Prime Minister La’aulialemalietoa Leuatea Schmidt says international media are “in the dark” about the reasons behind his decision to ban the Samoa Observerfrom government press conferences, arguing that overseas attention has created “support for one newspaper at the expense of the entire country.”
He also addressed concerns raised locally, directing criticism at the Journalists Association of Samoa (JAWS) for advising him to reconsider the ban.
“Now you have given me advice, but you should advise where the problem came from,” he said at a media conference this week. “Why are you advising me to lift the ban when you should be advising them [Samoa Observer]?”
La’aulialemalietoa said his duty was to the nation. “Who do I stand for? It is the country I represent. I will not back down from protecting the people of Samoa.”
He said he remained firm in his decision but hoped for a “constructive resolution” ahead. “As the Prime Minister, I will stand strong to do the right thing.”
On international reactions, he said some overseas commentators “do not understand Samoa” and claimed outside support was being used “to support one business and throw away the whole country that is trying to protect its future.”
He said the media was “part of democracy,” but argued that global reporting had focused on the ban itself rather than what he described as the issues that led to it.
Questioned actions of journalists
Turning to domestic matters, the Prime Minister also questioned the actions of local journalists, saying JAWS did not engage with ministries affected by earlier Samoa Observer reporting.
“You are talking to me, but why didn’t you talk to the ministries impacted?” he asked.
He also raised questions about the role of a media council. “Where do I go, or where does the government go, if this sort of thing happens?” he said, adding he was unsure whether such a body existed or had convened.
The Prime Minister said his concerns extended beyond media conduct to the protection of the Samoan language and culture.
“My whole being is about the Gagana Samoa. If there is no language, there is no country,” he said.
He also accused the Samoa Observer of showing disrespect and said harmful reporting left lasting effects.
“If you say something that hurts a person, it will stay with the person forever,” he said.
La’aulialemalietoa said he made it clear upon taking office that his position “is Samoa’s chair,” and the government must correct misinformation when it believed reporting was inaccurate or misleading.
“The government has to say something if a journalist is in the wrong,” he said, arguing that overseas commentary did not reflect local realities.
He said the government supported the media but insisted that cooperation depended on factual reporting.
“If you want to work together, the opportunity is open, but we cannot move forward until the writings are corrected.”
He dismissed one allegation as “a pure lie,” accusing journalists of trespassing onto his land.
“People do not walk onto my land like it’s a market,” he said, urging respect for aganuʻu and cultural protocol.
After waging war on public broadcasting and the arts, the Trump administration threatened last month to cut federal funding to nine prominent colleges unless they restricted campus speech that opposed conservatives.
“Academic freedom is not absolute,” read part of a Compact for Excellence in Higher Education that offered the schools preferential research funding if they obliged with a laundry list of demands that would restrict expression. If any school refused the demands, it “elects to forego federal benefits,” the compact read.
While the corporate media chose to gloss over the full extent to which the proposal undermined free expression, thousands of students across the country read it for themselves and took to the streets, demanding that their schools not capitulate.
And although none of the initial nine universities have signed on thus far, President Trump has now offered the agreement to every college in the country.
What does the compact say?
The compact was sent on October 2 to the University of Arizona, Brown University, Dartmouth College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, the University of Texas at Austin, Vanderbilt University, and the University of Virginia.
Nine pages long, it listed almost two dozen demands. Among the most controversial was one requiring schools to abolish “institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas.” Students noted these terms were vague, perhaps intentionally.
“What does that mean?” said Raya Gupta, a freshman at Brown who protested the compact. “We can be pretty sure that the Trump administration is going to use that to shut down programs like the Center for Students of Color and our LGBTQ+ center.”
The compact also demanded professors, when acting “as university representatives,” refrain from speaking on “societal and political events.”
Timmons Roberts, a professor of environment and society at Brown, said his courses on climate change fall into those categories.
“How am I going to teach what I need to teach?” he said. “That is a direct attack on the freedom of speech.”
In another clause, the compact demanded that universities “screen out” international students who “demonstrate hostility” to US values and allies, and share “all available information” with the State Department.
Universities risk “saturating the campus with noxious values, such as anti-Semitism,” the compact read.
Notably, the State Department this year has revoked the visas of hundreds of students it accuses without evidence of supporting antisemitic terrorism.
Students and faculty claimed other demands—a limit on international students to 15 percent of the school population, sex-based definitions of gender, and an SAT requirement—eroded institutional independence.
“We are not a dog,” said Clay Dickerson, the student council president at UVA, at a protest. “We are not to be leashed up by the federal government and dragged around.”
Demonstrators at Brown University taped their mouths shut to emphasize how they believe the compact would have a chilling effect on free speech. Students and faculty at all nine institutions that initially received the compact have protested it, as have thousands of other students across the country. | Photo by Jake Parker
How did universities respond?
Although federal officials set a final deadline of November 21 to respond to the compact, seven of the original nine schools have already rejected it. Vanderbilt and UT Austin have not indicated whether they will sign on.
But, in a social media post, Trump expanded the compact’s scope to all universities, claiming it will “bring about the Golden Age” of higher education.
While only two universities—the New College of Florida and Valley Forge Military College—have officially agreed to the compact, many of the schools that rejected it appeared more concerned with preserving merit-based research funding than protecting free expression.
In his response to the federal government, Arizona President Suresh Garimella wrote that his school has “much common ground” with the compact’s ideas, but does not agree with “a federal research funding system based on anything other than merit.”
UVA Interim President Paul Mahoney’s response was almost identical. Penn President Larry Jameson’s only justification was that he is “committed to merit-based achievement.” MIT President Sally Kornbluth wrote that the compact would “restrict” her school’s independence. But “fundamentally, the premise of the document is inconsistent with our core belief that scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone,” she wrote.
Only three schools—Brown, Dartmouth, and USC—heavily emphasized academic freedom in their responses.
“It’s disappointing,” said Jade Personna, a senior at MIT who protested against the compact, “that the school, which has a lot more power and leverage than I do, is not willing to stand up for us in that way.”
Personna said she believed MIT treaded lightly to prevent a brash response from Trump. But she would have preferred “stronger language,” she said.
It remains unclear what will happen to the schools that did not sign. In early November, Project Censored requested comment from the Education Department, but received an automated response: “Unfortunately, Democrat Senators are blocking passage of [a spending bill]. … We will respond to emails once government functions resume.”
What did the media cover?
The Wall Street Journalreported first on the compact, but its main and deck headlines included no mention of free speech. Six paragraphs in, after referencing the SAT requirement, the story mentioned the clause banning “institutional units” that “belittle” conservative values.
The article included no reference to clauses prohibiting professors from discussing “societal and political events” and mandating that schools screen foreign students who “demonstrate hostility” to US allies. Neither did stories by the New York Times, CNN, and USA Today.
The Washington Post’s story does mention the “societal and political events” clause—thirty paragraphs in. But, like the others, it doesn’t say international students would be screened for their values.
In its framing, CNN initially downplayed free speech implications, describing the effective ban on anti-conservative speech as a policy “to foster ‘a vibrant marketplace of ideas on campus,’” before quoting the rest of the clause seven paragraphs in.
Personna, the MIT student, said it was “concerning” to see that the establishment press did not cover all of the compact’s free-speech implications. Although she read the compact in full, individuals who relied on media summaries may have lacked critical information. “We all need to look at the things that are most alarming,” she said in reference to the compact’s free-speech clauses, because they can become a “stepping stone for the Trump administration to expand its power further.”
But even with the selective coverage, student groups on campus publicized the unfiltered truth, Personna said.
“The Trump administration very much miscalculated … how easy it would be to coerce people into signing something like this,” she said.
This essay first appeared on https://www.projectcensored.org/attack-freedom-of-speech-trump-higher-ed/
Since August, the US has been amassing military assets in the Caribbean. Warships, bombers and thousands of troops have been joined by the USS Gerald R. Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, in the largest regional deployment in decades. Extrajudicial strikes against small vessels, which UN experts have decried as violations of international law, have killed at least 80 civilians (CNN, 11/14/25).
Many foreign policy analysts believe that regime change in Venezuela is the ultimate goal (Al Jazeera, 10/24/25; Left Chapter, 10/21/25), but the Trump administration instead claims it is fighting “narcoterrorism,” accusing Caracas of flooding the US with drugs via the Cartel of the Suns and Tren de Aragua, both designated as foreign terrorist organizations.
“President [Trump] Expected to Sign Bill on Release of Epstein Files” read the November 19, 2025 New York Times headline. The report came a day after the House of Representatives passed a bill to release the government’s case files on the deceased convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, with only a single dissenting vote. The Senate followed with unanimous approval. What the files contain…
There’s been skillful work in journalism’s dark arts on display in the UK this past week, as the nasty British right-wing media pack tore down two senior BBC executives. The right-wing culture warriors will be celebrating big time.
They reckon they’ve put a big dent in Britain’s most trusted and most used news media with the scalps of director-general Tim Davie and director of news Deborah Turness.
Best of all, the London Daily Telegraph was able to make it look like an inside job (leaning into a paean of outrage from a former part-time “standards” adviser), hiding its hit job behind the pretence of serious investigative journalism.
For the paper long dubbed the Torygraph, it’s just another day of pulling down the country’s centrist institutions for not being right wing enough in the destructive, highly politicised world of British news media.
Sure, there’s criticisms to be made of the BBC’s news output. There’s plenty of research and commentary that pins the broadcaster for leaning over backwards to amplify right-wing talking points over hot-button issues like immigration and crime. (ABC insiders here in Australia call it the preemptive buckle.)
Most recently, for example, a Cardiff University report last month found that nearly a quarter of BBC News programmes included Nigel Farage’s Reform Party — far more coverage than similar-sized parties like the centrist Liberal Democrats or the Greens received.
It’s why there are mixed views about Davie (who started in the marketing rather than the programme-making side of the business), while the generally respected Turness is being mourned and protested more widely.
BBC’s damage-control plan
The resignations flow from the corporation’s damage-control plan around an earlier — and more genuine — BBC scandal: the 2020 expose that then rising star Martin Bashir had forged documents to nab a mid-1990s Princess Diana interview. You know the one: the royal-rocking “there were three of us in the marriage” one.
The Boris Johnson government grabbed onto the scandal as an opportunity to drive “culture change”, as then Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden put it in an interview in Murdoch’s The Times. As part of that change, the BBC board (almost always the villain in BBC turmoil) decided to give the Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee a bit of a hand, by adding an external “adviser”.
Enter Michael Prescott, a former News Corp political reporter before moving on to PR and lobbying. Not a big BBC gig (it pays $30,000 a year), but it came with the fancy title of “Editorial Adviser”.
Roll forward four years: new government, new board, new BBC scandal. Prescott’s term ended last July. But he left a land-mine behind: a 19-page jeremiad, critiquing the BBC and its staff over three of the right’s touchstone issues: Trump, Gaza and trans people.
It fingered the BBC’s respected Arab programming for anti-Israel bias and smeared LGBTQIA+ reporters for promoting a pro-trans agenda.
Last week, his letter turned up (surprise!) — all over the Telegraph’sfront pages, staying there every day since last Tuesday, amplified by its partner on the right, the Daily Mail, helped along with matching deplora-quotes from conservative leader Kemi Badenoch and demands for answers from the Tory MP who chairs the House of Commons Culture Standing Committee.
The one stumble sustaining the outrage? Back in November 2024, on the BBC’s flagship Panorama immediately before the US presidential election, snippets of Trump’s speech on the day of the January 6 riot had been spliced together, bringing together words which had been spoken 50 minutes apart.
Not for the first time, heads have rolled at the BBC following a puffed-up scandal pushed by the UK’s Tory press. Will the ABC learn the lessons of its British compatriot? https://t.co/nteARbd2M3
Carelessness . . . or bias?
Loose editing? Carelessness? Or (as the cacophony on the right insist) demonstrable anti-Trump bias?
The real problem? The loose editing took the report over one of the right’s red lines: suggesting — however lightly — that Trump was in any way responsible for what happened at the US Capital that day.
Feeding the right’s fury, last Thursday the BBC released its findings that a newsreader’s facial expression when she changed a script on-air from “pregnant people” to “pregnant women” laid the BBC “open to the interpretation that it indicated a particular viewpoint in the controversies currently surrounding trans identity”.
Even as the British news media has deteriorated into the destructive, mean-spirited beast that it has become, outdated syndication arrangements mean Australia’s legacy media has to pretend to take it seriously. And our own conservative media just can’t resist joining in the mother country’s culture wars.
An Australian Financial Review opinion piece by the masthead’s European correspondent Andrew Tillett took the opportunity to rap the knuckles of the ABC, the BBC and “their alleged cabals of leftist journalists and content producers”, while Jacquelin Magnay at The Australian called for a clean-out at the BBC due to its pivot “from providing factual news to becoming an activist for the trans lobby and promoting pro-Gaza voices”.
Trump, of course, was not to be left out of the pile-on, with his press secretary Karoline Leavitt calling the BBC “100 percent fake news” — and giving the UK Telegraph another front page to keep the story alive for another day. Overnight, Trump got back into the headlines as he announced his trademark US$1 billion demand on media that displeases him.
It’s not the first time Britain’s Tory media have brought down a BBC boss for being insufficiently right wing. Back in 1987, Thatcher appointed ex-Daily Mail boss Marmaduke Hussey as BBC chair. Within three months, he shocked the niceties of British institutional life when he fired director-general Alastair Milne over the BBC’s reporting on the conservative government.
Here we are almost 40 years later: another puffed-up scandal. Another BBC head falling to the outrage of the British Tory press.
Christopher Warren is an Australian journalist and Crikey’s media correspondent. He was federal secretary of the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance (MEAA) until April 2015, and is a past president of the International Federation of Journalists. This article was first published by Crikey and is republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.
The Paris-based global media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders has called on the Samoan Prime Minister to lift the ban preventing the daily newspaper Samoa Observer from attending government press conferences.
“The measure is totally unacceptable — it comes after one of its journalists filed a complaint over violence committed by the PM’s security officers,” said RSF in a post on its BlueSky news feed.
Samoan Prime Minister La’aulialemalietoa Leuatea Polataivao Schmidt “temporarily” banned the Samoa Observer on Monday from engagements with him and his ministers, triggering a wave of condemnation from Pacific and global media freedom organisations.
#Samoa: RSF is calling on the Prime Minister to lift the ban preventing the daily #SamoaObserver from attending government press conferences. The measure is totally unacceptable — it comes after one of its journalists filed a complaint over violence committed by the PM’s security officers.
As other criticism of the Samoan Prime Minister continued to flow during the week, former prime minister and leader of the Samoa Uniting Party, Fiame Naomi Mata’afa, said the ban was a “clear attempt to silence scrutiny” and a serious decline in Samoa’s democratic standards.
Quoted in the Samoa Observer today, Fiame said that when a person held public office, transparency was an obligation, not a choice.
She warned that democracy weakened not through a single dramatic event, but through a series of actions that slowly eroded transparency and silenced independent voices.
Fiame said the banning of a major newspaper like the Samoa Observer could not be viewed as a simple administrative decision.
“It is an act that strikes at the heart of media freedom, a right that allows the public to understand and question those who hold power,” she said.
