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Category: press freedom

  • War in Ukraine: RSF warns over journalists risking their lives

    Pacific Media Watch newsdesk

    Several media crews have already come under fire and four reporters have sustained gunshot injuries in Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion as it enters its fourth week.

    Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has reaffirmed its call to the Russian and Ukrainian authorities to comply with their international obligations to guarantee the safety of reporters in the field, and urges journalists to take the utmost care.

    The shots came within centimetres of Swiss photographer Guillaume Briquet’s head when presumed members of a Russian special commando fired on him shortly after he passed a Ukrainian checkpoint on a road towards the southern city of Mykolaiv on March 6, while covering the Russian advance in the region.

    Despite the many “Press” markings on his car and his bulletproof vest marked “Press,” this experienced war reporter was then harassed by the soldiers, who stole 3000 euros and reporting equipment from him.

    “As this incident clearly illustrates, reporters in the field are targets for belligerents despite all the rules protecting journalists,” said Jeanne Cavelier, the head of RSF’s Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk.

    “They are civilians, who are keeping the world informed about the progress of the fighting. They must be able to work safely. We therefore call on all parties to the conflict to immediately commit to protecting journalists in the field in accordance with international law.

    “We also recommend that journalists exercise the utmost caution in the light of the many attacks by Russian commandos sent ahead as scouts.”

    Under Russian fire
    “They were less than 50 metres away,” RSF was told by Briquet, who was wounded in the face and arm by glass splinters from his windshield.

    “They clearly shot to kill. If I hadn’t ducked, I would have been hit. I’ve been fired on before in other war zones, but I’ve never seen this.

    Journalists - RSF Ukraine war map 17 March 2022
    Map: RSF. Go to https://bit.ly/3qjMuKz for the interactive map

    “Journalists traveling around the country with no war experience are in mortal danger.”

    A crew working for the London-based pan-Arab TV channel Al-Araby TV — reporter Adnan Can and cameraman Habip Demirci — came under Russian fire in Irpin, a suburb of Kyiv, on March 6. Shots were aimed at their car even though they had attached a white flag and “Press” signs to it.

    Trapped in a town where fighting was taking place, the two journalists had to hide with residents.

    A crew with the UK’s Sky News TV channel — consisting of four Brits and a Ukrainian journalist – came under fire from a Russian reconnaissance unit while heading toward Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, on the fourth day of the invasion, February 28.

    The crew’s leader, reporter Stuart Ramsay, sustained a gunshot injury to the lower back while cameraman Richie Mockler’s body armour stopped two other rounds.

    After shouting that they were journalists and after seeing that the shooting continued despite their press vests, the crew had to abandon their vehicle and run for cover.

    Brush with death
    Vojtech Bohac     and Majda Slamova, two Czech journalists reporting for Voxpot, and two Ukrainian journalists with Central TV had more luck during a similar incident while travelling together in a car in Makariv, another town on the outskirts of Kyiv, on March 3.

    They managed to escape uninjured in their car after coming under fire from Russian soldiers using AK-47 assault rifles, their media outlets reported.

    “This shoulder wound missed costing me my life by just a few centimetres,” Danish journalist Stefan Weichert told RSF. He is now hospitalised in Denmark after being evacuated along his colleague, Emil Filtenborg Mikkelsen, who sustained four gunshot wounds in the same attack.

    The two reporters for the Danish newspaper Ekstra-Bladet sustained these injuries in the northeastern town of Okhtyrka on 26 February.

    “The gunman, who we weren’t able to identify, was located about 15 metres behind our car.” Weichert said. “He couldn’t have failed to see the ‘press’ sign that was clearly visible on our car.”

    4 TV towers bombed
    As well as firing live rounds at reporters, the Russian armed forces have also carried out strikes on telecommunications antennae to prevent Ukrainian TV and radio broadcasts. Four radio and TV towers — in Kyiv, Korosten, Lyssytchansk and Kharkiv — have been the targets of Russian attacks that abruptly terminated broadcasting by at least 32 TV channels and several dozen national radio stations.

    Evgeny Sakun, a cameraman for the local Kyiv Live TV channel, was at the Kyiv tower at the time of the attack and was killed in circumstances that RSF is investigating.

    Ukraine is ranked 97th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2021 World Press Freedom Index, while Russia is ranked 150th.

    Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • How China is manipulating the information war in the Pacific

    ANALYSIS: By Sue Ahearn

    As China seeks greater influence in the South Pacific, its manipulation of local news outlets is having a serious impact on media independence.

    Most Pacific media organisations are struggling financially, many journalists have lost their jobs and China is offering a way for them to survive — at the cost of media freedom.

    It’s not just the “no strings attached” financial aid and “look and learn” tours of China for journalists; it’s about sharing an autocratic media model.

    Prominent journalists and media executives say Pacific leaders are copying Chinese media tactics and stopping them from doing their jobs.

    China is one of the worst countries in the world for media freedom. It ranks 177 on the Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index.

    Now it’s trying to influence media around the world, especially in countries which have signed up to its Belt and Road Initiative. That includes 10 Pacific island nations. Four remain with Taiwan.

    China has spent an estimated US$6.6 billion over 13 years strengthening its global media presence. It took over Radio Australia’s shortwave transmitter frequencies in the Pacific when the ABC shut down its shortwave service in 2017.

    Satellite service for Vanuatu
    China’s national television service is about to start broadcasting by satellite into Vanuatu.

    In a 2020 report, the International Federation of Journalists warned that foreign journalists were wooed by exchange programs, opportunities to study in China, tours and financial aid for their media outlets. Beijing also provides free content in foreign newspapers and ambassadors write opinion pieces for local media.

    The federation’s report found that journalists frequently think their media is strong enough to withstand this influence, but a global survey suggests that’s not the reality and China is reshaping the media round the world.

    These attempts at ‘sharp power’ go beyond simply telling China’s story, according to Sarah Cook, research director for China, Hong Kong and Taiwan at Freedom House. Their sharper edge often undermines democratic norms, erodes national sovereignty, weakens the financial sustainability of independent media, and violates local laws.

    Journalists say this is an ideological and political struggle, with China determined to combat what it sees as decades of unchallenged Western media imperialism.

    There’s mounting evidence from the Pacific of the impact of Beijing’s worldwide campaign, particularly in Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.

    The situation for journalists in Solomon Islands has rapidly changed since the country swapped diplomatic allegiance from Taipei to Beijing in 2019. Media freedom has deteriorated and journalists say leaders are now taking their cues from China.

    Vulnerable media outlets
    Media outlets are vulnerable to offers of financial help. Many journalists have lost jobs and others haven’t been paid for months. It’s estimated there are just 16 full-time journalists left in Honiara.

    There’s been little advertising since the November 2021 riots, a situation exacerbated by the covid pandemic. The only income for one privately owned media outlet is from the small street sales of its newspapers.

    Earlier this month, the Solomon Islands government held its first news conference for 2022 after months of pressure to talk to journalists. The government denied there were restrictions on media freedom.

    As the media struggles to survive, China’s ambassador is offering support, such as more trips to China (after the pandemic) and donations including two vehicles to the Solomon Star and maintenance of the newspaper’s printing presses. In the experience of other media, these offers are often followed with pressure to adhere to editorial positions congruent with those of the Chinese embassy.

    While some journalists are resisting the pressure and holding a strong line, others are being targeted by China with rewards for “friends”.

    Chinese embassies throughout the South Pacific are active on social media. In Solomon Islands, the embassy’s Facebook site includes posts about its aid assistance for covid-19, joint press releases with the Solomons government and stories from official Chinese news outlets.

    There are numerous examples of the growing impact on media freedom.

    Harassment over investigation
    A freelance journalist has relocated to Australia after her investigations into the relationship between Solomons Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare and a Chinese businessman resulted in harassment from police. She said police told her an order for her arrest came directly from the prime minister.

    She was advised by Australia’s high commissioner to move to Australia for her safety.

    Veteran journalist Dorothy Wickham was among a group of Solomon Islands journalists who accepted an invitation for a “look and learn” tour of China soon after the Sogavare government swapped allegiance to China in 2019.

    She said the trip left her concerned about how Solomon Islands would deal with its new diplomatic partner.

    “By the time our tour concluded in Shanghai, I was personally convinced that our political leaders are not ready or able to deal effectively with China. Solomon Islands’ regulatory and accountability mechanisms are too weak,” she says.

    “We have already shown some spirit with our attorney-general rejecting a hasty deal to lease the island of Tulagi, the capital of one of our provinces, to a Chinese company, but I fear how fragile and weak my country is against any large developed nation let alone China,’ she wrote in an article for The Guardian.

    One senior media executive that said if his own government, Australia, and New Zealand didn’t assist, he would look to China.

    “There is too much talk about the role of media in democracy,” he said. He thought the Chinese ambassador understood that his organisation had its own editorial policy.

    Soon after that, though, he was asked to publish a press release word for word.

    No expense spared
    Another media executive said he only had to ring the Chinese embassy and help arrived. He said China was rapidly moving into his country’s media space with no expense spared.

    High-profile Vanuatu journalist Dan McGarry says he has no doubt that some Pacific governments are following China’s lead and adopting its contempt for critical speech and dissent.

    In 2019, McGarry left Vanuatu to attend a forum in Australia, but his visa was revoked and he was banned from re-entering Vanuatu. He told the ABC’s Media Watch programme at the time that he had no doubt it was because of a story he wrote about the secret deportation of six Chinese from Vanuatu.

    The six were arrested and detained without charge on the premises of a Chinese company with numerous large government contracts before being escorted out of Vanuatu by Chinese and Vanuatu police. McGarry said he was summoned by the prime minister, who told him he was disappointed with his negative reporting.

    McGarry said he had no evidence that China tried to influence the Vanuatu government over his residence, but he’d seen a tendency in Pacific leaders to emulate behaviour they saw elsewhere.

    Now back in Vanuatu, he said the decision to refuse his work permit was still under judicial review and he’s seeking financial compensation.

    In 2018, Papua New Guinea journalist Scott Waide was suspended by EMTV under pressure from Prime Minister Peter O’Neill for a story he wrote about a diplomatic Chinese tantrum and a scandal over the purchase of Maserati cars for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in Port Moresby.

    Waide told the ABC that Pacific governments were taking lessons from China in dealing with their critics using media clampdowns and intimidation. That didn’t necessarily involve direct instructions from Beijing, “but people watch, people learn”.

    Head of news sacked
    A dispute over media freedom has escalated with the sacking of the head of news and 24 journalists at EMTV in PNG. They were initially suspended but later terminated for supporting their editor over interference from a government minister about a story involving an Australian man charged with drug trafficking.

    On March 9, the EMTV news manager was sacked for insubordination. The network has since hired a new team of recent graduates with little experience — just months before the scheduled elections in June.

    These examples give a sharper edge to concerns about China’s growing influence in the South Pacific and the lack of an Australian media voice there. The ABC’s presence has been described as a whisper.

    There’s only one Australian journalist based in the region, the ABC’s Natalie Whiting in PNG. Meanwhile, Xinhua has a correspondent based in Fiji and China has recently been recruiting Pacific journalists for its global TV network.

    The situation worries Australia’s national broadcaster. ABC managing director David Anderson told a Senate hearing in February 2022 of growing Chinese influence in the Pacific.

    “The single biggest piece of information that comes back to us from the public broadcasters is concern over the pressure the Chinese government put on them to carry content,” he said.

    In November 2019, the Melanesian Media Freedom Forum at Griffith University expressed concern about growing threats to media freedom. It called on Pacific governments to fund public broadcasters properly to ensure they have sufficient equipment and staff to enable their services to reach all citizens and to adequately play their watchdog role.

    Australian journalist, media development consultant and trainer Jemima Garrett says media executives are at risk of being captured by China.

    She has no doubt that China’s growing influence is a major story, but with so few Australian journalists based in the region, even significant developments in the China story are going unreported.

