At the start of June, MSN, the world’s fourth-largest news aggregator, posted an article from a new climate-focused publication, Climate Cosmos, entitled: “Why Top Experts Are Rethinking Climate Alarmism”.
The article – by “Kathleen Westbrook M.Sc Climate Science” – cited a finding from the “Global Climate Research Institute” that “65 percent of surveyed climate professionals advocate for pragmatic, solution-focused messaging over fear-driven warnings.”
But there were a couple of major problems: the Global Climate Research Institute doesn’t exist, and nor does Kathleen Westbrook, whose profile on Climate Cosmos has now been renamed to ‘Henrieke Otte’.
The article accused those who advocate for climate action of overstating the harms caused by burning fossil fuels.
Today, 1 September 2025, is being marked as a Black Monday following the latest deadly strikes by the Israeli army against journalists in the Gaza Strip as part of a worldwide action by the Paris-based global media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders and the community politics organisation Avaaz.
On August 25, one of these strikes targeted a building in the al-Nasser medical complex in central Gaza, a known workplace for reporters, killing five journalists and staff members of local and international media outlets such as Reuters and the Associated Press.
Two weeks earlier, on the night of August 10, an Israeli strike killed six reporters, including Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif, who was the intended target.
According to RSF data, more than 210 journalists have been killed by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip in nearly 23 months of Israeli military operations in the Palestinian territory.
At least 56 of them were intentionally targeted by the Israeli army or killed while doing their job. This ongoing massacre of Palestinian journalists requires a large-scale operation highly visible to the general public.
With this unprecedented mobilisation planned for today, RSF renews its call for urgent protection for Palestinian media professionals in the Gaza Strip, a demand endorsed by over 200 media outlets and organisations in June.
Independent access
The NGO also calls for foreign press to be granted independent access to the Strip, which Israeli authorities have so far denied.
“The Israeli army killed five journalists in two strikes on Monday, August 25. Just two weeks earlier, it similarly killed six journalists in a single strike,” said Thibaut Bruttin, executive director of RSF.
“Since 7 October 2023, more than 210 Palestinian journalists have been killed by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip.
“We reject this deadly new norm, which week after week brings new crimes against Palestinian journalists that go unpunished. We say it loud and clear: at the rate journalists are being killed in Gaza by the Israeli army, there will soon be no one left to keep you informed.
“More than 150 media outlets worldwide have joined together for a major operation on Monday, 1 September, at the call of RSF and Avaaz.
“This campaign calls on world leaders to do their duty: stop the Israeli army from committing these crimes against journalists, resume the evacuation of the journalists who wish to leave Gaza, and ensure the foreign press has independent access to the Palestinian territory.
More than 150 media outlets in over 50 countries aretaking part in the operation on Monday, 1 September.
They include numerous daily newspapers and news websites: Mediapart (France), Al Jazeera (Qatar), The Independent (United Kingdom), +972 Magazine (Israel/Palestine), Local Call (Israel/Palestine), InfoLibre (Spain), Forbidden Stories (France), Frankfurter Rundschau (Germany), Der Freitag (Germany), RTVE (Spain), L’Humanité (France), The New Arab (United Kingdom), Daraj (Lebanon), New Bloom (Taiwan), Photon Media (Hong Kong), La Voix du Centre (Cameroon), Guinée Matin (Guinea), The Point (Gambia), L’Orient Le Jour (Lebanon), Media Today (South Korea), N1 (Serbia), KOHA (Kosovo), Public Interest Journalism Lab (Ukraine), Il Dubbio (Italy), Intercept Brasil (Brazil), Agência Pública (Brazil), Le Soir (Belgium), La Libre (Belgium), Le Desk (Morocco), Semanario Brecha (Uruguay), Asia Pacific Report (New Zealand) and many others.
Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.
This is the most lethal war for the media in recent times. A generation of journalists is being wiped out
Day by day, the death toll rises, the war crimes mount, and the outrage grows. Last Wednesday, the pope demanded that Israel stop its “collective punishment” of Gaza’s population. A day later, António Guterres, the United Nations secretary general, warned that “the levels of death and destruction … are without parallel in recent times”. More than 500 UN staff have pressed the human rights chief, Volker Türk, to call it genocide. Half of registered voters in the US have already concluded that that is what Israel is doing in Gaza.
The agony is deepening. On Friday, the Israeli military declared famine-hit Gaza City to be a combat zone, intensifying its assault and ending “tactical pauses” that allowed limited – if utterly inadequate – food delivery. Many inhabitants are physically incapable of fleeing again, and fear that they would be no safer elsewhere. Israel has attacked parts of areas that it has labelled as “humanitarian zones”.
The Fourth Estate may not be in a good way, corrupted and compromised as it is, but in some instances, it remains the only light cast over the predations and ghastliness of power. For that precise reason, the state of Israel has been most cautious, to the point of folly, of shutting out foreign journalists from covering the Gaza conflict. A job most dirty needs to be done – levelling, disabling, dispossessing and crushing of a strip with over 2 million Palestinians – and it shall only be witnessed, controlled and invigilated with utmost care.
Only the friendliest of the friendly need apply for access to Gaza, and the call by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier in August that the military bring in more foreign journalists is heavily contingent on control.
The Gaza campaign is proving frustratingly long for the Netanyahu government. During this time the Israeli Defense Forces have become routine killers of journalists. Given the international press ban, the number of those slain by the IDF are overwhelmingly Palestinian. Since the start of the Gaza War, 189 have been killed. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) puts the death toll for all journalists and media workers between October 2023 and August 2025 at 197. Data from Reporters Without Borders puts the figure of journalists killed in Gaza at over 210, claiming that 56 of them were intentionally targeted by the IDF, while the UN Secretary General António Guterres offers 242 as the more accurate figure. Between 2020-22, 165 journalists were killed across the globe, a statistic bound to move even the coldest of analysts.
Add aid workers and medical staff, and you have such cases as the attack on Khan Younis’ Nasser Hospital during the morning of August 25. Initially, it was assumed that two strikes hit southern Gaza’s sole functioning major hospital. At least 20 people died, including five journalists. A closer examination of footage of the strikes by BBC Verify shows the initial assessment to have been conservative. At least four strikes took place. Two staircases were hit in the first wave, and what was initially thought to be a single attack turns out to have been two separate strikes hitting the same location within a fraction of a second. The first, registered at 10:08 local time, killed journalist Hussam Al-Mastri, who was in the process of running a live TV feed for Reuters. First responders and journalists ran to aid the wounded and were subsequently butchered.
The list of the dead also includes Associated Press freelance photographer Mariam Abu Dagga; Al Jazeera cameraman Mohammed Salama; freelance photographer Moaz Abu Taha; and Middle East Eye and Quds News Network correspondent, Abu Aziz.
The justifications for such slaughter by the IDF have become something to behold. A weary formula is at work: first, assume the strike was on a Hamas or militant site, leaving those in the vicinity silly for being there. The official line: the IDF does not target civilians, despite killing a vast number in such strikes. Secondly, belittle those who died in exhaustive fashion, accusing them of being militants, militant sympathisers or “combat propagandists”. It follows on from the first point: if they were there, they were obviously tarnished one way or the other.
Jodie Ginsburg, the CEO of CPJ, provides a terse, accurate summary on what international humanitarian law says on this subject: “The only individuals who can be considered legitimate targets in war are those directly involved in active combat. Expressing sympathy for proscribed organisations, or even engaging in propaganda, does not make someone a legitimate target.”
One’s political inclination – in so far as protection from military targeting is concerned – is irrelevant to the role of gathering and disseminating news. As Ginsburg goes on to observe, journalists have had leanings and sympathies for such previously proscribed organisations as the Irish Republican Army or the African National Congress. “That didn’t make them terrorists, nor legitimate targets.”
With these killings and the continuing starvation and deprivation taking place in the Strip, many of Israel’s allies are now giving some unwanted advice. On August 21, member states of the Media Freedom Coalition released a statement declaring that, “In light of the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, the undersigned members of the Media Freedom Coalition, urge Israel to allow immediate independent foreign media access and afford protection for journalists operating in Gaza.” Of the 28 signatories, the bulk are European, including France, Germany and the United Kingdom. With usual conspicuousness, the United States remains absent.
The signatories went on to “condemn all violence directed against journalists and media workers, especially the extremely high number of fatalities, arrests and detentions.” International humanitarian made it clear that civilian journalists were protected in times of armed conflict. “We call for all attacks against media workers to be investigated and for those responsible to be prosecuted in compliance with national and international law.”
While the protection of journalists in such situations could hardly be fully sealed and assured, Israel will find killing members of the foreign press corps in numbers a more trying prospect. Should they be allowed to scribble and record the vast, engineered crime taking place in Gaza and in real time, silencing them will become a most formidable, exacting task. Certainly, casual accusations of Hamas membership or sympathy will be harder, more absurd, to make.
I am alarmed by reports that Filipino journalists were flown in by the Israeli government to participate in what is essentially a whitewashing campaign for the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
By attempting to divert attention from the massacre of Palestinian civilians to “the Old City’s labyrinthine alleys,” Flores acts as an apologist for war crimes, akin to writing a travel blog about Nazi Germany.
In a Facebook post, Flores further parrots Israel’s propaganda by highlighting how the brutal IDF employs both men and women to carry out atrocities, a cynical weaponisation of “feminism.”
Even more repulsive is the piece from the Daily Tribune about “Gaza’s Fake Famine” from Vernon Velasco. It is a parody of a story, overly simplifying the famine of Gaza to a matter of food truck logistics, and uncritically quoting an IDF Officer.
Fittingly, the article contains three photos of shipping containers but not a single photo of a human being.
This runs counter to facts laid out by UN officials, including Joyce Msuya, the UN’s Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, who points out how half a million people face “starvation, destitution, and death”.
‘Moral failure’ over Gaza
A study published in the prestigious medical journal Lancet points to the “moral failure” as 1-2 million people live in the most extreme food insecurity level (phase 5 or catastrophe famine) according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).
“By attempting to divert attention from the massacre of Palestinian civilians to ‘the Old City’s labyrinthine alleys,’ Flores acts as an apologist for war crimes, akin to writing a travel blog about Nazi Germany.” Image: TPS “Life” screenshot APR
This famine unfolds as shameless journalists make food vlogs kilometres away.
