owning, preserving, and lending books," Kahle said. "This ruling is a blow for libraries, readers, and authors and we plan to appeal it."

Internet Archive's supporters have shared similar warnings throughout the ongoing court battle, including after the ruling Friday.

"In a chilling ruling, a lower court judge in New York has completely disregarded the traditional rights of libraries to own and preserve books in favor of maximizing the profits of Big Media conglomerates," declared Lia Holland, campaigns and communications director at the digital rights group Fight for the Future.

"We applaud the Internet Archive's appeal announcement, as well as their steadfast commitment to preserving the rights of all libraries and their patrons in the digital age," they said. "And our admiration is shared—over 14,000 people having signed our pledge to defend libraries' digital rights at BattleForLibraries.com this week alone."

Holland continued:

From a basic human rights perspective, it is patently absurd to equate an e-book license issued through a surveillance-ridden Big Tech company with a digital book file that is owned and preserved by a privacy-defending nonprofit library. Currently, publishers offer no option for libraries to own and preserve digital books—leaving digital books vulnerable to unauthorized edits, censorship, or downright erasure, and leaving library patrons vulnerable to surveillance and punishment for what they read.

In a world where libraries cannot own, preserve, or control the digital books in their collections, only the most popular, bestselling authors stand to benefit—at the expense of the vast majority of authors, whose books are preserved and purchased by libraries well after publishers have stopped promoting them. Further, today a disproportionate number of traditionally marginalized and local voices are being published in digital-only format, redoubling the need for a robust regime of library preservation to ensure that these stories survive for generations to come.

A future in which libraries are just a shell for Big Tech's licensing software and Big Media's most popular titles would be awful—but that's where we're headed if this decision stands. No book-lover who wants an equitable and trustworthy written world could find such a future desirable. Accordingly, we plan to organize an in-person action to demand robust ownership and preservation standards for digital books and libraries. For updates on when and where, check BattleForLibraries.com.

More than 300 authors last September signed an open letter led by Fight for the Future calling out publishers and trade associations for their actions against digital libraries, including the lawsuit targeting Internet Archive.

"Libraries saved my life as a young reader, and I've seen them do as much and more for so many others," said signatory Jeff Sharlet. "At a time when libraries are at the frontlines of fascism's assault on democracy, it is of greater importance than ever for writers to stand in solidarity with librarians in defense of the right to share stories. Democracy won't survive without it."

Fellow signatory Erin Taylor asserted that "the Internet Archive is a public good. Libraries are a public good. Only the most intellectually deprived soul would value profit over mass access to literature and knowledge."

Koeltl's ruling came just two days after the American Library Association released a report revealing that in 2022, a record-breaking 2,571 titles were challenged by pro-censorship groups pushing book bans, a 38% increase from the previous year.

Meanwhile, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday passed the so-called Parents Bill of Rights Act, which education advocates and progressive lawmakers argue is intended to ban books and further ostracize marginalized communities.

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

all we are saying…

Today, I took a photo walk around the Welling Court Mural Project in Astoria, Queens, NYC.

“Imagine a city where graffiti wasn’t illegal, a city where everybody could draw whatever they liked. Where every street was awash with a million colors and little phrases. Where standing at a bus stop was never boring. A city that felt like a party where everyone was invited, not just the estate agents and barons of big business. Imagine a city like that and stop leaning against the wall — it’s wet.” (Banksy)

“I believe we cannot escape our destiny to create whatever it is we make — jazz, a wooden spoon, or graffiti on the wall.” (Orson Welles)

“Art is for everybody.” (Keith Haring)

“The walls are the publishers of the poor.” (Eduardo Galeano)

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Mickey Z..

When hundreds of literary figures and employees of Penguin Random House took issue with the publisher’s $2 million book deal with right-wing Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett (Guardian, 10/27/22), they provoked a backlash that underscores the degree to which the right seeks to control speech and dissent.