Fiame reflected on her own time as prime minister, noting that no journalist or media organisation had ever ever been shut out, regardless of how challenging their questions were.
She said leadership required openness, accountability, and the ability to face criticism without fear or restriction.
Meanwhile, the Samoa Observer’s editor, Shalveen Chand, reported that the Journalists Association of [Western] Samoa (JAWS) had also urged Prime Minister La’aulialemalietoa to reconsider the decision and lift the ban on the newspaper’s journalists from attending his press conferences.
JAWS said in a statement it was deeply concerned that such bans might “become the norm” for the current government and for future governments.
On Tuesday, the White House doubled down on Trump’s sexist remark toward a journalist last week, essentially claiming that the reporter had it coming for asking a legitimate question relating to the Epstein files. Bloomberg reporter Catherine Lucey was among the press gaggle aboard Air Force One on Friday. In a follow-up question to an earlier query on the Epstein files, Lucey asked Trump why…
The UN Security Council passed a regime change resolution against Gaza on Monday, effectively issuing a mandate for an invasion force to enter the besieged coastal enclave and install a US-led ruling authority by force.
Passing with 13 votes in favour and none in defiance, the new UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution has given the United States a mandate to create what it calls an “International Stabilisation Force” (ISF) and “Board of Peace” committee to seize power in Gaza.
US President Donald Trump has hailed the resolution as historic, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has stood in opposition to an element of the resolution that mentions “Palestinian Statehood”.
In order to understand what has just occurred, it requires a breakdown of the resolution itself and the broader context surrounding the ceasefire deal.
When these elements are combined, it becomes clear that this resolution is perhaps one of the most shameful to have passed in the history of the United Nations, casting shame on it and undermining the very basis on which it was formed to begin with.
An illegal regime change resolution In September 2025, a United Nations commission of inquiry found Israel to have committed the crime of genocide in the Gaza Strip.
For further context, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the most powerful international legal entity and organ of the UN, ruled that Israel is plausibly committing genocide and thus issued orders for Tel Aviv to end specific violations of international law in Gaza, which were subsequently ignored.
Taking this into consideration, the UN itself cannot claim ignorance of the conditions suffered by the people of Gaza, nor could it credibly posit that the United States is a neutral actor capable of enforcing a balanced resolution of what its own experts have found to be a genocide.
This resolution itself is not a peace plan and robs Palestinians of their autonomy entirely; thus, it is anti-democratic in its nature.
It was also passed due in large part to threats from the United States against both Russia and China, that if they vetoed it, the ceasefire would end and the genocide would resume. Therefore, both Beijing and Moscow abstained from the vote, despite the Russian counterproposal and initial opposition to the resolution.
It also gives a green light to what the US calls a “Board of Peace”, which will work to preside over governing Gaza during the ceasefire period. The head of this board is none other than US President Trump himself, who says he will be joined by other world leaders.
Former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who launched the illegal invasion of Iraq, has been floated as a potential “Board of Peace” leader also.
Vowed a ‘Gaza Riviera’
On February 4 of this year, President Trump vowed to “take over” and “own” the Gaza Strip. The American President later sought to impose a plan for a new Gaza, which he even called the “Gaza Riviera”, which was drawn up by Zionist economist Joseph Pelzman.
Part of Pelzman’s recommendations to Trump was that “you have to destroy the whole place, restart from scratch”.
As it became clear that the US alone could not justify an invasion force and simply take over Gaza by force, on behalf of Israel, in order to build “Trump Gaza”, a casino beach land for fellow Jeffrey Epstein-connected billionaires, a new answer was desperately sought.
Then came a range of meetings between Trump administration officials and regional leaderships, aimed at working out a strategy to achieve their desired goals in Gaza.
After the ceasefire was violated in March by the Israelis, leading to the mass murder of around 17,000 more Palestinians, a number of schemes were being hatched and proposals set forth.
The US backed and helped to create the now-defunct so-called “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” (GHF) programme, which was used to privatise the distribution of aid in the territory amidst a total blockade of all food for three months.
Starving Palestinians, who were rapidly falling into famine, flocked to these GHF sites, where they were fired upon by US private military contractors and Israeli occupation forces, murdering more than 1000 civilians.
The ‘New York Declaration’
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and France were busy putting together what would become the “New York Declaration” proposal for ending the war and bringing Western nations to recognise the State of Palestine at the UN.
Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, here came Trump’s so-called “peace plan” that was announced at the White House in October. This plan appeared at first to be calling for a total end to the war, a mutual prisoner exchange and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza in a phased approach.
From the outset, Trump’s “20-point plan” was vague and impractical. Israel immediately violated the ceasefire from the very first day and has murdered nearly 300 Palestinians since then. The first phase of the ceasefire deal was supposed to end quickly, ideally within five days, but the deal has stalled for over a month.
Throughout this time, it has become increasingly clear that the Israelis are not going to respect the “Yellow Line” separation zone and have violated the agreement through operating deeper into Gaza than they had originally agreed to.
The Israeli-occupied zone was supposed to be 53 percent of Gaza; it has turned out to be closer to 58 percent. Aid is also not entering at a sufficient rate, despite US and Israeli denials; this has been confirmed by leading rights groups and humanitarian organisations.
In the background, the US team dealing with the ceasefire deal that is headed by Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff has been juggling countless insidious proposals for the future of Gaza.
Even publicly stating that reconstruction will only take place in the Israeli-controlled portion of the territory, also floating the idea that aid points will be set up there in order to force the population out of the territory under de facto Hamas control. This has often been referred to as the “new Gaza plan”.
The disastrous GHF
As this has all been in the works, including discussions about bringing back the disastrous GHF, the Israelis have been working alongside four ISIS-linked collaborator death squads that it controls and who operate behind the Yellow Line in Gaza.
No mechanisms have been put in place to punish the Israelis for their daily violations of the ceasefire, including the continuation of demolition operations against Gaza’s remaining civilian infrastructure. This appears to be directly in line with Joseph Pelzman’s plan earlier this year to “destroy the whole place”.
The UNSC resolution not only makes Donald Trump the effective leader of the new administrative force that will be imposed upon the Gaza Strip, but also greenlights what it calls its International Stabilisation Force. This ISF is explicitly stated to be a multinational military force that will be tasked with disarming Hamas and all Palestinian armed groups in the Gaza Strip.
The US claims it will not be directly involved in the fighting with “boots on the ground”; it has already deployed hundreds of soldiers and has been reportedly building a military facility, which they deny is a base, but for all intents and purposes will be one.
Although it may not be American soldiers killing and dying while battling Palestinian resistance groups, they will be in charge of this force.
This is not a “UN peacekeeping force” and is not an equivalent to UNIFIL in southern Lebanon; it is there to carry out the task of completing Israel’s war goal of defeating the Palestinian resistance through force.
In other words, foreign soldiers will be sent from around the world to die for Israel and taxpayers from those nations will be footing the bill.
‘Self-determination’ reservation
The only reason why Israel has reservations about this plan is because it included a statement claiming that if the Palestinian Authority (PA) — that does not control Gaza and is opposed by the majority of the Palestinian people — undergoes reforms that the West and Israel demand, then conditions “may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood”.
A keyword here is “may”, in other words, it is not binding and was simply added in to give corrupted Arab leaderships the excuse to vote yes.
Hamas and every other Palestinian political party, with the exception of the mainstream branch of Fatah that answers to Israel and the US, have opposed this UNSC resolution.
Hamas even called upon Algeria to vote against it; instead, the Algerian leadership praised Donald Trump and voted in favour. Typical of Arab and Muslim-majority regimes that don’t represent the will of their people, they all fell in line and bent over backwards to please Washington.
It won’t likely work As has been the story with every conspiracy hatched against the people of Gaza, this is again destined to fail. Not only will it fail, but it will likely backfire enormously and lead to desperate moves.
To begin with, the invasion force, or ISF, will be a military endeavour that will have to bring together tens of thousands of soldiers who speak different languages and have nothing in common, in order to somehow achieve victory where Israel failed.
It is a logistical nightmare to even think about.
How long would it take to deploy these soldiers? At the very least, it’s going to take months. Then, how long would this process take? Nobody has any clear answers here.
Also, what happens if Israel begins bombing again at any point, for example, if there is a clash that kills Israeli soldiers? What would these nations do if Israeli airstrikes killed their soldiers or put them in harm’s way?
Also, tens of thousands of soldiers may not cut it; if the goal is to destroy all the territory’s military infrastructure, they may need hundreds of thousands. Or if that isn’t an option, will they work alongside the Israeli military?
It is additionally clear that nobody knows where all the tunnels and fighters are; if Israel couldn’t find them, then how can anyone else?
After all, the US, UK, and various others have helped the Israelis with intelligence sharing and reconnaissance for more than two years to get these answers.
How do regimes justify this?
Finally, when Arab, European, or Southeast Asian soldiers return to their nations in body bags, how do their regimes justify this? Will the president or prime minister of these nations have to stand up and tell their people . . . “sorry guys, your sons and daughters are now in coffins because Israel needed a military force capable of doing what they failed to do, so we had to help them complete their genocidal project”.
Also, how many Palestinian civilians are going to be slaughtered by these foreign invaders?
As for the plan to overthrow Hamas rule in Gaza, the people of the territory will not accept foreign invaders as their occupiers any more than they will accept Israelis. They are not going to accept ISIS-linked collaborators as any kind of security force either.
Already, the situation is chaotic inside Gaza, and that is while its own people, who are experienced and understand their conditions, are in control of managing security and some administrative issues; this includes both Hamas and others who are operating independently of it, but inside the territory under its de facto control.
Just as the Israeli military claimed it was going to occupy Gaza City, laying out countless plans to do this, to ethnically cleanse the territory and “crush Hamas”, the US has been coordinating alongside it throughout the entirety of the last two years. Every scheme has collapsed and ended in failure.
It has been nearly a month and a half, yet there are still no clear answers as to how this Trump “peace plan” is supposed to work and it is clear that the Israelis are coming up with new proposals on a daily basis.
There is no permanent mechanism for aid transfers, which the Israelis are blocking. There is no clear vision for governance.
How a US plan envisages Gaza being permanently split into two sections – a green zone and a red zone. Image: Guardian/IDF/X
‘Two Gazas’ plan incoherent
The “two Gazas” plan is not even part of the ceasefire or Trump plan, yet it is being pursued in an incoherent way. The ISF makes no sense and appears as poorly planned as the GHF.
Hamas and the other Palestinian factions will not give up their weapons. There is no real plan for reconstruction. The Israelis are adamant that there will be no Palestinian State and won’t allow any independent Palestinian rule of Gaza, and the list of problems goes on and on.
What it really looks like here is that this entire ceasefire scheme is a stab in the dark attempt to achieve Israel’s goals while also giving its forces a break and redirecting their focus on other fronts, understanding that there is no clear solution to the Gaza question for now.
The United Nations has shown itself over the past two years to be nothing more than a platform for political theatre. It is incapable of punishing, preventing, or even stopping the crime of all crimes.
Now that international law has suffocated to death under the rubble of Gaza, next to the thousands of children who still lie underneath it, the future of this conflict will transform.
This UNSC vote demonstrates that there is no international law, no international community, and that the UN is simply a bunch of fancy offices, which are only allowed to work under the confines of gangster rule.
If the Palestinian resistance groups feel as if their backs are against the wall and an opportunity, such as another Israeli war on Lebanon, presents them the opportunity, then there is a high likelihood that a major military decision will be made.
In the event that this occurs, it will be this UNSC resolution that is in large part responsible.
When the suffering in Gaza finally ends, whether that is because Israel obliterates all of its regional opposition and exterminates countless other civilians in its way, or Israel is militarily shattered, the UN should be disbanded as was the League of Nations. It is a failed project just as that which preceded it.
Something new must take over from it.
Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specialising in Palestine. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle and it is republished with permission.
Regional student journalists at the University of the South Pacific have condemned the Samoan Prime Minister’s ban on the Samoa Observer newspaper, branding it as a “deliberate and systemic attempt to restrict public scrutiny”.
The Journalism Students’ Association (JSA) at USP said in a statement today it was “deeply
concerned” about Samoan Prime Minister La’aulialemalietoa Leuatea Schmidt’s ban on the Samoa Observer from his press conferences and his directive that cabinet ministers avoid responding to the newspaper’s questions.
“The recently imposed suspension signals not merely a rebuke of one newspaper, but a more deliberate and systemic attempt to restrict robust public scrutiny,” the statement said.
“The JSA is especially concerned that these attacks are eroding youth confidence in the [journalism] profession.” Image: JSA logo“It raises serious concerns about citizens’ right to information, as well as the erosion of transparency, accountability, and public trust.”
“We also note reports of physical confrontations involving journalists outside the Prime Minister’s residence, which are deeply troubling. This is an alarming trend and signals a reverse, if not decline in media rights and freedom of speech, unless it is dealt with immediately,” the JSA said.
“With its long-standing dedication to reporting on governance, human rights, and social
accountability issues, the ban on the Samoa Observer strikes at the heart of public discourse and places journalists in a precarious position.
Not an isolated case
“It risks undermining their ability to report freely and without the fear of reprisal.”
Sadly, said the JSA statement, this was not an isolated case.
“Earlier this year, the JAWS president Lagi Keresoma faced defamation charges under Samoa’s libel laws over an article about a former police officer’s appeal to the Head of State.
“Samoa’s steep decline in the 2025 World Press Freedom Index further highlights the ongoing challenges confronting Samoan media.”
JAWS’ recent statement highlighting government attempts to control press conferences through a proposed guide, further added to the growing pattern of restrictions on press freedom in Samoa.
“These recent incidents, coupled with the exclusion of the Samoa Observer, send a chilling
warning to Samoan journalists and establish a dangerous precedent for media subservience at the highest levels,” said JSA.
“Journalists must be able to perform their work safely, without intimidation or assault,
as they carry out their responsibilities to the public. These incidents raise serious
questions about the treatment of media professionals and respect for journalistic work.
“As a journalism student association with many of our journalists and alumni working in
the region, we are committed to empowering the next generation of journalists.
“The JSA is especially concerned that these attacks are eroding youth confidence in the
profession.
“We believe strongly in defending a space where young people can enter a field that is critical to democratic accountability, public oversight, and civic engagement.”
The editor of Samoa’s only daily newspaper barred on Monday from accessing the Prime Minister’s press conferences says media freedom in Samoa is under attack.
Samoan Prime Minister La’aulialemalietoa Leuatea Polataivao Schmidt “temporarily” banned the Samoa Observer from engagements with him and his ministers.
In a statement, La’aulialemalietoa said the Observer had been “unfair and inaccurate” in its reporting on him, particularly during his health stay in New Zealand.
“While I strongly support the principles of the public’s right to information and freedom of the media, it is important that reporting adheres to ethical standards and responsible journalism practices, given the significant role and influence media plays in informing our community,” he said.
“There have been cases where stories have been published without sufficient factual verification or a chance for those involved to respond, which I believe is fundamental to fair reporting.”
La’aulialemalietoa pointed to several examples, such as an article regarding the chair he used during a meeting with New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters, several articles based on leaks from inside the government, and an article “aimed at creating discord during my absence”.
