‘The Commercial System Isn’t Providing The Local News We Need’. Janine Jackson: The board of Lee Enterprises, which owns some 90 newspapers in the US, including the Buffalo News and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, rejected what the Washington Post called an “unsolicited offer to purchase the company” from hedge fund Alden Global Capital. Many listeners will know Alden as the rapacious group that buys up newspapers and then lays off journalists in droves. The Lee board statement says the Alden buy “is not in the best interests of the company and its shareholders.” They might have noted that it’s also—some would say primarily—not in the interest of communities who rely on newspapers to tell them what’s going on […]
JOURNALISM
20 posts
National Security Journalism Is On Trial By Jameel Jaffer, Just Security. October 1, 2020 National Security Journalism Is On Trial2020-10-012020-10-01https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2017/12/popres-shorter.pngPopularResistance.Orghttps://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2020/10/assange2-e1601568114917.jpg200px200px Above photo: Supporters of Julian Assange protest outside the Old Bailey as the extradition hearing for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange resumes on September 7, 2020 in London, England. Guy Smallman/Getty Images. Few American media organizations seem to have noticed, but the U.S. Justice Department has spent the past few weeks trying to persuade the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales to extradite Julian Assange to the United States to face charges under the 1917 Espionage Act. The hearing is scheduled to […]
The recent mass layoffs at Fox News—an estimated body count of around 70, amounting to a little less than 3 percent of the cable channel’s workforce—signal what current and former employees describe as the purposeful devaluing of fact-based journalism in favor of right-wing opinion, race-baiting, and conspiracy-mongering at the top-rated, Donald Trump-friendly cable outlet. Fox News’ PR department used anodyne corporate-speak to characterize the job losses, namely “restructuring various divisions in order to position all of our businesses for ongoing success.” But the layoffs, outside of the hair and makeup department, cut most deeply into the channel’s straight-news operations at Fox […]
Great newspaper editors leave a permanent stamp on journalism. Harry Evans’ salient achievement as an editor was to push investigative journalism in Britain across the line from dispassionate reporting into direct advocacy on issues of public interest. That was a significant, controversial, and typically courageous step when it was taken. Its consequences are now widely felt. They range from the Boston Globe’s exposure of the American Catholic Church’s cover-up of the sexual abuse of boys by priests to The New York Times’ revelations about Harvey Weinstein’s sexual predations that led to the #MeToo movement. The force of reporting like this goes […]
News Media Who Ignore The Assange Trial Are Admitting They Don’t Care About Journalism September 18, 2020 News Media Who Ignore The Assange Trial Are Admitting They Don’t Care About Journalism2020-09-182020-09-18https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2017/12/popres-shorter.pngPopularResistance.Orghttps://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2020/09/medium-5.jpg200px200px Above photo: Garry Knight. The Sydney Morning Herald just published an article titled “Julian Assange interrupts extradition hearing again” about the WikiLeaks founder’s correct interjection that he never put anyone’s lives in danger with the publication of the Manning leaks a decade ago. It’s actually a rather shocking smear piece for the SMH, who has been one of the better Australian publications at giving Assange a fair hearing over the years. The article’s […]
Trump’s War On Journalism Takes Center Stage By Kevin Gosztola, Shadowproof. September 14, 2020 Trump’s War On Journalism Takes Center Stage2020-09-142020-09-14https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2017/12/popres-shorter.pngPopularResistance.Orghttps://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2020/09/julian-assange-extradition.jpg200px200px Above photo: From AryNews. Julian Assange’s Extradition Hearing. In the last half-century, journalists James Bamford, Ben Bradlee, Seymour Hersh, and Neil Sheehan were each threatened with prosecution under the Espionage Act. But the U.S. government never followed through with Espionage Act charges against a journalist until 2019, when WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested and charged. Trevor Timm, the executive director for the Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), told a magistrate court judge, “[President Donald] Trump’s administration is moving […]