While Barrett is one of the most extreme high court jurists in recent memory (Guardian, 8/26/22), the joint statement that was the target of the backlash highlighted her vote to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision which had recognized a constitutionally protected right to abortion. The letter urged the publishing house to reconsider the deal, which it stressed concerned “not just a book that we disagree with” but an “assault on inalienable human rights.”

Publisher’s Weekly (10/25/22) noted:

At the core of the statement argument against PRH’s decision to publish Coney Barrett is the alleged violation of the Bertelsmann Code of Conduct. The statement notes that Human Rights Watch, which was founded by former Random House publisher Robert L. Bernstein, cited the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights in declaring abortion access a human right. The Code of Conduct for PRH parent company Bertelsmann also cites that declaration, noting that the publisher is “committed to the principles” of the document. The statement claims that proceeding to publish Coney Barrett’s book would be in violation of both the company’s Code of Conduct and international human rights.

The signers focused on the policies of the company, insisting that Bertelsmann—a multinational media conglomerate based in Germany—uphold its own standards. This might be seen as a David vs. Goliath story, in which rank-and-file employees call on a powerful employer to choose its self-proclaimed principles over profit. The signatories pose no danger of silencing Barrett, one of the most powerful voices in the world, whose words will be widely read regardless of whether PRH pays her millions of dollars for the right to distribute them. But not everyone sees it that way.

‘What the left does’

Jonathan Turley (FoxNews.com, 11/2/22) denounces speech he disagrees with as “a general psychosis.”

“Of course they’re calling for censorship! This is what the left does!” hyperventilated Rod Dreher at American Conservative (10/29/22). Dreher, an author for a PRH imprint, added that the signers “do not believe that a female Supreme Court justice who believes in the sanctity of unborn human life (as do tens of millions of Americans) should have a platform.” He seemed incensed that many of the signers were denigrating their “own employer, in public, in an effort to censor Justice Barrett.”

On FoxNews.com (10/28/22), law professor Jonathan Turley wrote an op-ed headlined “Cancel Culture Keeps Targeting Amy Coney Barrett. Now It’s an Absurd Call to Ban Her Book.” The Washington Examiner‘s Quin Hillyer (10/28/22) scoffed, “More than 500 so-called literary figures need to get a life.” The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (Twitter, 10/27/22) called it an instance of “book banning.”

PEN America (10/31/22), perhaps the most mainstream organization to denounce the letter against Barrett’s book, said in a statement that while the political orientation of the Supreme Court was alarming, “if editors have concluded that a book…is of value to audiences, that decision should not be overturned at the behest of protesters who reject Coney Barrett’s views.” This seems to be not so much a defense of free expression as it is of editorial hierarchy, with the publishing world’s underlings enjoined to shut up once their bosses have reached a decision.

Some writers on the right wanted to put teeth in that judgment, arguing that letter signers must be punished severely for their insolence. Conservative journalist Cathy Young (Twitter, 10/28/22) called for the employees who signed the letter to be fired for “demonstrating their unfitness to work for a major publisher in a free society,” and Tablet writer and anti-woke crusader Wesley Yang (Twitter, 10/28/22) said the publisher “must fire every signatory and the wider industry must treat the signatory lists as a blacklist.”

The fallacy of free speech absolutism

Unsurprisingly, a for-profit media conglomerate takes a stand in favor of publishing a book it believes will make money (Wall Street Journal, 10/31/22).

The kerfuffle highlights a number of interesting contradictions and falsehoods that often pop up in right-wing freakouts about so-called liberal attacks on free speech. First of all, Barrett is hardly a lonely dissident fighting a censorship battle against an oppressive government. PRH is sticking with its contract with Barrett, despite all the outrage (Wall Street Journal, 10/31/22). And it isn’t as if liberal society could ever keep her from writing a book; conservative publishers like Encounter would certainly have offered her a contract if the big houses had passed.