“In the light of these experiences, I have decided to temporarily suspend this newspaper from my press engagements starting today [Monday].”
‘We just want answers’
However, Samoa Observer editor Shalveen Chand told RNZ Pacific the newspaper was just doing its job.
“We don’t really have any sides. We just want answers for questions which we believe the people of the nation need to know,” Chand said.
The Prime Minister’s ban on the Samoa Observer takes up the entire front page of the newspaper’s edition yesterday. Image: Samoa Observer screenshot RNZ
“If he has taken the step to ban us, he has just taken a step to stifle media freedom.”
Chand said that the government had a history of refusing to answer or ignoring questions posed by their reporters.
“It doesn’t change the fact that the job that we have to do we will continue doing. We will keep on holding the government accountable. We will keep on highlighting issues.”
“We’re not against the government, we’re not fighting the government. We just want answers.”
The Samoa Observer said it could still access MPs and other officials, and it could still enter Parliament and cover sittings.
But La’aulialemalietoa has reportedly asked his ministers not to engage with the Observer or any of its reporters.
Chand said, so far, there had not been any engagement from the government, and they did not know what they needed to do to have the ban lifted.
Ban ‘disproportionate’ says PINA
The Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) called the ban “disproportionate and unnecessary”, stating it represented a grave threat to media freedom in the country.
“PINA urges the government of Samoa to immediately reverse the ban and uphold its commitment to open dialogue and transparent governance,” the association said in a statement.
PINA noted that Samoa already had a legally mandated and independent mechanism (the Samoa Media Council) to address concerns about media accuracy, fairness, or ethical conduct.”
The Pacific Freedom Forum (PFF) said La’aulialemalietoa’s decision “undermines constitutional rights on media freedom and people’s right to seek and share information”.
“Banning an entire news organisation from press conferences hurts the public interest as people will lose access to independent reporting on matters of national importance,” PFF Polynesia co-chair Katalina Tohi said.
The PFF is urging the Prime Minister “to rethink his actions”.
Confrontation outside PM’s home On November 16, La’aulialemalietoa said three newspaper reporters and photographers trespassed his home, despite being stopped by police at the gate. Those reporters were from the Samoa Observer and the BBC.
“Their approach was rude, arrogant, invasive and lacked respect for personal privacy.”
But Chand denies that anybody had entered the compound at all, rather accessing the outside of the fence by the road.
“He’s the Prime Minister of Samoa, he’s a key public figure, and we as the press wanted to know how he was.”
As far as what played out afterward, Chand recalled things differently.
“One of my journalists had gone to ask, basically, how his trip had been and if he was doing okay . . . there was no regular communication with the Prime Minister during his eight-week stay in New Zealand.
“He told the journalist at the gate to come back on Monday, and the journalist was leaving. I had just come to drop off a camera lens for the journalist. I was getting into my car when two men unexpectedly walked out and started to assault me.”
Chand said he had received no explanation for why this had happened.
PMN News reported last night that BBC journalist Dr Mandeep Rai, who witnessed the incident, said the Samoa Observer team acted “carefully and respectfully”, and that the hostile response was surprising.
Ever since, Samoa Observer journalists have been bombarded with online abuse, Chand said.
“Attacks against me have actually doubled and tripled on social media . . . fake pages, or even people with real pages . . . it has somewhat impacted my family members a bit,” Chand said.
“But hey, we’re trying to do a job.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This past week, Donald Trump went global with his wrecking ball to the concept of a free press. For years, he has used lawsuits to intimidate major newspapers and broadcasters, in the process getting major outlets such as CBS and ABC to repeatedly bend the knee. Under his watch, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has reportedly pushed broadcasters to fire personalities…
As you know, there’s a tiny group of Dame Jacinda Ardern haters in New Zealand who are easily triggered by facts and the ongoing success of the former prime minister on the world stage.
The tiny eeny weeny group is made to look bigger online by an automated army of fake profile bots who all say the same five or six things and all leave a space before a comma.
This automation is imported into New Zealand so many of the profiles are in other countries and simply are not real humans.
Naturally this illusion of “flooding the zone” programmatically on social media causes the non-critical minded to assume they are a majority when they have no such real evidence to support that delusion.
Yet here’s some context and food for thought.
None of the haters have run a public hospital, been a director-general of health during a pandemic, been an epidemiologist or even a GP and many struggle to spell their own name properly let alone read anything accurately.
None of them have read all the Health Advice offered to the government during the covid-19 pandemic. They don’t know it at all.
Know a lot more
Yet they typically feel they do know a lot more than any of those people when it comes to a global pandemic unfolding in real time.
None of the haters can recite all 39 recommendations from the first Royal Commission of Inquiry into Covid-19, less than three of them have read the entire first report, none have any memory of National voting for the wage subsidy and business support payments when they accuse the Labour government of destroying the economy.
Most cannot off the top of their heads tell us how the Reserve Bank is independent of government when it raises the OCR and many think Jacinda did this but look you may be challenged to a boxing match if you try to learn them.
The exact macro economic state of our economy in terms of GDP growth, the size of the economy, unemployment and declining inflation forecasts escape their memory when Jacinda resigned, not that they care when they say she destroyed the economy.
They make these claims without facts and figures and they pass on the opinions of others that they listened to and swallowed.
It’s only a tiny group, the rest are bots.
The bots think making horse jokes about Jacinda is amusing, creative and unique and it’s their only joke now for three years — every single day they marvel at their own humour. In ten years they will still be repeating that one insult they call their own.
Bots on Nuremberg
The bots have also been programmed to say things about Nuremberg, being put into jail, bullets, and other violent suggestions which speaks to a kind of mental illness.
The sources of these sorts of sentiments were imported and fanned by groups set up to whip up resentment and few realise how they have been manipulated and captured by this programme.
The pillars of truth to the haters rest on being ignorant about how a democracy necessarily temporarily looks like a dictatorship in a public health emergency in order to save lives.
We agreed these matters as a democracy, it was not Jacinda taking over. We agreed to special adaptations of democracy and freedom to save lives temporarily.
The population of the earth has not all died from covid vaccines yet.
There is always some harm with vaccines, but it is overstated by Jacinda haters and misunderstood by those ranting about Medsafe, that is simply not the actual number of vaccine deaths and harm that has been verified — rather it is what was reported somewhat subject to conjecture.
The tinfoil hats and company threatened Jacinda’s life on the lawn outside Parliament and burnt down a playground and trees and then stamp their feet that she did not face a lynch mob.
No doors kicked in
Nobody’s door was kicked in by police during covid 19.
Nobody was forced to take a jab. No they chose to leave their jobs because they had a choice provided to them. The science was what the Government acted upon, not the need to control anyone.
Mandates were temporary and went on a few weeks too long.
Some people endured the hardship of not being present when their loved ones died and that was very unfortunate but again it was about medical advice.
Then Director-General of Health Sir Ashly Bloomfield said the government acted on about 90 percent of the Public Health advice it was given. Jacinda haters never mention that fact.
Jacinda haters say she ran away, but to be fair she endured 50 times more abuse than any other politician, and her daughter was threatened by randoms in a café, plus Jacinda was mentally exhausted after covid and all the other events that most prime ministers never have to endure, and she thought somebody else could give it more energy.
We were in good hands with Chris Hipkins so there was no abandoning as haters can’t make up their minds if they want her here or gone — but they do know they want to hate.
Lost a few bucks
The tiny group of haters include some people who lost a few bucks, a business, an opportunity and people who wanted to travel when there was a global pandemic happening.
Bad things happen in pandemics and every country experienced increased levels of debt, wage subsidies, job losses, tragic problems with a loss of income, school absenteeism, increased crime, and other effects like inflation and a cost of living crisis.
Haters just blame Jacinda because they don’t get that international context and the second Royal Commission of Inquiry was a political stunt, not about being more prepared for future pandemics but more about feeding the haters.
All the information it needed was provided by Jacinda, Grant Robertson and Chris Hipkins but right wing media whipped up the show trial despite appearances before a demented mob of haters being thought a necessary theatre for the right wing.
A right wing who signed up to covid lockdowns and emergency laws and then later manipulated short term memories for political gain.
You will never convince a hater not to hate with facts and context and persuasion, even now they are thinking how to rebut these matters rather than being open minded.
Pandemics suck and we did pretty well in the last one but there were consequences for some — for whom I have sympathy, sorry for your loss, I also know people who died . . . I also know people who lost money, I also know people who could not be there at a funeral . . . but I am not a hater.
Valuing wanting to learn
Instead, I value how science wants to learn and know what mistakes were made and to adapt for the next pandemic. I value how we were once a team of five million acting together with great kotahitanga.
I value Jacinda saying let there be a place for kindness in the world, despite the way doing the best for the common good may seem unkind to some at times.
The effects of the pandemic in country by country reports show the same patterns everywhere — lockdowns, inflation, cost of living increases, crime increase, education impacts, groceries cost more, petrol prices are too high, supply chains disrupted.
When a hater simplistically blames Jacinda for “destroying the economy and running away” it is literally an admission of their ignorance.
It’s like putting your hand up and screaming, ‘look at me, I am dumb’.
The vast majority get it and want Jacinda back if she wants to come back and live in peace — but if not . . . that is fine too.
Sad, ignorant minority
A small sad and ignorant minority will never let it go and every day they hate and hate and hate because they are full of hate and that is who they really are, unable to move on and process matters, blamers, simple, under informed and grossly self pitying.
I get the fact your body is your temple and you want medical sovereignty, I also get medical science and immunity.
It’s been nearly three years now, is it time to be a little less hysterical and to actually put away the violent abuse and lame blaming? Will you carry on sulking like a child for another three years?
It’s okay to disagree with me, but before you do, and I know you will, without taking onboard anything I write, just remember what Jacinda said.
In a global pandemic with people’s lives at stake, she would rather be accused of doing too much than doing too little.
Gerard Otto is a digital creator, satirist and independent commentator on politics and the media through his G News column and video reports. This article is republished with permission.
They say the march toward authoritarian rule begins with one simple act: taking control of the narrative and silencing the independent press. Yesterday, Samoa witnessed a step in that direction.
Prime Minister Laaulialemalietoa Leuatea Schmidt, elected by the people to serve them, has already moved to weaken one of democracy’s most essential pillars.
With barely seven full days in office, he directed his power at the Samoa Observer, the very institution tasked with holding leaders like him to account.
The Prime Minister accused this newspaper of misleading and inaccurate reporting, of disrespect and of having “no boundaries.” He went further by invoking the name of Sano Malifa, founder and owner of the Samoa Observer, suggesting that the paper had strayed from its mission, a statement he’s made countless times.
So let us clear the air.
Does the Prime Minister remember Sano Malifa’s reporting when, as Deputy Speaker, he gave a second hand car from his dealership to then Speaker of the House, Tolofuaivalelei Falemoe Leiʻataua, without cabinet approval?
It was Sano Malifa who wrote extensively about the matter and helped ensure the vehicle was returned when questions were raised about improper dealings.
Does he remember the concrete wall fence he attempted to build stretching toward Parliament, a plan never sanctioned by cabinet?
Does he remember calling the Samoa Observer before the 2021 general elections seeking permission to erect FAST party tents outside its offices and being refused, because this newspaper does not trade favours for political convenience?
Does he forget that Sano Malifa stood alone to question the one party rule of the HRPP, a party he joined and one his father served in, while most of the country remained silent because they felt they could not speak?
Does he forget that the Sano Malifa he now quotes would never permit any leader to run the country unchecked?
Let this be understood. Sano Malifa’s vision remains fully intact. It demands scrutiny of whoever occupies the Prime Minister’s chair, even if that chair is fake. It demands accountability, regardless of who holds power.
It is intact in the way this newspaper was the only media organisation to question the Prime Minister’s meetings with foreign leaders while he sat on his famous chair, despite the warnings of his own advisers.
It is intact in ensuring the public knew their new leader had been quietly flown out on a private plane for medical treatment, while sick patients in an overcrowded and underfunded hospital struggled without food because of unpaid wages for kitchen staff, even as its minister announced plans for a new hospital.
It is intact in the story of a father whose pleas for justice went unanswered after his son was badly beaten and fell into a coma, until the Samoa Observer published his account and police were finally forced to act.
It is intact in the simple reporting of rubbish piling up near homes, which was cleared by the government the very next morning.
It is intact even when Sano Malifa’s own village and family appeared on the front page during a dispute, because he believed in accountability for all, including himself.
So why would the Prime Minister believe he is entitled to special treatment?
As the elected Prime Minister, whose salary, car and expenses are paid for by the public through their hard earned taxes, he should know that the media’s fundamental role is to keep him honest.
If the Prime Minister is truly concerned about the vision of journalists, he need only look at those closest to him. A JAWS executive, Angie Kronfield, publicly declared she wished the Observer editor’s face had been disfigured during the assault carried out by the Prime Minister’s own security guards.
Better still, her husband, Apulu Lance Pulu, a long-time journalist and owner of Talamua Media, was charged alongside the Prime Minister and later convicted of fraud in a 2020 court case. Yet he now seems to enjoy the Prime Minister’s favour as a preferred media voice. Let that sink in.
So if the Prime Minister wants proof of a failed vision, he need not search far.
Lastly, the Prime Minister’s other claim that an outsider writes for this newspaper is a fiction of his own making.
The Samoa Observer remains under the same ownership, grounded in nearly 50 years of service to the public. And since he has made his wish clear that this newspaper is no longer welcome at his press conferences or those of his ministers, let us state this without hesitation. The same people stand behind this newspaper, and our promise to our readers has never wavered.
The Samoa Observer editorial published on 18 November 2025.
Samoa’s Prime Minister La’aulialemalietoa Leuatea Polataivao Schmidt has banned the country’s only daily newspaper, the Samoa Observer, from all ministerial press conferences.
The move has raised serious concerns among industry stakeholders about media freedom as he faces growing political and legal pressure.
La’aulialemalietoa announced the ban on Monday at his first press conference in two months, held just days after returning from medical treatment in New Zealand.
He told journalists that the ban also applies to his cabinet ministers. The decision follows a tense confrontation on Saturday, when journalists from the Samoa Observer and the BBC went to the Prime Minister’s home to confirm his return.
The journalists said they remained on the public roadside but were approached by men from the PM’s property, who accused them of trespassing and of behaving disrespectfully.
“They don’t respect me as the Prime Minister. In my time in New Zealand, I never saw any reporters writing so disrespectfully about leaders,” La’aulialemalietoa told reporters in his office on Monday.
“I was in my home for 10 minutes when they arrived. They argued with the police. They were told to leave as I was only just reuniting with my family and trying to say a prayer. My home is a private home, not a public place.”
He said when he asked police for help, he was told to lodge a complaint at the station. He has since filed a formal report.
BBC journalist Dr Mandeep Rai, who witnessed the incident, said the Samoa Observer team acted “carefully and respectfully”, and that the hostile response was surprising. She said the difficulty in simply confirming a national leader’s safe arrival raised questions about transparency and access.
The Prime Minister linked the ban to what he described as “wrong” and “disrespectful” reporting, including stories published during his medical leave.
“When I was away, I saw numerous reports that were wrong . . . especially the story about a meeting between the Deputy PM and my CEOs. A meeting that never happened.”