    Sue Ahearn is the creator and co-editor of The Pacific Newsroom and co-convenor of the Australia Asia Pacific Media Initiative. She was a senior executive at ABC Radio Australia and is currently studying Pacific development at the Australian National University. Image: Media Association of Solomon Islands/Facebook. This article was first published by The Strategist and is republished with the author’s permission.

    • Author’s note: Some of the Pacific journalists in this story have asked not to be named or identified because of the sensitivity of the issue.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Extradition Looms for Assange After UK Supreme Court Refuses to Hear His Appeal

    Protester for Julian Assange holds up sign

    The British judicial system has erected still another barrier to Julian Assange’s freedom. On March 14, the U.K. Supreme Court refused to hear Assange’s appeal of the U.K. High Court’s ruling ordering his extradition to the United States. If extradited to the U.S. for trial, Assange will face 17 charges under the Espionage Act and up to 175 years in prison for revealing evidence of U.S. war crimes.

    With no explanation of its reasoning, the Supreme Court denied Assange “permission to appeal” the High Court’s decision, saying that Assange’s appeal did not “raise an arguable point of law.” The court remanded the case back to the Westminster Magistrates’ Court, which is the same court that denied the U.S. extradition request on January 4, 2021.

    In all likelihood, the magistrates’ court will refer the case to the British Home Office where Home Secretary Priti Patel will review it. Assange’s lawyers then have four weeks to submit materials for Patel’s consideration. If she orders Assange’s extradition — which is highly likely — his lawyers will file a cross-appeal in the High Court asking it to review the issues Assange lost in the magistrates’ court.

    If the High Court refuses to review those additional issues, Assange can appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. That could take years. Meanwhile, he languishes in London’s high-security Belmarsh Prison, in fragile mental and physical health. He suffered a mini-stroke as his extradition hearing began. United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer wrote in a Twitter post that the “U.K. is literally torturing him to death.”

    The Legal Background

    On January 24, 2022, the High Court rejected Assange’s appeal but it certified to the Supreme Court that Assange had raised a “point of law of general public importance.” This means that it is a proper issue for the Supreme Court to review. The three-judge panel of the Supreme Court has now refused Assange permission to appeal.

    The point of law that the High Court certified to the Supreme Court was as follows:

    “In what circumstances can an appellate court receive assurances from a requesting state which were not before the court of first instance in extradition proceedings.”

    The United States waited until after the extradition hearing was over to offer U.K. District Judge Vanessa Baraitser assurances about the way Assange would be treated in U.S. prisons if extradited.

    Following a three-week evidentiary hearing, Baraitser ruled on January 4, 2021 that if Assange is extradited to the United States for trial, he is very likely to attempt suicide due to his mental state and the harsh conditions of confinement under which he would be held in U.S. prisons.

    During the hearing, the U.S. government did not assure Baraitser that Assange would not be held in solitary confinement in the United States. After Baraitser denied extradition, the Biden administration provided “assurances” that Assange wouldn’t be subject to special administrative measures (SAMs) or be housed at the ADX supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.

    But the United States’ so-called assurances contained a loophole big enough to drive a truck through. All assurances would be void if Assange committed a “future act” that “met the test” for the imposition of SAMs. That subjective determination would be made by prison officials with no judicial review.

    Although the late timing of the U.S.’s assurances prevented Assange’s lawyers from arguing they were unreliable and citing prior such assurances the United States failed to honor, the High Court accepted Biden’s assurances and dismissed Assange’s appeal in its January 2022 ruling.

    Issues Assange Seeks to Raise on Cross-Appeal

    In the cross-appeal, Assange’s lawyers will raise the following points:

    *The extradition treaty between the U.S. and the U.K. forbids extradition for a political offense and since espionage is a political offense, the court lacked jurisdiction to hear the case;

    *Extradition would be oppressive or unjust due to the passage of time;

    *The charges against Assange do not satisfy the “dual criminality test” which requires that they constitute criminal offenses in both the U.S. and the U.K.;

    *Extradition is barred because the request is based on Assange’s political opinions;

    *Extradition is barred because it would violate Assange’s rights to a fair trial and freedom of expression, as well as the prohibition on inhuman and degrading treatment, under the European Convention on Human Rights; and

    *The request for extradition is an abuse of process because it is being pursued for a political motive and not in good faith.

    Human Rights Organizations Decry Supreme Court’s Refusal to Hear Appeal

    Julia Hall, Amnesty International’s deputy research director for Europe, called the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the appeal a “blow to Julian Assange and to justice.” Hall said, “Demanding that states like the UK extradite people for publishing classified information that is in the public interest sets a dangerous precedent and must be rejected.” She added:

    Prolonged solitary confinement is a key feature of life for many people in U.S. maximum security prisons and amounts to torture or other ill treatment under international law. The ban on torture and other ill-treatment is absolute and empty promises of fair treatment, such as those offered by the U.S.A. in the Assange case threaten to profoundly undermine that international prohibition.

    Likewise, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) expressed strong opposition to the Supreme Court’s decision. “Assange’s case is overwhelmingly in the public interest, and it deserved review by the highest court in the U.K. After two full years of extradition proceedings, once again Assange’s fate has become a political decision,” said Rebecca Vincent, RSF’s director of operations and campaigns. “We call on the Home Office to act in the interest of journalism and press freedom by refusing extradition and releasing Assange from prison without further delay.”

    Assange’s Fiancée Says U.S. Wants to Imprison Him for Exposing Its War Crimes

    Stella Moris, Assange’s fiancée, says Assange is being persecuted for carrying out a core journalistic mission: telling the truth.

    “Whether Julian is extradited or not, which is the same as saying whether he lives or dies, is being decided through a process of legal avoidance,” Moris said. “Avoiding to hear arguments that challenge the UK courts’ deference to unenforceable and caveated claims regarding his treatment made by the United States, the country that plotted to murder him. The country whose atrocities he brought into the public domain. Julian is the key witness, the [principal] indicter, and the cause of enormous embarrassment to successive US governments.”

    Moris added, “Julian was just doing his job, which was to publish the truth about wrongdoing. His loyalty is the same as that which all journalists should have: to the public. Not to the spy agencies of a foreign power.”

    According to Moris, the United States wants to imprison Assange for 175 years because he “published evidence that the country that is trying to extradite him committed war crimes and covered them up; that it committed gross violations that killed tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children; that it tortured and rendered; that it bombed children, had death squads, and murdered Reuters journalists in cold blood; that it bribed foreign officials and bullied less powerful countries into harming their own citizens, and that it also corrupted allied nations’ judicial inquiries into US wrongdoing.”

    Assange and Moris, who have two small children together, have finally received permission to marry. They will be wed later this month in Belmarsh Prison.

  • No money, little experience, but Marshall Islands media icon leaves lasting legacy

    SPECIAL REPORT: By Giff Johnson, editor of the Marshall Islands Journal and RNZ Pacific correspondent

    Micronitor News and Printing Company founder Joe Murphy moved the goal posts of freedom of press and freedom of expression in the Marshall Islands, a country that had virtually no tradition of either, by establishing an independent newspaper that today is the longest running weekly in the Micronesia region.

    Murphy’s sharp intellect, fierce independence, vision for creating a community newspaper, bilingual language ability, and resilience in the face of adversity saw him navigate hurdles — including high tide waves that in 1979 washed printing presses out of the Micronitor building and into the street — to successfully establish a printing company and newspaper in the challenging business environment of 1970s Majuro.

    Murphy, who died at age 79 in the United States last week, was the original sceptic, who revelled in the politically incorrect.

    At 25, he arrived in the Marshall Islands capital Majuro in the mid-1960s and was dispatched by the Peace Corps to Ujelang, the atoll of the nuclear exiles from Enewetak bomb tests that was a textbook definition of the term “in the back of beyond.” A ship once a year, and no radio, TV, telephones or mail.

    Still, Joe thrived as an elementary teacher, survived food shortages and hordes of rats, endearing him to a generation of Ujelang people as an honorary member of the exiled community.

    After Ujelang, he wrapped up his two-year Peace Corps stint by taking over teaching an unruly urban centre public school class after the previous teacher walked out. He rewrote what he deemed boring curriculum and taught in military style, replete with chants in English.

    These experiences in pre-1970s Marshall Islands fuelled his desire to return. After his Peace Corps tour, some time to travel the world, and a brief return to the US, Murphy headed back to Majuro.

    No money, but a vision
    He had no money to speak of, but he had a vision and he set out to make it happen.

    “He was determined to start a newspaper written in both the English and Marshallese languages,” recalls fellow Peace Corps Volunteer Mike Malone, the co-founder with Murphy of what was initially known as Micronitor.

    Marshall Islands Journal founder and publisher Joe Murphy in the late 2010s.
    Marshall Islands Journal founder and publisher Joe Murphy in the late 2010s … “Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one.” – “I own one.” Image: Giff Johnson/RNZ

    In late 1969, they began constructing a small newspaper building, mixing concrete and laying the foundation block-by-block with the help of a few friends.

    Before the building was completed, however, they launched the Micronitor in 1970, printing from Malone’s house.

    The Micronitor would be renamed later to the Micronesian Independent for a bit before finding its identity as the Marshall Islands Journal.

    Writing in the Journal in 1999, Murphy commented: “The 30th anniversary of this publication is an event most of us who remember the humble beginnings of the Journal are surprised to see.

    “February 13, 1970 was a Friday, an unlucky day to begin an enterprise by most reckonings, and the two guys who were spearheading the operation were Irish-extract alcohol aficionados with very little or no newspaper experience.

    A worthy undertaking
    “They also, between the two of them, had practically no money, and of course should never, had they any commonsense, even attempted such a worthy undertaking.

    “But circumstances and time were on their side, and with all potential serious investors steering clear of such a dubious exercise they had the opportunity to make a great number of mistakes without an eager competitor ready and willing to capitalise on them.”

    With Murphy at the helm, it wasn’t long before the Journal earned a reputation far beyond the shores of the tiny Pacific outpost of Majuro. Murphy encouraged local writers, and spiced the newspaper with pithy comment and attacks on US Trust Territory authorities and the Congress of Micronesia.

    Joe Murphy in Majuro in the mid-1970s
    Joe Murphy in Majuro in the mid-1970s, a few years after launching the Marshall Islands Journal, which would go on to be the longest publishing weekly newspaper in the Micronesia area. Image: Giff Johnson/RNZ

    In the late 1980s and 1990s Murphy built two bars and restaurants, local-style places that appealed to Majuro residents as well as visitors. He also built the Backpacker Hotel, a modest cost accommodation that turned into a popular outpost for fisheries observers awaiting their next assignment at sea, low-budget journalists, environmentalists and assorted consultants.

    “The first thing that people think about when it comes to my father is that he is a very successful businessman here in the Marshall Islands,” said his eldest daughter Rose Murphy, who manages the company today.

    “But we need to remember him as someone who wanted to give the Republic of the Marshall Islands a voice.”

    “To say Joe was a unique person is a large understatement,” said Health Secretary and former Peace Corps Volunteer Jack Niedenthal.

    An icon with impact
    “He was an icon and had a profound impact on our country because he fostered free speech and demanded that those in our government always be held publicly accountable for their actions.”

    A plaque in his office defined his independent personality and his appreciation of the power of the press. It quoted the famous American journalist AJ Liebling: “Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one.” This was followed by a three-word comment: “I own one.” – Joe Murphy.

    “He fought for freedom of speech and fought against discrimination,” said Rose Murphy. “Regardless of race, religion, and even status, he befriended people from all parts of the world and from all walks of life.”

    In the mid-1990s, Joe Murphy created what became the justly famous motto of the Journal, the “world’s worst newspaper.” It was a reaction to the more politically correct mottos of other newspapers.

    Those three words led to wide international media exposure. In 1994, the Boston Globe conducted a survey of the world’s worst newspapers, reviewing a batch of Journals Murphy mailed.

    When the Globe reporter concluded that despite its claim, the Journal not only didn’t rank as the world’s worst newspaper it was “a first-class newspaper,” Murphy’s reaction was to say, “We must have sent you the wrong issues.”

