Washington, D.C., December 1, 2025—A White House website purporting to tackle “media bias” in fact creates a skewed representation of the work of journalists and creates an environment that seems to deliberately undermine independent reporting in the United States, the Committee to Protect Journalists said on Monday.
The page, published on November 28 and accessed via whitehouse.gov/mediabias, posts a “Media Offender of the Week,” accusing outlets of unfair coverage against the administration’s policies and statements made by President Trump, according to multiplereports.
In its first update, the page accused outlets CBS News, The Boston Globe, and The Independent of being media that “misrepresents and exaggerates,” and listed the names of four reporters employed by those outlets.
“This latest move from the Trump administration should be a wakeup call to Americans that their tax dollars are being used to suppress, rather than encourage freedom of speech,” said CPJ U.S., Canada, and Caribbean Program Coordinator Katherine Jacobsen. “The Trump administration’s landing page creates a dangerous permission structure for attacks on journalists and an attempt to undermine newsrooms across the country. This type of behavior is more in line with an authoritarian regime, and has no place in a democracy.”
The White House did not immediately respond to CPJ’s request for comment.
The origin of the expression “tuckered out” goes back to the east of the United States around the 1830s.
After New Englanders began to compare the wrinkled and drawn appearance of overworked and undernourished horses and dogs to the appearance of tucked cloth, it became associated with people being exhausted.
Expressions such as this can be adapted, sometimes with a little generosity, to apply to other circumstances.
This adaptation includes when a prominent far right propagandist and activist who, in a level of frustration that resembles mental exhaustion, lashes out against far right leaders and governments that he has been strongly supportive of.
Tariq Ali . . . reposts revealing far right lament. Image: politicalbytes.blog
This came to my attention when reading a frustrated far right lament reposted on Facebook (27 November) by British-Pakistani socialist Tariq Ali.
If anything meets the threshold for a passionate expression of grief or sorrow, this one did.
The lament was from Tucker Carlson, an American far right political commentator who hosted a nightly political talk show on Fox News from 2016 to 2023 when his contract was terminated.
Since then he has hosted his own show under his name on fellow extremist Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter). Arguably Carlson is the most influential far right host in the United States (perhaps also more influential than the mainstream rightwing).
He is someone who the far right government of Israel considered to be an unshakable ally.
Carlson’s lament
The lament is brief but cuts to the chase:
There is no such thing as “God’s chosen people”.
God does not choose child-killers.
This is heresy — these are criminals and thieves.
350 million Americans are struggling to survive,
and we send $26 billion to a country most Americans can’t even name the capital of.
His lament doubled as a “declaration of war” on the entire narrative Israel uses to justify its genocide in Gaza. But Carlson didn’t stop there. He went on to expose the anger boiling inside the United States.
President Donald Trump . . . also the target of Carlson’s lament. Image: politicalbytes.blog
The clip hit the US media big time including 48 million views in the first nine hours. Subsequently a CNN poll showed that 62 percent of Americans agree with Carlson and that support for Israel among Americans is collapsing.
But Carlson went much further directly focussing on fellow far right Donald Trump who he had “supported”.
By focussing the US’s money, energy, and foreign policy on Israel, Trump was betraying his promises to Americans.
This signifies a major falling out including a massive public shift against Israel (which is also losing its media shield), the far right breaking ranks, and panic within the political establishment.
Marjorie Taylor Greene . . . another prominent far right leader who has fallen out with Trump. Image: politicalbytes.blog
It should also be seen in the context of the extraordinary public falling out with President Trump of another leading far right extremist (and conspiracy theorist) Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. In addition to the issues raised by Carlson she also focussed on Trump’s handling of the Epstein files controversy.
Far right in New Zealand politics
The far right publicly fighting among itself over its core issues is very significant for the US given its powerful influence.
This influence includes not just the presidency but also both Congress and the Senate, one of the two dominant political parties, and the Supreme Court (and a fair chunk of the rest of the judiciary).
Does this development offer insights for politics in New Zealand? To begin with the far right here has nowhere near the same influence as in the United States.
The parties that make up the coalition government are hard right rather than far right (that is, hardline but still largely respectful of the formal democratic institutions).
It is arguably the most hard right government since the early 1950s at least. But this doesn’t make it far right. I discussed this difference in an earlier Political Bytes post (November 3): Distinguishing far right from hard right.
Specifically:
…”hard right” for me means being very firm (immoderate) near the extremity of rightwing politics but still respect the functional institutions that make formal democracy work.
In contrast the “far right” are at the extremity of rightwing politics and don’t respect these functional institutions. There is an overlapping blur between the “hard right” and “far right”.
Both the NZ First and ACT parties certainly have far right influences. The former’s deputy leader Shane Jones does a copy-cat imitation of Trumpian bravado.
Far right Brian Tamaki has some influence but is a small bit player compared to Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Image: politicalbytes.blog
Meanwhile, there is an uncomfortable rapport between ACT (particularly its leader and Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour) and the far right Destiny Church (particularly its leader Brian Tamaki).
But this doesn’t come close to meeting the far right threshold for both NZ First and ACT.
The far right itself also has its internal conflicts. The most prominent group within this relatively small extremist group is the Destiny Church. However, its relationship with other sects can be adversarial.
Insights for New Zealand politics nevertheless Nevertheless, the internal far right fallout in the United States does provide some insights for public fall-outs within the hard right in New Zealand.