The facts are clear. At least 63,000 people have been killed and 150,000 injured, with women and children making up a significant portion of the casualties. The UN has also reported that nearly 90 percent of Gaza’s population (around 1.9 million people) has been displaced.
Widespread destruction has left over 70 percent of Gaza’s infrastructure destroyed, including more than 94 percent of hospitals either damaged or destroyed. No amount of narrative spin or “complexity” can sanitise this genocide.
As we celebrate National Press Freedom Day, I implore friends in the press to not fall for the lies of the murderous Zionist regime.
It would be tragic for journalists to provide cover for a regime that has murdered at least 240 of their peers.
Filipino journalists must shed the unhealthy culture of silence and non-intervention, and not hesitate to criticise errant colleagues.
They must make it clear that these recipients of Zionist gold are a disgrace to Philippine journalism. The Philippine government must look into the activities of the Israeli Embassy and their manipulation of local media narratives to sanitise their genocide.
Filipino journalists must stand in solidarity with their slain colleagues abroad, not with their killers.
Walden Bello is a Filipino academic and analyst of Global South issues who was awarded Amnesty International Philippines’ Most Distinguished Defender of Human Rights Award in 2023. He has also served as a member of the House of Representatives of the Philippines.
A pair of House Republicans is moving forward with an investigation that will seek to reveal the identities of Wikipedia editors who have edited articles to include information that portrays Israel negatively. On Wednesday, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chair of the House Oversight Committee, and Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), chair of the House Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology…
With the nationwide rollout of 20% ethanol-blended petrol (E20) becoming a matter debate in various circles, a new trend was seen on social media, in which influencers with millions of followers were making and posting videos enumerating the benefits of ethanol-blended petrol.
The points made in these videos are similar — such as the environmental benefits of ethanol-blended petrol and how farmers can profit from it. This indicates a coordinated effort to amplify the government’s message. Several prominent influencers, such as Abhishek Malhan alias Fukra Insaan, Mahesh Keshwala alias Thagesh, Indrani Vishwas, Tayyab Alam, Geetanjali Chauhan, Neha Nagar, Akanksha Ahuja, Varsha Dahiya, Ankur Agarwal, Rajan Arora, Arun Kushwah alias Chhote Mian, RJ Naveed, RJ Praveen, RJ Karishma, RJ Shonali, have been a part of this campaign.
Some of these videos can be watched here:
Alt News noticed that many of these videos had views in lakhs and crores. For example, Abhishek Malhan’s video has been viewed more than 1.15 crore times, while Ankur Agarwal’s video had 40 lakh views. Similarly, Rajan Arora’s video has 31 lakh and RJ Karishma’s video more than 19 lakh views. Below we have presented the data of 30 influencers who have participated in the publicity to give the readers a sense of the reach of this campaign.
As mentioned earlier, in our analysis of videos posted on the same topic by influencers with millions of followers, we found several common points being made, such as how it can reduce pollution and benefit farmers. And all the influencers used the same hashtags. Apart from this, all these videos were posted using Instagram’s collab feature. The collaborators included official accounts of Union petroleum minister Hardeep Singh Puri, the Union petroleum and natural gas ministry, BPCL, HPCL and IOCL.
Readers should note that for the collab feature to work, the post has to be approved by the respective user. In this case, all these reels were approved for collab by the official accounts of the aforementioned minister, Union ministry and the oil companies.
While influencers like Arun Kushwah and RJ Karishma used hashtags to indicate that their posts were advertorial, and Neha Nagar used Instagram’s ‘Paid Partnership’ label, most influencers did not disclose in their captions or videos that their video was part of an advertisement campaign.
The Race Monkey: Influencer who Said No to Being a Part of the Campaign
Something noteworthy came to light when we closely looked at the influencer page, The Race Monkey. This Instagram account that shares content related to car, bike, automotive reviews, etc., posted a screenshot of a WhatsApp message from a social media influencer agency. In the message, the agency inquires about a possible brand collaboration with them regarding 20% ethanol-blended petrol. The sender of the message asks for @theracemonkey’s professional charges for posting content based on the subject. According to The Race Monkey’s Instagram post, they declined the offer.
In an Instagram story, the user also questioned the notion that the use of ethanol was beneficial. “The common man is bearing the cost of damage to the vehicle and the pocket. As a consumer driven automobile portal, we said a big No to spreading misinformation”, they said.
Speaking to Alt News, Ishaan Bhardwaj, who is also the editor of the portal, TheRaceMonkey.com, said, “On the 14th of August, I received a phone call from a woman named Simran who said she worked with an agency called Hextech Media, which was a social media influencer agency doing paid campaigns for various brands. She told me about this campaign on E20 Fuel and how it benefitted the farmers and the environment. I asked her to share the details on message to which she was a little hesitant but later on she did. After reading through the campaign, I was clear that this was to mislead people into believing that E20 was good for the vehicles sold in India by giving references of farmer welfare and environmental protection… Further, I called them to check on their budget on the campaign to understand how big the numbers were. They asked me to give me a number and I said Rs.20 lakh, to which they said they won’t be able to give more than 15 lakh…”
Bhardwaj, who is considered an expert in matters related to the automobile industry, said, “There have been internal communications among the Automotive Components Manufacturers Association (ACMA), the Union ministry of petroleum and natural gas and the Union ministry of road transport and highways (MoRTH) to make E20 fuel mandatory across the country.”
Explaining the entire scheme of things further, he stated, “In 2020, manufacturers globally had announced that they would switch to fully electric mobility by 2030. But then the pandemic happened. Because of the world-wide economic decline, electric car sales slumped and lately has reduced to a few thousands a year, model on model. Electric cars depreciate to half their value in 2-3 years too so it becomes a less economically viable purchase for anyone. And majority of the consumers for EVs is the middle class. Tis also contributed to sales going down considerably. ”
This, Bhardwaj explained, led to auto manufacturers re-think their strategy and go back to largely manufacturing petrol and diesel cars. “In India however, there was a major challenge. With no subsidies and high investments made by car and component manufacturers to setup their EV ecosystem, it became challenging for them to keep up with low sales month-on-month. Hence, earlier this month, the push for making E20 fuel compulsory across the country. Not as an option, but as a mandate for all fuel pump owners to follow.”
Elaborating on who benefits from this, Bhardwaj further said, “This push or an unnecessary compulsion has been done for the boost that component manufacturers will get, since original equipment manufacturers will now launch kits that will cost a bomb to convert old cars to E20 compliant ones. Union MoRTH minister Nitin Gadkari gets a huge chunk of margins since most of the refineries and corn farming is done under his family’s name. So, it’s a win-win situation of the government and ACMA which will be squeezing a huge chunk of money out of people’s pockets.”
Alt News reached out to Hextech Media regarding this matter. This article will be updated once we get a response.
Motorcycle Trails
Another influencer named Motorcycle Trails also shared a similar experience on Instagram. He was also approached by a social media influencer agency to create content on E20 ethanol-blended petrol and was asked about his professional charge for creating content related to that campaign.
In an Instagram post, Motorcycle Trails says that he has explained in a video on YouTube why ethanol blended petrol is harmful for old vehicles. He refused the offer saying that he would not be a part of any such collaboration with any agency that would try to change or influence his views on this issue.
We have reached out to Motorcycle Trails for more information. This article will be updated if we get a response from him.
Content Matches Govt Press Release Language
It is interesting to note that there is a lot of similarity between the official government communication on ethanol-blended petrol and the brand collab messages received from influencer agencies.
For instance, a message sent to The Race Monkey via WhatsApp from the agency briefly shared the idea of the brand collab. The message uses the phrase “RESPONSE TO CONCERNS ON 20% BLENDING OF ETHANOL IN PETROL AND BEYOND” . This phrase was also the title of the press release issued by the Union ministry of petroleum and natural gas on August 12 in which they responded to the concerns of the people on blending 20 percent ethanol in petrol. The same phrase was present with minor changes in the message received by Motorcycle Trails from the agency. This indicates that the government is systematically using influencer marketing to communicate its agenda to the public and set the desired narrative.
Questions Remain
The use of influencers to communicate messages to the public and effectively set a narrative also marks a shift from traditional advertising and public relations strategies. Some key questions that remain to be answered are as follows:
What is the likely budget of the campaign?
Although the total budget of this entire campaign has not been made public yet, The Race Monkey, which has has 1.5 lakh followers, was offered Rs 15 lakh for a post by the social media influencer agency. From this, one can have an idea on the total budget for the campaign, given many influencers with crores of followers have made videos on this.
Is ethanol-blended petrol a new development?
In 2014, only 1.5% ethanol was added to petrol but it reached 20% by 2025. On 24 July 2025, Union petroleum minister Hardeep Singh Puri claimed that ethanol production had increased from 38 crore liters in 2014 to 661.1 crore liters by June 2025. This has helped India save about Rs 1.36 lakh crore in foreign currency by reducing its dependence on imported crude oil.
In 2018, Nitin Gadkari had claimed that ethanol blending could reduce the price of petrol to Rs 55 per liter and diesel to Rs 50 per liter. He argued that ethanol made from sugarcane and corn was cheaper than petrol and this would benefit consumers. As on the date of this article being published, a retail consumer in Kolkata has to shell out Rs 105.41 per litre for petrol, Rs 92.02 for diesel.
The Palestine Chronicle is not a militant organization. It is a modest, independent publication, sustained by small donations and animated by a singular mission: to bear witness. It tells the untold stories of Palestine, documenting dispossession, resistance and the endurance of a people condemned to silence.
In a media landscape dominated by powerful conglomerates repeating the language of governments, the Chronicle insists on a journalism of proximity — grounded in daily lives, in the rubble of Gaza, in voices otherwise erased. Its true offense, in the eyes of its detractors, is not invention but truth.
At the heart of this endeavor stands Ramzy Baroud. His career is the antithesis of clandestine.
The Committee to Protect Journalists joined 20 other civil society groups calling on Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu to withdraw the proposed Maldives Media and Broadcasting Regulation Bill, warning it poses a grave threat to press freedom and media independence.
If passed, the bill would empower a new state-controlled regulator with sweeping powers to suspend media outlets, block websites, and impose heavy fines on journalists, in violation of the Maldives’ constitutional and international commitments to free expression. The bill was accepted by parliament without meaningful consultation, despite protests by local journalists.
No media workers or journalists were injured in the attacks. The shelling on Kyiv killed at least18 people and marked one of the rare instances in which Russian strikes have penetrated deep into the heart of the capital since the start of the full-scale invasion. Authorities reported no casualties in the Dnipropetrovsk region.