    The Marshall Islands Journal was the subject of scrutiny by the Boston Globe to determine if publisher Joe Murphy's claim that the Journal was the "World's Worst Newspaper" was accurate.
    The Marshall Islands Journal was the subject of scrutiny by the Boston Globe to determine if publisher Joe Murphy’s claim that the Journal was the “World’s Worst Newspaper” was accurate. Image: Giff Johnson/RNZ

    Murphy knew the key to successful newspaper publishing was not how nicely or otherwise the newspaper was packaged, or if a photograph was in colour. The most important ingredient in any successful local newspaper is original content, intelligently and interestingly written.

    ‘Livened up’ the Journal
    He did more than his fair share to liven up the Journal, from the time of its launch until poor health after 2019 prevented his engagement in the newspaper.

    “My father experienced extreme hardships on Ujelang along with his adopted Marshallese family, the exiled people of Enewetak Atoll, who were moved to Ujelang to make way for US nuclear tests in the late 1940s,” said daughter Rose.

    “He shared these hardships with his children to give them the perspective of being grateful for any little thing we had. If we had a broken shoe or little food, he shared with us this story.

    “Our father, to us, is a symbol of resilience and gratitude. Be resilient in tough situations.”

    From growing up among eight children of Irish immigrant parents in the United States to the austerity of Ujelang Atoll to the early days of establishing what would become the longest publishing weekly newspaper in the Micronesia region, Murphy was indeed a symbol of resilience and independence, able to navigate tough situations with alacrity.

    One of the first editions of the Majuro newspaper Micronitor in 1970
    One of the first editions of the Majuro newspaper in 1970, then known as Micronitor. Image: Giff Johnson/RNZ

    “Democracy was able to establish a toehold, and then a firm grip, in the Western Pacific in part because of a handful of journalism pioneers who believed in the power of truth, particularly Joe Murphy on Majuro,” said veteran Pacific island journalist Floyd K Takeuchi.

    “He had the courage to challenge the powers that be, including those of the chiefly kind, to be better, and to do better.

    “People forget that for many years, the long-term future of the Marshall Islands Journal wasn’t a sure thing. With every issue of the weekly newspaper, Joe’s legacy is made firmer in the islands he so loved.”

    Murphy is survived by his wife Thelma, by children Rose, Catherine “Katty,” John, Suzanne, Margaret “Peggy,” Molly, Fintan, Sam, Charles “Kainoa,” Colleen “Naki,” Patrick “Jojo”, Sean, Sylvia Zedkaia and Deardre Korean, and by 32 grandchildren.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • RSF condemns threats, violence against media from NZ’s ‘freedom convoy’ protest

    Pacific Media Watch newsdesk

    Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has condemned the threats and violence against news media by protesters during the 16-day anti-covid-19 vaccine mandates occupation of Parliament grounds, and called for prosecutions of those responsible.

    The media are among favourite targets of some of the 500 or so protesters still camped in front of the Parliament building, known as the Beehive, after arriving from various parts of the country in “freedom convoys” akin to those causing chaos in parts of Canada for the past month, reports the Paris-based media freedom watchdog in a statement tonight.

    The violence against journalists trying to cover the protest had included being regularly pelted with tennis balls with such not-very-subtle insults as “terrorists” and “paedophiles” written on them, said RSF.

    “Media = Fake News” and “Media is the virus” are typical of the slogans on the countless signs outside protesters’ tents.

    Journalists who approach have also been greeted with drawings of gallows and nooses, as well as insults and threats of violence ­– to the point that most of them now have bodyguards, says Mark Stevens, head of news at Stuff, New Zealand’s leading news website.

    ‘Your days are numbered‘
    Stevens sounded the alarm about the attacks on journalists in an editorial published on February 11.

    “They’ve had gear smashed, been punched and belted with umbrellas,” he wrote. “Many reporters have been harassed […], including one threatened with their home being burned down.”

    The violence has not been limited to Wellington.

    In New Plymouth, an angry crowd tried to storm the offices of the local newspaper, Stuff’s Taranaki Daily News, two weeks ago, as reported by Mediawatch. Some of the protesters even managed to breach the newspaper’s secured doors and attack members of the staff.

    “After the police intervened, [conspiracy theorist] Brett Power urged the protesters to return in order to hold the editor ‘accountable for crimes’ — meaning the newspaper’s failure to report their protests in the way they wanted,” the RSF statement said.

    “The verbal and physical violence against journalists is accompanied by extremely shocking online hate messages.”

    Stuff’s chief political reporter Henry Cooke tweeted an example of the threats he had received on social media:

    Daniel Bastard, the head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk, said: “The virulence of the threats against journalists by demonstrators, and the constant violence to which they have been subjected since the start of these protests are not acceptable in a democracy.”

    He called on authorities to “not allow these disgraceful acts to go unpunished. There is a danger that journalists will no longer be able to calmly cover these protests, opening the way to a flood of misinformation.”

    In a recent article, Kristin Hall, a reporter for 1News, described her dismay at discovering the level of “distaste for the press” among protesters who regarded the mainstream media as nothing more than “a bunch of liars”.

    “People have asked me why I’m not covering the protests while I’m in the middle of interviewing them,” she wrote.

    A Wellington Facebook page publisher attacked
    A Wellington Facebook page publisher attacked at the protest, as reported by 1News. Image: 1News screenshot APR

    ‘Headlocks, punches’
    Protester mistrust is no longer limited to mainstream media regarded as accomplices of a system imposing pandemic-related restrictions, as Graham Bloxham — a Wellington resident who runs the Wellington Live Community local news page on Facebook – found to his cost when he went to interview one of the protest organisers on February 18.

    “We just wanted to show people that it is peaceful … then bang. They just yelled and whacked. They were just all on me and they basically beat me and my cameraman to a pulp,” he told 1News.

    “Headlocks, punches… they were really violent.”

    A photo of a dozen Nazi war criminals being hanged at the end of the Second World War has been circulating on social media popular with the protesters for the past few days, accompanied by the comment: “Photograph of hangings at Nuremberg, Germany. Members of the media, who lied and misled the German people, were executed.” Definitely not subtle.

    Attacks against journalists have rarely or never been as virulent as this in New Zealand, which is ranked 8th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2021 World Press Freedom Index.

    • Henry Cooke reported an apology from some of the protesters over the “treatment” of some journalists, but incidents have continued to be reported.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Jack Lapauve: Why we walked out in protest over EMTV news independence

    COMMENTARY: EMTV’s deputy news editor Jack Lapauve Jr in Port Moresby writes in defence of the newsroom’s decision to walk out in protest over the suspension of head of news and current affairs Sincha Dimara on February 7.

    The EMTV News editorial decision to run the two stories [about the court cases involving Australian hotel businessman Jamie Pang] was based on two important points in our line of work:

    Impartiality and Objectivity.

    Impartiality cannot be achieved by the measure of words in a story, it is achieved by:

    • Avoiding bias towards one point of view
    • Avoiding omission of relevant facts
    • Avoiding misleading emphasis

    All of which are stated in the EMTV News and Current Affairs Manual 2019 in section 17.5 under standard operations of the television code.

    By running the stories, the team was accused of bias.

    We fail to see the areas of bias in our stories, especially because we presented more than one point of view in both stories.

    The information presented was based on facts and in avoiding any misleading emphasis; we delivered objective television news packages that were fully impartial in the code and conduct of journalism.

    Objective stories
    Overall, both stories were objective stories where two or more opinions were looked at closely in each story.

    To be clear, in television news objectivity is achieved by taking a rational but sceptical approach to ALL points of view.

    In this case, Jamie Pang’s arrest, conviction and charges were looked at, as well as his community and social activities:

    • Pang was arrested – Fact
    • Pang was convicted, charged and fined for having firearms and munitions in his possession – Fact
    • Pang was acquitted by a sound and proper court of justice in the PNG judicial system, from charges relating to methamphetamine – Fact
    • Being acquitted by a sound and proper court of justice in the PNG judicial system, makes Pang a free man from drug charges – Fact
    • Pang is heavily involved in social and community works – Fact
    • Pang was rearrested and detained – Fact

    All these factual points were documented in one story.

    Head of news Sincha Dimara .
    Head of news Sincha Dimara … suspended by EMTV. Image: RSF

    It is important to understand, that in objective writing, the opinion of the interviewees are their own. However, [how] it is perceived by the our viewers is up to them to weigh [up] and decide.

    Objective [news] stories are often mistaken as opinion pieces.

    They are not the same.

    An opinion piece is a commentary on one point of view.

    Journalism independence
    As journalists we cannot be servants of sectional interests. It is our duty to speak to both “saints” and “sinners”. It is our democratic right to report on the good, bad and the ugly aspects of any story.

    There are no instances of perceived impartiality in our reporting which display a lack of objectivity.

    And a lack of objectivity leaves room for personal bias which is not acceptable in the journalism code of ethics.

    The failure of the interim EMTV CEO, Lesieli Vete, to understand how a newsroom operates and a newsroom’s code of conduct led to the suspension of head of news Sincha Dimara.

    Vete’s failure to try to understand the newsroom’s points of objectivity and impartiality in the stories led to her issuing of the statement portraying the newsroom as biased and in support of meth by sympathising with Pang’s employees and friends.

    Vete’s statement served the purpose of explaining the leaked memo and portraying a bad picture of her newsroom.

    Her statement lacked objectivity and impartiality because a written standpoint of the newsroom’s reasons for airing stories in the coverage of the Pang story were not included in her statement.

    Suppression of media freedom
    Vete’s questioning of our stance on running the story, and not showing any interest in learning nor understanding the way it was put together, led to further suppression of freedom of speech; direct and daily intimidation of senior and junior staff; micromanagement of staff whereabouts and activities; and direct and indirect threats of termination on staff.

    The immense pressure to put a [news] bulletin together while being highly and closely monitored took a direct and serious toll on newsroom staff morale.

    This created conditions that were suffocating to work under. A walk off was imminent.

    We are making a stand now in solidarity against bullying and ill treatment of newsroom staff in the absence of news managers.

    This is the third time we are experiencing a suppression of our right to freedom of speech, and we want it to stop once and for all.

    After the suspension of Sincha Dimara, EMTV’s deputy news editor Jack Lapauve Jr is now the most senior news manager and he was with the walk out. He posted this commentary on his Facebook page and it is republished here with his permission.

    The empty EMTV newsroom
    The empty EMTV newsroom last Thursday … after a walkout in protest by journalists over the suspension of their head of news Sincha Dimara. Image: APN

     

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Greta stands with Sami and Navalny on trial again: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

    A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Myanmar to Mexico

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • EMTV news team walk out in protest over suspension of their chief editor

    Pacific Media Watch newsdesk

    The national news team of Papua New Guinea’s major television channel, EMTV, walked out last night in protest over a decision earlier this month to suspend head of news Sincha Dimara for alleged insubordination.

    They have condemned the political “endless intimidation” of the news service which has led to the suspension or sacking of three news managers in the past five years.

    The news team has vowed to not return until the “wrongs have been righted” by the EMTV management with Dimara, a journalist of 30 years experience, being reinstated, and acting CEO Lesieli Vete being “sidelined and investigated for putting EMTV News into disrepute”.

    In a statement signed by the “Newsroom 2022” team made public tonight, the team apologised to viewers for not broadcasting last night’s news bulletin.

    “With all that has happened in the last eight days, the EMTV News team has decided to walk off producing EMTV News for tonight, Thursday, 17th February 2022,” the statement said.

    “We, therefore demand that Ms Dimara be reinstated and for interim CEO Lesieli Vete to be sidelined and investigated for putting EMTV News into disrepute.

    “We no longer have confidence in her leadership.

    Apology to viewers
    “The EMTV Newsroom would like to apologise to our viewers for not bringing you tonight’s news bulletin. We will return when the wrongs have been righted.”

    The controversy arose over a series of news stories about Australian hotel businessman Jamie Pang and his court cases.