This is already becoming evident in the three rightwing parties making up the coalition government.
NZ Prime Minister Christopher Luxon . . . coalition arrangement starting to get tuckered out and heading towards lamenting? Image: politicalbytes.blog
For example:
NZ First has said that it would support repealing ACT’s recent parliamentary success with the Regulatory Standards Act, which was part of the coalition agreement, should it be part of the next government following the 2026 election;
National subsequently suggested that they might do likewise;
ACT has lashed out against NZ First for its above-mentioned position;
NZ First leader Winston Peters has declined to express public confidence in Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s leadership;
NZ First has publicly criticised the Government’s economic management performance; and
while National and ACT support the sale of public assets, NZ First is publicly opposed.
These tensions are well short of the magnitude of Tucker Carlson’s public attack on Israel over Gaza and President Trump’s leadership.
However, there are signs with the hard right in New Zealand of at least starting to feel “tuckered out” of collaborating collegially in their coalition government arrangement and showing signs of pending laments.
Too early to tell yet but we shall see.
Ian Powell is a progressive health, labour market and political “no-frills” forensic commentator in New Zealand. A former senior doctors union leader for more than 30 years, he blogs at Second Opinion and Political Bytes, where this article was first published. Republished with the author’s permission.
Note: In the Local Newspaper, Newport News Times, now called, The Leader.
These are unprecedented times for human intelligence and collective memory. We are seeing turbo charged the scarfing up of the American and Western collective consciousness through the illicit actions of billionaires and their hoarding henchmen millionaires.
So much common sense and clear thinking have been virtually memory holed by the advancing armies of information and data controllers. Larry Ellison isn’t just hoarding all the data of the world through his many operations tied to Oracle. He’s Big Brother of another Mother.
This isn’t your grandparents’ world: Ellison believes governments need to consolidate data about citizens for the sake of AI. He said AI models can help improve government services while also saving money and cutting down on fraud.
Imagine the power of this one fellow and his henchmen demanding the U.S. and other countries converting to a world of AI, after governments (corporations) unify the data they collect into one easily digestible database.
His son David has become the current “hostile takeover honcho” with acquiring Paramount studios, CBS, CNN and with an eye for more media outfits.
Imagine if “we the people” demanded a takeover of all Fortune 500 corporations’ data, while also wresting control of the private and corporate secrets of Exxon, Raytheon, Monsanto or the other tens of thousands of corporations which have turned the world into an Inverted Totalitarian Game of Thrones.
Note: Daddy Larry is the second richest person on the planet.
Those who control the water, oil, food, money, and now data, control the people and the world. Look up variations on a theme and discover which oligarchs have worked hand in hand with despotic and ill-intended creeps to grift, gouge and rip-off the public.
“Marks” is one way to describe how the rich see us. “Useless eaters” is another of their terms for us.
The “wretched of the earth” is yet another way the titans of tech, war and surveillance see us. Don’t just take my word as someone with 52 years in journalism.
Take a deep breath, learn and then research after reading:
“An artful combination of propaganda flattered the mass, exploited its antipolitical sentiments, warned it of dangerous enemies foreign and domestic, and applied forms of intimidation to create a climate of fear and an insecure populace, one receptive to being led. The same citizenry, which democracy had created, proceeded to vote into power and then support movements openly pledged to destroy democracy and constitutionalism. Thus, a democracy may fail and give way to antidemocracy that, in turn, supplies a populace—and a “democratic” postulate—congenial to a totalitarian regime.”
― Sheldon S. Wolin, Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism
That “artful propaganda” has managed the masses of America to turn against itself, and alas, we are the subjects of the billionaires and their shock troops of finance, banking, insurance, real estate, media and other tools propping up an undemocratic society.
I am talking at the Newport Performing Arts Center as part of the Oregon Coast Council for the Arts. At noon, Dec. 4, I drummed up a talk I titled, “Love and Death in a Time of Media Illiteracy.”
Part of the conversation covers digital media literacy, as a way to precipitate a robust critique of what one reads, listens to and watches in this vast media landscape. Unfortunately, the inability of citizens to grasp subject matter as far-ranging as climate heating or immigration, or even as mundane as to why the potholes aren’t getting fixed, is tied to a lack of depth.
These topics have been studied/researched and written about, in long form, i.e. books and academic journals. When the average person reads something on, say, bee colony collapse in the local newspaper or on Twitter/X, the reader is already far behind on the proverbial learning curve.
It is time-consuming to tap into sources that study these colony collapses and which go to the actual fields and into the labs; sources that are not afraid to challenge power, i.e. the corporations spreading pesticides and those ag businesses planting more mono-crops on land that used to sustain a variety of flowering plants for pollinators to sustain their energy to migrate.
What happening is not just a shortening of the material people read on bees, but there is a concerted effort to dumb-down, and to confuse the reader into NOT taking a position on what solutions might be deployed.
A system of artful rhetorical devices is used in this process – false balance and false equivalency. Both-sideism is more descriptive. No gray areas allowed.
I’ve mentioned Project Censored before. If you go there and tap into their Top 25 Censored Stories of 2025, you will be on your way to a knowledge reckoning.
“Faculty and students vet each candidate story in terms of its importance, timeliness, quality of sources, and corporate news coverage. If it fails on any one of these criteria, the story is deemed inappropriate and is excluded from further consideration.”