“Today’s devastating Russian attack on Ukraine, which damaged at least three media offices, is a stark reminder of the risks journalists face working and living in the country,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “The strikes show that journalists’ safety remains a major concern, regardless of how far they are from the front lines. We strongly condemn these attacks and call on Russia to immediately stop attacking civilian infrastructure.”
About 120 journalists, film makers, actors, media workers and academics have today called on Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and two senior cabinet ministers in an open letter to “act decisively” to protect Gaza journalists and a free press.
“These are principles to which New Zealand has always laid claim and which are now under grave threat in Gaza and the West Bank,” the signatories said in the letter about Israel’s war on Gaza.
The plea was addressed to Luxon, Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Media and Communications Minister Paul Goldsmith.
Among the signatories are many well known media personalities such as filmmaker Gemma Gracewood, actor Lucy Lawless, film director Kim Webby, broadcaster Alison Mau, and comedian and documentarian Te Radar, and journalist Mereana Hond.
The letter also calls on the government to urgently condemn the killing of 13 Palestinian journalists and media workers this month as the death toll in the 22-month war has reached almost 63,000 — more than 18,000 of them children.
Global protests against the war and the forced starvation in the besieged enclave have been growing steadily over the past few weeks with more than 500,000 people taking part in Israel last week.
Commitment to safety
The letter urged Luxon and the government to:
1. Publicly reaffirm New Zealand’s commitment to the safety of journalists worldwide and make clear this protection applies in every conflict zone, including Gaza.
2. Reiterate the Media Freedom Coalition call for access for international press, ensuring safety, aid and crucial reporting are guaranteed; paired with New Zealand’s existing call for a ceasefire and safe humanitarian access corridors.
3. Back international action already underway, by publicly affirming support for ICC investigations into attacks on journalists anywhere in the world, and by advocating that the United Nations adopt an international convention for the safety of journalists and media workers so that states parties meet their obligations under international law.
4. Formally confirm that New Zealand’s free press and human rights principles apply to Palestinian journalists and media workers, as they do to all others.
The letter said these measures were “consistent with New Zealand’s values, our history of independent foreign policy, and the rules-based international order we have always claimed to champion, and for which our very future as a country is reliant upon”.
It added: “They do not require us to choose sides and they uphold the principle that a free press and those who embody it must never be targeted for doing their jobs.”
Condemn the killings
The recent deaths brought the number of Palestinian journalists and media workers killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023, to at least 219 at the time of writing, said the letter.
“Many more are injured and missing. Many of those killed were clearly identified as members of the press. Some were killed alongside their families,” it said.
The letter called on the government to urgently condemn the killings of:
● Al Jazeera journalists Anas al-Sharif and Mohammed Qreiqeh, and camera operators Ibrahim Zaher and Mohammed Noufal, along with freelance journalist Mohammad Al-Khalidi and freelance cameraman Momen Aliwa, who were targeted and killed in, or as a result of, an August 10 airstrike on their tent in Gaza City.
● Correspondents Hussam al-Masri, Hatem Khaled, Mariam Abu Daqqa, Mohammad Salama, Ahmed Abu Azi and Moaz Abu Taha, all killed in a strike on Nasser hospital in Khan Younis on August 25.
● Journalist and academic Hassan Douhan, killed in Khan Younis on August 25.
“From Malcolm Ross to Margaret Moth, Peter Arnett to Mike McRoberts, New Zealand has a proud history of war correspondents. The same international laws that have protected them are meant to protect all journalists, wherever they work,” said the letter.
“Today, those protections are being violated with impunity.
“Our media colleagues are being murdered, and we have a duty to speak up.”
As journalists, editors, producers, writers, documentary-makers, media workers and storytellers, said the letter, “we believe in the essential role of a free press.
“These killings are in violation of international rules-based order, including humanitarian law, and are intended to erase witnesses to the truth itself. These media professionals are doing their jobs under extremely challenging conditions, and are civilians worthy of protection under human rights laws.
“This is not only a matter of professional solidarity, this is a matter of principle. Journalists are civilians. They are witnesses to history. They deserve the same protection anywhere in the world.”
“We urge you to lead, knowing you have the voices of Aotearoa’s storytellers and history-keepers standing with you.”
The recent Putin–Trump spectacle drew a thousand journalists to Alaska, culminating in an overhyped meeting with European leaders and President Zelensky at the White House. And for what? Nothing happened.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration deployed the National Guard in Washington, D.C., followed days later by FBI raids on the home of John Bolton, his former national security adviser and one of his fiercest critics.
The drama continued when Federal Judge Kathleen M. Williams issued a preliminary injunction on August 21, 2025, halting the expansion of the controversial “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration detention facility and ordering its operations wound down.
These headlines all share a common thread: they do not aim to resolve problems. Their purpose is to trap us—to keep us afraid, silent, and isolated. The system is using the media to paralyze, and it’s working.
As Common Dreams recently pointed out in the article “Trump’s DC Occupation Costs 4 Times More Than It Would Take to House City’s Entire Homeless Population,” these spectacles highlight misplaced priorities. The issue is never resolved—it is a distraction.
There is a persistent belief that a fearful population will eventually revolt and seize control of its destiny. But history offers little evidence to support this claim. Fear more often breeds submission than transformation.
The real question is: has the press become complicit in amplifying fear, endlessly recycling hollow slogans and inconsequential headlines instead of contributing to genuine human understanding and development?
Do we still need to publish—and read—yet another article about Trump’s threats? Or should we commit to our real work: reporting and investigating consequential events that shape people’s lives?
We hold the power to choose what we publish. We hold the power to build a different narrative—one rooted in the human experience and its future.
The recent internal report on RNZ’s performance, variously described as “scathing” and “blunt” in news coverage, caused considerable debate about the state broadcaster’s performance and priorities — not all of it fair or well informed.
The report makes several operational recommendations, including addressing RNZ National’s declining audience share by targeting the 50+ age demographic and moving key programme productions from Wellington to Auckland.
But RNZ’s diminishing linear radio audience has to be understood in the context of its overall expansion of audience reach online, and audience trends across the radio sector in general.
Total audience engagement with RNZ content on third-party platforms (including social media, YouTube and content-sharing partners who are permitted to republish RNZ material) now exceeds the reach of its radio audience.
There has also been a steady but significant decline in the daily reach of linear radio overall. NZ On Air audience research shows that in 2014, 67 percent of New Zealanders listened to linear broadcast radio every day. A decade later, this had dropped to 42 percent.
RNZ National’s share of the total 15+ audience peaked at 12 percent in 2021, following the initial pandemic period. By 2024, this had declined to 7 percent, having been overtaken by Newstalk ZB on 8 percent (also down from 9 percent in 2021).
But using comparative audience reach and ratings data to gauge the performance of a public service media operator does not capture the quality or diversity of audience engagement, or the extent to which its charter obligations are being met.
Nor do audience data reflect the positive structural role RNZ plays in supporting other media through its content-sharing model, the Local Democracy Reporting scheme or its RNZ Pacific service.
Clashing priorities Data provided by RNZ show the decline in RNZ National’s audience to be primarily in the 60+ age groups. How much that reflects recent efforts to appeal to a more diverse demographic through changed programming formats is unclear.
The RNZ report also suggests staff are uncertain about what audiences their programmes are aiming at. If so, this could explain the departure of some older listeners.
But that doesn’t necessarily support the report’s conclusion that RNZ National should stick to its radio knitting and double down on the 50+ audience, especially in Auckland, to compete with Newstalk ZB.
In fact, prioritising the 50+ audience at the expense of a broader appeal might reinforce RNZ’s brand image as a legacy service for older listeners — a prospect its commercial rivals would doubtless welcome.
Between 2007 and 2017, RNZ was subject to a funding freeze and was pressured by successive National-led governments to justify any claim for future increases with evidence of improved performance. Its Queenstown, Tauranga and Palmerston North offices all closed during this period of austerity.
In the 2017 budget, RNZ eventually received an extra NZ$11.4 million over four years. Its statement of intent that year acknowledged funding increases were premised on achieving a wider audience and that budgets needed to make “operational expenditure available for new online initiatives and updated technology”.
Given that expanding the online arm of RNZ would affect investment in its radio service, it would be surprising if operational priorities didn’t sometimes clash. While commercial broadcasters prioritise their most lucrative demographics, public service operators have the perennial challenge of providing something for everyone.
The risk of pleasing no one The online reach of RNZ’s website and app is now comparable to the reach of its linear broadcasts. Critics might frame that as under-performance on the radio side, but it also shows audience reach has grown beyond the older-skewing linear radio demographic.
According to RNZ’s 2024 audience research, 80 percent of New Zealanders engage with its content every month. Meanwhile, amid growing concern about declining trust in news, RNZ ranked top in the 2025 JMAD survey on trust in media.
None of this supports the narrative of a failing legacy operator that has lost its way.
Some of the issues raised in the RNZ report may simply reflect the reality of modern media management: maintaining the character, quality and demographic appeal of existing radio services while trying to reach broader demographics on new platforms.
RNZ’s charter obliges it to serve a diverse range of audiences, something the data show it achieves with a broad cross-section across all platforms.
If it were to now prioritise the 50+ or even 60+ radio audience at the expense of expanding online services and audience diversification, there would likely be more criticism and calls for further defunding from the broadcaster’s political and commercial enemies.
Rather like the moral of Aesop’s fable about the man, the boy and the donkey, if RNZ is expected to please everyone, it runs the risk of pleasing no one.
The grim facts should speak for themselves. Since 7 October 2023, Israel has deliberately killed an unprecedented number of Palestinian journalists in Gaza.
Those brave individuals are smeared as Hamas operatives and terrorists by Israel and its supporters.
But the real story behind this, beyond just Western racism and dehumanisation towards Arab reporters who don’t work for the corporate media in London or New York, is an Israeli military strategy to deliberately (and falsely) link Gazan journalists to Hamas.
“The Israeli military has operated a special unit called the ‘Legitimization Cell,’ tasked with gathering intelligence from Gaza that can bolster Israel’s image in the international media, according to three intelligence sources who spoke to +972 Magazine and Local Call and confirmed the unit’s existence.
“Established after October 7, the unit sought information on Hamas’ use of schools and hospitals for military purposes, and on failed rocket launches by armed Palestinian groups that harmed civilians in the enclave.