Freedom of speech and of the press don’t mean everyone is entitled to a contract with a particular publisher, and Barrett’s pen is already far stronger than those of most writers: She has the ability, in her government job for life, to strike down our civil rights and liberties, and there is little us plebs can do about it. The conservative backlash is a naked attempt by the right to shield a powerful government figure from the hoi polloi—condemning even the discussion of whether her views need to be further amplified.

I have previously written about how these right-wing outbursts are often hypocritical and a form of projection, as the right will happily “cancel” leftists and liberals (FAIR.org, 10/23/20)—often enlisting the power of the state to turn their opinions into diktats. But the accusation that liberals are somehow censoring conservative thought by criticizing it also reminds us of the uncomfortable fallacy of free speech absolutism. Like media objectivity, it isn’t real.

Sure, we all like to think of ourselves as free-speech die-hards who would fight for the right for our enemies to disagree with us. But everyone who isn’t an anarchist thinks some forms of speech should be illegal—for example, “Give me all your money or I’ll kill you”—and no one who isn’t a sociopath thinks that you ought to say everything that’s legal to say.

Few people would question why employees of a publisher would object to their bosses approving a book that promoted slavery. If people see forced birth as the same sort of human rights atrocity, should they be condemned for raising similar objections? Meanwhile, there are certainly staffers at Evangelical publishing houses who would be alarmed to see a book defending reproductive rights in their lists; should they be attacked if they demanded that their employers stick to their proclaimed moral code?

The fact is, employees calling on their bosses to cancel a book deal, a performer boycotting Spotify because it gives a platform to disinformation, or an audience member heckling a speaker are all forms of speech. You can’t condemn any of it without letting go of your fanciful claim to free-speech absolutism.

Yang and Young appear to think criticizing a book deal is crossing a red line, that this is a form of speech that deserves not just condemnation but economic punishment. So there is the limit of their free speech advocacy—a limit, it should be pointed out, that seeks to punish the people with vastly less power in the conversation.

Associative freedom also key

To debunk the notion of free speech absolutism is not to reject the importance of free speech, which is vital to liberalism and democracy. Publications and publishing houses must have the freedom to have a point of view, and individuals must have the freedom to criticize an agenda that seeks to dial women’s rights back to the Middle Ages. In its statement in favor of the book’s publication, PEN America said it “is the role of major publishers to make available a wide array of ideas and perspectives.”

Surely all the open letter’s signatories would agree with that; the question is, how wide? PEN America’s leadership would draw a line somewhere; the letter-writers would draw it in a different place. That’s the disagreement—one that has to do more with how much you value the right to abortion than it does with how much you value the right to free speech.

Osita Nwanevu (New Republic, 7/6/20) defends “freedom of association, the under-heralded right of individuals to unite for a common purpose or in alignment with a particular set of values.”

Osita Nwanevu noted at the New Republic (7/6/20) that freedom of speech and freedom of association are both crucial liberal ideals, and yet “associative freedom is often entirely absent from popular discourse about liberalism.” That is certainly true about the hand-wringing over the future of “free society” in the PRH story. Nwanevu wrote:

While public universities in America are generally bound by the First Amendment, controversial speakers have no broad right to speak at private institutions. Those institutions do, however, have a right to decide what ideas they are and aren’t interested in entertaining, and what people they believe will or will not be useful to their communities of scholars—a right that limits the entry and participation not only of public figures with controversial views, but the vast majority of people in our society. Senators…have every right to have their views published in a newspaper. But they have no specific right to have those views published by any particular publication. Rather, publications have the right—both constitutionally as institutions of the press, and by convention as collections of individuals engaged in lawful projects—to decide what and whom they would or would not like to publish, based on whatever standards happen to prevail within each outlet.

Like campaigns against “cancel culture” and “wokeness,” the conservative agenda isn’t just about policing speech, but aims to punish those who challenge the establishment and social hierarchies. It is very much about destroying the associative freedom that is inherent to the existence of democratic society. That is the nature of conservatism, but these days that movement, falsely, takes on the rallying cry of “free speech” in doing so.

The post The Right Thinks Publishers Have No Right Not to Publish the Right appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Ari Paul.