Assange Extradition And The War On Journalism By Chris Hedges, ScheerPost.com. September 10, 2020 Assange Extradition And The War On Journalism2020-09-102020-09-10https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2017/12/popres-shorter.pngPopularResistance.Orghttps://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2020/09/shipton-e1599743398832.jpg200px200px Above photo: John Shipton, the father of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, stands in front of a “Don’t Extradite Assange” poster as he arrives at the Old Bailey, London, ahead of a hearing in Assange’s battle against extradition to the US, Tuesday, September 8, 2020. Assange is fighting to avoid being sent to the US to face 17 charges under the Espionage Act and conspiracy to commit computer intrusion after the publication of hundreds of thousands of classified documents in 2010 and […]
War On Journalism Resumes On Monday By Nozomi Hayase, Commondreams. September 7, 2020 War On Journalism Resumes On Monday2020-09-072020-09-07https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2017/12/popres-shorter.pngPopularResistance.Orghttps://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2020/09/img_8758-2048×1536-e1599483093295.jpg200px200px Above photo: Assange supporters march on Parliament, February 2020. Joe Lauria. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s extradition hearing is set to start on Monday, Sept. 7 at the Old Bailey, the Central Criminal Court of London, and could last three or four weeks. Assange has been indicted on 17 charges of espionage and one charge of conspiring with a source to violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for his reporting on the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the torture at Guantanamo Bay. These charges against […]
Documentary – The War On Journalism: The Case Of Julian Assange September 2, 2020 Documentary – The War On Journalism: The Case Of Julian Assange2020-09-022020-09-02https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2017/12/popres-shorter.pngPopularResistance.Orghttps://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2020/09/juan-film-e1599083079481.jpg200px200px A new documentary by Juan Passarelli can be seen here on Consortium News, followed by a panel discussion with Passarelli, director Ken Loach and filmmaker Suzie Gilbert. Journalists are under attack globally for doing their jobs. Julian Assange is facing a 175 year sentence for publishing if extradited to the United States. The Trump administration has gone from denigrating journalists as ‘enemies of the people’ to now criminalizing common practices in journalism that have long served the […]
Maria Bustillos, founding editor of the digital magazine Popula, is also one of the founding members of Brick House, an umbrella of independent publishers operating under a collectivist business model. An earlier supporter, and benefactor, of the now-defunct media startup Civil, Bustillos said she never lost sight of the possibility of a journalist-owned media company. See also: Civil-Backed News Site Stores Full Article on Ethereum Blockchain Brick House will launch this October with nine sister publications, each of which owns a single share in the larger company. It will have “no owners, no executives, and no investors,” nor advertisers. The collective […]
Is Movement Journalism Needed During Reckoning Over Race And Inequality? By Tina Vasquez, Nieman Reports. August 27, 2020 Is Movement Journalism Needed During Reckoning Over Race And Inequality?2020-08-272020-08-27https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2017/12/popres-shorter.pngPopularResistance.Orghttps://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2020/08/manolia-charlotin-scaled-e1598539964895.jpg200px200px Above photo: Press On cofounder Manolia Charlotin speaks at the movement journalism track at the 2018 Allied Media Conference, which led to the formation of Press On in 2019. Press On. A movement journalist examines what it means to engage with communities and challenge the status quo. Last summer I found myself at the M.W. Stringer Grand Lodge in Jackson, Mississippi. Considered “the epicenter of the civil rights movement,” the well-worn building was once the […]
Military contractor Northrop Grumman is sponsoring an award for best “aerospace, defense and security” journalism at PressGazette’s British Journalism Awards, a crude act of public relations that doesn’t seem to faze the media. UK journalism organization Press Gazette has announced a pair of new categories for 2020’s British Journalism Awards: “anti-corruption journalism,” sponsored by human rights NGO Global Witness, and “aerospace, defense and security,” sponsored by Northrop – a company one might charitably call the polar opposite of a human rights NGO. The description of the new award on Press Gazette’s site is careful to make clear that this isn’t an […]
Ramona Diaz’s latest documentary, A Thousand Cuts, stars former CNN correspondent and Rappler co-founder Maria Ressa, a formidable Filipino reporter who was born in the country yet spent much of her youth, as well as her college years, in the U.S. Ressa became famous herself when she began being targeted by the violent populist government of President Rodrigo Duterte and its online followers. The attacks have intensified to the level of political retaliation, and the government has levied multiple charges, from cyber-libel to tax fraud, against Ressa and Rappler, a news website. On June 15, Ressa was convicted of the first […]