“It has also been assigned to identify Gaza-based journalists it could portray as undercover Hamas operatives, in an effort to blunt growing global outrage over Israel’s killing of reporters — the latest of whom was Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al-Sharif, killed in an Israeli airstrike this past week [august 10].
According to the sources, the Legitimisation Cell’s motivation was not security, but public relations. Driven by anger that Gaza-based reporters were “smearing [Israel’s] name in front of the world,” its members were eager to find a journalist they could link to Hamas and mark as a target, one source said.
As a journalist who’s visited and reported in Gaza since 2009, here’s a short film I made after my first trip, Palestinian journalists are some of the most heroic individuals on the planet. They have to navigate both Israeli attacks and threats and Western contempt for their craft.
I stand in solidarity with them. And so should you.
After the Israeli murder of Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al-Sharif on August 10, I spoke to Al Jazeera English about him and Israel’s deadly campaign:
Antony Loewenstein speaking on Al Jazeera English on 11 August 2025. Video: AJ
Antony Loewenstein interviewed by Al Jazeera on 11 August 2025. Video: AJ
News graveyards – how dangers to journalists endanger the world. Image: Antony Loewenstein Substack
Republished from the Substack of Antony Lowenstein, author of The Palestine Laboratory, with permission.
New York, August 26, 2025—Taliban authorities must immediately release Afghan journalist Shikib Ahmad Nazari, who has been detained by Taliban since July after a raid at his office in the latest crackdown on journalists reporting for overseas media, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Tuesday.
Nazari, who reports for Japan’s Nippon TV News among others, was detained on July 24 after around 15 Taliban intelligence agents and morality police raided his office in the capital Kabul, according to two journalists who are aware of Nazari’s situation and who spoke to CPJ on the condition of anonymity, fearing Taliban reprisals. Nazari was held at a detention center of the morality police for a week before he was transferred to a Taliban intelligence prison in Kabul later, the same sources said.
Nazari’s arrest was only confirmed publicly after a Taliban-linked account on social media platform X released a video of the journalist on August 21. The post was deleted shortly after publication, for unknown reasons.
“The arbitrary detention of Shikib Ahmad Nazari is yet another example of the Taliban’s brutal crackdown on the media,” said CPJ Asia-Pacific Director Beh Lih Yi. “They should release the journalist immediately, and stop coercing journalists into making confessions, which underscore their atrocious treatment of the press.”
In the video, reviewed by CPJ before it was removed, Nazari said he has worked with the Japanese outlet and that he posted content from women’s rights activists who have criticized the Taliban morality police in an NTV WhatsApp group. The Taliban consider sharing such information a criminal act. On his X profile, Nazari said he has also worked as a freelance reporter for CNN and the British newspaper The Daily Mail.
Journalists have told CPJ that Taliban morality police consider Afghan journalists who work with exiled media as “permissible to kill.” The Taliban have arrested a number of those reporting for exiled media.
Nippon TV News and the Taliban deputy spokesperson Hamdullah Fitrat did not immediately respond to CPJ’s request for comment on Nazari’s detention.
An Al Jazeera journalist who has documented Israel’s trail of atrocities for almost the past two years has condemned Western news agencies covering the war on Gaza as treating Palestinian reporters like “robots”.
“You see how Palestinian journalists are treated. There’s no protection when they are alive,” Hind Khoudary told Al Jazeera from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.
“And after they are killed, no one even mentions them.”
She said today was a “very, very angry morning” after five journalists were killed yesterday among at least 21 people, including medical workers, at al-Nasser Medical Centre in Khan Younis in a “double tap” strike by the Israeli military.
The slain news professionals have been named as Hossam al-Masri, a freelance photographer for the Reuters news agency; Mariam Abu Daqqa, freelance journalist for The Independent and the Associated Press (AP); Moaz Abu Taha, correspondent for the American broadcasting network NBC; Mohamad Salama, press photographer for Al Jazeera; and Ahmed Abu Aziz, freelance journalist working for Middle East Eye and the Tunisian radio station Diwan FM, who died later from his injuries.
“Palestinian journalists do not know how to mourn their five colleagues and there’s a wave of anger at the international news agencies.
“Many news outlets [that the killed journalists worked for] did not even mention their contributors. The Reuters news agency did not mention in their headline their cameraman who had been working for them for months.
“In their article, they simply described him as a Reuters ‘contractor’.
‘Not mentioned’
As for Moaz Abu Taha [another journalist killed in the Nasser medical centre attack], not a single news organisation that he was working for said he was working for them,” she said.
A moment just after the second strike hit the journalists at the al-Nasser Medical Centre in southern Gaza yesterday. Image: Reporters Without Borders
“Palestinian journalists have been risking their lives for 23 months now, and after they are killed, they are not even mentioned in headlines.
“In the end, they are mentioned as ‘contractors’, as ‘freelancers’ – while, when they were alive, they were working 24/7 to produce, fix and document for these news outlets.
“This is how most Palestinian journalists feel — that we’re just being used as robots to report on what’s going on because there are no foreign journalists.
“We get killed and then everyone forgets about us.”
Gaza’s silenced voices. Video: Al Jazeera
RSF ‘fiercely condemns’ killings
The Paris-based media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) “fiercely condemned” the latest killings, saying they came after the murder of Khaled al-Madhoun on Saturday, 23 August 23.
This was a toll of six journalists killed in two days. It follows the killing of six other journalists two weeks ago on August 10.
According to RSF information, all were deliberately targeted. RSF again called for an emergency UN Security Council meeting to “end this massacre of journalists”.
Thibaut Bruttin, director-general of RSF, said: How far will the Israeli armed forces go in their gradual effort to eliminate information coming from Gaza? How long will they continue to defy international humanitarian law?
“The protection of journalists is guaranteed by international law, yet more than 200 of them have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza over the past two years.
“Ten years after the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2222, which protects journalists in times of conflict, the Israeli army is flouting its application.
“RSF calls for an emergency UN Security Council meeting to ensure this resolution is finally respected, and that concrete measures are taken to end impunity for crimes against journalists, protect Palestinian journalists, and open access to the Gaza Strip to all reporters.”
Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary . . . reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza. Image: AJ screenshot APR
‘Suicide drone’
According to Al Jazeera, the first strike on the live broadcast post that killed Hossam al-Masri was carried out using a loitering munition — also known as a “suicide drone” — typically equipped with a camera and an explosive charge.
A Reuters article also confirmed the death of its contractor, Hussam al-Masri.
The second strike 8 minutes later targeted the hospital yet again after rescue teams and journalists had arrived.
The Al-Nasser complex is a well-known gathering place for displaced journalists in Gaza who, since October 2023, have been living in tents around the hospital to access information on injured and deceased patients, as well as available facilities.
Canadian photojournalist Valerie Zink has resigned after eight years with Reuters, criticising the news agency’s stance on Gaza as a “betrayal of journalists” and accusing it of “justifying and enabling” the killing of 245 journalists in the Palestinian enclave.
“At this point it’s become impossible for me to maintain a relationship with Reuters given its role in justifying and enabling the systematic assassination of 245 journalists in Gaza,” Zink said today via the US social media company X.
Zink said she worked as a Reuters stringer for eight years, with her photos published by many outlets, including The New York Times, Al Jazeera, and others worldwide.
She criticised Reuters’ reporting after the killing of Anas al-Sharif and an Al Jazeera crew in Gaza on August 10, accusing the agency of amplifying Israel’s “entirely baseless claim” that al-Sharif was a Hamas operative, which was “one of countless lies that media outlets like Reuters have dutifully repeated and dignified,” she said.
“I have valued the work that I brought to Reuters over the past eight years, but at this point I can’t conceive of wearing this press pass with anything but deep shame and grief,” Zink said.
Zink also emphasised that the agency’s willingness to “perpetuate Israel’s propaganda” had not spared their own reporters from Israel’s genocide.
“I don’t know what it means to begin to honour the courage and sacrifice of journalists in Gaza, the bravest and best to ever live, but going forward I will direct whatever contributions I have to offer with that front of mind,” Zink highlighted, reflecting on the courage of Gaza’s journalists.
“I owe my colleagues in Palestine at least this much, and so much more,” she added.
I can’t in good conscience continue to work for Reuters given their betrayal of journalists in Gaza and culpability in the assassination of 245 our colleagues. pic.twitter.com/WO6tjHqDIU
‘Double tap’ strike
Referring to the killing of six more journalists, including Reuters cameraman Hossam Al-Masri, in Israel’s Monday attack on the al-Nasser hospital in Gaza, Zink said: “It was what’s known as a ‘double tap’ strike, in which Israel bombs a civilian target like a school or hospital; waits for medics, rescue teams, and journalists to arrive; and then strikes again.”
Zink underlined that Western media was directly culpable for creating the conditions for these events, quoting Jeremy Scahill of Drop Down News, who said major outlets — from The New York Times to Reuters — had served as “a conveyor belt for Israeli propaganda,” sanitising war crimes, dehumanising victims, and abandoning both their colleagues and their commitment to true and ethical reporting.
She said Western media outlets, by “repeating Israel’s genocidal fabrications without determining if they have any credibility” and abandoning basic journalistic responsibility, have enabled the killing of more journalists in Gaza in two years than in major global conflicts combined, while also contributing to the suffering of the population.
The new fatalities among the media personnel in Gaza brought the number of Palestinian journalists killed in Israeli attacks since October 2023 to 246.
Israel has killed more than 62,700 Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023. The military campaign has devastated the enclave, which is facing famine.
Last November, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for its war on the enclave.
As US President Donald Trump late on Sunday lashed out against the American media and threatened to pull broadcasting licenses from networks for their alleged “biased” coverage of him, media experts said the danger to the news media lies partially in corporate outlets’ potential capitulation to the Trump administration. In a post on his Truth Social platform, the president railed against NBC…
They didn’t act like people and they didn’t act like actors. It’s hard to explain.
– J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
With all the hullabaloo about President Donald Trump’s “peace” gestures toward Russia over Ukraine and the resetting of U.S.-Russia bi-lateral relations, it is worth remembering the “pivot to Asia” announced by the Obama administration in 2011 and the coup d’état it carried out in Ukraine in 2014. For those who might not remember, I would recommend two films: John Pilger’s The Coming War onChina and Oliver Stone’s Ukraine on Fire.