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Our story “How Google’s Ad Business Funds Disinformation Around the World” found that, despite Google’s public commitments to fight disinformation, it continues to allow websites to use Google’s ad systems to profit from false and misleading content. Our reporting identified websites that were allowed to continue to collect revenue from Google ads, even on stories that appeared to be in violation of the company’s policies against unreliable and harmful claims related to COVID-19, health, elections and climate change. We also found that websites containing misinformation in languages other than English and smaller markets were more likely to be allowed to continue to profit from Google ads than similar English-language websites.

We analyzed datasets of articles and websites containing false claims to determine what proportion of them made money using Google’s ad platforms. We obtained these datasets from organizations that track online disinformation around the world and wrote software to determine whether a web address was currently earning money from Google ads. Between Aug. 23 and Sept. 13, 2022, we ran the datasets through this software system to calculate the proportion of web addresses monetizing with Google ads for each dataset. We include our detailed findings in Appendix A.

We analyzed 17 article and website datasets, totaling more than 13,000 active articles and over 8,000 domains, obtained from nine fact-checking and news quality monitoring organizations. Some of the datasets cover articles and websites from a particular country or region, while others cover subject matter, such as COVID-19 misinformation or climate change misinformation. In Appendix B we include a description of each dataset and the organizations that provided them.

The datasets varied in size, types of content and level of curation. We filtered all URL datasets to include only articles published after 2019 to keep the datasets recent and roughly within the same time frame. If the dataset provided information on the type of fact-checked content, we limited it to the most serious forms of disinformation or disinformation purveyors. For example, Brazil’s Netlab provided a column distinguishing between suspected and confirmed purveyors of disinformation, allowing us to select confirmed purveyors.

Some datasets included links to social media platforms, such as Facebook or Twitter. We excluded these links from our analysis. Some datasets also had links to images or pdfs, which we similarly excluded. See Appendix C for a full list of exclusions.

The datasets from the International Fact-Checking Network and Raskrinkavanje included articles that had been archived using a webpage archiving service such as archive.today. In these cases, we wrote programs to extract the original web addresses of the false or misleading articles. For the IFCN dataset, we extracted by hand any addresses that we could not extract by code. For Raskrinkavanje, we excluded from our final analysis any remaining links that could not be extracted. Links that could not be extracted accounted for less than 1% of the total webpages from the datasets. We do not have reason to believe these excluded links biased our results. See Appendix C for more detailed information.

Our system to determine whether a web address was currently earning money with Google’s ad systems consists of two components: a web scraper and a data analysis script.

A web scraper is software that can systematically extract and save data from a visited web page. ProPublica’s scraper uses a library called Playwright, which can mimic human behavior when visiting a site and is often used for automated website testing.

When our web scraper visits any web address, URL or base domain, it collects and saves the following information:

1. All network requests initiated by the webpage. Network requests are used to retrieve web content such as images, text and ads or to provide information such as user actions or profile information back to the web servers.
2. The response for each network request, if those requests went out to Google servers (a handful of servers we identified as serving or related to Google’s ad content). When successful, these responses contain ad content that the website loads onto the page.
3. The webpage content. Once the webpage loads, the scraper captures its HTML, the code that defines what a visitor to that page would see.

4. The ads.txt file: The ads.txt file lists all of a website’s advertising partners. Not all websites make this file available to visitors, but it is highly recommended by Google and the IAB Tech Lab as a web advertising transparency best practice.
5. A random subpage: When visiting a website, the scraper will select an arbitrary subpage link found on the base domain (e.g. for test.com, test.com/morecontent) and also scrape the same information for that page. This is done to capture cases where the homepage for a website does not run ads, but sections of the website do.

Our analysis tool processes the above data from each URL to determine whether the address is valid, and if so whether it is monetizing with Google’s ad systems.

We manually identified 10 separate network request and response pairs that indicate a webpage is making a request to a Google server for one or multiple ads. If the response did not contain advertising content, then we did not count the website as monetizing with Google. (This may occur, for example, if the webpage makes an ad request, but Google has demonetized the specific page or website.) We then wrote software that would look for these request-response pairs in the data collected by our web scraper.