Dang – The following are just some of the stories corporate and other media have under-reported or just not reported on at all. The Top 25, but many more are printed in the book, State of the Free Press 2025:
Generative AI security risks, Climate change impact on water scarcity, Indigenous activism in Panama, Government surveillance tactics, Corporate “net-zero” promises, Bottled water and inequality, Protests against fossil fuel investments, Healthcare access in Gaza, Texas border policies, PFAS contamination on Native American land, Kids Online Safety Act and free speech, Education for incarcerated youth, Media misrepresentation of crime data, Hospital school programs, Forced labor in Paraguay, Censorship of pro-Palestinian artists, Corporate profit in climate solutions, Amazon and labor rights, US support for authoritarian regimes, The influence of AI in journalism, Environmental impact of space exploration, Mental health crisis and student debt, The opioid crisis and pharmaceutical accountability, Data privacy and health apps, Whistleblower protection inadequacies!
*****
That talk, well, Dec. 4, it will be controversial because I am introducing concepts way outside the sacred cow and holier than thou American belief system. AFTER national day of sorrow/mourning. Do I dare bring up that, and then Dec. 7, that unholy day of Pearl Harbor!
The war that we have carefully for years
provoked
Catches us unprepared, amazed and indignant.
Our warships are shot
Like sitting ducks and our planes like nest-birds,
both our coasts ridiculously panicked,
And our leaders make orations. This is the
people
That hopes to impose on the whole planetary
world
An American peace.
– Robinson Jeffers, “Pearl Harbor.”
*****
“This Pearl Harbor business has a terrible smell.”
– Admiral Chester Nimitz, Commander-in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet in World War II.
Here are a few pieces by Native and Indigenous writers that shed a more honest light on American history and offer a new set of traditions to ground us in this time of uncertainty.
“Four ways to decolonize your thankstaking” by the Indigenous Environmental Network / A Twitter thread reminding readers that the hard work only begins with land acknowledgements, a reflection on the Indigenous land that you live or work on as a way to honor the history of the people who had the land stolen from them.
Trump loyalist and CIA contractor Larry Ellison’s purchase of CNN appears imminent, and marks the latest venture into media for the world’s second-richest individual. But Ellison is not alone. Indeed, the world’s seven richest individuals are all now powerful media barons, controlling what the world sees, reads, and hears, marking a new chapter in oligarchical control over society and striking another blow at a free, independent press and diversity of opinion.
Paramount Skydance– an Ellison-owned company– is in pole position to purchase Warner Brothers Discovery, a conglomerate that controls gigantic film and television studios, streaming services like HBO Max and Discovery+, franchises like DC Comics, and TV networks such as HBO, TNT, Discovery Channel, TLC, Food Network, and CNN.
It’s increasingly obvious that the US military threats against Venezuela have a wider agenda. Their game plan is regime change, but not only in Venezuela. This is the objective – on a longer timescale in some cases – across several of the countries in the Caribbean Basin, aiming to cleanse the region of governments deemed undesirable to Washington.
As international relations professor at the University of Chicago, John Mearsheimer reminds us, the US “does not tolerate left-leaning governments… and as soon as they see a government that is considered to be left-of-center they move to replace that government.”
In the Financial Times, Ryan Berg, head of the Americas programme at the Washington think-tank CSIS, which is heavily funded by Pentagon contractors, said that Trump’s vision is for the US to be the “undisputable, pre-eminent power in the western hemisphere.” The New York Times dubbed Trump’s ambitions the “Donroe Doctrine.”
After Venezuela, in the current US line of fire, is Honduras. This Central American country faces an election on November 30 which will determine whether the leftist Libre Party stays in power or whether the country reverts to neoliberalism.
The crisis in the Caribbean engineered by the Trump administration is being actively instrumentalized to distract Hondurans from domestic issues when deciding how to vote. Honduras’s mainstream media repeatedly draw attention to the likelihood that Washington will threaten Honduras militarily if it votes the “wrong way” on November 30.
Interviewed on television, opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla was asked what would happen if the Libre Party won. He replied: “Those ships that are soon going to take over Venezuela are going to come and target Honduras.” Amplifying the supposed threat, opposition candidates have posted street signs labelling themselves “anti-communist,” as if communism were actually on offer in the election.
In a bizarre article, the Wall Street Journal alleges that Venezuela aims to “gobble up Honduras.” Turning on its head recent alarming evidence of a plot by Libre’s opponents to steal the election, the article claims that Venezuela is schooling Libre in defrauding the Honduran people.
This argument is also being repeated enthusiastically in the US Congress by María Elvira Salazar and others. On November 12, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said the US government “will respond rapidly and firmly to any attack on the integrity of the electoral process in Honduras.” In fact, the US is working with the opposition to undermine the popular mandate.
There is acute irony here. Washington’s justification for its military build-up is supposedly to tackle “narcoterrorism,” yet a Libre defeat would risk returning Honduras to the “narcostate” it had become in the decade under US patronage before the previous election in 2021.
Also lined up for regime change is, inevitably, Cuba. The UK’s Daily Telegraph, not normally known for its Latin America coverage, argues that Cuba is the “real target” of Trump’s campaign in Venezuela.
Having failed to dislodge the Cuban revolution after more than six decades of blockade, driving its citizens into acute hardship and pushing a tenth of them to migrate, Secretary of State Marco Rubio evidently sees the “real prize” of the US military build-up as dealing the fatal blow to its revolution.