They are two prongs of a long-term U.S. strategy to maintain American preeminence throughout the world by countering Russia and China simultaneously, if not equally at once. Such strategy is not determined by someone like President Donald Trump speaking or acting impulsively, as is his wont, but by bankers, financiers, éminences grises, and pale-faced scholarly guns-for-hire in stately buildings reserved for such deliberations.
Despite rhetoric to the contrary, there is a consistent foundational foreign policy strategy from one American presidential administration to the next with necessary little detours here and there, and arguments within the ruling class about tactics. Long-term strategy is capacious enough to include sudden seeming shifts in policies that are couched in cover stories that beguile even the smartest people. Wishes fuddle the minds of the most astute. They serve to obscure the interests of U.S. dominance of the world, a dominance that is now threatened, and one that Trump is not abandoning, even as he adjusts American tactics on the fly.
The Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) and its magazine, Foreign Affairs are where the ruling elites of the United States debate and determine American foreign policies from administration to administration, regardless of political party. The CFR is the preeminent U.S. think tank; it is over one hundred years old, financed by the Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie Foundations and its members have included former CIA Director Allen Dulles, McGeorge Bundy, Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and many other high government and financial figures, including David Rockefeller, who served as chairman between 1970-1985.
“Largely unbeknownst to the general public, executives and top journalists of almost all major US media outlets have long been members of the influential Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).” It is evidence of why the corporate mainstream media is an adjunct of the U.S. propaganda system. To become a member is to be baptized into the U.S. ruling establishment and its vast propaganda network that includes, as former CIA analyst Ray McGovern describes it: the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank complex, MICIMATT.
Donald Trump is a headline grabber who ultimately follows orders. He is not, as claimed, an outlier. Unusual he may be – bizarre in many ways – but he has his supporters within the dueling factions of the ruling elites. Nothing could clarify this more than the events of the past weeks, from his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska to his meeting in the White House with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenski, his fellow entertainer, and his European entourage of jugglers and clowns. They didn’t act like people and they didn’t act like actors.
“Whenever I take up a newspaper,” the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen wrote in his play Ghosts, “I seem to see ghosts gliding between the lines. There must be ghosts all the country over, as thick as the sands of the sea. And then we are, one and all, so pitifully afraid of the light.”
Such is what I see when I read today’s press about Trump, the peacemaker. Having been around a few years, his actions strike no shock of the new in me, but rather bring to mind a walk down a city street where old ghosts meet to whisper a description I once read of most corporate mainstream journalists – “No ideas and the ability to express them.” Or to put it another way – only ideas they have been fed and the ability to regurgitate them. So Trump is either described as a traitor who has been manipulated by Putin or a man genuinely seeking the end of America’s efforts to surround and crush Russia.
Neither is true. We are captives in a contronymal game (a contronym being a word having contradictory meanings, such as “refrain”: to desist from doing something or to repeat).
Someone is playing someone. Who is playing whom and why I will leave as a question for readers’ research. See, for example, the work of another key think tank – the Rand Corporation’s 2019 study, “Extending Russia,” – that cooly sets out various options for the U.S. to use in undermining Russia as if it were suggesting possible menu items at a restaurant. Without a knowledge of history, Donald Trump appears to be a radical departure from past American presidents. That he opened a dialogue when he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska seems significant. It is true that talking is better than walking away, but only when the intentions that underlie it are honorable, and in this case, I find that doubtful.
Let me use an analogy that may at first seem “by the way” and therefore not apt. I think it is. When it came to the assassination of President Kennedy, the CIA and its media mouthpieces weaponized the term “conspiracy theory” to besmirch the names of those who questioned the Warren Commission Report. The corporate mainstream media (MSM) have echoed this ever since and thus the term came to be one applied to dissenters of all sorts, even those who believe the most outlandish things, such as Elvis didn’t die but was taken up by aliens where he now commands a spaceship called Suspicious Minds, named for one of his hit songs.
Conspiracists were those who had these insane thoughts that there were elements within the government, notably within the CIA, FBI and Pentagon, who would assassinate their own leaders and those devoted to peace. Over the years this term came to be mixed with that of “the deep state,” shadow government, rogue network, etc. The “official” position was that such conspiratorial thinking was undermining the official good government and was the work of lunatics; it assumed that the government didn’t conspire to commit crimes, only lone nuts did, and then crazier nuts tried to pin it on elements within the government such as the CIA. These people were said to be paranoid.
But over the decades scholars have clearly shown that many of the claims of the “conspiracy theorists” were correct despite the best efforts of MICIMATT to create fantastically absurd “conspiracy” stories that they have used to ridicule serious thinkers and researchers. This mode of attack was weakening and along popped Donald Trump “straight” out of the TV screen. A larger than life big mouth who appealed to voters who felt that they were being screwed by the elite elites, which they were and are (Trump, after all, is a super-rich New York City real estate tycoon that no one except the most astute propagandist would choose to run for the presidency). Trump promised he would get to the bottom of many of the “conspiracy theories” – such as the assassinations of JFK, Malcolm X, MLK, Jr., Robert Kennedy, and the events of September 11, 2001, etc. – but he never will. He was going to expose the crooks, clean out the swamp, and make government as pellucid as a pristine mountain stream. Like all the charlatan presidents, he campaigned as a peacemaker and then waged war directly or through barely concealed proxies (war being the lifeblood of the U.S. economy) – Ukraine, Israel, Syrian “rebels” (i.e. terrorists), etc. The charade of his “peacemaking,” although weakening, still casts a spell over many people who fail to understand who formulates American foreign policy strategy.
If there is a so-called deep state responsible for the aforementioned assassinations, etc. and it controls U.S. presidents, then it controls Donald Trump. If Trump is truly trying to end the U.S. proxy war via Ukraine against Russia and establish good relations with its long-term arch-enemy, either the “deep state” has decided this is the best long-term strategy to try to maintain world dominance and it has tricks up its sleeve to attempt to do so, or else it will prevent Trump from carrying out his ostensible intent.
However, if there is no hidden “deep state,” just the official U.S. public state whose policies are largely determined in the dens of the aforementioned think tanks whose works are openly available, a government that does what it wants under various cover stories – two most significant ones being “the deep state” and “conspiracy theory” – then Trump may be its most fantastic contronymal creation, the epitome in his person of what Orwell meant by Doublethink:
Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them…. To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies – all this is indispensably necessary.
It is important to remember how all the rhetoric surrounding the term “deep state” has been so craftily used and mixed with that of “conspiracy theory” that it is worth considering it part of a very sophisticated propaganda campaign to scramble minds.
Few would dispute the fact that there is a ruling class in the United States and that its interests are not those of ordinary Americans. This is so obvious I will elide further comments about it. Everyone knows how wealth controls the electoral system; that it has corrupted it beyond repair.
Logic suggests that if a “deep state” is posited opposed to the official “open” government, and if it can be eliminated by a “good” politician, then the good guys will be back in charge and a return to the status quo effected.
So we must ask the question: What is the opposite of a contronym?
West Papuan journalist Victor Mambor has vowed not to be silenced despite years of threats, harassment and even a bomb attack on his home.
The 51-year-old founder and editor-in-chief of Jubi, West Papua’s leading media outlet, was in Fiji this week, where he spoke exclusively to The Fiji Times about his fight to expose human rights abuses.
“Despite them bombing my home and office with molotov bombs, I am still doing journalism today because my people are hurting — and I won’t stop,” Mambor said.
The news industry has undergone a sea-change in the last two decades. Print readership of newspapers has declined sharply, while their digital readership has edged up slowly. Local newspapers have consolidated into ever larger chains controlled by private equity and vulture funds. Newer digital-only media sites have multiplied. Into this changing news landscape has come an influx of new…
Three media spokespeople addressed the 98th week of New Zealand solidarity rallies for Palestine in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland today, criticising the quality of news reporting about the world’s biggest genocide crisis this century.
Speakers at other locations around the country also condemned what they said was biased media coverage.
The critics said they were affirming their humanity in solidarity with the people of Palestine as the United Nations this week officially declared a man-made famine in Gaza because of Israel’s weaponisation of starvation against the besieged enclave with 2 million population.
More than 62,000 Palestinians have been killed in the 22 months of conflict – mostly women and children.
One of the major criticisms was that the New Zealand media has consistently framed the series of massacres as a “war” between Israel and Hamas instead of a military land grab based on ethnic cleansing and genocide.
The first speaker, Mick Hall, a former news agency journalist who is currently an independent political columnist, said the way news media had covered these crimes had “undoubtedly affected public opinion”.
“As Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Gaza devolved into a full-blown genocide, our media continued to frame Israel’s attack on Gaza as a war against Hamas, while they uncritically recorded Western leaders’ claims that Israel was exercising a ‘right of self-defence’,” he said.
NZ media lacking context
New Zealand news outlets continued to “present an ahistorical account of what has transpired since October 7, shorn of context, ignoring Israel’s history of occupation, of colonial violence against the Palestinian people”.
“An implicit understanding that violence and ethnic cleansing forms part of the organisational DNA of Zionism should have shaped how news stories were framed and presented over the past 22 months.
Independent journalist Mick Hall speaking at today’s rally . . . newsrooms “failed to robustly document the type of evidence of genocide now before the International Court of Justice.”
“Instead, newsroom leaders took their lead from our politicians, from the foreign policy positions from those in Washington and other aligned centres of power.”
Hall said newsrooms had not taken a “neutral position” — “nor are they attempting to keep us informed in any meaningful sense”.
“They failed to robustly document the type of evidence of genocide now before the International Court of Justice.
“By wilfully declining to adjudicate between contested claims of Israel and its victims, they failed to meet the informational needs of democratic citizenship in a most profound way.
“They lowered the standard of news, instead of upholding it, as they so sanctimoniously tell us.”
Evans slams media ‘apologists’
Award-winning New Zealand cartoonist Malcolm Evans congratulated the crowd of about 300 protesters for “being on the right side of history”.
“As we remember more than 240 journalists, camera and media people, murdered, assassinated, by Zionist Israel — who they were and the principles they stood for we should not forget our own media,” he said.
Cartoonist and commentator Malcolm Evans . . . “It wasn’t our reporters living in a tent in Gaza whose lives, hopes and dreams were blasted into oblivion because they exposed Zionist Israel’s evil intent.” Image: Asia Pacific Report
“The media which, contrary to the principles they claim to stand for, tried to tell us Zionist Israeli genocide was justified.”
“Whatever your understanding of the conflict in Palestine, which has brought you here today and for these past many months, it won’t have come first from the mainstream media.