    According to the newsroom statement, on Monday, 7 February 2022, “a fraction of the EMTV News team was verbally notified of a decision made by EMTV management to suspend EMTV’s head of news and current affairs, Sincha Dimara for a 21-day period”.

    The statement said the decision had been based on two grounds:

    “Purported insubordination over a series of news stories relating to Jamie Pang and his associates and damaging the reputation of EMTV, which the interim CEO claims EMTV received negative comments from the public on the airing of Jamie Pang’s stories.”

    Suspended EMTV news manager Sincha Dimara
    Suspended EMTV news manager Sincha Dimara … “”We are dismayed at the extreme harsh treatment of our head of news,” say the EMTV news team. Image: EMTV News

    The news team said the issue could have been “handled better” by the interim CEO Vete who “lacked a demonstration of leadership”.

    “We are dismayed at the extreme harsh treatment of our head of news and the continuous interferences from outside the newsroom,” the statement said.

    Third suspension in five years
    “This is the third time in a space of five years for an EMTV news manager to be suspended due to external influence.”

    • Scott Waide was the first manager suspended in 2018 over a story aired during the 2018 APEC meeting.
    • Neville Choi was terminated in August 2019, also on grounds of “insubordination”.
    • And now Sincha Dimara was placed in a similar situation.

    On Wednesday, 9 February 2022, the news team wrote a letter to Vete expressing concern on the suspension of Dimara.

    According to the news team, Vete queried the letter demanding to know which staff members were involved in sending out the letter.

    The same day, Thursday, 10 February 2022, the entire news team expressed their concern in another letter with signatures from all individual members to support the call to re-instate Dimara.

    “We are certain that the manner and approach taken by the interim CEO over the suspension of Ms Dimara is not right,” said the news team.

    “We consider the grounds of suspension to be shallow, contradictory and irrelevant.

    EMTV's defence statement
    EMTV’s statement defending the suspension of its news chief by highlighting a memo “leak” on February 8. Image: EMTV website

    News reports ‘unbiased and factual’
    “The news team strongly believes that the stories that ran on the nightly news relating to Jamie Pang were unbiased and reported with facts and did not impede on any of the current laws nor did not implicate anyone.”

    On Thursday, 10 February 2022, the EMTV management team, acting CEO of Telikom – the owners of EMTV’s parent company Media Niugini Limited (MNL)  — and few senior officers met with the news team and explained their decision to suspend Dimara.

    The management team initiated an audit investigation into the situation to determine what went wrong. That investigation is still continuing.

    After that meeting, the news team wrote another letter addressed to Telikom acting CEO, Amos Tepi and copied in the chairman of Telikom, Johnson Pundari which was sent to both Tepi and Pundari yesterday – February 17.

    “The decision to suspend Dimara is wrong as it breaches the Media Code of Ethics which is to report without fear or favour,” the news team said.

    The team also said it was standing up against continuous intimidation from the interim CEO.

    ‘Endless intimidation’
    “We condemn the endless direct or indirect intimidation which includes:

    • Threats of terminating news members for not putting together a news bulletin;
    • Micromanaging daily news production by being present in the master control room during live news;
    • Forcing the news team to sign a recently drafted news manual through the HR Department; and
    • Attempts to single out individual staff and asking if they have read the news manual or finding out if they have completed a degree or diploma in their respective fields.

    Under Dimara’s leadership, EMTV News has won the award for AVN Outstanding Reporting from the Pacific category for a well-documented series, Last Man Standing, which covered the political life of a founding father of Papua New Guinea, Sir Julius Chan.

    Dimara was planning the coverage of Papua New Guinea’s 2022 National Elections and the news team insist they need her leadership.

    There was no immediate public response from the EMTV management to the news team’s walkout protest last night, nor was there any mention of the absence of the nightly bulletin on the new channel’s website.

    Several media freedom monitoring organisations have made statements with the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemning the “unacceptable political meddling” and calling for immediate reinstatement of Sincha Dimara.

    The Paris-based International Federation of Journalists also condemned Dimara’s suspension and urged the company to immediately reinstate her.  Pacific Media Watch reported on the ongoing intimidation of EMTV editorial staff.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Attacks on Journalists Are Just One Looming Threat to Press Freedom in the US

    Trump weaponized the term “fake news,” but corporate news media has always had deep, structural flaws.

    Every year, Project Censored publishes State of the Free Press, an in-depth look at the year’s best independent journalism, centering voices and topics marginalized by the establishment press. Each volume features the project’s list of the year’s most important but underreported news stories. In addition, the book provides critical analysis of the junk food news served by the establishment media and the prevalence of “news abuse.” It also revisits previous years’ top 25 stories and shares the inspiring examples of media democracy in action. The top 25 list for State of the Free Press 2022 includes topics such as how “climate debtor” nations have colonized the atmosphere, the way Pfizer bullies South American governments over the COVID-19 vaccine and the scant coverage of the historic wave of wildcat strikes for workers’ rights.

    State of the Free Press is edited by Andy Lee Roth and Mickey Huff. Roth is the coordinator of Project Censored’s Campus Affiliates Program, which brings hundreds of professors and students at colleges and universities across the U.S. together in a collective effort to identify each year’s most underreported news stories. Huff is the project’s director and president of the nonprofit Media Freedom Foundation. We asked Roth and Huff to share their thoughts on what important news goes unmentioned and why.

    Peter Handel: How does Project Censored decide on its top 25 most censored stories each year?

    Andy Lee Roth: The aim of the project’s annual top 25 story list is to alert the public to extraordinarily important news stories that have been marginalized, distorted or ignored by the corporate news media, and to celebrate the good work of the independent journalists who have helped inform the public about those stories nonetheless.

    The production of the project’s annual top 25 story list is a year-long process that involves several hundred people and at least five distinct rounds of review and evaluation. Candidate stories are nominated by college students participating in the project’s Campus Affiliates Program and interested community members. Once identified, stories are vetted by those students and their faculty mentors for newsworthiness, credibility, transparency of sourcing and corporate news coverage. If a story fails on any one of these criteria, it is deemed inappropriate and excluded from further consideration.

    Once Project Censored receives the candidate story, we undertake a second round of evaluation, using the same criteria and updating the review to include any subsequent corporate news coverage. Stories that pass this stage of review are posted on the project’s website as Validated Independent News stories (or VINs).

    In spring, we present all eligible VINs in the current annual cycle to the faculty and students at our affiliate campuses and to our panel of expert judges, who vote to winnow the candidate stories down from several hundred to a short list.

    The stories that make the short list are subject to another round of intensive review, and those that pass muster are sent to our panel of judges, who vote to rank them in numerical order. The resulting top 25 story list is featured in Project Censored’s annual book, on our website and by independent news weeklies across the country.

    Give us a few examples of the independent news stories featured on the 2020-2021 story list.

    Andy Lee Roth
    Andy Lee Roth

    Andy Lee Roth: One of this year’s top stories is the historic wave of wildcat strikes: Payday Report, an independent news outlet focused on labor issues, has documented more than 1,750 wildcat strikes since March 2020. Corporate media have by and large failed to “connect the dots” on the scope of these protests. In fact, until October 2021, when the corporate media began to cover “Striketober,” corporate news framed worker protests during the pandemic as sporadic, isolated events. Overall, corporate news media do a poor job of covering labor issues.

    This year’s number two story, “Journalists Investigating Financial Crimes Threatened by Global Elites,” focused on a report by the U.K.-based Foreign Policy Centre about the threats faced by journalists investigating financial misconduct by wealthy individuals and international corporations. Journalists from 41 nations reported being subject to defamation lawsuits, social media smear campaigns, online trolling and even physical violence in the course of investigating stories on financial crimes. Although the Foreign Policy Centre’s report received some attention from corporate news media outside the United States, our research found that, as of July 2021, no major commercial newspaper or broadcast outlet in the United States had so much as mentioned the report. This is especially troubling because threats to journalists undermine freedom of the press and jeopardize the health of democratic societies.

    Still other stories on the list have received limited corporate news coverage, but that coverage is not at all proportional to the significance of the topic. For example, story number 19, about Europe’s hunger for biomass fuel made from American forests, was the subject of one exemplary New York Times article, but no other corporate news outlet so much as ran an op-ed on the issue. The harvesting of timber for biomass fuels has led to toxic air pollution and catastrophic flooding along the southern coast of the United States, including North and South Carolina, southern Georgia, Alabama and northern Florida, but most Americans know nothing about this because the establishment press have failed to cover the issue.

    In State of the Free Press 2022, you talk about disturbing attacks on the media at home and abroad. What were the major challenges to a free press in 2020-2021?

    Mickey Huff
    Mickey Huff

    Mickey Huff: The COVID-19 pandemic is the most obvious threat to journalistic integrity, but not the only one. The pandemic has done severe damage to every sector of American society, and journalism has not been spared. In December 2021, the Poynter Institute reported that more than 100 local news outlets have closed since the beginning of the pandemic — a terrible loss that accelerates the spread of “news deserts,” communities and regions where there is no local news coverage at all. Project Censored has documented how corporate outlets with conservative agendas swoop into these communities to exploit the need for local news.

    But the threats to journalism aren’t limited to the pandemic. The United States is an increasingly dangerous place for journalists, who are subject to assaults, arrests and other threats. The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker described 2021 as “another record year” for press freedom violations in the country, and documented 142 assaults on journalists, 59 arrests or detainments, 23 subpoenas of journalists or news organizations, and 36 instances of journalists having equipment damaged or destroyed. For these and related reasons, the United States ranked just 44th of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders’s 2021 World Press Freedom Index, which identified the “disappearance of local news” and “ongoing and widespread distrust of mainstream media” among the “many chronic, underlying conditions” impacting press freedoms in the United States.

    A third threat to journalistic integrity comes from Big Tech. The impacts of the internet and the increasing influence of social media cannot be overstated. “Google may not be a country, but it is a superpower,” Timothy Garton Ash noted in his book, Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World. The new media giants — including Alphabet (which owns Google and YouTube), Meta (which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp), Twitter, Apple and Microsoft — function as arbiters of public issues and legitimate discourse, despite their leaders’ assertions that they are tech platforms, not publishers or media companies.

    As Andy Lee Roth has written, these tech giants are the new gatekeepers and their proprietary algorithms “determine which news stories circulate widely, raising serious concerns about transparency and accountability in determinations of newsworthiness.” Accountability and transparency are guiding principles for ethical journalism. But news gatekeeping conducted by proprietary algorithms crosses wires with these ethical guidelines, producing grave threats to the integrity of journalism — not to mention the likelihood of a well-informed public.

    Did threats to freedom of the press worsen during the Trump administration, or have they remained basically the same since 1976 when Project Censored began?

    Andy Lee Roth: Trump’s presidency exposed (and exploited) chronic malignancies in American society that predated his rise to power. Trump was extraordinary in his zeal to condemn the press as “the enemy of the people” whenever it reported news that failed to flatter him. He seemed opposed to any form of journalism that involved factual reality, with the exception, perhaps, of “alternative” facts, as endorsed by his counselor Kellyanne Conway. It’s difficult to accept that there is no connection between Trump’s provocative rhetoric and subsequent violence and threats directed at journalists, from Rep. Greg Gianforte’s 2017 assault of a Guardian reporter, to the message “Murder the Media” scratched onto a door to the U.S. Capitol during the failed insurrection on January 6, 2021.

    But it is misleading — and dangerous — to assume that U.S. journalism was free of faults until Donald Trump weaponized the term “fake news” to serve his own interests. That position cedes more influence to Trump than he deserves, while it ignores the importance of deep, structural flaws in corporate news media. As Project Censored’s Steve Macek and I argued in a November 2020 article for Truthout, explanations of news bias that trace it back to “the self-interest and partisan bias of editors and journalists — or even aggregates of those individual interests and biases — fail to explain the political power of news or to identify the foundations on which far more fundamental forms of news slant are built.” To understand the establishment media’s deepest biases requires a structural analysis of journalism, including the economic imperatives, institutional constraints, professional values and social relationships that shape the production of every news story. These are the basic building blocks of the critical media literacy that Project Censored champions.