Installing a US-friendly government in Caracas would aid the counter-revolution by cutting off gasoline and other supplies it currently sends to Cuba. Or supplies might be stopped by the US navy itself, further tightening the screws on Havana. In addition, if the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela collapsed, it would embolden the US-sponsored dissidents in Cuba, who feed on the discontent rained upon their country by US sanctions.
Yet even the gung-ho Telegraph doubts whether Rubio’s goal will be achieved, given Cuba’s remarkable resilience.
Another country in Washington’s crosshairs is Nicaragua. Here too, Rubio is leading the charge. But he has plenty of confederates on both sides of the congressional isles.
Although not directly threatened militarily (at least, so far) by the US, it has imposed new sanctions on Nicaraguan businesses, threatens to impose 100% tariffs on the country’s exports to the US, and may try to exclude it from the regional trade agreement, CAFTA.
At the same time, Nicaragua’s opposition figures enthusiastically identify with their peers in Venezuela, hoping that regime-change in Caracas would encourage Washington to further attack Nicaragua’s Sandinista government.
Two other left-leaning administrations in the Caribbean Basin, Colombia and Mexico, have been subject to Trump’s threats of military strikes. Colombian President Gustavo Petro has been sanctioned by Washington as “a hostile foreign leader.” He has responded by condemning the US attacks on boats in the Caribbean as “murder.”
Trump has recently repeated earlier threats to attack Mexican drug cartels, saying he would be “proud” to do so. Asked whether he would only take military action in Mexico if he had the country’s permission, he refused to answer the question. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum had earlier dismissed Trump’s threat of military action against drug cartels inside her country, telling reporters: “It’s not going to happen.”
However, despite Sheinbaum’s ongoing popularity, on November 15 she faced so-called Gen Z demonstrations which erupted in over 50 cities. According toThe Grayzone, these were not what they seemed: they were financed and coordinated by an international right-wing network and amplified by bot networks. Their timing in relation to the Caribbean military build-up may have been intentional.
In the context of these protests, Trump said: “I am not happy with Mexico. Would I launch strikes in Mexico to stop drugs? It’s OK with me.” Elements in the MAGA movement are urging him to go further, launching a US military incursion to ensure “a transitional government.”
Washington successfully interfered in recent elections in Argentina. US endorsement of the right-wing victory in Ecuador in April was critical after a disputed election. Next month is the second round of Chile’s elections. Trump hopes for a rightward shift – with a little help from the hegemon – in that election as well as those in Colombia next year and in 2030 in Mexico.
Former Bush and Trump official Marshall Billingslea says the ultimate target of a US regime change assault is the entire Latin American left, “from Cuba to Brazil to Mexico to Nicaragua.” Military intervention leading to the end of the Maduro government would halt what he alleges (without evidence) is the flow of money from Caracas that has led to the “socialist plague that has spread across Latin America.”
US-imposed regime-change in Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua – where the “socialist plague” has taken deep root – is a bipartisan project. For other progressive and left-leaning Latin American states – Mexico, Honduras, Colombia, and even Chile – the pax americana prescription stops short of outright deep regime change; infiltration, intimidation and co-optation are employed to keep them subordinate.
For Democrats and Republicans alike, the US imperial projection on the region is a given. Trump and his comrade-in-arms Rubio are leading the charge. But the so-called US opposition party is offering weak constraints.
To these ends, the US empire, with Trump at its titular head, is weighing the opportunity costs of deploying the full force of the military might assembled in the Caribbean, one-fifth of its navy’s global firepower. But Trump’s neocon advisers appear to want to seize the moment and embark on hemispheric political change, bringing a Trumpian “Donroe Doctrine” to fulfilment.
Will caution prevail, or will the US continue to bring lawlessness and chaos – as it has to Haiti, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere – not just to Venezuela but possibly to other countries in the region?
The global civil society alliance Civicus has called on eight Pacific governments to do more to respect civic freedoms and strengthen institutions to protect these rights.
It is especially concerned over the threats to press freedom, the use of laws to criminalise online expression, and failure to establish national human rights institutions or ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).
But it also says that the Pacific status is generally positive.
Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Samoa and Solomon Islands have been singled out for criticism over press freedom concerns, but the brief published by the Civicus Monitor also examines the civic spce in Fiji, Kiribati, Tonga and Vanuatu.
“There have been incidents of harassment, intimidation and dismissal of journalists in retaliation for their work,” the report said.
“Cases of censorship have also been reported, along with denial of access, exclusion of journalists from government events and refusal of visas to foreign journalists.”
The Civicus report focuses on respect for and limitations to the freedoms of association, expression and peaceful assembly, which are fundamental to the exercise of civic rights.
Freedoms guaranteed
“These freedoms are guaranteed in the national constitutions of all eight countries as well as in the ICCPR.
“In several countries — including Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, PNG and Samoa — the absence of freedom of information laws makes it extremely difficult for journalists and the public to access official information,” the report said.
Countries such as Samoa, Tonga and Vanuatu, continued to enforce criminal defamation laws, creating a “chilling environment for the media, human rights defenders and anyone seeking to express themselves or criticise governments”.
In recent years, Fiji, PNG and Samoa had also used cybercrime laws to criminalise online expression.