“It wasn’t our reporters living in a tent in Gaza whose lives, hopes and dreams were blasted into oblivion because they exposed Zionist Israel’s evil intent.
“The reporters whose witness to Zionist Israel’s war crimes sparked your outrage were not from the ranks of Western media apologists.”
Describing the mainstream media as “pimps for propaganda”, Evans said that in any “decent world” he would not be standing there — instead the New Zealand journalists organisation would be, “expressing solidarity with their murdered Middle Eastern colleagues”.
Palestinian journalists owed debt
David Robie, author and editor of Asia Pacific Report, said the world owed a huge debt to the Palestinian journalists in Gaza.
“Although global media freedom groups have conflicting death toll numbers, it is generally accepted that more than 270 journalists and media workers have been killed — many of them deliberately targeted by the IDF [Israeli Defence Force], even killing their families as well.”
Journalist and author Dr David Robie . . . condemned New Zealand media for republishing some of the Israeli “counter-narratives” without question. Image: Del Abcede/APR
Dr Robie stressed that the Palestinian journalist death toll had eclipsed that of the combined media deaths of the American Civil War, First and Second World Wars, Korean War, Vietnam War, Cambodian War, Yugoslavia Wars, Afghan War, and the ongoing Ukraine War.
“The Palestinian death toll of journalists is greater than the combined death toll of all these other wars,” he said. “This is shocking and shameful.”
He pointed out that when Palestinian reporter Anas al-Sharif was assassinated on August 10, his entire television crew was also wiped out ahead of the Israeli invasion of Gaza City — “eliminating the witnesses, that’s what Israel does”.
Six journalists died that day in an air strike, four of them from Al Jazeera, which is banned in Israel.
Dr Robie also referred to “disturbing reports” about the existence of an IDF military unit — the so-called “legitimisation cell” — tasked with smearing and targeting journalists in Gaza with fake information.
He condemned the New Zealand media for republishing some of these “counter-narratives” without question.
“This is shameful because news editors know that they are dealing with an Israeli government with a history of lying and disinformation; a government that is on trial with the International Court of Justice for ‘plausible genocide’; and a prime minister wanted on an International Criminal Court arrest warrant to answer charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity,” he said.
“Why would you treat this government as a credible source without scrutiny?”
Mock media cemetery
The protest included a mock pavement cemetery with about 20 “bodies” of murdered journalists and blue “press” protective vests, and placards declaring “Killing journalists is killing the truth”, “Genocide: Zionism’s final solution” and “Zionism shames Jewish tradition”.
The demonstrators marched around Te Komititanga Square, pausing at strategic moments as Palestinians read out the names of the hundreds of killed Gazan journalists to pay tribute to their courage and sacrifice.
Author and journalist Saige England . . . “The truth is of a genocide carried out by bombs and snipers, and now there is another weapon.” Image: Claire Coveney/APR
In Ōtautahi Christchurch today, one of the speakers at the Palestine solidarity rally there was author and journalist Saige England, who called on journalists to “speak the truth on Gaza”.
“The truth of a genocide carried out by bombs and snipers, and now there is another weapon — slow starvation, mutilation by hunger,” she said.
“The truth is a statement by Israel that journalists are ‘the enemy’. Israel says journalists are the enemy, what does that tell you?
“Why? Because it has carried out invasions, apartheid and genocide for decades.”
Some of the mock bodies today representing the slaughtered Gazan journalists with Al Jazeera’s Anas al-Sharif in the forefront. Image: APR
The 1980s were a time of war in El Salvador. The government openly attacked its citizens. Repression. Murder. Massacres.
Radio Venceremos broadcasted twice a day. And it was a voice of truth. A voice of reason. A voice of resistance amid the violence and the government repression and the military bloodshed. They spoke truth to power. They offered hope to the masses—the people praying for change. Praying that El Salvador could be different. That one day they would not have to live in fear.
This is episode 63 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast produced by The Real News. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.
You can check out exclusive pictures of the Radio Venceremos archive at the Museum of Word and Image in San Salvador here, on Michael Fox’s Patreon.
Please consider supporting this podcast and Michael Fox’s reporting on his Patreon account: patreon.com/mfox. There you can also see exclusive pictures, video, and interviews.
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It was a time of war. A time of desperation. This was El Salvador—early 1980s. The government openly attacked its citizens. It hadbeen for years.
Repression. Murder. Torture. Massacres. Disappearances… hundreds a month.
And the United States fueled the fire. It trained the soldiers, gave the logistics, backed the death squads and the authoritarian governments.
But Salvadorans responded. After the killing of Archbishop Monsignor Romero, guerrilla forces united. They founded a movement to push back on the despotic regime. They sparked a civil war that would grip the country for more than a decade. And at the heart of it was one guerrilla radio.
Radio Venceremos.
They broadcast twice a day, and they were a voice of truth. A voice of reason. A voice of resistance amid the violence, and the government repression, and the military bloodshed.
And Radio Venceremos didn’t just broadcast news. They sang music. They acted out plays and skits. They made fun of government and military officials. They reported from the front lines. Spoke with everyday Salvadorans. And denounced the violence, repression, and the massacres.
They spoke truth to power. They offered hope to the masses—the people praying for change. Praying that El Salvador could be different. That one day they would not have to live in fear.
And for this, the radio was targeted, and attacked. For this, the Salvadoran government could not let them continue. And the military set out to destroy this tiny guerrilla radio.
They were often on the run, broadcasting while bombs fell, government forces only a few steps behind. But they responded with creativity. They ran their signal over the barbed wires that covered the countryside.
They broadcast their words and songs, stories and hope, from miles away from their location, and fooled military officers and bombing raids for months and years.
Radio Venceremos became so reputable, international mainstream media turned to it for news and reporting. News from the front lines. The news and stories the government would not tell, and which the government prohibited other news outlets from reporting. Investigative stories about government massacres. The truth from the battlefield, and from communities across El Salvador.
Radio Venceremos was a beacon of light in a sea of darkness. A glimmer of hope amid the despair. A reminder that the US-backed government and the repressive forces and the guns and violence could not silence the resistance.
People listened in far and wide. Even military officers, though it was prohibited.Humanity breathing, speaking truth into the airwaves. The airwaves that would not be silenced, despite every government attempt to stop them.
On January 16, 1992, the government finally signed a peace agreement with the guerrilla forces of the FMLN, or Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, ending the country’s 12-year-long civil war.
Radio Venceremos broadcast throughout the war.
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Hi folks, thanks for listening. I’m your host Michael Fox.
This week, National Radio Day was held in the United States on August 20.
I thought it was a fitting moment to honor this tremendous guerrilla radio that was El Salvador’s Radio Venceremos.
If you would like to learn more, please check out episodes 4 and 5 of my podcast Under the Shadow. They both deal with the country’s civil war in the 1980s. In particular, episode 5 is entirely about Radio Venceremos. The radio’s archive today, is housed at the Museum of Word and Image in San Salvador. It’s a great episode. You can find links in the show notes.
You can check out exclusive pictures of the Radio Venceremos Archive in my Patreon account. It’s exclusively for my supports on Patreon. I’ll include the link in the show notes.
As always, if you like what you hear and enjoy this podcast, please consider becoming a subscriber on my Patreon. It’s only a few dollars a month. I have a ton of exclusive content there, only available to my supporters. And every supporter really makes a difference.
This is the latest episode of Stories of Resistance, a podcast series produced by The Real News. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review.
Protesters in their thousands have been taking to the streets in Aotearoa New Zealand demonstrating in solidarity with Palestine and against genocide for the past 97 weeks.
Yet rarely have the protests across the motu made headlines — or even the news for that matter — unlike the larger demonstrations in many countries around the world.
At times the New Zealand news media themselves have been the target over what is often claimed to be “biased reportage lacking context”. Yet even protests against media, especially public broadcasters, on their doorstep have been ignored.
Reporters have not even engaged, let alone reported the protests.
Last weekend, this abruptly changed with two television crews on hand in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland days after six Palestinian journalists — four Al Jazeera correspondents and cameramen, including the celebrated Anas al-Shifa, plus two other reporters were assassinated by the Israeli military in targeted killings.
With the Gaza Media Office confirming a death toll of almost 270 journalists since October 2023 — more than the combined killings of journalists in both World Wars, and the Korean, Vietnam, and Afghan wars — a growing awareness of the war was hitting home.
After silence about the killing of journalists for the past 22 months, New Zealand this week signed a joint statement by 27 nations for the Media Freedom Coalition belatedly calling on Israel to open up access to foreign media and to offer protection for journalists in Gaza “in light of the unfolding catastrophe”.
Sydney Harbour Bridge factor
Another factor in renewed media interest has probably been the massive March for Humanity on Sydney Harbour Bridge with about 300,000 people taking part on August 3.
One independent New Zealand journalist who has been based in the West Bank for two periods during the Israeli war on Gaza – last year for two months and again this year – is unimpressed with the reportage.
Why? Video and photojournalist Cole Martin from Ōtautahi Christchurch believes there is a serious lack of understanding in New Zealand media of the context of the structural and institutional violence towards the Palestinians.
“It is a media scene in Aotearoa that repeats very harmful and inaccurate narratives,” Martin says.
“Also, there is this idea to be unbiased and neutral in a conflict, both perspectives must have equal legitimacy.”
As a 26-year-old photojournalist, Cole has packed in a lot of experience in his early career, having worked two years for World Vision, meeting South Sudanese refugees in Uganda who had fled civil war. He shared their stories in Aotearoa.
“New Zealand must move beyond empty statements on Gaza” . . . says Cole Martin. Image: The Spinoff screenshot
‘Struggle of the oppressed’
This taught him to put “the struggle of the oppressed and marginalised” at the heart of his storytelling.
Cole studied for a screen and television degree at NZ Broadcasting School, which led to employment with the news team at Whakaata Māori, then a video journalist role with the Otago Daily Times.
He first visited Palestine in early 2019, “seeing the occupation and injustice with my own eyes”. After the struggle re-entered the news cycle in October 2023, he recognised that as a journalist with first-hand contextual knowledge and connections on the ground he was in a unique position to ensure Palestinian voices were heard.
Cole spent two months in the West Bank last year and then gained a grant to study Arabic “which allowed me to return longer-term as New Zealand’s only journalist on the ground”.
“Yes, there are competing narratives,’ he admits, “but the reality on the ground is that if you engage with this in good faith and truth, one of those narratives has a lot more legitimacy than the other.”