    A clear-eyed analysis of threats to freedom of the press must look back before Trump’s presidency — not to mention beyond it. The Biden administration does not refer to the press as “enemy of the people,” but it continues in its efforts to extradite Julian Assange. And, although the First Amendment provides protection against “prior restraint” — the effort to prevent publication or publicization of information or ideas — by the government, in November 2021, a New York State court ordered The New York Times not to publish information about the group Project Veritas, a far right group notorious for its production of deceptively edited videos. As the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker noted, this was the first prior restraint for the Times since the Pentagon Papers case of 1971.

    In your book you include a chapter on sensationalized and empty “Junk Food News” that discusses something you call “humilitainment.” What is “Junk Food News,” and how does it distract us from more substantive reporting?

    Mickey Huff: Project Censored began to track Junk Food News after news editors contacted Carl Jensen, the project’s founder, to counter the project’s claim that certain news topics were “censored.” Citing a finite amount of time and space for news reporting, which prevented them from covering every important story, those editors got Jensen wondering: What do they report? The problem, Jensen found, was not necessarily a lack of time and space for substantive news, but the quality of the news selected to fill that limited time and space. Most of it was, in Jensen’s words, “sensationalized, personalized, and homogenized inconsequential trivia,” for which he coined the now-common term “Junk Food News.”

    Today, faculty and students working with Project Censored continue to track Junk Food News. This year’s chapter investigates the social networking service TikTok as a popular purveyor of junk food news. In particular, the analysis focuses on “humilitainment,” a term developed in 2005 by media scholars Brad Waite and Sara Booker to describe entertainment that capitalizes on someone else’s humiliation. TikTok trades in humilitainment, as exemplified by sensational news coverage of Gorilla Glue Girl. The chapter’s authors show how a fascination with humilitainment obscured more substantive reporting on topics including humanitarian crises in Yemen and Ethiopia, the wave of disproportionately female unemployment propelled by COVID-19, and legislation to restrict voting rights.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Media Council condemns EMTV over ‘dangerous’ suspension of news chief

    Pacific Media Watch newsdesk

    The Media Council of PNG has condemned the suspension of the news chief of Papua New Guinea’s major television channel, EMTV, describing the move as a “dangerous precedent … in an election year”.

    The council said the suspension of head of news and current affairs Sincha Dimara for 21 days without pay over coverage by EMTV about the rearrest of Australian hotel manager Jamie Pang last month was an an act of intimidation by the interim CEO and management of Media Niugini Ltd in the face of political influence.

    It amounted to “suppression of a free media in the country”, the council added in its statement today.

    Papua New Guinea faces a general election in June this year.

    As a warning to all media managements in PNG, the council said that a strong news service was only as strong as its head of news, with the support of the company’s management and board.

    “To resort to suspending its head of news for reasons of performing and complying to a ministerial directive based on personal or emotional reactions to social media comments about a story reeks of undue political influence, and sets a dangerous precedent as the country moves into election year,” it said.

    “[This is] a time when strong independent news assessment will be key in news coverage.”

    Reinstate Dimara call by Media Council
    The council called on EMTV’s interim CEO Lesieli Vete and the management to immediately reinstate Dimara as head of news to “protect the interest of the media industry”.

    The suspension had been at the “behest of an executive directive” from the minister responsible for EMTV to “fix the problem”. The minister was not named by the council.

    The Media Council of PNG media statement
    The Media Council of PNG media statement today. Image: APR

    For EMTV’s CEO Vete to “target her head of news in efforts to ‘fix the problem’ clearly shows that Media Niugini Ltd has not learned from its past experiences of sidelining, and even terminating, its heads of news based on political directives“.

    The council’s statement also cited four EMTV reports of the Pang coverage, which it described as well-balanced and presented:

    • Friday, January 28, 2022: “Pang acquitted”, about the legal outcome of the case against the hotelier.
    • Monday, January 31, 2022: “Pang’s staff concerned”, focused on the alleged human rights abuse surrounding the re-arrest of Pang.
    • Tuesday, February 1, 2022: “Boxers concerned for Pang”, focused on the views of boxers involved in community martial arts programmes run by Pang.
    • Wednesday, Febuary 2, 2022: “Mixed martial arts”, focused on the Mixed Martial Arts club with no mention of Pang’s association with it.

    Other PNG news media reported Pang being acquitted and the concerns of his employees over his rearrest.

    ‘Shallow’ reasons for suspension
    The council said it recognised Dimara’s news assessment over the stories and rejected EMTV management’s reasons for suspending her, describing them as “shallow”.

    EMTV’s management claimed staff were neither “restricted nor stopped from reporting unfolding stories on the detained resident”.

    It said a leaked internal memo had been the result of “alleged insubordination by staff towards verbal lawful instructions to drop stories sympathising with Pang”.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Suspension of EMTV’s news chief sparks PNG journo protests

    Pacific Media Watch newsdesk

    Suspension of the news manager of Papua New Guinea’s major television channel, EMTV, has sparked a flurry of protest from senior news personalities and independent who condemn the apparent political pressure on the broadcaster.

    Long standing and experienced news manager Sincha Dimara has reportedly been suspended over news judgement in a move that a former EMTV senior news executive  said “reeks of external influence” on the company’s top management.

    “A CEO is a buffer between staff and any external pressure. You need a heart of steel and buckets of bravery to fend off political pressure,” said independent television journalist and blogger Scott Waide.

    Waide was himself subjected to unfair suspension over airing a controversial story about then Peter O’Neill government’s purchase of luxury Maseratis for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference hosted in Port Moresby in 2018. He was later reinstated after an international outcry.

    The Maserati saga continues to be a controversy in PNG.

    “There is another way to correct coverage that does not ‘fit the aspirations’ of a news organisation — it’s called leadership,” said Waide in response to the Dimara suspension.

    “If the CEO is too timid and cannot protect our Papua New Guinean staff, then please resign and go home! This is not the place for you.”

    In responses shared on social media, former publisher of the PNG Post-Courier and a regional media consultant Bob Howarth, asked: “What does the Media Council have to say about political meddling in PNG’s struggling ‘free press’ …?”

    Another former news executive, Joseph Ealedona, who headed the state broadcaster NBC and was himself involved in controversies, said NBC had built its reputation and integrity for years and “has the people’s protection”.

    “It did happen to me but the people’s protest and insistence and the will of senior statesmen and political leaders to right the wrong saw me return for EMTV,” he said.

    “in my view, it is just someone trying to protect oneself and fearful of losing privileges and has no guts to say no … and listening to just one or two people.

    “I would believe that the PM [James Marape] is not happy with this this, it is at the detriment of the government if allowed to continue, especially when the NGE is around the corner [national general election is in June].

    “The freedom of the media is very important to a free democracy but we in the [media] fraternity must carry [on] with utmost respect and do nothing but expose the truth as a responsible profession.”

    Ealedona said journalists “must continue to fight against and with the might of the pen”.

    He also asked what was the stance of the Suva-based Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) in response.

     

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Kill the Bill and period protests: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

    A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Cambodia to Costa Rica

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Thousands Sign Petition Supporting Assange Release

    Washington, DC – Led by the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC), more than 26 antiwar groups and 2,500 individual peace and justice advocates have cosponsored a statement calling for the immediate release of publisher Julian Assange and commending him for his contributions toward global peace.

    Assange is currently fighting extradition to the United States after the Trump administration indicted him on unprecedented Espionage Act charges. His indictment marked the first time in U.S. history that a journalist has been charged for publishing truthful information. 

    Since being removed from Ecuador’s London embassy after a new Ecuadorian administration bowed to U.S. pressure to withdraw his asylum, Assange has been held for more than 1,000 days in Belmarsh Prison while his extradition case is being heard through UK courts.

    The post Thousands Sign Petition Supporting Assange Release appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Isaac ‘Iron’ Nicholas, the fearless PNG reporter who led from the front

    OBITUARY: By the PNG Post-Courier

    “Iron” we called him. And so he was, our iron man at Papua New Guinea’s Post-Courier in Lawes Road, Port Moresby, to the end.

    Until Wednesday, Isaac Nicholas was the steely fearless reporter who held us up front, and firmly led us from the front page as chief political reporter.

    It is not easy being a political reporter.

    PNG Post-Courier
    PNG POST-COURIER

    Few people survive the beat and the heat.

    Your name is mentioned in the halls of power.

    You are enemy first and friend second.

    Politicians either fear you or hate you.

    Wary of his beat
    Either way, Isaac Nicholas was always wary of his beat. He played the pollies with a calculated intensity like no-one did.

    He was sure fire seeking the truth and quite firm in gaining traction without compromising the essence of fair and unbiased reporting.

    He was a friend to all of them but getting under their skins, irritating them, made the Iron a trademark enemy to none.

    Some of his best friends, like the MP for Goilala [William Samb], criticised him openly when they could about his reporting but at the end of the day, he would stand up in the newsroom and declare, “the member just called me” and that was it!

    This little man from Yangoru, 52, served our newspaper and our country faithfully for the past 15 years, going places where few reporters dare, like the mountains of Goilala and the bush of Telefomin and the crocodile-infested swamps of Kerema.

    You can think of many journos from the Sepik and Isaac Nicholas was among the best.

    He was friendly, good natured and humorous.

    Green iron tins under a mango tree
    At the end of a hard day’s news hunt, our Iron would always retire under his mango tree at East Boroko. How ironic it was that his favourite cooling off was always with green iron tins under a green tree.

    His notebooks were filled with names and stories.

    There’s a box full of them on his table.

    That is his life story.

    Those of us who knew him, walked with him, talked with him, shared a buai [betel nut], shed our tears for the loss of a close friend.

    A protector of junior newshounds, a leader of senior scribes. His leadership and reporting will be missed in Papua New Guinean journalism.

    Life is such that we make friends without knowing when that friendship will pass. PNG woke up on Wednesday to the news that our iron man in news-making had breathed his last.

    From Yangoru to Manugoro, Dagua to Kagua, Vailala to Goilala, Malalaua to Salamaua, Baniara to Honiara, the name Isaac Nicholas was a trusted forte of political drama and conscience leadership.

    Without the generosity of a goodbye, without the curiosity of a farewell, we, his friends at the Post-Courier find it quite hard to fathom losing such a dear brother, news leader and best friend so suddenly.

    We remember the late Isaac and comfort Judy Nicholas and their children in this time of sadness.

    Vale Isaac, you were truly our IRON MAN!

    Tributes flow in for Isaac Nicholas
    Isaac Nicholas, 52, was a giant in the Papua New Guinean media fraternity, known for his ability to get answers from PNG’s political heavyweights on any given day, report colleagues in the PNG media industry.

    Fellow senior journalists, NBC’s Gregory Moses and Sunday Bulletin’s Clifford Faiparik remembered their friend and the light moments they shared while on the beat.

    Moses lamented: “Parliament coverage next week will not be the same.

    “I fought back tears whole day, and sat down and reminiscing all the fun and jokes we shared as colleagues and brothers.”

    Professor David Robie, who was head of the journalism programme at the University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG) in the 1990s, paid tribute to Nicholas as “one of the outstanding journalists in the making of our times on Uni Tavur”, the award-winning student newspaper featured in his 2004 book Mekim Nius.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • PDF: A CPJ special report on President Biden and the press

    cpj_usa_report_2022_web – 1-12Download


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • CPJ’s letter to President Biden

    Biden-report-White-House-letter-FINALDownload


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Biden and the media: CPJ’s press freedom recommendations

    CPJ is concerned that U.S. President Joe Biden has not addressed many of the Obama and Trump-era limitations on press freedom. In ‘Night and Day’, a CPJ special report on the Biden administration’s relationship with the press during its first year in office, former Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr. found that while some progress has been made, key problems outlined in his reports on the previous two administrations remained. These range from freedom of information requests that remain backlogged, stymieing reporters’ ability to cover matters of public interest; limited access to the southern border; and the use of the Espionage Act against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. 