“Governments in the Pacific must do more to protect press freedom and ensure that journalists can work freely and without fear of retribution for expressing critical opinions or covering topics the government may find sensitive,” said Josef Benedict, Civicus Asia Pacific researcher.
“They must also pass freedom of information legislation and remove criminal defamation provisions in law so that they are not used to criminalise expression both off and online.”
Civicus is concerned that at least four countries – Kiribati, Nauru, Solomon Islands and Tonga – have yet to ratify the ICCPR, which imposes obligations on states to respect and protect civic freedoms.
Lacking human rights bodies
Also, four countries — Kiribati, Nauru, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu — lack national human rights institutions (NHRI).
Fiji was criticised over restricting the right to peaceful assembly over protests about genocide and human rights violations in Palestine and West Papua.
In May 2024, “a truckload of police officers, including two patrol cars, turned up at a protest at the premises of the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre against human rights violations in Gaza and West Papua, in an apparent effort to intimidate protesters”.
Gatherings and vigils had been organised regularly each Thursday.
In PNG and Tonga, the Office of the Ombudsman plays monitor and responds to human rights issues, but calls remain for establishing an independent body in line with the Paris Principles, which set international standards for national human rights institutions.
“It is time all Pacific countries ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and ensure its laws are consistent with it,” said Benedict.
“Governments must also to establish national human rights institutions to ensure effective monitoring and reporting on human rights issues. This will also allow for better accountability for violations of civic freedoms.”
A youth march with the notable absence of youth. A march against violence that ended with deliberately provoked violence. A nonpartisan march with one of its key proponents in the pay of the nation’s conservative party. A march inspired by imagery from the hit left-wing comic One Piece descending into a maelstrom of far-right hate.
The contradictions surrounding Mexico’s so-called “Generation Z” march on November 15 — also known as the “15N protests and riots” — are abundant. Moreover, they provide an object lesson in the “franchise model” of international demonstration symbolism in which a domestic event is appropriated to suit the agenda of the franchisees.
Note: Again, smalltown news, a newspaper that is now as thin as a tissue, once a week, and here we are — a 900 to 1000 word piece by yours truly once a month. This November, some catching up with October’s Banner Books week, and other funky things.
Next month I do a bit of jujitsu, and I was begged to speak, and I both look forward to it and dread it:
I am NEVER in friendly territory, and in most cases, it’s ‘friendly fire’ against me, the messenger and the dude who is anti-authority and is not a sheeple, but again, Haeder does not spell H-A-T-E.
In a week, another Op-Ed runs, twice in a month, and that pisses people off, for sure. So much copy, and why so long, why 956 words? I’m introducing this talk to the wider community, tied to the death of journalism, with a trigger warning and redressing the zombification and infantalilization of AmeriKKKa.
Oh, maybe 60 Power Point slides, a media literacy quiz, and a box full of Project Censored “year in review books on the most censored stories of that respective year” and some Covert Action magazines and Z-Magazines, too.
Public schools across the U.S. saw more than 6,800 book bans in the 2024-25 school year. A new documentary, The Librarians, examines the experiences of school librarians who’ve found themselves on the front lines of a battle against censorship.
Maybe they will make connection between schooling and libraries and media illiteracy? The documentary, The Librarians.
It’s a lot of work, working with democrats, mostly grayhairs, and alas with the Anti-Antisemitism virus hitting may of us, those in the audience do not like the word “genocide” or the concept of “ethnic cleansing” or the very big tent idea of 130 Jewish billionaires and a few million multi-millionaire Jews, well, having that outsized “control of banking and media and tech and AI and war mongering and finance and real estate and, well, governments from her to Sudan to Venezuela, et al.”
Now, this op-ed continues with the bloody lies of, well, Capitalism, big time or small time USA.
Ahh, the banned books week passed (it should be a daily reminder that freedom of speech and thought are illusory in Capitalism). That was October 5 through 11, and you can Google what intense censorship has always occurred in USA and is going on now with the new brownshirts in office.
You can call school and library administrators, school board and library board members, city councilpersons, and your elected representatives to ask them to support the right to read! But most of them are running scared and are completely cowed by their own shadows.
Imagine California, running this House Bill and it passing with the Ray-Ban governor’s signature.
The law no longer references Israel’s war in Gaza, but critics have said it could still have a chilling effect and prevent open discussion on contentious issues in the classroom.
“Teacher discourse on Palestine or the genocide in Gaza will be policed, misrepresented, and reported to the antisemitism coordinator,” Theresa Montaño with the California Faculty Association said in a statement.
So, no need to burn books or ban them since K12 students will be policed and brought before boards of inquiry if they dare talk about the Nakba and how that ethnic cleansing that started in 1948 (earlier, really, but don’t tell our representative Gomberg that!) relates to another passing October critical thinking milestone – Indigenous People’s Day.
That was October 13, and with the fanfare of stormtroopers hitting Portland’s streets and even our own backwater county seeing ICE masked raiders taking a citizen away, forget about finding deep discussion about that day of infamy – celebrating for ONE 24-hour period our own legacy of indigenous culture and wisdom.
The schools might not even be able to put up posters stating the following with this new regime of Stephen Miller and his Homeland Security infecting the great shining city on the hill: “We honor the Native American people for their culture including art and many crafts, their food, their clothing, their grit and endurance, their goodness and influence. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are about 4.5 million Native Americans and Alaska Natives in the United States today. That is about 1.5 percent of the population in the United States. There are ten main areas of North America where the Native Americans have lived over the last 2,000 years.”