Martin says that New Zealand media have failed to recognise this reality through a “mix of ignorance and bias”.
“They haven’t been fair and honest, but they think they have,” he says.
Hesitancy to engage
He argues that the hesitancy to engage with the Palestinian media, Palestinian journalists and Palestinian sources on the ground “springs from the idea that to be Palestinian you are inherently biased”.
“In the same way that being Māori means you are biased,” he says.
“Your world view shapes your experiences. If you are living under a system of occupation and domination, or seeing that first hand, it would be wrong and immoral to talk about it in a way that is misleading, the same way that I cannot water down what I am reporting from here.
“It’s the reality of what I see here, I am not going to water it down with a sort of ‘bothsideism’.”
Martin says the media in New Zealand tend to cover the tragic war which has killed more than 62,000 Palestinians so far — most of them women and children — “like we would cover an everyday story of Miss Jones fetching a cat from the tree.”
“This war is treated as a one-off event without putting it in the context of 76 years of occupation and domination by Israel and without actually challenging some of these narratives, without providing the context of why, and centring it on the violations of international law.”
It is a very serious failure and not just in the way things have been reported, but in the way editors source stories given the heavy dependency in New Zealand media on international media that themselves have been persistently and strongly criticised for institutional bias — such as the BBC, CNN, The New York Times and the Associated Press news agency, which all operate from news bureaux inside Israel.
“Firsthand view of peacemaking challenge in the ‘Holy Land’.” Image: Asia Pacific Report screenshot
‘No independent journalism’
“I have heard from editors that I have reached out to who have basically said, ‘No, we’re not going to publish any independent or freelance work because we depend on syndicated sources like BBC, CNN and Associated Press’.
“Which means that they are publishing news that doesn’t have a relevant New Zealand connection. Usually this is what local media need, a NZ connection, yet they will publish work from the BBC, CNN and Associated Press that has no relevance to New Zealand, or doesn’t highlight what is relevant to NZ so far as our government in action.
“And I think that is our big failure, our media has not held our government to account by asking the questions that need to be asked, in spite of the fact that those questions are easily accessed.”
Expanding on this, Martin suggests talking to people in the community that are taking part in the large protests weekly, consistently.
“Why are they doing this? Why are they giving so much of their time to protest against what Israel is doing, highlighting these justices? And yet the media has failed to engage with them in good faith,” he says.
“The media has demonised them in many ways and they kind of create gestures like what Stuff have done, like asking them to write in their opinions.
“Maybe it is well intentioned, maybe it isn’t. It opens the space to kind of more ‘equal platforming’ of very unequal narratives.
“Like we give the same airtime to the spokespeople of an army that is carrying out genocide as we are giving to the people who are facing the genocide.”
Robert Fisk on media balance and the Middle East. Video: Pacific Media Centre
’50/50 journalism’
The late journalist Robert Fisk, the Beirut-based expert on the Middle East writing for The Independent and the prolific author of many books including The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East, described this phenomena as “50/50 journalism” and warned how damaging it could be.
Among many examples he gave in a 2008 visit to New Zealand, Fisk said journalists should not give “equal time” to the SS guards at the concentration camp, they should be talking to the survivors. Journalists ought to be objective and unbiased — “on the side of those who suffer”.
“They always publish Israel says, ‘dee-dah-de-dah’. That’s not reporting, reporting is finding out what is actually going on on the ground. That’s what BBC and CNN do. Report what they say, not what’s going on. I think they are very limited in terms of how they report the structural stuff,” says Martin.
“CNN, BBC and Associated Press have their place for getting immediate, urgent news out, but I am quite frustrated as the only New Zealand journalist based in the occupied West Bank or on the ground here.
“How little interest media have shown in pieces from here. Even with a full piece, free of charge, they will still find excuses not to publish, which is hard to push back on as a freelancer because ultimately it is their choice, they are the editors.
“I cannot demand that they publish my work, but it begs the question if I was a New Zealand journalist on the ground reporting from Ukraine, there would be a very different response in their eagerness to publish, or platform, what I am sharing.
“Particularly as a video and photojournalist, it is very frustrating because everything I write about is documented, I am showing it.
NZ journalist documents Palestinian life in the West Bank. Image: NZH screenshot
‘Showing with photos’
“It’s not stuff that is hearsay. I am showing them with all these photos and yet still they are reluctant to publish my work. And I think that translates into reluctance to publish anything with a Palestinian perspective. They think it is very complex and difficult to get in touch with Palestinians.
“They don’t know whether they can really trust their voices. The reality is, of course they can trust their voices. Palestinian journalists are the only journalists able to get into Gaza [and on the West Bank on the ground here].
“If people have a problem with that, if Israel has a problem with that, then they should let the international press in.”
Pointing the finger at the failure of Middle East coverage isn’t easy, Martin says. But one factor is that the generations who make the editorial decisions have a “biased view”.
“Journalists who have been here have not been independent, they have been taken here, accompanied by soldiers, on a tailored tour. This is instead of going off the tourist trail, off the media trail, seeing the realities that communities are facing here, engaging in good faith with Palestinian communities here, seeing the structural violence, drawing the connections between what is happening in Gaza and what is happening in the West Bank — and not just the Israeli sources,” Martin says.
“And listening to the human rights organisations, the academics and the experts, and the humanitarian organisations who are all saying that this is a genocide, structural violence . . . the media still fails to frame it in that way.
‘Complete failure’
“It still fails to provide adequate context that this is very structural, very institutional — and it’s wrong.
“It’s a complete failure and it is very frustrating to be here as a journalist on the ground trying to do a good job, trying to redeem this failure in journalism.”
“Having the cover on the ground here and yet there is no interest. Editors have come back to me and said, ‘we can’t publish this piece because the subject matter is “too controversial”. It’s unbelievable that we are explicitly ignoring stories that are relevant because it is ‘controversial’. It’s just an utter failure of journalism.
“As the Fourth Estate, they have utterly failed to hold the government to account for inaction. They are not asking the right questions.
“I have had other editors who have said, ‘Oh, we’re relying on syndicated sources’. That’s our position. Or, we don’t have enough money.
That’s true, New Zealand media has a funding shortage, and journalists have been let go.
“But the truth is if they really want the story, they would find the funding.
Reach out to Palestinians
“If they actually cared, they would reach out to the journalists on the ground, reach out to the Palestinians. The reality is that they don’t care enough to be actually doing those things.
“I think that there is a shift, that they are beginning to respond more and more. But they are well behind the game, they have been complicit in anti-Arab narratives, and giving a platform to genocidal narratives from the Israeli government and government leaders without questioning, without challenging and without holding our government to account.
“The New Zealand government has been very pro-Israel, driven to side with America.
“They need to do better urgently, before somebody takes them to the International Criminal Court for complicity.”
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.
Exiled West Papuan media are calling for Fiji — in a reflection of Melanesian solidarity — to hold the greater Pacific region to account and stand against Indonesia’s ongoing media blackout in addition to its human rights abuses.
The leaders in their field which include two Papuans from Indonesia’s occupied provinces have visited the Pacific country to forge media partnerships, university collaboration and joint advocacy for West Papua self-determination.
They were speaking after the screening of a new documentary film, Pepera 1969: A Democratic Integration, was screened at The University of the South Pacific in Fiji.
The documentary is based on the controversial plebiscite 56 years ago when 1025 handpicked Papuan electors, which were directly chosen by the Indonesian military out of its 800,000 citizens, were claimed to have voted unanimously in favour of Indonesian control of Western New Guinea.
Victor Mambor — a co-founder of Jubi Media Papua — in West Papua; Yuliana Lantipo, one of its senior journalists and editor; and Dandhy Laksono, a Jakarta-based investigative filmmaker; shared their personal experiences of reporting from inside arguably the most heavily militarised and censored region in the Pacific.
“We are here to build bridges with our brothers and sisters in the Pacific,” Mambor told the USP media audience.
Their story of the Papuan territory comes after Dutch colonialists who had seized Western New Guinea, handed control of the East Indies back to the Indonesians in 1949 before The Netherlands eventually withdrew from Papuan territory in 1963.
‘Fraudulent’ UN vote
The unrepresentative plebiscite which followed a fraudulent United Nations-supervised “Act of Free Choice” in 1969 allowed the Indonesian Parliament to grant its legitimacy to reign sovereignty over the West Papuans.
That Indonesian authority has been heavily questioned and criticised over extinguishing independence movements and possible negotiations between both sides.
Indonesia has silenced Papuan voices in the formerly-named Irian Jaya province through control and restrictions of the media.
Mambor described the continued targeting of his Jubi Media staff, including attacks on its office and vehicles, as part of an escalating crackdown under Indonesia’s current President Prabowo Subianto, who took office less than 12 months ago.
“If you report on deforestation [of West Papua] or our culture, maybe it’s allowed,” he said.
“But if you report on human rights or the [Indonesian] military, there is no tolerance.”
An Indonesian MP, Oleh Soleh, warned publicly this month that the state would push for a “new wave of repression” targeting West Papuan activists while also calling the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) – the West Papuan territory’s peak independence movement – as a “political criminal group”.
‘Don’t just listen to Jakarta’
“Don’t just listen to what Jakarta says,” Mambor said.
“Speak to Papuans, listen to our stories, raise our voices.
“We want to bring West Papua back to the Pacific — not just geographically, but politically, culturally, and emotionally.”
Press freedom in West Papua has become most dire more over the past 25 years, West Papuan journalists have said.
Foreign journalists are barred entry into the territory and internet access for locals is often restricted, especially during periods of civil unrest.
Indigenous reporters also risk arrest and/or violence for filing politically sensitive stories.
Most trusted media
Founded in 2001 by West Papuan civil society, Jubi Media Papua’s English-language publication, the West Papua Daily, has become arguably the most trusted, independent source of news in the territory that has survived over its fearless approach to journalism.
“Our journalists are constantly intimidated,” Mambor said, “yet we continue to report the truth”.
The word Jubi in one of the most popular Indigenous Papuan languages means to speak the truth.
Mambor explained that the West Papua Daily remained a pillar of a vocal media movement to represent the wishes of the West Papuan people.
The stories published are without journalists’ bylines (names on articles) out of fear against retribution from the Indonesian military.
“We created a special section just to tell Pacific stories — to remind our people that we are not alone, and to reconnect West Papua with our Pacific identity,” Mambor said.