    Based on the report by Downie, who also wrote CPJ reports on The Obama Administration and the Press and The Trump Administration and the Media, CPJ makes the following recommendations to the Biden administration:

    • Embrace good practice and transparency in dealing with the press by speaking to reporters on the record and avoiding overuse of on background briefings and quote approval. Make the president more accessible to reporters.
    • Instruct all government departments to comply with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests in a timely manner without regard to the media organizations or reporters filing those requests. Enforce prompt and less restrictive responses to FOIA requests to facilitate greater transparency. 
    • Implement restrictions that would require the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to obtain warrants before searching electronic devices. Require both agencies to release transparency reports about such searches. 
    • Prohibit DHS and CBP agents from intimidating and singling out journalists for questioning and/ or asking journalists about their work . 
    • Codify the new DOJ policy restricting federal prosecutors’ ability to obtain journalists’ phone and email records in government leak investigations. 
    • Prioritize and support passage of legislation – such as Senator Ron Wyden’s PRESS Act – that would protect journalists’ First Amendment rights against government prosecution for using and receiving confidential and classified information. The legislation should expansively define journalists, and shield reporters’ communication records, ensuring that the government cannot compel journalists to disclose sources or unpublished reporting information. 
    • Stop the misuse of the Espionage Act to hinder press freedom: Drop the espionage charges against Julian Assange and cease efforts to extradite him to the U.S. Put into place legislation that would prevent the use of the Espionage Act as a means to halt news gathering activity. 
    • Ensure that U.S. companies or individuals are not contributing to the secret surveillance of journalists abroad, and that foreign companies face targeted sanctions for enabling authoritarian governments to spy on journalists.   
    • Take action against impunity in the murder of journalists: Impose sanctions on Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman, holding the leader to account for his role in the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.  
    • Process P-2 visa applications for Afghan journalists as rapidly as possible and be communicative about which cases are being processed; allow P-2 processing for individuals who have reached the U.S.; and provide support and protection to journalists still in Afghanistan or who have escaped to third countries.
    • Support the creation of an emergency visa for journalists at-risk around the world (such as in section 6 of the International Press Freedom Act of 2021) to ensure solutions are in place for future crises like the one in Afghanistan. 


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Pacific media dangers: ‘I had death threats and my tyres slashed for my reporting’

    SPECIAL REPORT: By Joyce McClure in Guam

    I spent five years as the lone journalist on the remote Pacific island of Yap. During that time I was harassed, spat at, threatened with assassination and warned that I was being followed.

    The tyres on my car were slashed late one night.

    There was also pressure on the political level. The chiefs of the traditional Council of Pilung (COP) asked the state legislature to throw me out of the country as a “persona non grata” claiming that my journalism “may be disruptive to the state environment and/or to the safety and security of the state”.

    During a public hearing of the Yap state legislature in September 2021, 14 minutes of the 28-minute meeting was spent complaining about an article of mine that reported on the legislature’s initially unsuccessful attempt to impeach the governor.

    One politician then posted about me on his Facebook page, under which a member of the public posted a comment saying I should be assassinated.

    American Bill Jaynes, editor of the Kaselehlie Press in Pohnpei, one of Yap’s sister states in the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), has had his share of death threats over the years, too.

    Several death threats
    “In the 15 or so years I’ve been at this desk I have had several death threats,” he said.

    “Early on in my tenure, some angry individual carved a request for me to perform an act of physical impossibility into the hood of my car which then rusted for posterity. Most of that was during the early days before I came to be trusted to view things from an FSM rather than a foreigner’s point of view and to handle things factually rather than sensationally.”

    Freedom of the press is included in both the FSM and the Yap State Constitution, but as Leilani Reklai, publisher and editor of the Island Times newspaper in Palau and president of the Palau Media Council, says: “Freedom of the press in the constitution is pretty on paper but not always a reality.”

    These incidents are shocking, but sadly are not isolated. Journalists in the Pacific face imprisonment, loss of employment and banishment from their homes.

    “While there might not be assassinations, murders, gagging, torture and ‘disappearances’ of journalists in Pacific island states, threats, censorship and a climate of self-censorship are commonplace,” professor David Robie, founding editor of Pacific Journalism Review, wrote in a 2019 article for The Conversation.

    A Fijian journalist, who asked to remain anonymous, said that after he posed questions to a politician during a public forum, the politician replied that he knew where the reporter lived. The following day, the reporter’s car was broken into.

    Soon after, the reporter was told that if he didn’t stop being critical, he would be kicked out of his job “and can go bag groceries instead” and he was evicted from his housing. The reporter believes all of these incidents stemmed from the questions he asked of the politician.

    “Within one week my life changed completely,” he said. “I do not see a future for me or any other journalist who is curious and questioning to make a career in journalism in Fiji.”

    Fiji ranked 55th in world
    According to the Reporters Without Borders’ 2021 World Press Freedom Index, Fiji is ranked as 55th out of 179.

    The index highlights the “draconian” Media Industry Development Decree, introduced in 2010 and turned into law in 2018. “Those who violate this law’s vaguely-worded provisions face up to two years in prison. The sedition laws, with penalties of up to seven years in prison, are also used to foster a climate of fear and self-censorship,” said Reporters Without Borders.

    In 2018, senior journalist Scott Waide of Papua New Guinea was suspended by EMTV after the airing of his report critical of the government for purchasing 40 luxury Maseratis and three Bentleys to drive attendees during the APEC conference.

    Reinstated after a public and media outcry, Waide stated during an interview on ABC’s Pacific Beat programme: “Increasingly, not just EMTV, but nearly every other media organisation in Papua New Guinea has been interfered with by their boards or with politicians, or various other players in society.

    “They’re doing it with impunity. It’s a trend that’s very dangerous for democracy.”

    Daniel Bastard, Asia-Pacific director of Reporters Without Borders, said the situation is complicated by how small and connected many Pacific nations are.

    “The fact is that political leaders are also economic bosses so there’s a nexus. It’s symptomatic of the small journalistic communities in the Pacific islands that need to deal with the political community to get access to information. They have to be careful when they criticise knowing the government can cut advertising, publicity, etc. There’s still a strong level of intimidation.”

    While there are particular dangers faced by local journalists, foreign reporters living in the Pacific are not safe either.

    Denied renewal of work permit
    Canadian Dan McGarry, former media director of the Vanuatu Daily Post and a resident of the island nation for nearly 20 years, was denied renewal of his work permit in 2019. The reason given was that his job should be held by a local citizen.

    But McGarry said he believed it was politically motivated due to his reporting on “Chinese influence” in the small nation. He was then denied re-entry to Vanuatu after ironically attending a forum on press freedom in Brisbane.

    Regional and international news organisations came to his defence and the court granted McGarry re-entry, but the newspaper’s appeal to have his work permit renewed is ongoing.

    I have written about some sensitive and difficult topics and like to think of myself as pretty fearless. In 2018 I wrote about illegal fishing by Chinese commercial fishing boats around the Outer Island of Fedrai. That coverage resulted in the expulsion of the fishing vessel and significant political consequences.

    I’ve written about issues in the customs and immigration processes in FSM, that were potentially jeopardising tourism to Yap, which is so important to so many people’s livelihoods, and also about a huge and controversial proposed resort that would have seen thousands and thousands of Chinese tourists flown in to that tiny island on charter flights.

    These stories matter and just because some Pacific nations are small and remote does not mean that they do not need or deserve the scrutiny of a free press.

    But eventually, the threats to my safety were too much to handle. I spent too much time looking over my shoulder, living behind locked doors and never going out alone after dark.

    In mid-2021, I moved to Guam for greater peace of mind where I am continuing to write about this largely invisible, but crucial part of the world.

    Joyce McClure is a freelance journalist based in Guam. This article was first published by The Guardian’s Pacific Project and has been republished with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Desmond Tutu’s funeral and Kazakhstan clashes: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

    A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Mexico to Hong Kong

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • ‘The Taliban say they’ll kill me if they find me’: a female reporter still on the run speaks out

    We return to the story of a journalist forced to flee as Afghanistan fell to the Taliban in August. Unable to return home without putting at risk everyone she loves and hounded by threatening calls, she remains in hiding in the country four months on

    I am an Afghan female journalist and I have been on the run for more than four months. I have lived in numerous safe houses and the homes of people who’ve offered me refuge. I am constantly moving to avoid being caught, from province to province, city to city.

    The Taliban insurgents have been threatening to kill me and my colleagues for two years, for our reports exposing their crimes in our province. But when they seized control of our provincial capital, they started to hunt for those who had spoken out against them. I decided to escape, for my own and my family’s safety.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Julian Assange can be extradited to US to face espionage charges, court rules

    WikiLeaks co-founder’s lawyers say they will seek to appeal, as Amnesty International says decision is a ‘travesty of justice’

    Julian Assange can be extradited to the US, according to the high court, as it overturned a judgment earlier this year and sparked condemnation from press freedom advocates.

    The decision deals a major blow to the WikiLeaks co-founder’s efforts to prevent his extradition to the US to face espionage charges, although his lawyers announced they would seek to appeal.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Nobel Peace laureates slam ‘Damocles’ sword’ threat to press freedom

    Pacific Media Watch

    Despite its champions being honoured with a Nobel Peace Prize, press freedom has a “sword of Damocles” hanging over it, warn this year’s two laureates.

    Maria Ressa of the Philippines, co-founder of the news website Rappler, and Dmitry Muratov of Russia, editor of the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, will receive their prize in Oslo on Friday for “their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression”, reports AFP news agency.

    “So far, press freedom is under threat,” Ressa told a press briefing, when asked whether the award had improved the situation in her country, which ranks 138th in the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) press freedom index.

    The 58-year-old journalist mentioned her compatriot and former colleague, Jesus “Jess” Malabanan, a reporter for the Manila Standard Today, who was shot in the head on Wednesday.

    Malabanan, who was also a Reuters correspondent, had worked on the sensitive subject of the “war on drugs” in the Philippines.

    “It’s like having a Damocles sword hang over your head,” Ressa said.

    Toughest stories ‘at own risk’
    “Now in the Philippines, the laws are there but… you tell the toughest stories at your own risk,” she added.

    Ressa, whose website is highly critical of Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, is herself the subject of a total of seven lawsuits in her country.

    Currently on parole pending an appeal after being convicted of defamation last year, she needed to ask four courts for permission to be able to travel and collect her Nobel in person.

    Sitting beside her on Thursday, Muratov, 60, concurred with his fellow recipient’s words.

    “If we’re going to be foreign agents because of the Nobel Peace Prize, we will not get upset, no,” he told reporters when asked of the risk of being labelled as such by the Kremlin.

    “But actually… I don’t think we will get this label. We have some other risks though,” Muratov added.

    ‘Foreign agent’ label
    The “foreign agent” label is meant to apply to people or groups that receive funding from abroad and are involved in any kind of “political activity”.

    “Foreign agent” organisations must disclose sources of funding and label publications with the tag or face fines.

    Novaya Gazeta is a rare independent newspaper in a Russian media landscape that is largely under state control. It is known for its investigations into corruption and human rights abuses in Chechnya.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Whistleblower Craig Murray Speaks Out After Being Imprisoned In Scotland Over Blog Posts

    This article was funded by paid subscribers of The Dissenter, a project of Shadowproof. Become a paid subscriber and help us expand our work.

    Prisoners and prison staff at Her Majesty’s Prison Edinburgh in Scotland, or Saughton Prison, faced a serious outbreak of COVID-19 at a time when inmates were explicitly discouraged from requesting COVID tests, according to diplomat-turned whistleblower Craig Murray.

    “There was a major COVID outbreak in the prison in the last 6 weeks of my incarceration,” Murray recalled. While COVID was present in the prison throughout his stay there, Murray said that between October 20 and November 20, “there were more than 200 positive tests for COVID in the jail.”

    “That’s 200 out of a population of 900,” he added, emphasizing that all of these prisoners would have been symptomatic. (Prisoners who weren’t symptomatic were not tested.)