DAVE DAVIES, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I’m Dave Davies, in today for Terry Gross. Earlier this month, the McClatchy Company, publisher of 30 daily newspapers, including the Miami Herald, The Kansas City Star and the Charlotte Observer, was sold in a bankruptcy auction to the Chatham Management Group, a New Jersey hedge fund. Hedge fund ownership of other papers has led to sharp budget cuts and reduced local coverage. Due to competition from the Internet and other pressures, more than 2,000 American newspapers have gone out of business since 2004. Financial stresses from the coronavirus pandemic have only made things […]
Now that my 44 years on daily newspapers have ended, I’m finally free to admit my biases. I’m biased toward the facts. Toward compassion. Toward freedom. All basics of our business. All under attack by today’s Republicans. We reporters pride ourselves on open minds. We’re fiercely independent. We defy sources and editors alike. We try to look past party labels to individuals’ merits. Some of my colleagues at the Cleveland Plain Dealer wouldn’t even vote in Ohio’s primary because of having to declare their parties. So I wasn’t surprised to see a 2017 study in ScienceAdvances showing little bias in our […]
“Welcome to Full Frontal, I’m basic cable John Oliver,” Samantha Bee said at the top of her TBS show Wednesday night. And like her former Daily Show colleague, she went deep on President Donald Trump’s war against the free press. After playing a montage of journalists getting attacked by police during recent protests, Bee declared, “This is not normal. Journalists shouldn’t have to deal with being threatened by the police.” “Fortunately, the president saw these injustices and responded quickly to defend the First Amendment,” she joked before reading one of Trump’s most recent Twitter attacks on the “FAKE NEWS” media. “Look, […]
Online And Independent: The Future Of Journalism Is Already Here By Andrew Tarantola, Engadget. June 20, 2020 Online And Independent: The Future Of Journalism Is Already Here2020-06-202020-06-20https://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2017/12/popres-shorter.pngPopularResistance.Orghttps://popularresistance-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2020/06/dims-e1592665705197.jpg200px200px Above photo: Carlos Barria / Reuters. We’ll do it live! The modern news industry is in crisis. For years, formerly stalwart publications have been bought up, hollowed out, and sold for scrap by predatory (and often utterly incompetent) venture capital firms. The recent global outbreak of COVID-19 has further shattered the business as reporters and editors have been furloughed, or outright laid off, en masse. Now, as demonstrations across the country protesting George Floyd’s death at […]
MOSCOW, JUNE 10 — RT extends the deadline for entries for the 2020 Khaled Alkhateb Memorial Awards, an annual international competition that recognizes the best journalism from conflict zones, until June 30. The competition, now in its third year, was established in honor of RT Arabic freelancer, Khaled Alkhateb, who died reporting from the frontlines in Syria. “Even the pandemic couldn’t stop war correspondents from doing their job across the world. Just last week, a freelancer working with RT’s RUPTLY multimedia agency was viciously killed in Yemen. We established the Khaled Alkhateb Memorial Awards to honour those who put their lives […]
Popular sports commentator Jemele Hill has been challenged on social media after claiming that journalists should aim to serve as disrupters of society – a radical belief which she doesn’t seem to practice herself. Hill, who writes for the Atlantic, appeared on CNN to give her thoughts about a group of reporters who called in sick as a form of protest after their newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, published a column expressing concern that ongoing protests could damage historical buildings in the city. According to the former ESPN host, the group of journalists had every right to take a stand against the […]
MOSCOW, MAY 14 — RT is now accepting entries for the 2020 Khaled Alkhateb Memorial Awards, an annual international competition that recognizes the best journalism from conflict zones. The competition, now in its third year, was established in honor of RT Arabic freelancer, Khaled Alkhateb, who died in 2017 while reporting from the frontlines in Syria. The Khaled Alkhateb Memorial Awards is presented in three categories: Best Video Journalism from a Conflict Zone: Long Form; Best Video Journalism from a Conflict Zone: Short Form; and Best Written Journalism from a Conflict Zone. The inaugural year of the competition in 2018 saw entries from more […]