A space for sporadic updates on the media situation.
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author: @oxymoronist@rawtext.club
license: CC BY-NC-ND
Seymore Hersh's recent article on substack shows what news is no longer fit to print in the mainstream press, at least in the US. Himself being a celebrity reporter, it should be hard to put the mute on his explosive pipeline story. There have been some healthy debate as to the sufficiency of relying on one unnamed source, even though many other news stories taken absolutely seriously have also relied on a single anonymous source. Then came another version of the pipeline story, much more vague, and worse, some of its more detailed claims have been debunked as implausible or impossible (e.g. in an article by Scott Ritter on Consortium News, March 14).
https://seymourhersh.substack.com/
The founder of Cryptome has asked to be a co-defendant in the case against Julian Assange, for publishing the same documents as Wikileaks. Godspeed! Cryptome and a number of other sites have now been added to the media guide with annotated links to independent media sites.
gemini://rawtext.club/~oxymoronist/media2.gmi
The attempted launch of the Disinformation Governance Board, aka Ministry of Truth, met with a backlash, but the attempts to gain tighter control over public discourse are obviously ongoing. Although this predominantly concerns social media, the efforts are not limited to the largest ones. An Intercept article reports on some leaked DHS documents, commenting: "How disinformation is defined by the government has not been clearly articulated, and the inherently subjective nature of what constitutes disinformation provides a broad opening for DHS officials to make politically motivated determinations about what constitutes dangerous speech." They provide some additional insight into the Hunter Biden laptop story, but fail to mention the embarrassing split up with Glenn Greenwald, who had wanted to report on it on the Intercept.
DHS plans to police disinformation
In a commentary on the recent attack on Salman Rushdie, the Angry Arab makes some interesting remarks, for example that Western liberals often insist that muslims should tolerate insults in the name of free speech, but that Israel, the state rather than its people, should be shielded from criticism. He also shares this intriguing observation: "the Arab-Islamic civilization was most tolerant when it was strong and powerful and [...] its decline coincided with an atmosphere of strictness and intolerance." Is there a causal connexion? The American power sphere including Europe is obviously going down, at what speed remains to be seen. Does that have implications for our tolerance?
German journalist Alina Lipp has been reporting what she sees on the ground in Donbass. As a consequence she has had money drawn from her bank account, her paypal account frozen, and now she also seems to face the risk of imprisonment if she returns home to Germany. No doubt whose side she stands on, and also no doubt that the German state stands on the opposite side; but still, isn't this a bit of an over-reaction? She has also appeared on a kill list, as has Eva Bartlett, another brilliant journalist.
Aline Lipp interview on Rokfin
If the British Online Safety Bill wasn't bad enough, now there is also a new law proposal that would threaten journalists reporting on matters related to national security with life in prison. It would also apply to direct action. Looks like the UK is expecting to grow its prison population.
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/07/07/uk-bill-threatens-journalists-with-life-in-prison/
Paypal has terminated the accounts of at least two important independent news sites, Mint Press and Consortium News (there could be others I'm not aware of). This is serious, since these organisations are funded by their readers. It also shows how vulnerable dissenters are in a digital economy.