We also identified scenarios where a scraper visit did not result in valid webpage content. These invalid visits can mean the scraper was redirected to a different page from the original page, the content at the web address is no longer available, or the server is no longer reachable.

Thus, for a single web address, there are three possible outcomes of the analysis:

1. The web address is valid, and it is monetizing with Google’s ad systems.
2. The web address is valid, but it is not monetizing with Google’s ad systems.
3. The web address is not valid or the content has been removed.

We scraped and analyzed each web address in our 17 datasets to determine which of the three categories it fell under. We then compiled the results in a spreadsheet. Appendix A provides the detailed results of this analysis.

We hand-checked the results of all of the smaller domain datasets by visiting each page and determining the validity of its web address and whether the webpage was monetizing via Google’s ad systems. For the larger datasets containing individual webpages, we extracted and checked a random sample of web addresses by hand, using a 90% confidence level and 10% margin of error.

The scraper and analysis tools were designed to make false positives (where we falsely flag a web address as monetizing with Google) very rare. In fact, we never identified a false positive during our audit. There were some instances where ads were displayed at the time of the scrape but not when we manually visited the page later on (or vice versa). In these cases, we manually examined the scraped data to confirm ad content was served at the time of the scrape. There were a few rare instances where content returned from the ad server was never loaded on the page, possibly because of coding errors on the webpage. We still counted these cases as positives, since they are indications of an active monetization relationship with Google.

False negatives (where the scraper did not find ads on the page but ads were present) were more common due to several scenarios: For example, the scraper was sometimes blocked from accessing a page or failed to bypass page pop-ups such as consent forms. In our audits we saw false negative rates of between 0% and 13%.

Because we found false negatives more often than false positives, the true proportion of these web addresses monetizing with Google’s ad systems is likely slightly higher than what we reported.

Dataset name

Data source

Languages covered

Regions covered

Domains or Web Pages

Number of valid web addresses analyzed

Number of valid web addresses monetizing Google ads

% of valid web addresses monetizing Google  ads

Africa Check

Misinformation

Web Pages

Africa Check

English

Nigeria, South Africa, and Kenya

Web pages

66

38

57.6

Africa Check

Misinformation

Web Pages

Senegal

Africa Check

French

Senegal, Guinea, Mali, Côte d'Ivoire, and Cameroon

Web pages

44

29

65.9

Balkans

MisinformationWeb Pages

Raskrinkavanje

Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian

Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Web pages

9,973

6,216

62.3

Balkans Publishers

​​Raskrinkavanje

Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian

Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Domains

30

26

86.7

Brazil Publishers

Netlab

Portuguese

Brazil

Domains

30

24

80

Latin American Publishers

Chequeado

Spanish, Portuguese

Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Venezuela, Peru and Mexico

Domains

49

19

38.8

Covid Disinformation Pages

International Fact-Checking Network

Various

Global

Web pages

814

338

41.5

NewsGuard Publisher list

NewsGuard

Various

Global

Domains

7,739

4,186

54.1

Turkey Disinformation Pages

Teyit

Turkish

Turkey

Web pages

1,035

756

73

Turkey Publishers

Teyit

Turkish

Turkey

Domains

50

45

90

Spanish Language Publishers

EU DisinfoLab

Spanish

Spain

Domains

32

14

43.8

German Language Publishers

EU DisinfoLab

German

Germany, Austria and Switzerland

Domains

30

10

33.3

EU

Disinformation Pages

EU DisinfoLab

Various

EU

Web pages

235

57

24.3

Climate

Disinformation Pages

Science Feedback

Various

Global

Web pages

427

86

20.1

All datasets were filtered to remove duplicates, archived URLs that could not be successfully unarchived, data before 2019 and URLs from social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Weibo, Pinterest, Telegram and WhatsApp (see full list in Appendix C).