The jig was up more than 250 years ago, throughout the enslavement of Africans, but recall that we had politician after general after newspaper editor repeating in variations of a theme these racist but highly American statements in regard to our Native People:
In 2021, Rick Santorum claimed there was “nothing” in America before colonization and little Native American culture present today.
Trump’s boy, Andrew Jackson, signed the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which forced many eastern tribes, such as the Cherokee, Choctaw, and others, off their ancestral lands. This policy led directly to the “Trail of Tears.” Jackson’s own words often framed Native Americans as uncivilized and an obstacle to American progress.
“The only good Indian is a dead Indian” is a racist proverb originating from General Philip Sheridan. [Denied by Sheridan — DV Ed]
Maybe schools will allow coursework — now that we have National Day of Remembrance or Sorrow — to include American Indian scholars questioning the origins of Thanksgiving.
“Almost any portrait that we see of an Indian, he is represented with tomahawk and scalping knife in hand, as if they possessed no other but a barbarous nature. Christian nations might with equal justice be always represented with cannon and ball, swords and pistols,” states Elias Johnson, A Native Tuscarora Chief.
I doubt this book has been banned from public libraries: Let’s Play Indian, is a children’s book by Madye Lee Chastain. It’s one of countless examples of “playing Indian,” a practice engaged in by outsiders who appropriate, or take on, American Indian identities and cultural ways. Chastain’s main character transforms herself into “a really truly dressed-up painted Indian,” who runs, whoops, and waves her tomahawk.
Forget about K12. I believe OCCC would get pushback if, say, I taught writing and communication including an amazing young Lakota’s Red Nation broadcast Nick Estes is a Lakota activist, writer, and scholar whose work delves into settler-colonialism, indigenous history, and decolonization. He is the author of Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance. I’d be highlighting Nick’s on-line advocacy for Palestinian liberation, wherein he highlights the ongoing genocide in Gaza by exploring the intersection of the struggles faced by Palestinian and Indigenous peoples in America.
Drill down into Native American perspectives and unmask almost all myths perpetrated in this country. But as you pass the gravy on Nov. 27, remember it’s not all a bed of pumpkins and cranberries:
Federal agents kept the Dakota-Sioux from receiving food and provisions. Accordingly, on the brink of death from starvation, some fought back, resulting in the Dakota War of 1862. In the end, President Lincoln ordered 38 Dakota men to die from hanging, but he too was spinning PR, so he felt that the first Thanksgiving (1863) offered an opportunity to bridge the hard feelings amongst Natives and the federal government.
“It was propaganda,” Dr. Kelli Mosteller, Citizen Potawatomi Nation’s Cultural Heritage Center director explains. “It was to try and build this event so that you could have a deeper narrative about community building and coming together in shared brotherhood and unity.”
So, there was a counter Op-Ed, running two weeks ago, and of course, I ran my own letter to the editor, here:
But they, the readers, the democrat lite or light-headed, they just DO NOT get AmeriKKKa.
Imagine just a month tying into just a few dozen Break Through News reports, such as this one:
Dear Editor:
So, a long attack on me was published Nov. 12, along with a snarky fucked up letter to the editor also attacking the above “facts.” Opinion piece. Here, just published today, my letter response:
Dear Editor — Recent attacks (Nov. 5 commentary and letter to the editor) on my integrity as a writer and as an educator, plus the inane label of “antisemitism,” just don’t hold water. The thing about going after someone’s credentials and lifework is called ad hominem attack. Kill the messenger is also a term I could deploy with two personal attacks on my Oct. 15 Commentary.
Learning curves are steep in a country of people who have been miseducated, propagandized, and drawn and quartered by an elite media, whether right or left of some imaginary middle.
For real journalism on Gaza and the Jewish genocide, as well as just general news, try Drop Site News (dropsitenews.com). Try heading over to Monthly Review On-Line for deeper analyses of USA the Empire, and its insane and perverted hatred of socialism, as well as its relationship with an apartheid and genocidal state called Israel, the Occupied Land of Palestinians (monthlyreview.org). Then, of course, The Intercept, theintercept.com, will get you more news.
Again, steep learning curves are present when one comes out of K12 and college in this Empire of Chaos, War, Pain, and Terror. Try Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research — thetricontinental.org. I could list five dozen sites here that easily counter the narratives cooked up in the minds of Americans who have been colonized by one-sided narratives and bizarre takes on US and Global history.
Lifetimes of work and research and ground-truthing easily shoot holes into what most Americans and Westerners have come to believe are their “truths.”
The world has lost a giant with the passing of Australian media legend Bob Howarth. He was 81.
He was a passionate advocate for journalism who changed many lives with his extraordinary kindness and generosity coupled with wisdom, experience and an uncanny ability to make things happen.
Howarth worked for major daily newspapers in his native Australia and around the world, having a particularly powerful impact on the Asia Pacific region.
I first met Bob Howarth in 2001 in Timor-Leste during the nation’s first election campaign after the hard-won independence vote.
We met in the newsroom of the Timor Post, a daily newspaper he had been instrumental in setting up.
I was doing my journalism training there when Howarth was asked to tell the trainees about his considerable experience. It was only a short conversation, but his words and body language captivated me.