    While the Scottish government urged the entire population to test themselves with lateral flow tests more than twice a week, whether they had symptoms or not, it was difficult for prisoners to get a test.

    On December 1, one day after his release from prison, Murray spoke in an exclusive interview to The Dissenter. He was the first journalist to be imprisoned for media contempt of court in Scotland in over 70 years, according to his defense team.

    His conviction stemmed from his coverage of the sex assault trial of former Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond. Murray, a longtime supporter of Scottish independence, appears to have fallen foul of a split within the Scottish National Party (SNP) over how strongly the administration of the current First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is pushing for independence.

    As the Omicron variant of the coronavirus spreads through Scotland and the wider United Kingdom, and authorities claim they are taking action to prevent outbreaks, Murray’s account of his time in prison once again focuses attention on a vulnerable prison population often neglected during the pandemic.

    “When people started going down like flies all around me, I applied for a COVID test, which I did orally. I didn’t get a response so I put in the application in writing. Two weeks after that I became unwell and had some symptoms, largely upset stomach symptoms. And at that stage, because I was ill they gave me a COVID test, but in general, prisoners who didn’t have symptoms weren’t tested.”

    Prisoners in the cells on each side of Murray became ill with COVID, though the cells themselves are not “hermetically sealed” and the window, which is separated by bars, cannot open to let in fresh air.

    Murray said staff discouraged prisoners, even the symptomatic ones, from asking to be tested in an environment Murray described as “filthy” with rats scurrying around cells.

    One prisoner Murray spoke to had symptoms, including a cough, tight chest, and difficulty breathing. They asked for a COVID test from a nurse. “The nurse had said to him, are you sure you want a COVID test? Because if you’re positive you’ll be banged up basically in solitary confinement for three weeks. So, are you sure you want one?”

    Murray believes the combination of failing to mass test prisoners whilst also discouraging prisoners from getting tested, meant that authorities were in effect falsifying the COVID-19 figures within Saughton.

    I Thought They Were ‘Attempting To Kill Me’

    The Dissenter interviewed Murray at his office in his family home, which is situated within a quiet suburb of Scotland’s capital, Edinburgh.

    His face was freshly smooth after his wife Nadira took him for a hot Turkish shave only a couple hours earlier, removing a beard which grew considerably during his incarceration.

    “It’s a very unpleasant experience,” Murray stated in a manner that was relaxed but also introspective. “I was confined in a cell, which was 12 feet by 8 feet. I was confined in that for a minimum of 22 hours a day. For much of the period of 23 hours a day, with very little association with other prisoners,” he said.

    He was “surrounded by the noise and antagonisms of a jail, which contains a lot of… percentage of the population who are violent or problematic in other ways. They may be suffering from drug addiction and withdrawal for example, but there’s an awful lot of noise clatter and apparent hostility in the background, sounds you hear as you’re locked in your cell.”

    Murray, who is 62 years old and has heart and lung conditions that make him “highly vulnerable” to COVID-19, found he was surrounded by people catching the virus and falling ill. He considers it quite extraordinary that he was left in such a situation and did not contract the virus.

    “It led me to have seriously paranoid thoughts whether they were attempting to kill me. It really was and is to me incredible that you would leave a highly vulnerable person deliberately exposed to COVID in that way,” Murray shared.

    Campaign organizations and health experts in the U.K. have made repeated calls over the past two years urging that the rights of prisoners be protected during the pandemic; that they have the same healthcare access as the public and measures be taken to avoid prison outbreaks.

    In May 2020, the heads of multiple United Nations organizations, as well as the head of the World Health Organization, signed a statement urging political leaders to “consider limiting the deprivation of liberty” to a measure of “last resort, particularly in the case of overcrowding, and to enhance efforts to resort to non-custodial measures,” including release mechanisms for those “at particular risk of COVID-19, such as older people and people with pre-existing health conditions, as well as other people who could be released without compromising public safety.”

    The Scottish government released nonviolent prisoners early in order to reduce the risk of COVID outbreaks but ended that policy shortly before Murray would have benefited from it. It is unclear as to why the policy was terminated.

    As Murray recounted, the majority of prison staff in his wing caught COVID and took time off work sick. Some of them were “quite seriously” ill.

    “One of them was off for approximately six weeks, and when he came back he had lost a huge amount of weight, and he had trouble speaking. His voice was just totally different. He plainly had been very ill indeed.”

    “Prison staff did their very best in very difficult circumstances”, Murray contended, “displaying extraordinary courage” as they took meals into each cell and dirty dishes out every day with only very rudimentary personal protective equipment (PPE).

    But staff were “spreaders of the illness as they went around from cell-to-cell administering to the prisoners who were locked in.”

    *Read the rest of this report at The Dissenter.


    The post Whistleblower Craig Murray Speaks Out After Being Imprisoned In Scotland Over Blog Posts appeared first on Shadowproof.

    This post was originally published on Shadowproof.

  • Nobel laureate Ressa: How the information ecosystem has been poisoned

    By Bea Cupin in Manila

    Journalist and publisher Maria Ressa has called on tech and social media giants to practise “enlightened self-interest” amid a global call for platforms to step up in the fight against disinformation.

    “The world that you’ve created has already shown that we must change it. I continue to appeal for enlightened self-interest,” said Ressa, chief executive and founder of Rappler, in an online lecture for the Facebook and the Big Lie series.

    Ressa, a veteran journalist and Nobel Peace laureate who will be receiving the award this Friday, has been studying, reporting on, and sounding the alarm against the use of social media platforms as a means to spread lies and hate.

    The Rappler boss herself has been the subject of harassment online and of legal cases against her in the Philippines.

    Platforms like Facebook, said Ressa, give the same weight on posts, whether it is a lie or a fact, in a bid to increase user engagement.

    While it has meant more revenue for the platforms, it also means that posts that spark emotion — whether or not they are based on fact — gain the most traction online.

    Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen had earlier revealed that the algorithm for instances, puts weight on “angry” reactions more than regular likes.

    ‘Moderate the greed’
    “In the Philippines, we say ‘moderate the greed.’ [These platforms] are part of our future, that’s why we’re partners,” she explained.

    The stakes are even higher in countries like the Philippines, which will be electing a new president in May 2022.

    “Why we must fight disinformation. It weakens, and ultimately subverts, democracy, by undermining the factual basis of reality, by denying the standards of truth.”

    — #FightDisinfo

    “We cannot not do anything because we in the Philippines have elections on May 9. If we do not have integrity of facts, we won’t have integrity of elections,” warned Ressa.

    Platforms, after all, are anything but clueless and helpless.

    Facebook, for instance, put more weight on “news ecosystem quality” or NEQ after employees found that election-related information were spreading on the platform in the days following the US elections in 2021.

    The NEQ, according to The New York Times, is a “secret internal ranking it assigns to news publishers based on signals about the quality of their journalism.”

    The lies asserted that the elections were rigged and that Donald Trump, then US president, was the true winner.

    The ‘big lie’ persists
    he “big lie,” as it has since been called, persists to this day.

    Ressa said she woud be asking Facebook “behind the scenes and in front,” via Rappler’s partnerships, to turn up the NEQ locally.

    Increasing the weight of the NEQ, at least in the US, meant that for a while, mainstream media accounts — The New York Times, CNN, and NPR — were more prominent on the Facebook feed than hyperpartisan pages.

    “The foundational problem is that facts and lies are treated equally, which is what has poisoned the information ecosystem,” added Ressa.

    Duterte, who won the 2016 elections by a wide margin in a plurality, is among the first national candidates to effectively use social media in a Philippine election.

    Social media hasn’t just changed how regular citizens act and candidates campaign, it has also changed sitting leaders’ tactics.

    “Leaders in the past that would take over, their first challenge is always how to unite people. Now, with social media because of the incentive schemes, we’re seeing leaders awarded if they divide,” said Ressa.

    More manipulation tools
    “Illiberal governments have gotten more tools to manipulate people,” she added. Rappler investigations later found that pro-Duterte networks used fake accounts to spread lies and disinformation well into his term as president.

    Rappler started out as a Facebook page in mid-2011 and has since grown to be among the leading news sites in the Philippines. The news organisation faces at least seven active pending cases before different courts in the Philippines.

    These are on top of online attacks over its reporting on the Duterte administration, including its bloody “war on drugs” and allegations of corruption among the President’s allies.

    Ressa and a former researcher were convicted in June 2020 for a cyber libel law that hadn’t even been legislated when the article first came out.

    Ressa is the first Filipino individual awardee of the Nobel Peace Prize and is the only woman in this year’s roster of laureates.

    Ressa won the Peace Prize alongside Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov.

    They won the prize “for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.”

    Republished from Rappler with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • I feel despair at Sudan’s coup. But my children’s mini protest gives me hope | Khalid Albaih

    After 30 years in exile, it’s easy to doubt that it will ever be safe to live and work in Sudan. But the action being taken by young people shows democracy will rise again

    “All the goodness and the heroisms will rise up again, then be cut down again and rise up,” John Steinbeck wrote to a friend in 1941, just before the US entered the second world war. “It isn’t that the evil thing wins – it never will – but that it doesn’t die.”

    Growing up, I was always interested in politics, politics was the reason I had to leave Sudan at the age of 11. At school, we weren’t allowed to study or discuss it, and it was the same at home.For years, I lay in bed and listened to my father and his friends as they argued about politics and sang traditional songs during their weekend whisky rituals. They watched a new Arabic news channel, Al Jazeera, which aired from Qatar. All the journalism my father consumed about Sudan was from the London-based weekly opposition newspaper, Al Khartoum. The only time he turned on our dial-up internet was to visit Sudanese Online.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • #HoldTheLine coalition demands charges against Maria Ressa be dropped before Nobel awards

    Reporters Without Borders

    One week ahead of the Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony, the #HoldtheLine Coalition has called on the government of the Philippines to drop all pending cases and charges against veteran journalist and Nobel laureate Maria Ressa and grant her unrestricted permission to travel to Oslo to accept this international award.

    The government of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has strongly opposed Maria Ressa’s application to travel to Oslo for the Nobel ceremony but three out of four courts have now granted her permission to fly out for the December 10 award ceremony.

    While Ressa’s legal team is almost certain that the remaining court will permit her to travel this week, the #HoldtheLine Coalition is concerned that the Philippine authorities may yet attempt to undermine Ressa’s free expression and restrict her movement.

    “The government’s relentless and retaliatory campaign against Ressa serves a sole purpose: to silence independent journalism and curtail the free flow of information in the country,” said the HTL steering committee.

    “In keeping with its public claims of support for free expression, the Philippines should overturn its opposition to Maria Ressa’s application to travel to Oslo, and drop all remaining charges against her immediately.”

    In its announcement of the prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said it was honouring Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov for their efforts to safeguard press freedom.

    The Philippines is ranked 138th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2021 World Press Freedom Index.

    Contact #HTL Steering Committee: Gypsy Guillén Kaiser (press@cpj.org); Julie Posetti (jposetti@icfj.org); and Rebecca Vincent (rvincent@rsf.org)

    The #HTL Coalition comprises more than 80 organisations around the world. This statement is issued by the #HoldTheLine Steering Committee, but it does not necessarily reflect the position of all or any individual coalition members or organisations.

    Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Nobel winner: ‘We journalists are the defence line between dictatorship and war’

    Next week, Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov receive their Nobel peace prizes. In a rare interview, Muratov says he fears the world is sliding towards fascism

    The last time a journalist won a Nobel prize was 1935. The journalist who won it – Carl von Ossietzky – had revealed how Hitler was secretly rearming Germany. “And he couldn’t pick it up because he was languishing in a Nazi concentration camp,” says Maria Ressa over a video call from Manila.

    Nearly a century on, Ressa is one of two journalists who will step onto the Nobel stage in Oslo next Friday. She is currently facing jail for “cyberlibel” in the Philippines while the other recipient Dmitry Muratov, the editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, is standing guard over one of the last independent newspapers in an increasingly dictatorial Russia.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Solomon Islands riots: ‘We’ll shoot you with stones’ abuse for journalists

    By Mike Tua in Honiara

    Facing angry rioters threatening them with physical attacks, Solomon Islands mainstream and freelance journalists and photographers were confronted with an unsettling reality during last week’s three days of rioting in Honiara.