La’aulialemalietoa said that as Faatuatua i le Atua Samoa ua Tasi (FAST) chairperson, he had previously banned the Observer from party events, but lifted that ban when he became Prime Minister at the request of senior government officials.
The ban intensifies an already tense political climate in Samoa.
In October, former Prime Minister Fiamē Naomi Mataʻafa filed a ST$1.1 million ($NZ698,000) defamation case against him, alleging he falsely linked her to interference in the murder investigation of American Samoan academic Dr Caroline Sinavaiana-Gabbard. The case is now before the Supreme Court.
Regional pressure also rising
There are also ongoing election-related disputes, public service tensions, and growing scrutiny about the government’s commitment to transparency.
La’aulialemalietoa’s return to Samoa follows an unofficial meeting with New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon in Auckland earlier this month, his first public political engagement in weeks.
The two leaders discussed major issues, including health infrastructure, drug-trafficking in the Pacific, and labour mobility.
La’aulialemalietoa confirmed plans for new hospitals in Tuanaimato and Savai’i and reiterated his support for the Pacific Justice campaign, which seeks visa-on-arrival access to New Zealand for Pacific citizens.
At the start of Monday’s press conference, La’aulialemalietoa asked the Samoa Observer’s reporter to leave his office. The exchange happened in front of the president of the Journalists Association of Samoa (JAWS) and other senior media members.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZand with PMN News permission.
So Trump suddenly threatens to sue the BBC for $1 billion for a misleading splice-up of video clips broadcast over a year ago. A BBC news editor — Raffi Berg — is suing journalist Owen Jones for exposing his biased judgement in reporting Gaza war news. And two top knobs at the BBC, Director-General Tim Davie and CEO of news Deborah Turness, jump before they’re pushed.
The British public are angry enough at having to pay the BBC’s extortionate TV licence fee only to have biased news beamed at them. If Trump were to win his $1 billion claim he’d be paid off with licence payers’ money which would infuriate the public even more.
If Berg were to proceed against Jones it would open a whole new can of worms and magnify what’s already known about pro-Israel bias inside the state broadcaster.
And the departure of the two top post-holders from the BBC leaves too many iffy editors still in place and the bias problem still unresolved.
Mismanaging news standards
When, in November 2023, BBC senior management attended a meeting with at least 100 staffers to discuss coverage of Gaza, Deborah Turness called out, in an attempt to assert control of the meeting: “We’ve got to all remember that this all started on 7 October.” Erasing the decades of Israeli occupation before October 7 was a stunning example of how distorted the mindset of those at the top can be.
As for Berg, Mint Press points to his former employment with the US State Department’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service, a unit widely regarded as a CIA front. “Berg is currently the subject of considerable scrutiny after thirteen BBC employees spoke out, claiming, among other things, that his ‘entire job is to water down everything that’s too critical of Israel’ and that he holds ‘wild’ amounts of power at the British state broadcaster, that there exists a culture of ‘extreme fear’ at the BBC about publishing anything critical of Israel, and that Berg himself plays a key role in turning its coverage into ‘systematic Israeli propaganda’.”
BBC journalists also claimed Davie and Turness stood in the way of change. Both were aware of concerns about Berg but ignored them.
And according to Owen, at a ‘listening session’ meeting between staffers and Tim Davie “they noted Berg’s history and associations as indicative of bias, pointing to instances where journalists’ copy had been changed prior to publication. They made specific requests: that stories should, as a rule, emphasize that Israel had not granted the BBC access to Gaza, that the network should end the practice of presenting the official Israeli versions of events as fact, and that the BBC should do more to offer context about Israeli occupation and the fact that Gaza is overwhelmingly populated by descendants of refugees forcibly driven from their homes beginning in 1948. While Davie told staff that management would ‘look into’ staff objections, to date no response ever came back.”
In response to a request for comment, the BBC said it unequivocally stood by Berg’s work and asserted that the BBC was “the world’s most trusted international news source” and its “coverage should be judged on its own merits and in its entirety. If we make mistakes we correct them.”
But complaints have continued, for example the use of emotional words like ‘massacre’ and ‘atrocities’ to describe Hamas’s attacks but not in reference to the slaughter perpetrated by Israeli forces. A failure to provide historical context, crucial omissions, and a lack of critical engagement with Israel’s claims, were also mentioned.
Staffers acknowledged the pressure the BBC faces from pro-Israel lobbyists and emphasize that their sole objective was to uphold the BBC’s values of fairness and impartiality and to produce content “without fear or favour” — principles they felt had been cast aside in deference to Israeli narratives. The website, headed by Raffi Berg, was considered the BBC’s worst violator of editorial standards. They also raised concerns about Robbie Gibb, one of five people who serve on the BBC’s editorial guidelines and standards committee along with Davie, Turness, the Chairman of the Arts Council Nicholas Serota, and BBC Chair Samir Shah.
Gibb is responsible for helping to define the BBC’s commitment to impartiality and respond to complaints about the BBC’s coverage on Israel and Palestine. But between 2017 and 2019 he’d served as director of communications for Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May, and in 2020 he led a consortium to rescue the Jewish Chronicle from bankruptcy. He then joined the BBC board as a non-executive director while continuing his involvement with the Jewish Chronicle, saying in his Declaration of Personal Interests that he was the 100% owner of that newspaper until a venture capitalist took over in August 2024. According the Companies House Gibb was sole director of Jewish Chronicle Media from April 2020 to August 2024 and was succeeded by Ian Austin (Lord Austin of Derby) and Jonathan Kandel. The Jewish Chronicle Ltd was dissolved in February 2023. Gibb’s links to the Jewish Chronicle and its slavish pro-Israel stance were widely known, so it’s puzzling how he could ever have been thought sufficiently impartial for a key position managing the BBC’s editorial standards.
Openness and transparency are not BBC strong points either. Back in March campaigner Deborah Mallender, in a Freedom of Information request, asked the BBC:
“In response to parts 1 and 2 of your request, please be advised that we do not consider this to constitute a valid request under the FOI Act. The Act gives a general right of access to information that we hold in our records, e.g. in writing. We are not required to create new information to respond to a request, or to give a judgement, opinion or comment that is not already recorded. In response to parts 3, 4 and 5 of your request, please be advised that section 12 of the FOI Act states the BBC to does not have to deal with a request where it estimates that it would exceed the ‘appropriate limit’ (defined in the Fees Regulations) to comply with the request.”
Meanwhile, Trump has received an apology from the BBC for its “error of judgement”, and that should be enough. It is surely beneath any normal US president to pursue the broadcasting arm of an allied power for such a preposterous sum, though not in Trump’s case. Nor should the BBC even consider stroking this conceited man’s bloated ego and forking out one penny of British public’s licence fee money. On the other hand I would gladly pay that fee if the BBC were to force Trump to bring his action in the UK High Court. My understanding is that it must be done within 1 year and Trump is out of time. Case dismissed.
University of the South Pacific’s Associate Professor Shailendra Singh, who edited the inaugural edition of Pacific Media journal along with co-editor Dr Amit Sarwal, has responded to the publication with a Q and A.
The new journal has replaced the Pacific Journalism Review, which was founded by Professor David Robie at the University of Papua New Guinea and published for 30 years.
This new publication, supported by Tuwhera Open Access at Auckland University of Technology, was also founded by Dr Robie and the Asia Pacific Media Network and it is hoped that it will offer greater community media access and flexibility.
What does this new publication, Pacific Media, signal?
Dr Shailendra Singh: It signals an ongoing commitment to research on Pacific media, development, and democracy — just when such research is most urgently needed to understand the impact of multiple forces reshaping the region. These include artificial intelligence, misinformation and disinformation, the intensifying geopolitical contest between China and the West, the drugs and HIV epidemic, and the existential threat of climate change. With the world on track for a three-degree Celsius temperature rise, some reports describe this as a “death sentence” for Pacific reefs, food security, and livelihoods.
Yet, even as Pacific media confront one of the most complex and challenging reporting environments in history, they remain financially fragile, due to the impacts of digital disruption and covid-19.
The 2024 Pacific Media International Conference was quite an innovative step — bringing media academics and the industry together. How has that helped the region?
It created greater awareness of the challenges facing Pacific news media and exposed some of the industry’s structural weaknesses. Importantly, it fostered a better understanding — and hopefully, greater empathy — among the public toward the difficult conditions under which Pacific journalists operate. The conference underscored the importance of ongoing research, provided direction for future studies, and demonstrated the power of regional collaboration by amplifying Pacific voices and ideas.
How does the partnership between the USP Journalism Programme and the Pacific Media publishers, Asia Pacific Media Network, contribute to journalism excellence in the region?
Pacific Media – congratulations from USP Journalism. Image: USP
Research on Pacific media is as scarce as it is vital for the development of Pacific journalism. The USP Journalism Programme and the Asia Pacific Media Network are the only two entities consistently conducting dedicated research on Pacific media, democracy, and development. Historically, both have been vocal about threats to media freedom and the welfare of journalists. They have documented the impact of coups and other forms of repression, while advocating for journalist safety, ethical standards, and media independence through awareness and education.
What next?
The next step is to consolidate and expand research, and training and development. This means deepening partnerships between academia and industry, mentoring a new generation of Pacific media researchers and journalists, and securing sustainable funding for long-term studies.
It also involves strengthening regional collaboration so that Pacific voices lead the global conversation about the region — rather than being spoken to and for. Ultimately, the goal is to ensure that Pacific media remain resilient, independent, and equipped to serve their communities in the face of profound social, technological, and environmental change.
The next edition of Pacific Media, edited by Khairiah A Rahman and Dr Rachel Khan, will also be published shortly.
Republished from Pacific Media journal’s website.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.
After more than three years on strike against the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and five years of overall corporate violation of labor law, The News Guild of Pittsburgh, TNG-CWA Local 38061, completely won its case against the Block brothers, the paper’s owners.
Writing on Nov. 10 for a unanimous panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, Judge Cindy Chung—the former U.S. Attorney for Western Pennsylvania, headquartered in Pittsburgh—ordered the Blocks to bargain and reach a contract with the Guild, just as the National Labor Relations Board demanded in seeking an injunction, a mandatory court order, against the duo.
After more than three years on strike against the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and five years of overall corporate violation of labor law, The News Guild of Pittsburgh, TNG-CWA Local 38061, completely won its case against the Block brothers, the paper’s owners.
Writing on Nov. 10 for a unanimous panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, Judge Cindy Chung—the former U.S. Attorney for Western Pennsylvania, headquartered in Pittsburgh—ordered the Blocks to bargain and reach a contract with the Guild, just as the National Labor Relations Board demanded in seeking an injunction, a mandatory court order, against the duo.
After more than three years on strike against the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and five years of overall corporate violation of labor law, The News Guild of Pittsburgh, TNG-CWA Local 38061, completely won its case against the Block brothers, the paper’s owners.
Writing on Nov. 10 for a unanimous panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, Judge Cindy Chung—the former U.S. Attorney for Western Pennsylvania, headquartered in Pittsburgh—ordered the Blocks to bargain and reach a contract with the Guild, just as the National Labor Relations Board demanded in seeking an injunction, a mandatory court order, against the duo.
OBITUARY:By Robert Luke Iroga, editor and publisher of Solomon Business Magazine
In June 2000, I travelled to Port Moresby for a journalism training course that changed my life in ways I did not expect. The workshop was about new technology—how to send large photo files by email, something that felt revolutionary at the time.
But the real lesson I gained was not about technology. It was about people. It was about meeting Bob Howarth.
Bob, our trainer from News Corp Australia, was a man whose presence filled the room. He was old school in his craft, yet he embraced the future with such excitement that it was impossible not to be inspired.
He was full of energy, full of stories, full of life. And above all, he was kind. Deeply kind. The sort of kindness that stays with you long after the conversation ends.
He had just returned from East Timor and knew what life was like in the developing world.
In just one week with him, we learned more than we could have imagined. It felt like every day stretched into a month because Bob poured so much of himself into teaching us. It was clear that he cared—not just about journalism, but about us, the young Pacific reporters standing at the start of our careers.
That week was the beginning of his love affair with the Pacific, and I feel proud to have been a small part of that story.
Before we closed the training, Bob called me aside. He gave me his email and said quietly,
“If anything dramatic happens in the Solomons, send me some photos.”
The Timor Post mourns journalist and media mentor Bob Howarth who died on Thursday aged 81. Image: Timor Post
I didn’t know then how soon that moment would come.
I returned home on Sunday, 4 June 2000. The very next morning, June 5th, as I was heading to work at The Solomon Star, Honiara fell into chaos.
The coup was unfolding. The city was under siege. I rushed to the office, helping colleagues capture the moment in words and images. And just as Bob had asked, I sent photos to him. Within hours, those images appeared on front pages across News Corp newspapers.
Bob wrote to me soon after, saying, “You’re truly the star of our course.”
That was Bob—always lifting others up, always encouraging, always giving more credit than he took.
From that week in PNG, we became more than just colleagues. We became friends—real friends. Over the years, whenever I travelled through Port Moresby, I would always reach out to him.
Sometimes we shared a drink, sometimes a long talk, sometimes just a warm hello from his home overlooking the harbour. But every time, it felt like reconnecting with someone who genuinely understood my journey.
Asia Pacific Report publisher David Robie’s tribute to Bob Howarth on Bob’s FB page.
Bob was the person I turned to for advice, for guidance, for perspective. He believed in me at a time when belief was the greatest gift anyone could offer. And he never stopped being that voice in my corner—whether I was working here in the Solomons or abroad.
This morning, I learned of his passing. And my heart sank.
It feels like losing a pillar. Like losing a chapter of my own story. Like losing someone whose kindness shaped the path I walked.
To his wife, his children, and all who loved him, I send my deepest condolences. Your husband, your father, your friend—he touched the Pacific in ways words can barely capture.
And he touched my life in a way I will never forget.
RIEP Bob. Thank you for seeing me when I was still finding my footing.
Thank you for believing in me. Thank you for being my friend.
Robert Luke Iroga is editor and publisher of Solomon Business Magazine and chair of the Pacific Freedom Forum. He wrote this tribute on his FB page and it is republished with permission.
A day after a car explosion near Delhi’s Red Fort claimed 13 lives, the Press Trust of India (PTI) reported that a cache of explosives was seized from a house in Faridabad’s Sector 56 area amid an ongoing probe to track down the perpetrators. (Archive)
After the explosion rocked the national capital, the police filed charges under Sections 16 and 18 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), and Sections 3 and 4 of the Explosive Substances Act. The Ministry of Home Affairs also handed over the investigation to the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on November 11. The following day, the government officially labelled the blast a ‘terrorist incident’.
VIDEO | Faridabad, Haryana: A day after 12 people were killed in the Delhi blast, a massive cache of explosives has been seized from a rented house in Sector 56. Authorities have launched a detailed investigation into the matter.
After PTI’s X post, News18 also published a video report that the police recovered 50-60 kgs of explosives, and the crime branch arrested two persons from Sector 56 of Faridabad in Haryana. The video also showed footage of a police officer examining packages. (Archive)
The same day as PTI’s X post, the Faridabad police’s official handle clarified that reports claiming 50-60 kgs explosives were found are false. They said that the material found was firecrackers used for celebratory occasions. People’s Police – Faridabad Police (@FBDPolice) wrote on X: “A misleading news story is being circulated in the media that explosive material has been found in the Sector 56 Faridabad area. This material is firecrackers used in weddings and marriages, and their raw material; it has no connection with terrorist activities. The Faridabad Police refutes this, do not spread misleading propaganda”.