He was a born storyteller.
Role in the Timor-Post
I later found out about his role in the birth of the Timor Post, the newly independent nation’s first daily newspaper.
In early 2000, after hearing Timorese journalists lacked even the most basic equipment needed to do their jobs, he hatched a plan to get non-Y2K-compliant PCs, laptops and laser printers from Queensland Newspapers over to Dili.
And, despite considerable hurdles, he got it done. Then his bosses sent Howarth himself over to help a team of 14 Timorese journalists set up the Post.
The first publication of the Timor Post occurred during the historic visit of Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid to Timor-Leste in February 2000.
A media mass for Bob Howarth in Timor-Leste Video: Timor Post
In that first edition, Bob Howarth wrote an editorial in English, entitled “Welcome Mr Wahid”, accompanied by photos of President Wahid and Timorese national hero Xanana Gusmão. That article was framed and proudly hangs on the wall at the Timor Post offices to this day.
After Bob Howarth left Timor-Leste, he delivered some life-changing news to the Timor Post — he wanted to sponsor a journalist from the newspaper to study in Papua New Guinea. The owners chose me.
In 2002, I went with another Timorese student sponsored by Howarth to study journalism at Divine Word University in Madang on PNG’s north coast.
Work experience at the Post-Courier
During our time in PNG, we began to see the true extent of Howarth’s kindness. During every university holiday we would fly to Port Moresby to stay with him and get work experience at the Post-Courier, where Bob was managing director and publisher.
Bob Howarth with Mouzy Lopes de Araujo in Dili in 2012 . . . training and support for many Timorese and Pacific journalists. Image: Mouzinho Lopes de Araujo
Our relationship became stronger and stronger. Sometimes we would sit down, have some drinks and I’d ask him questions about journalism and he would generously answer them in his wise and entertaining way.
In 2005, I went back to Timor-Leste and I went back to the Timor Post as political reporter.
When the owners of the Post appointed me editor-in chief in the middle of 2007, at the age of 28, I contacted Bob for advice and training support, with the backing of the Post’s new director, Jose Ximenes. That year I went to Melbourne to attend journalism training organised by the Asia Pacific Journalism Centre.
I then flew to the Gold Coast and stayed for two days with Bob Howarth and Di at their beautiful Miami home.
“Congratulations, Mouzy, for becoming the new editor-in-chief of the Post,” said Bob Howarth as he shook my hand, looking so proud. But I replied: “Bob, I need your help.”
He said, “Beer first, mate” — one of his favourite sayings — and then we discussed how he could help. He said he would try his best to bring some used laptops for Timor Post when he came to Dili to provide some training.
Arrival of laptops
True to his word, in early 2008 he and one of his long-time friends, veteran journalist Gary Evans, arrived in Dili with said laptops, delivered the training and helped set up business plans.
After I left the Post in 2010, I planned with some friends to set up a new daily newspaper called the Independente. Of course, I went to Bob for ideas and advice.
On a personal note, without Bob Howarth I may never have met my wife Jen, an Aussie Queensland University of Technology student who travelled to Madang in 2004 on a research trip. Bob and Di represented my family in Timor-Leste at our engagement party on the Gold Coast in 2010.
Without Bob Howarth, Mouzinho Lopes de Araujo may never have met his Australian wife Jen . . . pictured with their first son Enzo Lopes on Christmas Day 2019. Image: Jennifer Scott
Jen moved to Dili at the end of that year and was part of the launch of Independente in 2011.
In the paper’s early days Howarth and Evans came back to Dili to train our journalists. He then also worked with the Timor-Leste Press Council and UNDP to provide training to many journalists in Dili.
Before he got sick, the owners and founders of the Timor Post paid tribute to Bob Howarth as “the father of the Timor Post” at the paper’s 20th anniversary celebrations in 2020 because of his contributions.
He and the Timor Post’s former director had a special friendship. Howarth was the godfather for Da Costa’s daughter, Stefania Howarth Da Costa.
Bob Howarth at the launch of the Independente in Dili in 2011. Image:
30 visits to Timor-Leste
During his lifetime Bob Howarth visited Timor-Leste more than 30 times. He said many times that Timor-Leste was his second home after Australia.
After the news of his passing after a three-and-a-half-year battle with cancer was received by his friends at the Independente and the Timor Post on November 13, the Facebook walls of many in the Timorese media were adorned with words of sadness.
Both the Timor Post and the Independente organised a special mass in Bob Howarth’s honour.
He has left us forever but his legacy will be always with us.
May your soul rest in peace, Bob Howarth.
Mouzinho Lopes de Araujo is former editor-in-chief of the Timor Post and editorial director of the Independente in Timor-Leste, and is currently living in Brisbane with his wife Jen and their two boys, Enzo and Rafael.
Bob Howarth (third from right) in Paris in 2018 for the Asia Pacific summit of Reporters Without Borders correspondents along with colleagues, including Asia Pacific Report publisher David Robie (centre). Image: RSF/APR
The Fijian Media Association (FMA) has demanded better police protection after a journalist working for the state broadcaster Fiji Broadcasting Corporation (FBC) was violently attacked outside a courthouse
In a statement today, the FMA again called for police to be more vigilant in managing security and threats outside the Suva High Court in the capital after another Fijian journalist was violently attacked by a convicted murderer leaving under police guard.
