Category Archives: Media

New York Times strike: From reporters to rabble-rousers

Workers at the “newspaper of record” stopped working to demand better pay and labor rights—but only for a day. What would happen if they actually flexed their power.

Strike activity in the United States appears to have reached an all-time high as the unionized staff of the New York Times recently joined the ranks of iconic brands like Starbucks and Amazon in agitating for their rights. More than 1,100 staffers, represented by the NewsGuild of New York, staged a one-day walkout on December 8, saying their hand was forced “due to the company’s failure to bargain in good faith, reach a fair contract agreement with the workers, and meet their demands.” It was the first time in 40 years that the paper boasting of publishing “All the News That’s Fit to Print” experienced such a labor action. Continue reading

Hunting the Twitter Files: Legacy media censor details about censorship

Over two years after Big Tech Big-Tech made the historic decision to limit access to the New York Post’s story about President Joe Biden’s son Hunter, users are getting a glimpse into how Twitter came to that decision. However, delusional legacy and social media outlets are doing everything they can to misrepresent and bury the consequential details of the process. Continue reading

Journalism defenders press for passage of ‘game-changing’ PRESS Act

"The PRESS Act is the most important free press legislation in modern times because it would finally stop the government from spying on journalists and threatening them with arrest for doing their jobs," explained one advocate.

Free press advocates this week urged people to contact Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s office and ask the New York Democrat to pass legislation protecting journalists from government abuses during the closing days of the current Congress. Continue reading

Censorship by proxy: How big tech and billionaires dodge First Amendment laws and engage in censorship on the platforms where most of us get our news

Adapted from Project Censored’s “State of the Free Press 2023”

Despite the promise of boundless access to information, Silicon Valley mirrors legacy media in its consolidated ownership and privileging of elite narratives. This new class of billionaire oligarchs owns or controls the most popular media platforms, including the companies often referred to as the FAANGs—Facebook (Meta), Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google (Alphabet). Their CEOs are routinely lionized in popular culture and the press as intrepid entrepreneurs, inventors of today’s must-have tools for work and play, and stewards of the public square. They include, but are not limited to Bill Gates (Microsoft, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation), Mark Zuckerberg (Meta, Facebook, Instagram), and Jeff Bezos (Amazon, the Washington Post)—all of whom are deeply involved and invested in computer software, social media platforms, and the worldwide web itself (e.g., Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube). Continue reading

The Guardian could help Assange by retracting all the lies it published about him

The Guardian has joined The New York Times, Le Monde, Der Spiegel and El País in signing a letter from the five papers which collaborated with WikiLeaks twelve years ago in the publication of the Chelsea Manning leaks to call for the Biden administration to drop all charges against Julian Assange. This sudden jolt of mainstream support comes as news breaks that Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been personally pushing the US government to bring the Assange case to a close. Continue reading

Because ‘publishing is not a crime,’ major newspapers push US to drop Assange charges

"This indictment sets a dangerous precedent, and threatens to undermine America's First Amendment and the freedom of the press," The Guardian, The New York Times, and other media outlets warned.

The five major media outlets that collaborated with WikiLeaks in 2010 to publish explosive stories based on confidential diplomatic cables from the U.S. State Department sent a letter Monday calling on the Biden administration to drop all charges against Julian Assange, who has been languishing in a high-security London prison for more than three years in connection with his publication of classified documents. Continue reading

Symbolic but significant: why the decision to investigate Abu Akleh’s murder is unprecedented

The recent decision by the United States Department of Justice to open an investigation into the killing, last May, of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh is not a game-changer, but important and worthy of reflection, nonetheless. Continue reading

What if journalism disappeared?

By examining how journalism is missing from many Americans’ lives, we can identify false paths and promising routes to its reinvention.

In 1995, early in the development of the global internet, sociologist Michael Schudson imagined how people might process information if journalism were to suddenly disappear. An expert on the history of US news media, Schudson speculated that peoples’ need to identify the day’s most important and relevant news from the continuous torrent of available information would eventually lead to the reinvention of journalism. Continue reading

Media relies on Republican propaganda tools when predicting GOP victory

While no one has a crystal ball that can tell for sure what will happen in the elections next week, one thing is certain. There will not be the Republican, or “red,” wave that both the GOP and huge sections of the media are hyping. Continue reading

The depravity of hedge fund ‘journalism’

Who slimmed down your local paper, diluted it with filler, and then doubled the price? Profiteers who don’t care about the news.

Throughout the country, newspaper subscribers are asking questions like: Hey, who took my Saturday paper? What happened to those political cartoons and columns that I liked? Why does it take two days to get election results and sports scores? How did my local paper get filled with filler? Continue reading

My newspaper died

More than half of all daily papers in America are in the grip of just 10 syndicates, most of which don’t care about journalism.