मीडिया में एक भ्रामक खबर प्रचारित हो रही है कि से० 56 फरी० क्षेत्र में विस्फोटक सामग्री मिली है
यह सामग्री शादी विवाह में चलने वाले पटाखे व उसका रॉ मैटेरियल है, इसका आतंकवादी गतिविधियों से कोई संबंध नहीं है। फरीदाबाद पुलिस इसका खंडन करती है, भ्रामक प्रचार ना करें@police_haryana
Hours before the November 10 Delhi blast, the Jammu & Kashmir police had made seven arrests, busting an “inter-State and transnational terror module” linked with terror groups Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) and Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind (AGH). The J&K police also seized 2,900 kilograms of improvised explosive device (IED) making material in the past 15 days. At present, investigators are looking into possible links between this ‘terror module’ and the Delhi blast.
Among those arrested by the J&K police were two doctors — Muzammil Ahmad Ganaie, also known as Musaib, a resident of Koil, Pulwama, and Adeel, a resident of Wanpora, Kulgam. The other accused are Arif Nisar Dar, Yasir-ul-Ashraf, and Maqsood Ahmad Dar, all residents of Nowgam, Srinagar; Zameer Ahmad Ahanger, alias Mutlasha, of Ganderbal; and Irfan Ahmad, a maulvi from Shopian. Further, on November 11, a woman identified as Shaheen Saeed was arrested.
Ganaie was the first to be arrested in this case; he taught at the Al Falah Hospital in Faridabad and was apprehended in a joint operation between the J&K and Faridabad police 12 days ago. Police said they seized 358 kg of explosives from his rented home in Faridabad’s Dhauj village.
The connection to Faridabad in the ‘terror module’ bust may have led to confusion when a large quantity of materials required for making fireworks was recovered from another area in Faridabad. However, it was debunked by the Faridabad police that this recovery was completely independent of the investigation regarding the blast or the ‘terror module’ bust.
I sat in a cafe listening to one man telling another how to get more out of his workers — “his team”, kind of the way people talked about workhorses until some of us read Black Beauty and learned that sentient creatures have feelings, both animals and people.
I hope that people will wake up to the need to unite, to pull together. The best decluttering is decolonising.
Maybe Zohran Mamdani’s win is a sign that will herald a new era, an era when socialists can beat “the money men”. Maybe it’s time when we will all wake up to a different possibility. Maybe other values will be recognised.
Virtues do not come from wealth. Capital, capitalism (the key is in the word) is a system of exploitation. It was designed by merchants to make some rich and keep others poor. That’s the system.
Maybe you were not taught that? Of course you were not taught that. Think about it.
I listened to William Dalrymple being interviewed by Jack Tame last Sunday and I thought Jack — who I used to respect a lot before he failed to tackle genocide with Israel’s representative for genocide here in Aotearoa — I thought he, Jack, looked like a possum in the headlights when Dalrymple said that Donald Trump had a precursor in Benjamin Netanyahu and called genocide a genocide.
I like to think Jack and others like him (because I have been like them too) will learn to learn about the history of all people and not view history as an inevitable story of winners and losers.
Winners are exploiters
The winners are exploiters and if we want to save the planet we need a massive game change.
The legacy of colonisation. Video: TVNZ Q&A
Look at the stats of the land that was taken for expansion and how that expansion was used to justify the extermination of one people to prop another people up. The stats, the real statistics show who was there before, show people lived on the land with the land and the waters.
Capitalism is a system of expansion and exploitation. It flourished for a while on slavery and it flourished for a while on settler colonialism, and it flourished for a while on keeping workers believing the story that they were working for greater glory when their take home pay did not equal the value of their labour.
And there is a difference between guilt and remorse. We can learn from the latter. The former, guilt, stagnates, it leads to defence and offence.
We need to recognise that we don’t need to prop up a dying system that flourishes on making some weak and others stronger.
We need to learn to change — those of us who were wrong can admit it and go forward differently. We can realise that they system was designed to make us fail to see the threads that connect all people. We can wake up now and smell the manure among the roses.
Good shit helps things grow, bad shit is toxic contaminated waste that turns things inwards, makes them gnarly.
Monsters are connected
Unfortunately, those who behave like monsters are connected not just to some of us but all of us.
We need to open our minds and our hearts to a different our value system. We need to decolonise our senses.
If you defend a bad system because right now you are one of the few on a decent pay scale then you are part of the problem. You are the problem. You have been conned. A system is only fair if it is fair for all people.
Learning history gives us a map said Dalrymple (author of The Golden Road which tells the story of how great India was BEFORE it was stolen by Britain — how that country gave the world numbers and so much more) and we need to learn how the map was drawn.
As someone who reads history to write history, I encourage us all to read widely and deeply and to research so that we do not stop thinking and analysing, and so we can tell wrong from right.
Do not be neutral about wrongs as some historians would suggest. It is more than OK to call a wrong a wrong. In fact it is vital. Take a new lens into viewing history, not the one the masters have given you.
We miss seeing the world if we look fail to think about who drew the map, how it was drawn up by men who carved up the world for the Empires intent on creating a golden age by enslaving most of the people to prop up those at the top.
World map’s curling edges
We need to look under the curling edges of the world map drawn up by the exploiter. We need to find find the stories of those who were exploited and who had been part of the creation story of this planet before they were exploited.
Those of us who are descendants of colonisers also — many of us — descend from those who were exploited.
The stories of British workhouses, of the system of exile via banishment, of the theft of women’s rights, of the extreme brutal forms of punishment, the stories of the way the top class pushed down and down on the people of the fields and forests and forced them to serve and serve, these real stories are less well known than the myths.
Myths like the story of King Arthur are better known.
Some myths have been created as a form of propaganda. We need to unpick the stories that were told to keep us stupid, to keep us ignorant.
It is time to stop following the trail of crumbs to Buckingham Palace, or at least to see where the trail really leads — to pedophiles who preyed on others, to predators — not just one but many, to people brilliant at reconstructing themselves — creating some fall guys and some good guys and making some people villains.
That story is a lie that protects and processes dysfunction.
Acting on the truth
Blaming one part of the system prevents us from realising and acting on the truth that the whole system is one of exploitation.
This was always a horror story disguised as a fairy story. One crown could save so many poor. The monarchy is not a family that produced one disfunctional person it is the disfunction.
It promotes the lie that one group of people deserve wealth because they are better than another. What a sick joke.
So let’s back away from societies made by men who want to profit from others and get back to nature.
Let’s look on nature as a sister or mother — a sister or mother you love.
Let’s look at the so called natural disasters like climate change. Look at how they have been created by “noble men” and “noble women” and ignoble ones as well. Disasters that can be averted, prevented.
Who suffers the most in a natural disaster? Not the rich.
How do we heal?
So how do we hope and how do we heal? We see the change. We be the change.
Personally, for my mental and physical health I’ve been sea bathing, dipping in the sea. I join a group of mainly women who all have stories, and who plunge into nature for release and relief, to relieve ourselves from the debris. Uniting in nature.
I’ve learned that every day is different. The sea is always changing. No two waves are the same and they all pull in the same direction.
We are part moon, part wave, part light, part darkness. We are the bounty and the beauty.
I do have hope that we will all unite for common good. Sharing on common ground. The word Common is so much better than Capital.
If you are working for the kind of people that are discussing how to get more out of you for less, then unite.
And if you know people who are being exploited in any way at all unite with them not the exploiter. Be the change.
By helping each other we save each other. And that includes helping our friend and exploited lover: Nature.
Saige England is an award-winning journalist and author of The Seasonwife, a novel exploring the brutal impacts of colonisation. She is also a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.
Almost half (45%) of teens in a recent survey by The News Literacy Project said journalists harm democracy. Only 56% believed reporters value fairness and accuracy. 80% concluded that news content is subjective, and nearly 70% thought press outlets intentionally add bias to their coverage. The cynicism illustrated in the study reflects one of the extreme positions toward the press that is undermining democratic norms.
The other extreme is the blind trust that citizens have in certain news outlets. As I noted in The Anatomy of Fake News (University of California Press, 2020), history is filled with examples of journalists getting things wrong, inserting bias, or serving as mouthpieces for powerful interests. Indeed, from the Pentagon Papers to Iraq’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, the news has at times spread false, baseless, and damaging narratives masquerading as truth. Yet, total rejection of journalism is equally dangerous. Some of the most important democratic movements in U.S. history—from the civil rights outcry following the murder of Emmett Till to the global protests after the killing of George Floyd—were fueled by courageous reporting that forced the public to confront injustice.
In a democracy, the citizen’s job is neither to worship nor to despise the press, but to engage critically with it—to analyze, question, and hold it accountable while defending its freedom to exist. It’s not easy work. Democracy, after all, is a 24-hour job. The alternative is authoritarianism, a system that reduces citizens to obedient, vapid vessels, their lives and futures dictated by power—not by the will of the people. The Gaslight Gazette exists to help citizens do that work—by examining journalism, exposing propaganda, and defending truth.
This mission has never been more urgent, as mounting evidence suggests that citizens are inadvertently leading the nation toward authoritarianism by choosing passive consumption over critical engagement with journalism. Indeed, the powerful know that fake news is their most effective weapon—one that turns people against democracy by sowing cynicism and distrust. Consider Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X (formerly Twitter) and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. Musk recently claimed to have uncovered an election scandal in New York City’s mayoral race, alleging that the two candidates—Democratic Party and Working Families Party nominee Zohran Mamdani (who won the race) and Republican Party and Conservative Party nominee Curtis Sliwa—had cheated by appearing twice on the ballot, while his preferred candidate, former Governor Andrew Cuomo, who had to create the Fight and Deliver Party because no existing party would nominate him, appeared only once. Musk seemed unaware that in New York, political parties can cross-endorse candidates, allowing their names to appear multiple times.
When misinformation spreads, it always has consequences. In Ireland, residents recently witnessed how easily fake news can trigger chaos: police were inundated with emergency calls about a supposed loose lion, only to discover it was merely a dog with an unusual haircut. Harmless, perhaps—but it illustrates how swiftly false information can spark public panic.
More dangerously, fake news can stoke prejudice and hate. Recently, Fox News Channel aired a segment about videos supposedly showing people of color complaining about losing government assistance during the 2025 government shutdown. The videos were later revealed to be AI-generated. Though Fox issued a correction, it framed the issue as the public being duped—without admitting the network itself had been spreading racist, fabricated content disguised as journalism. And it’s not just conservatives. Leftists, too, have fallen for sensational claims, such as online theories about President Donald Trump’s health based on photos of bruises and swelling, videos of him falling asleep are spun into proof of hidden medical decline.
This erosion of trust fuels a dangerous doom loop: as fake news spreads, cynicism grows, and even factual reporting becomes suspect. Truth itself becomes relative, collapsing the foundation of democracy, which depends on an informed public capable of discerning fact from fiction.
A recent Politico survey revealed that two-thirds of Americans believe the government lies to them. This widespread distrust crosses—felt by 64% of Trump voters and 70% of Vice President Kamala Harris’s supporters—suggests that people no longer see the government as a democratic institution “of, by, and for the people.” The collapse of trust became painfully clear when Trump’s former FBI Director Kash Patel announced a supposed Halloween terror plot in 2025, instantly dividing Americans along partisan lines.
The distrust extends beyond government. The public’s confidence in science has also deteriorated, partly due to disinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Plandemic conspiracy documentary and missteps by figures such as Dr. Anthony Fauci, who blurred the line between scientific research and political decision-making, fueled skepticism across the ideological spectrum. Today, such scientific denial remains strong in online spaces and contributes to growing numbers of men now reject scientific consensus altogether—a grim testament to how disinformation corrodes not just politics, but the very idea of truth.
So, do journalists protect or harm democracy? The answer depends not on them—but on us. When citizens demand accountability, truth, and transparency, journalism can be democracy’s greatest ally. But when we surrender to cynicism and stop thinking critically, even the free press becomes another tool of manipulation.
Democracy dies not when the press lies, but when the public stops caring to find the truth.
The resignations of Tim Davie, BBC director general, and Deborah Turness, BBC head of news, after an intense, right-wing campaign led by the Daily Telegraph reveals much about the state of British ‘mainstream’ media.
Before we discuss the latest scandal, consider first some relevant facts about BBC coverage of the Middle East. In June 2025, a devastating indictment of BBC ‘impartiality’ was published by the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM) in the form of a detailed report into the BBC’s coverage of Israel and Gaza. The stated aim of CfMM is to ‘promote fair, accurate and responsible journalism about Muslims and Islam through verifiable evidence and constructive engagement.’
The report examined BBC content from 7 October 2023 to 7 October 2024. A total of 3,873 BBC articles and 32,092 segments broadcast on BBC television and radio were analysed. CfMM’s key findings were:
Palestinian deaths treated as less newsworthy: Despite Gaza suffering 34 times more casualties than Israel, BBC gave Israeli deaths 33 times more coverage per fatality and ran almost equal numbers of humanising victim profiles (279 Palestinians vs 201 Israelis).
Systematic language bias favouring Israelis: BBC used emotive terms four times more for Israeli victims, applied ‘massacre’ 18 times more to Israeli casualties, and used ‘murder’ 220 times for Israelis versus once for Palestinians.
Suppression of genocide allegations: BBC presenters shut down genocide claims in over 100 documented instances whilst making zero mention of Israeli leaders’ genocidal statements, including Netanyahu’s biblical Amalek reference (see below).
Muffling Palestinian voices: The BBC interviewed significantly fewer Palestinians than Israelis (1,085 v 2,350) on television and radio, while BBC presenters shared the Israeli perspective 11 times more frequently than the Palestinian perspective (2,340 v 217).
These findings suggest that the BBC values the lives of Israelis considerably more than the lives of Palestinians. This appalling revelation was apparently not a resigning matter for senior BBC figures.
At the parliamentary launch of the CfMM report, Richard Burgess, the BBC director of news content, was challenged by Peter Oborne, the former chief political commentator of the Daily Telegraph. The exchange was filmed by a participant at the meeting. Oborne robustly confronted Burgess with as many as six ways in which BBC News has misled its audiences:
1. The BBC has never mentioned the Hannibal directive, implemented by Israel on 7 October 2023, that permitted the Israeli killing of Israeli civilians to prevent them being taken captive by Hamas. See our media alert from February 2025.
2. The BBC has never mentioned Israel’s Dahiya doctrine which underlies Israel’s murderous ‘mowing the lawn’ Gaza strategy over the past two decades: repeated devastating assaults on the Palestinians to weaken their resistance to the brutal and illegal Israeli occupation, and to make it easier to ethnically cleanse them.
3. The BBC has not reported the many dozens of genocidal statements from Israeli officials. In particular, the BBC buried Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s biblically-inspired comparison of the Palestinians to ‘Amalek’; a people the Jews were instructed by God to wipe from the face of the earth.
4. By contrast, on more than 100 occasions when guests tried to refer to what is happening in Gaza as genocide, BBC staff immediately shut them down on air.