Website: https://africacheck.org/

Description: Africa Check is an African nonprofit fact-checking organization founded in South Africa in 2012.

Datasets analyzed:

• Articles in French from Senegal, Guinea, Mali, Côte d’Ivoire and Cameroon between 2019 and 2022 fact-checked and determined to be misinformation.
• Articles in English from Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya between 2019 and 2022 fact-checked and determined to be misinformation.Raskrinkavanje

Website: https://raskrinkavanje.ba/

Description: Raskrinkavanje is a fact-checking program for media organizations in the Balkans. It was founded in 2017 by Zašto ne, a civil society organization based in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Datasets analyzed:

• Articles from the region between 2019 and July 2022 that were fact-checked by Raskrinkavanje and determined to be misinformation.
• Thirty websites that were most frequently identified as publishing misinformation by Raskrinkavanje in the region from 2019 to July 2022.Netlab

Website: http://www.netlab.eco.ufrj.br/

Description: Netlab is a research laboratory of the School of Communication of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) that uses network analysis to study online misinformation.

Datasets analyzed:

• A list of websites shared within Brazilian right wing and left wing WhatsApp and Telegram groups and channels in August 2022 and flagged by researchers as a source of disinformation in Portuguese.Chequeado

Website: https://chequeado.com/

Description: Chequeado is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news monitoring and fact-checking organization founded in Argentina in 2010.

Datasets analyzed:

• Websites determined by LatamChequea, Chequado’s fact-checking partners in Latin America, to be spreading false information.International Fact-Checking Network

Website: https://www.poynter.org/ifcn/

Description: The International Fact-Checking Network is a network of 100 fact-checking organizations around the world. It was launched in 2015 by the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit journalism institute based in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Datasets analyzed:

• COVID: links to social media and news content spreading misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic.NewsGuard

Website: https://www.newsguardtech.com/

Description: NewsGuard is a company that provides trust ratings for the most visited websites in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Germany, France and Italy.

Datasets analyzed:

• Domains for news websites around the world rated by NewGuard. Reliability ratings range from 0 to 100 (0 being completely untrustworthy).Teyit

Website: https://teyit.org/

Description: Teyit is a Turkish nonprofit fact-checking and media literacy social enterprise founded in 2016.

Datasets analyzed:

• Articles that were published in 2019 or later that contained claims categorized as “incorrect association,” “manipulation,” or “distortion” and which the fact-checkers had not seen subsequently corrected. (Fact-checkers provided access to a database containing a wide range of thousands of fact-checks which ProPublica filtered based on the previous criteria.)EU DisinfoLab

Website: https://www.disinfo.eu/

Description: EU DisinfoLab is a Brussels-based nonprofit organization that studies misinformation in the EU.

Datasets analyzed:

• Articles from the region between 2019 and present that were fact-checked by EU DisinfoLab and determined to be misinformation.
• Websites from Spain and German-speaking countries that were identified as sources of false and misleading claims in the regions.Science Feedback

Website: https://sciencefeedback.co/

Description: Science Feedback is a nonprofit based in France that produces scientist-expert fact-checks for health and climate news articles.

Datasets analyzed:

• Articles related to climate and climate change published in 2019 or later that Science Feedback rated their lowest rating, “False.”

All datasets were cleaned with the intention of removing invalid links, social media traffic, archived content and images/PDFs.

Any links originating from the below social media or content hosting sites were removed from the final analysis.

• Google Drive
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Pinterest
• Telegram
• TikTok
• Twitter
• Vimeo
• Weibo
• WhatsApp
• YouTube

Any links ending in any of the below were automatically excluded from the final analysis:

• .png
• .jpg
• .jpeg
• .pdf
• ?type=image

Any of the archiving sites below were visited and an attempt was made to extract the archived URL. If the extraction failed or the extracted link was of a type that should be excluded from the final analysis anyway, the URL was discarded.

• Web.archive.org
• Webcache.googleusercontent.com
• Archive.today
• google.com/url?
• perma.cc

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Ruth Talbot, Jeff Kao, Craig Silverman and Anna Klühspies.