Journalist Apenisa Waqairadovu of the FBC suffered injuries to his arms and hands after he was attacked by Sairusi Ceinaturaga, who had just been convicted of murdering the one-year-old child of his de facto partner, the FMA stated.
After his conviction, Ceinaturaga walked out of the courtroom in handcuffs, followed a metre or two behind by a police officer who was outrun and scrambled to catch up when Ceinaturaga chased the journalist.
Ceinaturaga threatened Waqairadovu, swore and ran after him before pushing him down the stairs.
“This has been happening too often to journalists outside the courtroom, and we do not see any improved process despite our repeated calls for stronger security and protection,” the FMA stated.
“We have been consistently calling for urgent action from police to protect media workers — even after another convicted murderer Tevita Kapawale tried to attack journalists outside the courthouse in August.
‘Physical threats every year’
“Journalists have faced physical threats every year while covering court cases, and the Fiji Police Force’s repeated failure to provide adequate security for media personnel is unacceptable.
“The media plays a vital role in ensuring transparency and accountability in our justice system. Journalists have the right to report on matters of public interest without fear of violence or intimidation.”
The FMA is now demanding the Fiji Police Force immediately implement proper security protocols for court proceedings, including secure perimeters during prisoner transport and adequate police presence to protect journalists from violent offenders — the same call it made following the August incident.
The FMA says police must do better and relook at how they provide security at the courthouse.
“In the past officers would surround the accused person and escort him out, not let them just walk out with officers strolling at the back.
“In this case the journalist kept their distance but was still chased down and attacked and this is totally unacceptable.”
The FMA said reporters covered court stories in order to inform the public and to ensure that justice was served under the law.
“We are again urging the public to appreciate and understand the role journalists play in providing the coverage of how justice and the rule of law is administered in this country.”
Prime Minister La’aulialemalietoa Leuatea Schmidt has defended his decision to ban the Samoa Observer in response to a joint letter from the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) and the Pacific Freedom Forum (PFF).
“The action taken relates solely to the Samoa Observer, following sustained unprofessional behaviour, breaches of industry ethics, and continuous inaccurate and misleading reporting over an extended period.
“Samoa remains firmly committed to upholding media freedom, transparency, and open engagement with the media,” the statement said.
“However, it is equally important to clarify the context and the basis of the government’s decision.”
The release said that the move targets one media outlet and does not represent a broader clampdown.
‘Multiple opportunities’
According to the statement, the Samoa Observer was given “multiple opportunities for correction, dialogue, and improvement,” and that “No other media organisation in Samoa is affected. Engagement with all other local and regional media continues uninterrupted.”
The release also said it would follow due process.
“The Prime Minister has already indicated that a formal review will be undertaken in due course, once all matters surrounding the Observer’s conduct are addressed and resolved and the facts are fully documented,” the statement said. “This review will include an opportunity for the media organisation concerned to respond to the issues raised.”
The release also reiterated its recognition of the importance of a free press.
“The government reiterates that it welcomes robust scrutiny, responsible journalism, and constructive criticism,” it said. “At the same time, media freedom carries the corresponding responsibility of accuracy, professionalism, and respect for the truth.”
“The government invites PINA and PFF to engage constructively and to review the documented evidence of unprofessional reporting and breach of media ethical standards that led to this action,” the statement said.
“Samoa remains available to provide clarification and to work collaboratively to strengthen media standards across the region.”
No response to Samoa Observer
“The decision relating to the Samoa Observer is specific, justified, and based on conduct, not on an attempt or attack to suppress the free flow of information or journalism,” it said.
“The government of Samoa remains open to fair, balanced, and ethical engagement with all media organisations, both local and overseas.”
The Samoa Observer reached out to the government on November 19 to offer the opportunity to make corrections and provide clarifications on the five points originally raised as the reasons for the ban but no response has been received.
Former Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari says Israel has “lost the war on social media,” describing the online space as the most dangerous and complex arena shaping global public opinion, especially among younger generations.
Speaking at the annual conference of the Jewish Federations of North America in Washington, DC, Hagari urged the creation of a powerful new propaganda apparatus modelled on the capabilities and structure of Unit 8200, Israel’s elite cyber intelligence division, reports Middle East Monitor.
He argued that Israel must now fight “a battle of images, videos, and statistics—not lengthy texts.”
Hagari proposed establishing a unit capable of monitoring anti-Israel content across platforms, in real time and in multiple languages, supplying rapid-response messaging and data to government and media outlets.
His plan also calls for the systematic creation of fake online identities, automated bot networks, and the use of unofficial bloggers — “preferably mostly young women” — to shape global perceptions.
He warned that the decisive phase of this battle would unfold a decade from now, when students using artificial intelligence tools searched for information on the events of October 7 and encountered “two completely contradictory narratives.”
Hagari, a former navy officer who served in sensitive military roles, became Israel’s top military spokesperson in 2023 before being dismissed from the position earlier this year.
The past two years have seen a catastrophic failure by Western journalists to report properly what amounts to an undoubted genocide in Gaza. This has been a low point even by the dismal standards set by our profession, and further reason why audiences continue to distrust us in ever greater numbers.
There is a comforting argument — comforting especially for those journalists who have failed so scandalously during this period — that seeks to explain, and excuse, this failure. Israel’s exclusion of Western reporters, so the claim goes, has made it impossible to determine exactly what is occurring on the ground in Gaza.
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.