5. The BBC has largely ignored Israel’s campaign of murdering Palestinian journalists in Gaza.
6. Finally, Oborne observed that the distinguished Israeli historian Avi Shlaim, who lives in the UK and teaches at Oxford University, has never been invited to appear by the BBC.
Burgess gave a feeble, bureaucratic response excusing himself, saying that, ‘My role is to direct the journalists and I’m not a Middle East expert’. When Hamza Yusuf of Declassified UK challenged Burgess to explain why the BBC was not reporting British spy planes operating over Gaza from RAF base Akrotiri on Cyprus, the BBC editor gave this bizarre and misleading answer:
‘I don’t think we should overplay the UK’s contribution to what’s happening in Israel.’
Why did Burgess say ‘in Israel’? Why did he erase Palestine? Was he actually unaware that Gaza is an occupied Palestinian territory? Nobody was asking the BBC to ‘overplay’ what the UK is doing; but simply to report its role, rather than bury it to the point of invisibility. Whitewashing genocide as ‘what’s happening in Israel’ is wretched BBC newspeak.
But there was no national scandal, no media outrage and denunciations. As far as we could tell, the exchanges with Richard Burgess were not reported anywhere in the UK national press. Only the National newspaper in Scotland reported it. No BBC heads rolled.
The BBC Is a ‘Leftist Propaganda Machine’?
This time it is different. The hard-right Daily Telegraph, famously antagonistic towards the supposed lefty-liberal-biased BBC, was leaked an internal BBC memo written by Michael Prescott, a former external adviser to the BBC’s editorial guidelines and standards committee. Prescott had previously been a journalist, including a decade at the Rupert Murdoch-owned Sunday Times, where he was the chief political correspondent and later the political editor.
Prescott’s 8,000-word report said that a BBC Panorama documentary, broadcast in October 2024, edited a Donald Trump speech so that he appeared to explicitly encourage the Capitol Hill riots of January 2021.
In his speech in Washington DC on 6 January 2021, Trump had said:
‘We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.’
However, in the Panorama edit he was shown saying:
‘We’re going to walk down to the Capitol… and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.’
The two sections of the speech that were edited together were more than 50 minutes apart. The ‘fight like hell’ comment was taken from a section where Trump alleged how ‘corrupt’ US elections are.
More widely, Prescott accused the corporation of ‘serious and systemic’ bias in its editorial coverage, including BBC Arabic’s reporting of ‘the Israel-Gaza war’ which was supposedly anti-Israel and pro-Hamas. All of this was catnip to the right-wing media and commentators who immediately used it as a weapon to attack the BBC.
The Telegraph led with a front-page story headlined: ‘BBC’s Trump bias exposed in memo leak’
The following day, the Telegraphheadlined on its front page Tory leader Kemi Badenoch’s call that: ‘Heads “should roll over BBC bias”’.
The Telegraph also published a comment piece from Danny Cohen, former director of BBC television, under the headline:
‘Now we have the evidence. The BBC knowingly helped spread Hamas lies and hate’
The sub-headline was: ‘The rot has spread far beyond the infamous Arabic service’
Cohen claimed: ‘An internal report reveals that the BBC has knowingly spread Hamas propaganda and anti-Semitic hate.’
A few days after the leaked memo was reported by the Telegraph, Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt described the BBC as ‘100% fake news’. She added that British taxpayers were being ‘forced to foot the bill for a leftist propaganda machine’. The notion that the BBC is a ‘leftist propaganda machine’ is an exotic, bizarre reversal of reality.
A report in the Guardian quoted an anonymous BBC insider saying that the BBC board member that ‘led the charge’ over Prescott’s claims was Robbie Gibb, Theresa May’s former communications chief who also helped to found the right-wing news channel GB News. Gibb is a controversial figure even among BBC journalists, where he has been accused of interfering in stories where he perceives the editorial line to be left-leaning or ‘woke’. Reportedly, Gibb, a friend of Prescott’s, was the driving force behind then prime minister Boris Johnson’s appointment of Prescott to the BBC’s editorial committee.
In 2020, Gibb led a consortium to buy the right-wing Jewish Chronicle, an ardent supporter of the state of Israel, whose journalism has been repeatedlydiscredited, even leading to several long-time columnists resigning. Alan Rusbridger, former Guardian editor, observed last year that the Jewish Chronicle’s editor, Jake Wallis Simons, appointed by Gibb, is ‘bitterly critical of the BBC’s reporting of the war’ for supposedly being anti-Israel. Again, a reversal of reality.
As Rusbridger noted:
‘How can Gibb possibly back his own editor while sitting on the board of the BBC, which is said by the same man [Wallis Simons] to actively hate Israel?’
After Davie and Turness had resigned, Trump responded that they had left the BBC: ‘because they were caught “doctoring” my very good (PERFECT!) speech of January 6th.’
He added:
‘These are very dishonest people who tried to step on the scales of a Presidential Election. What a terrible thing for Democracy!’
Trump has now threatened a $1 billion lawsuit against the BBC if they do not withdraw the offending Panorama documentary.
Political columnist Steve Richards, a regular presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Week in Westminster, observed:
‘It’s ironic but predictable that the BBC duo – who tried so hard to please the right wing papers – are removed by the right wing papers.’
The poet, author and academic Michael Rosen noted wryly:
‘Tim Davie was privately educated, went to Cambridge and was a Tory candidate and deputy chair of a local Conservative Party Association. Clear case of left-wing bias. If the left wing rot’s gotta stop, then we need to start with private schools, Cambridge and the Tory Party.’
Pro-Israel Impunity at the BBC
Richard Sanders, an award-winning producer who has made over fifty films in history, news and current affairs, including Al-Jazeera’s ‘October 7’ and ‘The Labour Files’ documentaries, noted via X:
‘BBC Panorama’s Trump gaff was shockingly poor.
‘But the contrast between the furore it’s caused and the silence over their far more egregious 2019 doc on Corbyn reveals the reaction to these scandals is all about the interests at stake – not the scale of the crime.’
Sanders is referring here to the notorious Panorama documentary, ‘Is Labour Antisemitic?, by John Ware, who had previously made clear his antagonism towards Corbyn’s politics. As we wrote in a media alert at the time, it quickly became clear that the programme makers were not interested in a serious appraisal of the supposed evidence and that the question was merely rhetorical.
The entire thrust of the programme was that Labour under Jeremy Corbyn was antisemitic. The Panorama broadcast was immediately followed by BBC News at Ten which gave it extensive coverage, pumping up the propaganda value of the bogus ‘investigation’.
At the time, Peter Oborne, mentioned above, said via Twitter:
‘I proposed to the BBC a documentary on Tory Islamophobia three years ago [in 2016]. Zero interest.’
In a carefully researched and detailed series called ‘The Labour Files’, produced by the Al Jazeera Investigative Unit, Sanders exposed the multiple deceptions of the Panorama documentary. One of these concerned Ben Westerman, a Jewish member of Labour’s disputes team. He claimed to Ware in the documentary that he had personally encountered antisemitism during a face-to-face disciplinary meeting with a Labour activist. He claimed that the person had asked him where he was from and, when Westerman refused to say, had asked him if he was from Israel.
As Al Jazeera revealed, Westerman had been interviewing Helen Marks, a Jewish Labour party activist who had been accused of antisemitism. She had been accompanied to the meeting by her friend, Rica Bird, also a Jewish woman. It was Bird who had asked Westerman where he was from. But she had actually asked him which local branch of the Labour Party he was from. She had never asked him if he was from Israel. The women had a tape recording to prove their version of events. As far as we are aware, Panorama has never issued an apology for this appalling misrepresentation.
As we observed in our media alert on 5 October 2022, there was a shocking, if entirely predictable, mass media blanket of silence in response to ‘The Labour Files’.
‘Whatever you think of the BBC today is a bleak, bleak day for British broadcasting. The Trump gaffe was poor – but it happened a year ago, and no-one in Trump’s team had noticed.
‘Equally worrying, Prescott clearly had an agenda where coverage of Gaza was concerned. His principal criticism of BBC Arabic was that it wasn’t similar enough to BBC English – which, by any objective, purely journalistic criteria is a good thing.
‘Today’s events lay bare the immense pressures operating behind the scenes and help explain why the BBC’s coverage of Gaza has been so abject over the last 2 years. It’ll now get worse.’
He continued:
‘Ironic this should happen on same day this excruciating video emerges of Mossad fan boy Raffi Berg. Yes – this really is the person who has been BBC Online’s Middle East News Editor throughout the assault on Gaza.’
Sanders then linked to a clip where Berg was interviewed about his book Red Sea Spies: The True Story of Mossad’s Fake Diving Resort. Berg said that, in writing the book, he had been ‘accepted into a circle of trust among the people who belonged to, some of whom still work for, the Mossad’. He added: ‘as a Jewish person and an admirer of the state of Israel’, Mossad’s ‘fantastic operations’ made him ‘tremendously proud… talking about it still gives me goosebumps’. The public is to understand that Berg is an impartial BBC news editor on issues related to Israel and Palestine.
Berg has now launched legal proceedings against Owen Jones and Drop Site News. This is in response to a long and detailed article, including interviews with anonymous former and current BBC journalists, that Jones published last December titled, ‘The BBC’s Civil War Over Gaza’.
When the BBC refused to show the powerful documentary, Gaza: Doctors Under Attack, it compounded its complicity in Israel’s genocide. The Corporation’s earlier withdrawal of ‘Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone’, had already epitomised how much the UK’s national broadcaster is beholden to the Israel lobby (see our media alert here).
Gaza: Doctors Under Attack detailed how Israel has systematically targeted hospitals, health care centres, medics themselves and even their families. Doctors told the filmmakers of how they had been detained, beaten and tortured by the Israelis, confirmed by an anonymous Israeli whistleblower. The nonsensical reason given by the BBC for cancelling the film, which it had itself commissioned from Basement Films, was the risk that broadcasting it would create ‘a perception of partiality’. Reporting the truth about Israel’s crimes would be ‘partial’? Such inversion of reality has become standard for the national broadcaster.
The film was instead shown by Channel 4 on 2 July. After watching it, Gary Lineker, who had essentially been pushed out of the BBC for his honesty on Gaza and other issues, said that, ‘The BBC should hang its head in shame.’
Ben de Pear, the documentary’s executive producer for Basement Films and a former Channel 4 News editor, accused the BBC of trying to gag him and others over its decision not to show the documentary. In a statement that he posted to LinkedIn, de Pear said the film had passed through many ‘BBC compliance hoops’ and that the BBC were now attempting to stop him talking about the film’s ‘painful journey’ to the screen:
‘I rejected and refused to sign the double gagging clause the BBC bosses tried multiple times to get me to sign. Not only could we have been sued for saying the BBC refused to air the film (palpably and provably true) but also if any other company had said it, the BBC could sue us.
‘Not only could we not tell the truth that was already stated, but neither could others. Reader, I didn’t sign it.’
At a conference in Sheffield, de Pear criticised Tim Davie, then still the BBC director-general, over the BBC’s decision to drop the film:
‘All the decisions about our film were not taken by journalists, they were taken by Tim Davie. He is just a PR person. Tim Davie is taking editorial decisions which, frankly, he is not capable of making.’
How ironic that quote sounds now.
Meanwhile, BBC News daily regurgitates Israeli propaganda bullet points with impunity. Last week, BBC newsreader Clive Myrie announced on News at Ten:
‘Now, it’s almost a month since the ceasefire in Gaza came into effect. And, despite claims of violations, the truce is still holding.’
As B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights organisation, has pointed out, since the ceasefire agreement took effect on 10 October 2025, Israel has killed at least 241 Palestinians in Gaza, 117 of them children. More than 600 people have been injured. If 241 Israelis had been killed over the past month, the BBC would certainly not have reported that ‘the truce is still holding’.
The latest events reveal that the BBC bends all too easily to sustained pressure from established power and the right-wing press.
UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine Francesca Albanese talks to journalist Chris Hedges about her new report that examines how 60+ countries are complicit in Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity demonstrated to the world in a “livestreamed atrocity”.
INTERVIEW:The Chris Hedges Report
After two years of genocide, it is no longer possible to hide complicity in Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians. Entire countries and corporations are — according to multiple reports by UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine Francesca Albanese — either directly or indirectly involved in Israel’s economic proliferation.
In her latest report, Gaza Genocide: a collective crime, Albanese details the role 63 nations played in supporting Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians. She chronicles how countries like the United States, which directly funds and arms Israel, are a part of a vast global economic web.
This network includes dozens of other countries that contribute with seemingly minor components, such as warplane wheels.
Rejection of this system is imperative, Albanese says. These same technologies used to destroy the lives of Palestinians will inevitably be turned against the citizens of Israel’s funders.
“Palestine today is a metaphor of our life and where our life is going to go,” Albanese warns.
“Every worker today should draw a lesson from what’s happening to the Palestinians, because the large injustice system is connected and makes all of us connected to what’s happening there.”
The transcript: Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on Palestine, in her latest report, Gaza Genocide: a collective crime, calls out the role 63 nations have in sustaining the Israeli genocide. Albanese, who because of sanctions imposed on her by the Trump administration, had to address the UN General Assembly from the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation in Cape Town, South Africa, slams what she calls “decades of moral and political failure.”
“Through unlawful actions and deliberate omissions, too many states have harmed, founded and shielded Israel’s militarized apartheid, allowing its settler colonial enterprise to metastasize into genocide, the ultimate crime against the indigenous people of Palestine,” she told the UN.
The genocide, she notes, has diplomatic protection in international “fora meant to preserve peace,” military ties ranging from weapons sales to joint trainings that “fed the genocidal machinery,” the unchallenged weaponization of aid, and trade with entities like the European Union, which had sanctioned Russia over Ukraine yet continued doing business with Israel.
The 24-page report details how the “live-streamed atrocity” is facilitated by third states. She excoriates the United States for providing “diplomatic cover” for Israel, using its veto power at the UN Security Council seven times and controlling ceasefire negotiations. Other Western nations, the report noted, collaborate with abstentions, delays and watered-down draft resolutions, providing Israel with weapons, “even as the evidence of genocide … mounted.”
The report chastised the US Congress for passing a $26.4 billion arms package for Israel, although Israel was at the time threatening to invade Rafah in defiance of the Biden administration’s demand that Rafah be spared.
The report also condemns Germany, the second-largest arms exporter to Israel during the genocide, for weapons shipments that include everything from “frigates to torpedoes,” as well as the United Kingdom, which has allegedly flown more than 600 surveillance missions over Gaza since war broke out in October 2023.
At the same time, Arab states have not severed ties with Israel. Egypt, for example, maintained “significant security and economic relations with Israel, including energy cooperation and the closing of the Rafah crossing” during the war.
Francesca Albanese talks to Chris Hedges Video: The Chris Hedges Report
The Gaza genocide, the report states, “exposed an unprecedented chasm between peoples and their governments, betraying the trust on which global peace and security rest.” Her report coincides with the ceasefire that isn’t. More than 300 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed by Israel since the ceasefire was announced two weeks ago.