    Local journalists in the country equipped with their cameras and limited protection were working solo on assignments for their newsrooms when the riots happened.

    A freelance and multimedia woman journalist, Georgina Kekea tells of the threats to attack her and her news crew by the crowd as they marched down to Vavaya Ridge road, next to City Motel in Central Honiara.

    “They threatened to shoot us with stones and swore obscenities at us. They shouted, ‘Go away with your cameras!’

    “Those that knew me personally didn’t say anything. Those that did, I assume they knew of me but do not know me personally; some might not know me at all,” says Kekea, who is president of the Media Association of Solomon Islands (MASI).

    “I don’t think any call for respect for journalists at this point would make a difference,” she told Sunday Isles.

    “Except that I am surprised that people who spoke highly of culture do not have any respect at all for culture.

    ‘Women doing our job’
    “We are women doing our job just like any other, and if that’s the way Solomon Islands men treat women in general, I am sorry for our country.

    “We are lost. Nothing will and can change unless we the people change ourselves. We will not make a difference.”

    Kekea pleads for people to simply allow the media to do their job.

    Freelance journalist Gina Kekea
    Freelance journalist Gina Kekea doing a “piece to camera” during the aftermath of the riots in Chinatown. Image: Lisa Osifelo/Freelance/SundayIsles

    “MASI condemned the recent riots that happened and called on the authorities too to respect the work of the media,” she said.

    In a media statement from the Pacific Freedom Forum (PFF), chair Bernadette Carreon also urged the authorities to protect local journalists who are delivering crucial news to the public about the protests:

    “The media should be allowed to do their job unharmed.

    “PFF is urging authorities and protesters to respect the media who are working to inform the public about the unfortunate events taking place in the city.

    “Journalists on location were attacked with tear gas, rubber bullets, and stones while protestors advanced towards the Solomon Islands Parliament house.

    “While we understand this was done to disperse protesters, said journalists were merely in the line of fire due to the nature of their job as frontliners.

    “The assault on members of the media is an assault on democracy.”

    Freelance journalist Georgina Kekea
    Freelance journalist Georgina Kekea and her freelance news crew cameraman … threatened by rioters while covering the mayhem in Honiara. Image: Lisa Osifelo/Freelance/Sunday Isles

    Rioters smashed reporter’s phone
    Sunday Isles     online newspaper multimedia journalist Alex Dadamu also faced harassment and his phone was smashed by rioters while covering the insurrection in and around the Mokolo Building near the Mataniko Bridge, Chinatown.

    “I would say they used many hurtful abusive words towards me in the Malaita language and were too aggressive,” he says.

    “I was standing in front of Mokolo Building near the Mataniko Bridge taking pictures secretly because the crowd does not want anyone to take pictures and videos. They announced it in the first place before and during the march down to Chinatown.

    “At one point, I took a picture and then put my phone back in my pocket. Unfortunately, a member of the crowd saw me take the picture.

    “He approached me aggressively, threatening to hit me. By that time, more members of the crowd were starting to join that guy to threaten me for taking the pictures.

    “They demanded that I hand over the phone to them. I humbly said, ‘sorry,’ and handed over the phone because already my life was in danger of them beating me up.

    “I feared for my safety and I humbly handed over the phone from my pocket and they smashed in on the tarseal road.

    “There goes my phone,” says Dadamu.

    He says he and a colleague journalist from Sunday Isles (environment reporter John Houanihau) who were covering the unrest on November 24 were also affected by the tear gas targeted at the rioters.

    Many lessons learned
    When asked if he was wearing press credentials (identification card) issued by Sunday Isles, he says: “I showed them my Sunday Isles media ID card which identified me as a politics and development reporter.”

    Dadamu says he learned many lessons from the incident and hopes this will make a difference in the future.

    “Lesson learned and I don’t blame them. It is our job as reporters to assess the situation and take note of the dangers which might happen,” he says.

    “Additionally, more awareness needs to be than so that people may know and understand more about the role of media in a situation such as these.”

    In another related incident, a woman journalist from Island Sun newspaper, Mavis Nishimura Podokolo, says that when covering the scene at the Town Ground area, west of Honiara, demonstrators verbally harassed and chased her, forcing her to get out of the area.

    Mavis appealed to the public to respect the work of local media practitioners and journalists in the country — especially in times of crisis.

    “The role of journalists is to inform the public and during the ongoing crisis or riot it is pivotal,” she says.

    “The work of the journalist is very important in a democracy.”

    Mike Tua is a journalist at Sunday Isles. Republished with permission.

    SIBC radio and television journalist Simon Tavake
    SIBC radio and television journalist Simon Tavake patrolling the streets in the aftermath of the rioting in the Honiara’s Chinatown. Image: Simon Tavake/SIBC/SundayIsles

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Media advocates tell of struggle for ‘survival and truth’ at Asia-Pacific forum

    Pacific Media Watch newsdesk

    Journalists and journalism are waging a global struggle for survival and for “truth” against fake news and alternative facts, say two Asia-Pacific media commentators.

    “Without journalists who will tell it like it is no matter the consequences, the future will continue to be one of alternate facts and manipulated opinions,” Rappler executive editor Glenda Gloria told about 135 media scholars, journalists and researchers at the opening of the Asian Congress for Media and Communication (ACMC) in Auckland today.

    “As we’ve experienced at Rappler, the battle to save journalism cannot be fought by journalists alone, and cannot be fought from our laptops alone. The battle for truth is a battle we must share — and fight — with other groups and citizens.

    “Each time our freedoms are threatened, we should have no qualms engaging other democracy frontliners and participating in collective efforts to resist authoritarianism.”

    However, she told the virtual conference hosted at Auckland University of Technology (AUT) she believed that journalists had the motivation and enough understanding now to “stop the tide of disinformation” that fuelled the spread of authoritarianism.

    “In this environment, make no doubt: Journalism is activism,” added the award-winning investigative journalist and author who heads the digital website that has repeatedly angered Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte with its exposés.

    Another keynote speaker, Dr David Robie, founding director of the Pacific Media Centre and retired professor of Pacific journalism at AUT, condemned a “surge of global information pollution”.

    Disinformation damaging democracy
    He outlined how disinformation was damaging democracy and encouraging authoritarianism across the Pacific, singling out Fiji and Papua New Guinea for particular criticism.

    Dr Robie cited how authorities in PNG had been forced to abandon mobile health clinics and teams of health workers carrying out covid-19 vaccination and awareness programmes because of the increasingly risky attacks against them.

    Professor Felix Tan
    Professor Felix Tan … a welcome from AUT’s Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies. Image: AUT

    He said much of the content used by anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists which framed the covid-19 response as a fight between the individual and the allegedly “treacherous” state had been repackaged from US and Australia vested interests.

    Dr Robie said universities could do far more in the fight against disinformation and praised initiatives such as the RMIT fact-checking collaboration with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), The Conversation news and academia project, The Juncture journalism school website, and the new Monash University backed 360info wire news service.

    “The challenge confronting many communication programmes and journalism schools located in universities or tertiary institutions is what to do about authoritarianism, how to tackle the strain of an ever-changing health and science agenda, the deluge of disinformation and the more rapid than predicted escalation of climate catastrophe,” he said.

    “One of the answers is greater specialisation and advanced programmes rather than just relying on generalist strategies and expecting graduates to fit neatly into already configured newsroom boxes.

    “The more that universities can do to equip graduates with advanced problem-solving skills, the more adept they will be at developing advanced ways of reporting on the pandemic – and other likely pandemics of the future – contesting the merchants of disinformation and reporting on the climate crisis.”

    Dr Robie, who was awarded the 2015 AMIC Asian Communications prize, pioneered several student journalist projects in the region such as intensive coverage of the 2000 Fiji coup and the 2011 Pacific Islands Forum, and more recently the 2016-2018 Bearing Witness and 2020 Climate and Covid project in partnership with Internews.

    Journalism Nobel Peace Prize
    Glenda Gloria said her entire editorial team had been delighted when their chief executive Maria Ressa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize – along with Russian editor Dmitry Muratov. Ressa was the first Filipino Nobel laureate and “some of us started calling our office the Nobel newsroom”.

    “This immense pride that we feel isn’t just because Maria is our CEO, it is that the prize went to two journalists who have faced the toughest challenges imposed by authoritarian states,” Gloria said.

    “More than that, the Nobel prize puts a global spotlight on the extraordinary dangers that we journalists face today.

    “To many of us in the Global South, journalism has always been considered a dangerous profession long before media watchdogs started ranking countries around the world according to the freedoms enjoyed by their press.

    “And yet, despite all that we have seen and experienced, it’s no exaggeration to say that this is the most challenging period for journalism.

    “At stake today is our very existence, our relevance, and our ability to speak truth to power.”

    The conference was opened following a traditional mihi by AUT’s acting dean of the Faculty of Design and Communication Technologies, Professor Felix Tan, and ACMC president Professor Azman Azwan Azamati of Malaysia.

    Master of ceremonies duties are being shared by AUT’s Khairiah A. Rahman, the chief conference organiser, and Dino Cantal of Trinity University of Asia.

    More than 40 media and communication research papers are being presented over three days with the conference ending on Saturday afternoon.

    ACMC conference
    Some of the 135 participants at the opening day of the Asian Congress for Media and Communication (ACMC) conference in Auckland today. Image: AUT

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • CPJ demands Facebook restore ‘censored’ press freedom awards video

    The Committee to Protect Journalists press freedom 2021 video removed by Facebook, but still available on YouTube and Twitter. Video: CPJ (Hongkong crackdown at 32m:05s)

    Pacific Media Watch newsdesk

    The Committee to Protect Journalists has called on Facebook to restore a video honouring the winners of the International Press Freedom Awards (IPFA) at CPJ’s annual awards ceremony held on November 18 and streamed on social media during the event.

    Less than an hour after the stream ended, Facebook notified CPJ that the video had been withheld worldwide because of a “copyright match” to a 13-second clip owned by i-Cable News, a Hong Kong-based Cantonese-language cable news channel, reports CPJ.

    CPJ emailed i-Cable Communications Limited on November 24 requesting details but received no immediate reply.

    The clip, featuring Jimmy Lai taking a bite from an apple, was taken from an advertisement for the now-shuttered Apple Daily dating from the 1990s when he founded the newspaper.

    Currently imprisoned by Chinese authorities, Lai has become a powerful symbol of press freedom as the Chinese Communist Party seeks to gain control over Hong Kong’s media and was honoured during CPJ’s award ceremony for his work.

    It is not clear if Facebook applied the action automatically, or whether i-Cable News complained in an attempt to suppress the video.

    The news group, i-Cable, signed an agreement in 2018 with China Mobile Limited, a state-owned telecommunication company, allowing China Mobile to use its content for the next 20 years.

    “It is beyond ironic that a platform which trumpets its commitment to freedom of speech should block a video celebrating journalists who risk their lives and liberty defending it,” CPJ deputy executive director Robert Mahoney said.

    “Facebook must restore the video immediately and provide a clear and timely explanation of why it was censored in the first place.”

    A lawyer at Donaldson and Callif, which vetted the IPFA video for Culture House, the production house that cut the video, told CPJ in an email that the firm was of the opinion that the clip of Lai “constitutes a fair use as used in this IPFA video”.

    The full awards video — and its comments, views and share — remains unavailable to Facebook users worldwide. The IPFA video is still available on YouTube and Twitter.

    CPJ contacted Facebook on November 19 and again on November 22 outlining CPJ’s concerns about the video’s removal but has yet to receive an explanation for the action by the company.

    CPJ has documented examples of US copyright laws being used to censor journalism globally.

    The press freedom organisation has held IPFA award ceremonies since 1991 as a way to honour at-risk journalists around the globe and highlight erosions of press freedom.

    Republished from Committee to Protect Journalists.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.