My newspaper died. Continue reading

The collapse of local newspapers helps hacks spread lies

“Critical race theory” panic owes its rise to thousands of fake websites filling the gaps left by real, independent newspapers.

One noisy piece of the GOP’s culture war bunkum is Critical Race Theory, or CRT — a previously little-known field of academic study examining racism’s central role in shaping our society. Continue reading

Silencing the lambs: how propaganda works

In the 1970s, I met one of Hitler’s leading propagandists, Leni Riefenstahl, whose epic films glorified the Nazis. We happened to be staying at the same lodge in Kenya, where she was on a photography assignment, having escaped the fate of other friends of the Führer. Continue reading

Deliberate misrepresentation: Western media bias makes Israeli war on Palestinians possible

While US and western mainstream and corporate media remain biased in favor of Israel, they often behave as if they are a third, neutral party. This is simply not the case. Continue reading

Corporate media has failed to report accurately on the threats to women’s reproductive rights

The establishment press ignored stories about the right's racist assault on reproductive health for years

In the weeks since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the corporate media has been saturated with analyses and reports about the implications of the ruling for women’s lives and health. Legal observers have weighed in on the conservative majority’s reasoning in the case. The impact of the ruling on the 2022 midterm elections has been discussed endlessly. The state-by-state battles over legislation and state-level constitutional amendments banning abortion have been covered exhaustively, as have efforts by women’s rights groups and medical providers to ensure that women get the reproductive health services they need. Continue reading

The Alex Jones playbook

Jones and legacy news media hate each other, but they often use the same playbook

In August 2022, a Texas jury ruled that internet personality Alex Jones pay $49 million for defaming the parents of the victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary school massacre. Starting a decade earlier, Jones had claimed that the shooting was a hoax. He argued that crisis actors played the victims and the children never existed. The decision was met with relief from the loved ones of the victims and ideological opponents of Jones. Continue reading

The deadly business of reporting truth

Two grim anniversaries demonstrate how journalists around the world increasingly face violence, but leaders—including President Biden—have been slow to act

Violence is the most basic and blunt form of press censorship. To kill or imprison a journalist is to silence the public’s source of news. To date, 33 journalists around the world have been killed this year and another 494 are currently imprisoned, according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF). Put another way, thus far in 2022, on average, once per week somewhere in the world a journalist is killed for reporting the news. Continue reading

News outlets, press freedom groups to DOJ: don’t let GOP states criminalize abortion coverage

"We ask that you publicly reiterate the press freedoms granted under the First Amendment, and remind states that they cannot infringe on those rights when news outlets write about abortion."

More than two dozen newsrooms and press freedom groups sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland on Tuesday, calling on the Justice Department to prevent journalists and their employers from being prosecuted for simply writing about abortion. Continue reading

Journalists hijacking planes for performing bears

Recent revelations that MI5 outlet Bellingcat was involved in a Keystone Cops plot to hijack Russian planes should give their primary targets pause for thought regarding MI5’s Ukrainian machinations. Although fighter pilots have defected from other theaters in the past, this twist in a hoary old Hollywood plot is important because given that the players, clowns like Zelensky and Bellingcat, are so innately stupid, we must examine why MI5 employs such cretins. Continue reading

Elite lapdogs always welcome in the corporate media

Chris Cuomo’s return is a reminder that corporate media personalities are not accountable to the public, they are accountable to the elites they serve

The return of Chris Cuomo to television is the latest reminder that there is little accountability to speak of in corporate news media. Chris was ousted at CNN in late 2021 amidst an ethics investigation that claimed he utilized his position at the cable news juggernaut to consult his brother, then governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo. At the time, the governor was facing a series of sexual misconduct allegations. Chris was using his professional connections to identify what reporters knew about the allegations, and then using that information to consult Andrew on how to respond, all while hosting Andrew on his daily CNN program. In July 2022, Cuomo returned to television to promote his podcast The Chris Cuomo Project. Cuomo appeared on Dan Abrams show on NewsNation (where Cuomo recently secured a position and I have served as an expert guest) and Real Time with Bill Maher. Continue reading

New media are as intertwined with imperial power as old media

Alan MacLeod has a new article out with Mintpress News showing how most of the supposedly independent “fact-checking” organizations which Facebook has partnered with to police the information people are allowed to see on the platform about the war in Ukraine are, in fact, funded by the United States government. Continue reading

To the New York Times—“We thought we knew ye”

In 1980 we produced a report titled How to Appraise and Improve Your Daily Newspaper: A Manual for Readers, authored by David Bollier, one of our precocious interns, who had just graduated from Amherst and went on to become an expert on the Commons (See, bollier.org). I thought about this past initiative to empower readers/consumers while contemplating what is happening in recent months to the print edition of the New York Times. Continue reading

Glen Ford’s irreplaceable journalism

I was very proud to write the preface to Glen Ford's book, The Black Agenda, which published posthumously by OR Books. I endeavored to explain why Glen was truly irreplaceable.