The first major ceasefire breach on October 19 led to Israeli air strikes that killed 100 Palestinians and wounded 150 others. Palestinians in Gaza continue to endure daily bombings that obliterate buildings and homes. Shelling and gunfire continue to kill and wound civilians, while drones continue to hover overhead broadcasting ominous threats.
Essential food items, humanitarian aid and medical supplies remain scarce because of the ongoing Israeli siege. And the Israeli army controls more than half of the Gaza Strip, shooting anyone, including families, who come too close to its invisible border known as the “yellow line”.
Joining me to discuss her report, the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the complicity of numerous states in sustaining the genocide in Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on Palestine.
Before we get into the report, let’s talk a little bit about what’s happening in Gaza. It’s just a complete disconnect between what is described by the international community, i.e. “a ceasefire”, the pace may have slowed down, but nothing’s changed.
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Yes, thank you for having me, Chris. I do agree that it seems that there is a complete disconnect between reality and political discourse. Because after the ceasefire, the attention has been forced to shift from Gaza elsewhere.
I do believe, for example, that the increased attention to the catastrophic situation in Sudan, which has been such for years now, all of a sudden is due to the fact that there is a need for, especially from Western countries and the US, Israel and their acolytes to focus on a new emergency.
‘There is the pretence that there is peace, there is no need to protest anymore because finally, there is peace. There is no peace.’
There is the pretence that there is peace, there is no need to protest anymore because finally, there is peace. There is no peace. I mean, the Palestinians have not seen a day of peace because Israel has continued to fire, to use violence against the Palestinians in Gaza. Over 230 Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire, 100 of them in one day in 24 hours, including 50 children.
And starvation continues. Yes, there has been an increase in the number of trucks, but far, far below what is needed with much confusion because it’s very hard to deliver aid. All the more, Israel maintains a control over 50 percent of the Gaza Strip while the entire Gaza population is amassed in small portions, guarded portions of the territory.
So there is no peace. Meanwhile, while the Security Council seems to be ready to approve a Security Council resolution that will create a non-acronistic form of tutelage, of trusteeship over Palestine, over Gaza, the West Bank is abandoned to the violence and the ethnic cleansing pushed by armed settlers and soldiers while Israel jails continue to fill up with bodies to torture of adults and children alike. This is the reality in the occupied Palestinian territory today and so it makes absolutely no sense where the political discourse is.
CHRIS HEDGES: Two issues about Gaza. One, of course, Israel has seized over 50% or occupies over 50 percent of Gaza. And as I understand it, they’re not allowing any reconstruction supplies, including cement, in.
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: This is also my understanding. They have allowed in food, water and some essential materials needed for hospitals, mainly camp hospitals, tents. But anything related to sustainability is prohibited.
There are many food items that are also prohibited because they are considered luxurious. And the question, Chris, is, and this is why I harbor so much frustration these days toward member states because in the case of genocide, you have heard yourself the argument, well, the recalcitrance of certain states to use the genocide framework saying — and it’s pure nonsense from a legal point of view — but saying, well, the International Court of Justice has not concluded that it’s genocide.
Well, it has concluded already that there is a risk of genocide two years ago, in January, 2024. But however, even when the court does conclude on something relevant like in July, 2024, that the occupation is illegal and must be dismantled totally and unconditionally, this should be the starting point of any peace related or forward-looking discussions.
Instead of deliberating how to force Israel to withdraw from the occupied Palestinian territory, member states continue to maintain dialogue with Israel as Israel has sovereignty over the territory. See, so it’s completely dystopic, the future they are leading Palestinians out of despair into.
But they are also forcing the popular movement, the global movement that has formed made of young people and workers to stop. Because look at what’s happening in France, in Italy, in Germany, in the UK — any kind of attempt at maintaining the light turned on Palestine from Gaza to the West Bank is assaulted. Protests, conferences, there is a very active assault on anything that concerns Palestine.
So this is why I’m saying we are far, far beyond the mismanagement of the lack of understanding, I mean the negligence in approaching the question of Palestine, it’s active complicity to sustain Israel in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
CHRIS HEDGES: Which, as you point out in your report, has been true from the beginning despite a slight change in rhetoric recognising the two-state solution. The UK did this while only cutting back on shipments by 10 percent.
But I want to ask before we get into the report, what do you think Israel’s goal is? Is it just to slow-walk the genocide until it can resume it? Is it to create this appalling, uninhabitable, unlivable ghetto? What do you think Israel’s goal is?
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: I think that now more than ever it is impossible to separate and distinguish the goals of Israel from the goals of the United States. We tend to have a fragmented view of what happens, analysing for example the relationship between Lebanon and Israel, between Iran and Israel, or between Israel and the Palestinians.
‘One of the things that Palestine has made me realise is the meaning of “Greater Israel” because I do believe that what the current leadership in Israel has in mind and it’s supported by many willing or not in the Israeli society, many who are fine with the erasure of the Palestinians.’
In fact, do, I mean, one of the things that Palestine has made me realise is the meaning of “Greater Israel” because I do believe that what the current leadership in Israel has in mind and it’s supported by many willing or not in the Israeli society, many who are fine with the erasure of the Palestinians.
But there is this idea of Greater Israel and for a long time I have been among those who thought, who were wondering what it is, this “Greater Israel” because of course you look at the map by Israeli leaders in several occasions with this Greater Israel going from the Nile to the Euphrates and you say come on they cannot do that, they cannot occupy Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq.
But then everything changes when you look at it from a non-territorial border expansion perspective. And if you think that in fact domination can be exerted, established, other than by expanding the physical borders and through military occupation, but through domination and financial control, control from outside, power domination, you see that the Greater Israel project has already started and it’s very advanced.
Look at the annihilation of Iraq, Libya, Syria, Lebanon. So all those who were historically considered not friends of Israel have been annihilated. And the other Arab countries that remain either do not have the capacity to confront Israel and perish the thought they explored the idea of unity among them or with others. And the others are fine with it.
Ultimately, I think that Greater Israel is the quintessential explanation of the US imperialistic design in that part of the world for which the Palestinians remain a thorn in the side not just for Israel but for the imperialistic project itself because the Palestinians are still there resisting.
They don’t want to go, they don’t want to be tamed, they don’t want to be dominated so they are the last line, the last frontier of resistance, both physically and in the imagination. And therefore, you see, the fierceness against them has scaled up, with the US now getting ready with boots on the ground to get rid of them. This is my interpretation of the general design behind Israel-United States, where Israelis are going to pay a heavy price like many in the region, not just the Palestinians.
CHRIS HEDGES:So you see the imposition of American troops in Gaza as another step forward to the depopulation of Gaza.
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Yes, yes, yes, I don’t trust any promise made to the Palestinians either by Israel or by the United States because what I’ve seen over the past two years shows me, demonstrates to all of us in fact, that they don’t care at all about the Palestinians. Otherwise, they would have seen their suffering.
‘The beginning of genocide has changed my perception of the world in a way, for me personally, it’s the end of an era of innocence when I really believed that the United Nations were a place where things could still be advanced in the pursuit of peace.’
It’s just not like people like us who can really divide their life. Is it pre-genocide? Does it happen to you as well? Are you talking of pre-genocide or after genocide? Because in fact, the beginning of genocide has changed my perception of the world in a way, for me personally, it’s the end of an era of innocence when I really believed that the United Nations were a place where things could still be advanced in the pursuit of peace.
Now I don’t think so, which doesn’t mean that I think that the UN is over, but in order not to be over, in order to make sense to the people, it is to be led by dignity, principles like dignity, equality and freedom for all. And we are absolutely far from that today.
CHRIS HEDGES: And what is it that brought you to this decision? Is it the acceptance of this faux ceasefire on the part of the UN, or was it before this moment?
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: No, it’s before. It’s before. It’s the fact that for two years most states, primarily in the West, but with the acquiescence of other states in the region have supported the Israeli mantra of “self-defence”.
Sorry, it was a mantra because again, self-defence has a very, I’m not saying that Israel had no right to protect itself. Of course Israel had suffered a ferocious attack on October 7. Some say similar to the attacks it had inflicted on the Palestinians. Others say more brutal, say less brutal. It doesn’t matter.
Israel suffered a horrible, violent attack. Israeli civilians suffered a horrible attack on October 7th. But hey, this didn’t give the possibility to Israel to invoke Article 51 of the UN Charter, meaning the right to wage a war.
This is not legal. And on this I can say I’m surprised by how conservative are member states when it comes to the interpretation of international law, except on this, in the sense that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has already set the limits of the right of invoking self-defence for member states.
And it can only be done against states where there is a concrete threat that the state will attack which is not the case here. So yes, Israel could defend itself, but not wage a war. And while the war was clearly identifiable more for its crimes than not its tendency to avoid crimes, member states have continued to say nothing and it was very extreme violence against the Palestinians in Gaza but also against the Palestinians in the West Bank. And for two years they’ve not used their power to stop it.
So I’m convinced that in order to have a political shift vis-à-vis Israel, there must be a political shift at the country level, because governments are completely subdued to the dictates of the US. Of course, if the US wanted, this would stop, but the US with this constellation of figures in the government is not going to stop.
And plus look at how the West in particular has contributed to dehumanise the Palestinians. Even today you hear people saying yes, Palestinians have been killed in these numbers because they’ve been used as human shields when the only evidence that they’ve been used as human shields is against Israel because Israel has used Palestinians as human shields in the West Bank and in Gaza alike.
You see Palestinians have returned to be wrapped into this colonial tropism of them being the savages, the barbarians, in a way, they have brought havoc upon themselves. This is the narrative that the West has used toward the Palestinians. And by doing that, it has created, they have created the fertile ground for Israel’s impunity.
CHRIS HEDGES: Let’s talk about the nations that you single out in your report that have continued to sustain the genocide, either through weapons shipments, but also the commercial interests. I think your previous report talked about the money that was being made off of the genocide. Just lay out the extent of that collaboration and to the extent that you can, the sums of money involved.
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Yeah, yeah, let me start with introducing generally two components, the military component and the trade and investment ones, which are quite interrelated. And states have, in general, I name 62 states, primarily Western states, but with substantive collaboration of states from the Global South, global majority, including some Arab states.
So they have altogether ignored, obscured and somewhat even profited from Israel’s violations of international law through military and economic channels. So military cooperation through arms trades or intelligence sharing has fueled Israel’s war machine during the occupation, the illegal occupation, and especially during the genocide while the United States and Germany alone have provided about 90 percent of Israel’s arms export.
At least 26 states have supplied or facilitated the transfer of arms or components, while many others have continued to buy weapons tested on the Palestinians. And this is why in my previous report, the ones looking at the private sector, I was shocked to see how much the Israeli stock exchange had gone up during the genocide.
And this is particularly because of a growth in the military industry. On the other hand, there is the trade and investment sector. Both have sustained and profited from Israel’s economy. Think that between 2023, 2024, actually the end of 2022 and 2024, exports of electronics, pharmaceuticals, energy minerals and what is called the dual-use have totaled almost US$500 billion, helping Israel finance its military occupation.
Now one third of this trade is with the European Union while the rest is complemented by North American countries, the US and Canada, who have free trade agreements with Israel and several Arab states that have continued to deepen economic ties.
Only a few states have marginally reduced trade during the genocide, but in general the indirect commercial flows, including with states that have supposedly no diplomatic relations with Israel, have continued undisturbed.
It’s a very grim picture of the reality. But let me add just one extra element. I do believe that in many respects, the problem is ideological. As I said, there is a tendency to treat Ukraine, for example, vis-a-vis Russia, in a very different fashion than Palestine versus Israel. And this is why I think there is an element of Orientalism that accompanies also the tragedy of the Palestinian people.
CHRIS HEDGES:Talk a little bit about the kinds of weapons that have been shipped to Israel. These are, and we should be clear that, of course, the Palestinians do not have a conventional army, don’t have a navy, they don’t have an air force, they don’t have mechanized units, including tanks, they don’t have artillery, and yet the weapons shipments that are coming in are some of the most sophisticated armaments that are used in a conventional war.
And as a leaked Israeli report, I think it was +972, provided, 83 percent of the people killed in Gaza are civilians.
FRANCISCA ALBANESE: Yes, yes. First of all, there are two things that are weapons, what is considered conventional weapons and dual-use. And both should have been suspended according to the decision of the International Court of Justice concerning Israel in the Nicaragua v. Germany case.
Meanwhile, there are two things: there is the transfer of weapons directly to Israel, and this includes aircraft, materials to compose the drones, because Israel doesn’t produce anything on its own, it requires components — artillery shells, for example, cannon ammunition, rifles, anti-tank missiles, bombs.
So these are all things that have been provided primarily by the United States. Germany, which is the second largest arms exporter to Israel has supplied a range of weapons from frigates to torpedoes.
And also, and then there is Italy, which has also provided spare parts for bombs and airplanes and the United Kingdom, who has played a key role in providing intelligence. And there is also the question of the UN. Not everything is easy to track because the United States have traveled … the United States are the prime provider of weapons, also because they are the assembler of the F-35 programme.
So there are 17 or 19 countries which cooperate and all of them say, well, you know, I mean, yes, I know that the F-35 is used in Israel, by Israel, but I only contribute to a small part. I only contribute to the wheels. I only contribute to the wings. I only provide these hooks or this engine.
Well, everything is assembled in the US and then sold or transferred or gifted to Israel. And it’s extremely problematic because this is why I say it’s a collective crime, because no one can assume the responsibility on their own but eventually all together they contribute to make this genocide implicating so many countries.
CHRIS HEDGES: So Francesca, Israel is the ninth largest arms exporter in the world. To what extent do those relationships have? I mean, I think one of the largest purchasers of Israeli drones is India. We’ve seen India shift its position vis-a-vis Palestine.
Historically, it’s always stood with the Palestinian people. That’s no longer true under [Narendra] Modi. To what extent do those ties affect the response by the 63 some states that you write about for collaborating with the genocide.
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: So let me first expand on this. Weapon and military technology sale is a core component of Israel’s economy. And since 2024, it has constituted one third of Israeli exports. And of course, there are two elements connected to this, is that these exports enhances Israel’s manufacturing capacity, but also horribly worsens the life of the Palestinians because Israeli military technology is tested on the Palestinians under occupation or other people under other Israeli related military activities.
Now, the fact that the arms export has increased of nearly 20 percent during the genocide, doubling toward Europe. And only the trade with Europe accounts for over 50 percent of Israeli military sales, selling to so many other countries, including in the Global South, the Asia and Pacific states in the Asia-Pacific region account for 23 percent of the purchase, with India being probably the major. But also 12 percent of the weapons tested on the Palestinians are purchased by Arab countries under the Abraham Accords. So what does it tell us?
It explains what you were hinting at in the question, the fact that this is also reflected in the political shift toward Israel that has been recorded at the General Assembly level. If you see how some African countries and Asian countries, including India, are behaving vis-a-vis Israel, it’s 180 degrees turn compared to where they were in the 1970s, 80s and 90s.
This is because on the one hand, Israel is embedded in the global economy, but also it’s a global economy that is veering toward ultra liberal, I mean, it’s following ultra-liberalist ideologies and therefore capital and wealth and accumulation of resources, including military power, comes first.
‘It’s very sad, but this is the reality . . . since the end of the Cold War that there has been an increasing globalisation of the system where the common denominator is force.’