Lantipo spoke about the daily trauma faced by the Papuan communities which are caught in between the Indonesian military and the West Papua national liberation army who act on behalf of the ULMWP to defend its ancestral homeland.
‘Reports of killings, displacement’
“Every day, we receive reports: killings, displacement, families fleeing villages, children out of school, no access to healthcare,” Lantipo said.
“Women and children are the most affected.”
The journalists attending the seminar urged the Fijian, Melanesian and Pacific people to push for a greater awareness of the West Papuan conflict and its current situation, and to challenge dominant narratives propagated by the Indonesian government.
Laksono, who is ethnically Indonesian but entrenched in ongoing Papuan independence struggles, has long worked to expose injustices in the region.
“There is no hope from the Asian side,” Laksono said.
“That’s why we are here, to reach out to the Pacific.
“We need new audiences, new support, and new understanding.”
Arrested over tweets
Laksono was once arrested in September 2019 for publishing tweets about the violence from government forces against West Papua pro-independence activists.
Despite the personal risks, the “enemy of the state” remains committed to highlighting the stories of the West Papuan people.
“Much of Indonesia has been indoctrinated through school textbooks and [its] media into believing a false history,” he said.
“Our film tries to change that by offering the truth, especially about the so-called Act of Free Choice in 1969, which was neither free nor a genuine act of self-determination.”
Andrew Mathieson writes for the National Indigenous Times.
Melanesian supporters for West Papuan self-determination at The University of the South Pacific. Image: USP/NIT
A joint statement by the Media Freedom Coalition — signed by 27 countries, including New Zealand — urged Israel to offer protection for journalists in Gaza “in light of the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe”.
“Journalists and media workers play an essential role in putting the spotlight on the devastating reality of war. Access to conflict zones is vital to carrying out this role effectively,” the statement said.
“We oppose all attempts to restrict press freedom and block entry to journalists during conflicts.
“We also strongly condemn all violence directed against journalists and media workers, especially the extremely high number of fatalities, arrests and detentions.
“We call on the Israeli authorities and all other parties to make every effort to ensure that media workers in Gaza, Israel, the West Bank and East Jerusalem — local and foreign alike — can conduct their work freely and safely.
“Deliberate targeting of journalists is unacceptable. International humanitarian law offers protection to civilian journalists during armed conflict. We call for all attacks against media workers to be investigated and for those responsible to be prosecuted in compliance with national and international law.”
It reiterated calls for an immediate ceasefire, and the unconditional release of remaining hostages, unhindered flow of humanitarian aid.
The statement also called for “a path towards a two-state solution, long-term peace and security”.
Other countries to sign the statement included: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Chile, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal, Sierra Leone, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Ukraine.
The Media Freedom Coalition is a partnership of countries that advocates for media freedom around the world. New Zealand joined the coalition in March 2021.
New Zealand was not among the signatories of this statement, which was signed by the foreign ministers of the United Kingdom and 22 of its international partners — including Australia and Canada.
The statement called on Israel to reverse its decision.
“The decision by the Israeli Higher Planning Committee to approve plans for settlement construction in the E1 area, East of Jerusalem, is unacceptable and a violation of international law,” it said.
“Minister [Bezalel] Smotrich says this plan will make a two-state solution impossible by dividing any Palestinian state and restricting Palestinian access to Jerusalem. This brings no benefits to the Israeli people.
“Instead, it risks undermining security and fuels further violence and instability, taking us further away from peace.
“The government of Israel still has an opportunity to stop the E1 plan going any further. We encourage them to urgently retract this plan.”
The statement said “unilateral action” by the Israeli government undermined collective desire for security and prosperity in the Middle East.
“The Israeli government must stop settlement construction in line with UNSC Resolution 2334 and remove their restrictions on the finances of the Palestinian Authority.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Allen Forrest is writer, painter, graphic artist and activist who produces many cartoons illustrating the regressivism of capitalist societies. One cartoon by Forrest depicted a man and woman swimming in a shark-patrolled sea of MSM (aka mainstream media) lies. But why call it MSM or mainstream media?
Of course, any media would love to be branded as “mainstream media.” After all, “mainstream” is defined as: “considered normal, and having or using ideas, beliefs, etc. that are accepted by most people.” Specifically, what is often called the mainstream media refers to news media: a source for people to find out the how, why, where, and when of events and what these events mean or portend.
This awareness of events, both domestic and international, is important insofar as an enlightened populace is desired by a society. One assumes that most people want to be up-to-date and informed; at the very least people do not want to be kept in the dark on important matters or be deceived by their governments and media.
But the news media of “mainstream” outlets does not appear to have the confidence of the news consuming public. Gallup gauged Americans’ views of of the news media and noted on 27 February 2025: “Americans are now divided into rough thirds, with 31% trusting the media a great deal or a fair amount, 33% saying they do “not [trust it] very much,” and 36%, up from 6% in 1972, saying they have no trust at all in it.” In other words, 31% of Americans trust, to some degree, their so-called mainstream media and the rest don’t have trust in the “mainstream” media.
It should be starkly apparent that 31% constitute a definitive minority of a trusting population. Ergo, it is not “mainstream.” Others will refer to it as monopoly media, as did Ben Bagdikian, in the title of his books on media consolidation that posits media is presenting the views desired by the media consolidators. Another term that came into vogue is legacy media, which refers to the old mass media that predate the internet; for example, newspapers, television, radio, and magazines. Legacy media does proliferate online, as well. Others might simply note that there is state media (media funded by government and hence influenced by views desired by a government) or corporate media (media that seek profits and, therefore, will not want to upset the bottom line by losing potential advertisers).
The poll reveals that 69% of people, far exceeding a 50% cutoff, thus constituting a mainstream, are distrusting of the media.
Many people distrust or have even turned away from legacy media. With the advent of the internet an alternative media has cropped up. To the extent that people have given up on legacy media, then the alternative media may well represent a mainstream media for sourcing news and information. But is this media best depicted as an “alternative”? A more preferable name might be “independent media.” In this case, independent means not dependent on seeking profit beyond breaking even. In fact, many of these independent media editors and writers donate their time and efforts to provide relevant background information and reveal propaganda and disinformation.
Disinformation, being an intentional attempt to deceive, is of particular importance. In the case of the United States-led coalition’s invasion of Iraq, the disinformation campaign helped generate support from many sectors of the public. The legacy media kept repeating the disinformation, and much of the public believed it, being unable to discern the verisimilitude. The legacy media had a hand in the slaughter through its complicity that led to a range of 392,979–942,636 excess mortalities in Iraq. This was based on the fallacious claim that Iraq was in possession of weapons of mass destruction, although United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) inspector Scott Ritter had warned against such an attack claiming that Iraq was “fundamentally disarmed.” As such, following four days of detailed information on the method and operation of disinformation, as well as relevant international law and conventions on propaganda, the July 2004 Halifax Symposium on Media and Disinformation held that “disinformation—its creation and propagation—is a crime against humanity and a crime against peace.”
Conclusion
I do not suggest ditching the legacy media; there is value in being aware of the narrative the legacy media is pushing. Approach legacy media the same way one should approach independent media. Use open-minded skepticism. Demand evidence for information presented. Reserve extra skepticism for media sources known to have disinformed in the past.
Consider describing a media accurately by name. Legacy media is not my mainstream news source. Independent media, media dedicated to informing others with factual accuracy, coherent analysis, and a commitment to morality is my mainstream.
Like many others, I abandoned mainstream media long ago. The endless spin, shallow reporting, and predictable and propagandist narratives made it unbearable. Podcasts once seemed like the antidote: raw, unfiltered, and intellectually daring. But after countless hours of listening, I’ve begun to notice something unsettling: the global podcast universe is slowly morphing into the very thing it set out to replace.
It doesn’t matter which show you tune into—the same pundits, professors, and activists appear on rotation. The circle is closed. What once felt refreshing now feels predictable and self-referential. And part of the problem is the commercialization and ruthless competition for views and followers. Every podcaster wants traction, and the easiest shortcut is to invite a star guest. We, the audience, fall for it every time—believing that the bigger the name, the more profound the insights. The reality? Most celebrities are exhausted, endlessly repeating the same theses. Consistent, yes. But new? Rarely.
Despite the promise of broader horizons, most discussions follow the daily news cycle or focus on whichever conflict dominates headlines. Everything else disappears. The world is effectively shrinking—reduced to a handful of regions and a narrow set of concerns. Some hosts release multiple episodes in a single day. How deep can those conversations possibly be? Often, what masquerades as productivity is really just mass production. The speed comes at the expense of substance. Meanwhile, Western voices dominate. Women are often absent altogether. So we all end up in the world of westsplaining and mansplaining.
When podcasters endlessly guest on each other’s shows, swapping seats and recycling conversations, the result is not dialogue but repetition. An echo chamber with shinier packaging is still an echo chamber. The real challenge is not in lining up “big names” but in expanding the conversation: making it more polemical, more creative, more imaginative, more globally aware, more diverse.
Perhaps the true problem is our own laziness. We have grown accustomed to outsourcing our judgment, waiting for the “best” or most famous voices to tell us what to think. It is comfortable, quick, and flattering to believe we are following the wisdom of giants. But perhaps it is precisely this habit that leaves us intellectually dependent, recycling dominant (even though alternative, critical) insights instead of creating new ones.
Local and national podcasters are on the rise for quite some time, but their reach remains limited, often hindered by language barriers or uneven production quality. The same pattern repeats everywhere: chasing visibility, recycling familiar perspectives, and favoring recognizable names over truly fresh voices. The result is a public sphere that is narrower, less inventive, and less daring than it could be. But it remains a (relatively) profitable one…
If podcasts are to be more than mainstream media’s digital twin, we need to demand more—not only from hosts but from ourselves as listeners. We must cultivate curiosity beyond celebrity, seek voices we disagree with, challenge accepted wisdom, etc. Otherwise, the danger isn’t just boredom—it’s intellectual stagnation. If we do not break this cycle, we will soon discover that these “alternatives” were never really alternatives at all.
If we don’t insist on new voices (especially from the Global South/majority), bolder ideas, and sharper arguments, the “alternative” will soon be indistinguishable from the mainstream it once sought to escape.
Maybe I am wrong… I am just sharing my observations.
By the way, I still find Substack more inspirative than podcasts. It feels like a space where ideas can breathe, develop, and push us beyond the recycled talking points.