In the best sense of the word a journalist is someone who brings to the public sphere accurate, well sourced information, and rigorous analysis. Those individuals speak for the marginalized, who can’t speak for themselves, and they expose the privileged, who are always given opportunities for expression. They point out the faults of those deemed too authoritative to be questioned. If an outlet claims to write all the news that is fit to print or declares that democracy dies in darkness, their work should be given more scrutiny than credibility. The journalist should be truly independent and skeptical of official narratives. Glen Ford was such a person. His decades of work provide a blueprint for anyone who wants that word to have real meaning and integrity. Continue reading

The Assange case still matters—a lot

Let's not be naïve about the symbolic importance of the US putting Assange on trial. It would be an alibi for cracking down on journalism for every repressive, authoritarian government in the world.

The announcement by UK Home Secretary, Priti Patel, that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange would be extradited to the US to face espionage charges may be news that many consider to be of lesser importance. We are, after all, in the midst of both a war inside of European borders and an economic crisis. The seemingly endless Assange saga has been going on for 12 years, and there is undoubtedly fatigue on the part of news consumers who have lost interest in the story. Continue reading

Let’s not obsess over Julian Assange’s job title, but consider what is the real story about his extradition

Assange will battle on now with an appeal against the UK decision to extradite him to the U.S. It’s time now for his own team to play the same dirty game which they have fallen victim to and forget about the foibles of journalists and the media

Is Julian Assange a journalist or a publisher? It’s a divisive question which usually draws the wrath of an entire legion of on-line haters, mainly in Australia, who assume the author is attacking the founder of WikiLeaks and so rationale is lost to nationalistic vitriol and score settling. The so-called supporters usually fail to see how if that energy was put into campaigning rather than just letting off steam on Twitter against total strangers, then Assange might have a chance of attaining something akin to justice. Continue reading

Free Assange? Yes, but that’s not nearly enough.

On June 17, UK Home Secretary Priti Patel approved the extradition of Julian Assange to the United States to face 18 criminal charges: One count of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, and 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act of 1917. If convicted on all charges, Assange faces up to 175 years in prison. Continue reading

‘Sad day for Western democracy’: Chomsky, Ellsberg, others denounce Assange extradition

"The U.K.'s decision to extradite Julian Assange to the nation that plotted to assassinate him—the nation that wants to imprison him for 175 years for publishing truthful information in the public interest—is an abomination."

As supporters of Julian Assange held a news conference Friday at the United Kingdom’s consulate in New York to demand freedom for the jailed WikiLeaks founder, a trio of leading leftist figures decried the British government’s approval of the ailing Australian’s extradition to the United States. Continue reading

RIP two veteran DC journalists

It’s ironic that on the 50th anniversary of the break-in of the Watergate that two journalists who were involved in covering the incident and the subsequent scandal that drove Richard Nixon from the White House have passed on. Continue reading

‘A chilling message to journalists the world over’: UK approves Assange extradition to US

Julian Assange's wife, Stella, slammed the U.K. government for moving to send the WikiLeaks publisher "to the country that plotted his assassination."

The U.K. government on Friday formally approved the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States to face espionage charges, a decision that human rights groups condemned as a dire threat to journalism worldwide. Continue reading

We’re getting used to fake news. And we’re getting tired of the Ukraine War. Here’s why you should be worried

Journalists and congressmen these days seem to be uniformly unable to probe and scrutinize egregious amounts of cash and military hardware being apparently sent to Ukraine. One reason could be that it is not being sent there in the first place.

The ghost of Kiev pilot is dead, Putin is dead, Ukrainian soldiers were slaughtered on Snake Island and 300 Ukrainians perished in the Mariupol theatre attack. Which of these four news stories coming from western media is true? In fact, they are all entirely false but have been put out as entirely Bonafede news stories and not even corrected when the evidence is overwhelmingly to the contrary. Continue reading

Journalism is an endangered species

Journalism’s best days are long gone. And, unless NATO’s journalists have a collective Damascene moment, they too will deservedly go the way of the dodo. Continue reading

Assange now hostage to ‘triumph of evil’ decision to send him to a U.S. jail but politics can still save him

The argument that Assange operated as a journalist and exercised his right to freedom of speech, has very little gravitas with the western mindset.

Whether you love or loathe Julian Assange, the decision by a British court to allow a U.S. extradition process is morally repugnant and wrong on so many levels. Assange will now have approximately four weeks to wait and see whether the British government itself signs off on his extradition or not – at which point he can decide to appeal. Continue reading