It’s very sad, but this is the reality. And it’s important to know because this is a long, as I was hinting before, my sense is that this is a long term trajectory that didn’t start on October 7, 2023. I mean, probably since the end of the Cold War that there has been an increasing globalisation of the system where the common denominator is force.
I mean, there is this, not a common denominator, but the unifying factor for many is force, how the monopoly of force that comes with weapons, capital and algorithms. And yeah, this is where the world is going.
CHRIS HEDGES: Well, we’ve seen these weapons systems which of course are tested. They’re sold as bad. say the term is battle tested without naming the Palestinians, but they are sold to Greece to hold back migrants coming from North Africa. They are used along the border in the United States with Mexico.
And it’s not just that these weapons are “battle tested” on the Palestinians and we haven’t even spoken about these huge surveillance systems, but the very methods of control, the way they’re used are exported through military advisors.
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Of course, because in fact, the Israeli population is made almost entirely of soldiers. Of course, there are those who do not enlist in the army for religious reasons or because they are contentious objectors, they’re a tiny minority. But the majority of the people of Israelis go through the army.
And then many of them transfer their know-how or what they have been doing into their next career steps. So the fact that Israel, as I was documenting in my previous report, Israel’s startup economy has a huge dark side to the fact that it’s connected to the military industry and to the surveillance industry.
There is a significant body of Israeli citizens who are going around providing advice, intelligence and training in the Global South both to mercenaries and states proper like Morocco. So there is an Israelisation and Palestinianisation of the international relations or rather of the relations between individuals and states.
And I think the interesting thing, this is why I’m saying Palestine is such a revealer, it’s because, as you say, eventually these tools of control and securitisation have concentrated in the hands of those who are fortifying borders at the expense of refugees and migrants.
So it’s really clear what’s happening here. There are oligarchs who are getting richer and richer and more and more protected in their fortresses where the state is providing the fertile ground to have it, but it’s not states that are benefiting from this inequality, because the majority of the people within states, look at the US, but also in Europe, are not benefiting from anything, in fact.
They’re victims. This is why you equally exploit it. This is why I’m saying it’s another degree of suffering, of course, than the Palestinians. But every worker today should draw a lesson from what’s happening to the Palestinians, because the large injustice system is connected and makes all of us connected to what’s happening there.
CHRIS HEDGES: Well, internally as well. I mean, with Sikh farmers who were protesting Modi were out on the roads, suddenly, over their heads were Israeli-made drones dropping tear gas canisters.
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Yeah, exactly. Drones are one of the most exported devices from Israel’s technology and they are in use by Frontex to surveil the Mediterranean Sea, as you were saying, the US-Mexican border. But more and more, they’re getting into people’s lives.
Also look at the way certain technologies have been perfected across borders. I remember earlier this summer, this is very anecdotal, I’ve not done research on it, but I knew that we were seeing something quite and horribly revolutionary.
This year, this summer during the protests in Serbia, where students and ordinary citizens were taken to the streets against the government and have been protesting for one year now, people in Serbia. I saw the use of these sound weapons, oxygen-fed weapons.
So there are bombs that produce such a pain in the body who finds itself in the wave that it’s excruciating. And then of course people try to flee, but they also lose senses, et cetera. And I’ve seen this in Serbia.
And now I understand that it’s being used in Gaza as well, where the bomb doesn’t produce fire, it produces a movement of air that causes pain to the body and even to internal organs. It’s incredible. And these are weapons that have been perfected through testing here and there, and Serbia keeps on selling and buying military technology to and from Israel.
CHRIS HEDGES: I just want to close with, I mean, I think your reports, the last two reports in particular, show the complete failure on the part of governments as well as corporations to respond legally in terms of their legal obligations to the genocide. What do we do now? What must be done to quote Lenin?
How, because this, as you have pointed out repeatedly, really presages the complete breakdown of the rule of law. What as citizens must we do?
FRANCESCA ALBANESE: I think that we have passed the alarm area. I mean, we are really in a critical place and I sense it because instead of correcting itself, the system led by governments is accentuating its authoritarian traits. Think of the repressive measures that the UK government is taking against protesters, against civil society, against journalists standing in solidarity with Palestine, for justice in Palestine.
In France and in Italy at the same time, conferences academic freedom is shrinking and in the same days, conferences of reputable historians and military and legal experts have been cancelled owing to the pressure of the pro-genocide groups, pro-Israel groups in their respective countries. People, including in Germany, are being persecuted, including academics, for their own exercise of free speech.
This tells me that there is very little pretense that Western states, so-called liberal democracies, the most attached to this idea of democracy are ready to defend for real. So in this sense, it’s up to us citizens to be vigilant and to make sure that we do not buy products connected or services connected to the legality of the occupation, the apartheid and the genocide.
And there are various organisations that collect lists of companies and entities, including universities that are connected to this unlawful endeavor. BDS [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions] is one, don’t buy into the occupation who profits profundo, but also students associations.
‘There is a need to speak about Palestine, to make choices about Palestine and not because everything needs to revolve around Palestine, but because Palestine today is a metaphor of our life and where our life is going to go is clearly evident in this.’
And this is something that has taught me, it’s very touching because it’s really the work of students, faculty members and staff that has mapped what each university does. And I think it gives the possibility to act, everyone in our own domain. Then of course there is a need to speak about Palestine, to make choices about Palestine and not because everything needs to revolve around Palestine, but because Palestine today is a metaphor of our life and where our life is going to go is clearly evident in this.
But also we need to make sure that businesses divest. Either through our purchase power, people have to step away and stop using platforms like Airbnb or Booking.com. I know that Amazon is very convenient, but guys, we might also return to buy books in libraries, ordering books through libraries.
Of course, not all of us can, but many do, many can. On the way to work, buy a book in a library, order a book in a bookstore. We need to reduce our reliance on the tools that have been used, that have been perfected through the slaughter of the Palestinians. And of course, make government accountable. There are lawyers, associations, and jurists who are taking government officials to court, businesses to court. But again, I do not think that there is one strategy that is going to be the winning one.
It’s the plurality of actions from a plurality of actors that is going to produce results and slow down the genocide and then help dismantle the occupation and the apartheid. It’s a long trajectory and the fight has just started.
CHRIS HEDGES: Thank you, Francesca, and I want to thank Thomas [Hedges], Diego [Ramos], Max [Jones] and Sofia [Menemenlis], who produced the show. You can find me at ChrisHedges.Substack.com
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning author and journalist who was a foreign correspondent for 15 years for The New York Times. This interview is republished from The Chris Hedges Report.
Timor-Leste Prime Minister Kay Rala Xanana Gusmão has paid tribute to the “courageous and determined” contribution of Australian journalist Robert Domm to the struggle of the Timorese people in gaining independence from Indonesia. He died last Friday.
Domm was remembered for meeting in secret with the then Timorese resistance leader Gusmão in an exclusive interview.
“The government and people of East Timor are deeply saddened by the passing of Robert Domm, whose courage and determination helped bring to the world the truth of our fight for self-determination,” Gusmão’s statement said.
“In September 1990, when few in the world were aware of the devastation in occupied East Timor, or that our campaign of resistance continued despite the terrible losses, Robert Domm made the perilous journey to our country and climbed Mount Bunaria to meet with me and the leadership from FALINTIL.
“He was the first foreign journalist in 15 years to have direct contact with the Resistance.
“Your interview with me, broadcast by the ABC Background Briefing programme, broke the silence involving Timor-Leste since 1975.
“He conveyed to the world the message that the Timorese struggle for self-determination and resistance against foreign military occupation was very much alive.
Merchant seaman
“Robert Domm visited East Timor in the 1970s, then under Portuguese colonial control, as a merchant seaman on a boat crossing between Darwin and Dili, transporting general cargo and fuel.
“He returned in 1989, when Indonesia allowed tourist entry for the first time since 1975.
“He returned in 1990, allegedly as a “tourist”, but was on a secret mission to interview me for the Australian Broadcasting Commission.
“Robert Domm’s journey to find me took extraordinary courage. His visit was organised by the Timorese resistance with, as he later recalled, “military precision”. He involved more than two hundred people from Timore who guided him through villages and checkpoints, running great risk for himself and the Timore people who helped him.
“He was a humble and gentle Australian who slept next to us on the grounds of Mount Bunaria, ate with us under the protection of the jungle and walked with our resistance soldiers as a comrade and a friend. I am deeply moved by your concern for the people of Timore.
He risked his own life to share our story. His report has given international recognition to the humanity and the resolve of our people.
“Following the broadcast, the Indonesian military carried out large-scale operations in our mountains and many of those who helped them lost their lives for our freedom.
Exposed complicity
“Robert continued to support East Timor after 1990. He spoke out against the occupation and exposed the complicity of governments that have remained mute. He was a co-author, with Mark Aarons, of East Timor: A Tragedy Created by the West, a work that deepened the international understanding of our suffering and our right to self-determination.
“He remained a friend and defender of East Timor long after the restoration of independence.
“In 2015, twenty-five years after his maiden voyage, Robert returned to East Timor to commemorate our historic encounter. Together, we walked to Mount Bunaria, in the municipality of Ainaro, to celebrate the occasion and remember the lives lost during our fight.
“The place of our meeting has been recognised as a place of historical importance.
“In recognition of his contribution, Robert Domm was awarded the Order of Timor-Leste in August 2014. This honour reflected our nation’s gratitude for its role in taking our struggle to the world. Robert’s contribution is part of our nation’s history.
“Robert’s soul now rests on Mount Matebian, next to his Timorese brothers and sisters.
“On behalf of the government and people of East Timor, we express our deepest condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of Robert Domm. His courage, decency and sense of justice will forever remain in the memory of our nation.”
Journalist Robert Domm with Timorese resistance leader Xanana Gusmão, now Prime Minister of Timor-Leste, in a jungle hideout in 1990. Image: via Joana Ruas
Timor-Leste Prime Minister Kay Rala Xanana Gusmão has paid tribute to the “courageous and determined” contribution of Australian journalist Robert Domm to the struggle of the Timorese people in gaining independence from Indonesia. He died last Friday.
Domm was remembered for meeting in secret with the then Timorese resistance leader Gusmão in an exclusive interview.
“The government and people of East Timor are deeply saddened by the passing of Robert Domm, whose courage and determination helped bring to the world the truth of our fight for self-determination,” Gusmão’s statement said.
“In September 1990, when few in the world were aware of the devastation in occupied East Timor, or that our campaign of resistance continued despite the terrible losses, Robert Domm made the perilous journey to our country and climbed Mount Bunaria to meet with me and the leadership from FALINTIL.
“He was the first foreign journalist in 15 years to have direct contact with the Resistance.
“Your interview with me, broadcast by the ABC Background Briefing programme, broke the silence involving Timor-Leste since 1975.
“He conveyed to the world the message that the Timorese struggle for self-determination and resistance against foreign military occupation was very much alive.
Merchant seaman
“Robert Domm visited East Timor in the 1970s, then under Portuguese colonial control, as a merchant seaman on a boat crossing between Darwin and Dili, transporting general cargo and fuel.
“He returned in 1989, when Indonesia allowed tourist entry for the first time since 1975.
“He returned in 1990, allegedly as a “tourist”, but was on a secret mission to interview me for the Australian Broadcasting Commission.
“Robert Domm’s journey to find me took extraordinary courage. His visit was organised by the Timorese resistance with, as he later recalled, “military precision”. He involved more than two hundred people from Timore who guided him through villages and checkpoints, running great risk for himself and the Timore people who helped him.
“He was a humble and gentle Australian who slept next to us on the grounds of Mount Bunaria, ate with us under the protection of the jungle and walked with our resistance soldiers as a comrade and a friend. I am deeply moved by your concern for the people of Timore.
He risked his own life to share our story. His report has given international recognition to the humanity and the resolve of our people.
“Following the broadcast, the Indonesian military carried out large-scale operations in our mountains and many of those who helped them lost their lives for our freedom.
Exposed complicity
“Robert continued to support East Timor after 1990. He spoke out against the occupation and exposed the complicity of governments that have remained mute. He was a co-author, with Mark Aarons, of East Timor: A Tragedy Created by the West, a work that deepened the international understanding of our suffering and our right to self-determination.
“He remained a friend and defender of East Timor long after the restoration of independence.
“In 2015, twenty-five years after his maiden voyage, Robert returned to East Timor to commemorate our historic encounter. Together, we walked to Mount Bunaria, in the municipality of Ainaro, to celebrate the occasion and remember the lives lost during our fight.
“The place of our meeting has been recognised as a place of historical importance.
“In recognition of his contribution, Robert Domm was awarded the Order of Timor-Leste in August 2014. This honour reflected our nation’s gratitude for its role in taking our struggle to the world. Robert’s contribution is part of our nation’s history.
“Robert’s soul now rests on Mount Matebian, next to his Timorese brothers and sisters.
“On behalf of the government and people of East Timor, we express our deepest condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of Robert Domm. His courage, decency and sense of justice will forever remain in the memory of our nation.”
Journalist Robert Domm with Timorese resistance leader Xanana Gusmão, now Prime Minister of Timor-Leste, in a jungle hideout in 1990. Image: via Joana Ruas
Condé Nast is being accused of engaging in “extreme” union busting and illegal conduct after the media giant fired four union leaders and suspended five others last week, shortly after they confronted management about recent mass layoffs at Teen Vogue. Last Wednesday, a group of over a dozen editorial staff confronted the company’s head of HR seeking answers about two rounds of mass layoffs…
After iconic Bollywood actor Dharmendra was hospitalised on November 11, several major media outlets published obituaries and reported that the legend was no more. Several journalists, celebrities and social media users also rushed to express condolences on social media.
Among the channels that posted about Dharmendra’s death was India Today. The outlet said his team allegedly confirmed the news, but later deleted their X post. (Archive)
Hindi news channel Aaj Tak, part of the India Today group, claimed that the actor died at Breach Candy hospital in Mumbai. Aaj Tak later deleted the post. (Archive)
Similarly, ABP News also posted that the actor died at the age of 89 and later deleted it. (Archive)
Apart from these, Zee Business, Business Standard, ABP English, Outlook and Hindustan Times also published similar reports on the actor’s death. However, these outlets later updated the reports; some turned them into ‘health updates’. News agency UNI ran a story on this in its Hindi edition, Univarta. Besides news outlets, journalist Chitra Tripathi, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath and renowned lyricist and poet Javed Akhtar also shared condolences on X.
However, all of these obituaries and reports were published prematurely before the news of the actor’s death was even verified. In the rush to push out reports first, news outlets skipped the most crucial bit: to confirm whether the unfortunate news was true.
What the Family Said
While these posts were being shared on X, the actor’s family categorically denied the reports, calling it a hoax. They also called out media outlets for reporting irresponsibly on this. “How can responsible channels spread false news about a person who is recovering?” Dharmendra’s wife and BJP MP Hema Malini posted on X.
Dharmendra’s daughter, Esha Deol, wrote on her Instagram story that the media was on “overdrive” and “spreading false news”.She stressed that her father’s condition was stable and that he was recovering.
This is not the first time that Indian media outlets have carelessly published reports on an ailing celebrity’s death without verifying. Often, corrections and apologies aren’t issued either and the misinformation is clarified only after the family of those rumoured to be dead speaks up.