A media bribe? More like the deal of the century.

Fifty-five million dollars does sound like a lot of money. It could buy you a fantastic jet-setting lifestyle, homes around the world and certainly the freedom to never work again.

But what it won’t buy you is influence over a near 200-year-old industry that costs billions to run every year.

• READ MORE: Local Democracy Reporting reports on Asia Pacific Report

Yet, as the government’s Public Interest Journalism Fund turns towards its home straight, there is the baffling suggestion that somehow editors around New Zealand have all been “bought” by the Labour government.

It is a false, dangerous and frankly lazy assumption.

One of the bigger recipients of the fund is the Local Democracy Reporting scheme. It takes about $1.5 million a year. It will likely always need public money because it was set up to fix a problem.

Regional news is struggling. Advertising revenue has been hoovered by tech giants.

Facebook versus the Akaroa Mail… who would you bet on?

Slashed to survive
So, local radio stations, community papers and even regional titles in place for more than a century have had to slash to survive.

Reporters could no more sit in council meetings, chase up the activities of ports or dig into what district health boards are up to. There wasn’t the time. There wasn’t the money.

Journalists, already earning scandalously small wages, got sacked and local news got smaller.

Private media did not step in to fill the gap as there was no profit to be had.

So local lawmakers were quietly left alone to manage ratepayer money. Some did better than others.

Addressing this information vacuum, RNZ and the News Publishers’ Association got creative.

In 2019, they set up a project known as Local Democracy Reporting. Based on similar schemes in Canada and the UK, it now manages 15 reporters around the country.

Seeking the truth
The journalists, funded by taxpayer money, are employed to go and seek truth from publicly elected people and organisations.

Stories they write can be accessed by rival media outlets at the same time as they go to print by the host newsroom. It is, at its core, a domestic wire service.

Last year, LDR reporters wrote more than 3000 local stories from around the country generating more than 9 million page views.

Stories from the top to bottom of New Zealand were shared for free to the 30 media partners who sign up to the scheme.

And since the project’s inception in 2019, how many stories have been questioned by the purse holders at NZ On Air? Not one. Not a single email, telephone call or meeting has questioned the editorial output of any one of the reporters.

Neither has there been a single suggestion of a news line that reporters might consider. And if there had been, you can take it as gospel that these reporters would chuck the suggestions straight in the bin.

Journalists value their independence.

LDR reporters not ‘newbies’
LDR reporters are not “newbies” to the game either. They are at least mid-career and know their patches well. Most are part of a newsroom they worked in before LDR existed and are well in tune with their audience.

They are Māori, Pākehā, female, male, old and young. But most importantly they are skilled reporters who spend their time searching for fact, inconsistency, lies and truth.

The idea that they and their editors are now craven to government paymasters that they have never met is both preposterous and insulting.

And the best way to see this is to look at the stories. They hardly paint the government of the day in a flattering light.

Covid-19 rules, new laws for farmers, racial inequity and management of water are just some of the topics given regional voice. In these stories, government ministers don’t get a look in.

Some who decry public funding of news are also quick to complain that the ‘metropolitan elite’ don’t pay enough attention to the smaller towns and communities.

They say the mainstream media has no clue about ‘real New Zealand, doing it tough’.

Stitching it all together
LDR is in place to address that very concern.

Up and down the country, the reporters go out and talk to iwi, business owners, parents, councillors and mayors. They stitch it all together and get it in the news.

If you want to judge the success and worth of a local democracy reporter, go talk to your local councillors. Ask if they enjoy having reporters present at meetings. If they are honest, they will tell you that they don’t.

They know public discussion of any rate increase, speed limit change or building project could be online to a big audience within minutes.

The LDR project constantly keeps its eye on the use of public cash all around the country. It costs every New Zealander about 30 cents a year. What a bargain.

David Reid is the Local Democracy Reporting manager. Asia Pacific Report is an LDR partner.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.