MAGA World Hates Flaws in Women

A photograph of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has been purged from photo services. Why? Because it was supposedly taken at an unflattering angle.  According to Status, the photo—which shows Leavitt holding her son during a White House Thanksgiving event—was removed from AFP and Getty Images archives. The disappearing photo is just the latest example of the administration’s zeal to control its image—and the media playing along.

But shortly after the photo was removed from the archives, it began surfacing online, where it was reproduced by the official Democrats social media account.

A representative from AFP admitted that it was removed after the White House made the service “aware” of its displeasure. The photo clashes with the “correct” image of women that has been pushed by the MAGA movement. Outlets like Fox News have argued that conservative women are superior to their liberal counterparts because they purportedly embrace beauty treatments like hair dye and lip filler and put greater emphasis on women serving merely as vessels for producing babies.

But this isn’t the Trump administration’s first clash with unapproved photography.  Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth barred photographers from attending war briefings at the Pentagon after supposedly “unflattering” images of the former Fox News host were taken earlier this month.

And last year, a Vanity Fair photo shoot with several members of the senior Trump team, including Leavitt, went viral after it highlighted their physical imperfections—again running counter to the administration’s misogynistic messaging about women.

President Donald Trump has argued for years that media outlets that do anything other than regurgitate his own lies and propaganda are “fake news,” and the administration has attacked and suppressed journalism that refuses to fall in line.  The choice by AFP and Getty to purge unapproved images shows that mainstream media continues to be subservient to Trump rather than focus on informing the public. 

 

UAE Cracks Down on Social Media in an Effort to Maintain Its Phony Image

Dubai has been struggling to maintain its image as a safe and picturesque locale since the region has been under attack during the Trump-Iran war.  But early on, as Iranian missiles began to fall on Dubai (the largest and most ostentatiously luxe city in the United Arab Emirates) the facade began to crack.   The city once touted as one of the safest places in the world is now no longer a peaceful haven. And the UAE government has rushed to try and control the narrative, prompting a huge crackdown on anyone sharing photos of missile attacks and their aftermath. Instead, content creators have been posting weirdly similar photos and videos full of praise, parroting buzzwords about the city’s strong, stable leaders.

Satellite images of Dubai show smoke from areas damaged by air strikes

How can influencers continue to portray the “Dubai dream” online, when the whole world knows that the city has been mired in conflict? And what about the ordinary people who are being detained for sharing photos and videos that go against the official line?

Trump Loses Yet Again in Federal Court

A federal judge has ruled that the Pentagon’s restrictions on news outlets violate the First Amendment and issued an order tossing parts of the Defense Department’s policy.

Judge Paul Friedman, of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, also ordered the Pentagon to restore the press passes of seven journalists for The New York Times, which had brought the suit. The NYT reporters had surrendered their passes last October instead of signing the policy, which empowered the Pentagon to declare journalists “security risks” and revoke their press passes if they engaged in any conduct that the Pentagon believed threatened national security.

In his 40-page ruling, Judge Friedman wrote that the Pentagon’s policy rewarded reporters who were “willing to publish only stories that are favorable to or spoon-fed by department leadership.”

Siding with an argument advanced by The Times, Judge Friedman added that the Pentagon had given itself too much power to enforce its new rules. The policy also violates journalists’ due process rights under the Fifth Amendment, he said, writing that it “provides no way for journalists to know how they may do their jobs without losing their credentials.”

The ruling was a defeat for the Trump administration, which has been engaged in a multifaceted pressure campaign against the news media. ABC News and CBS News’s parent company agreed to multimillion-dollar settlements to resolve suits that President Trump brought against the networks. The ABC late-night star Jimmy Kimmel was temporarily pulled off the air last year after Mr. Trump’s top communications regulator assailed his program and suggested that he might take regulatory action against the broadcaster.

The ruling against the Pentagon followed a similarly stark decision this month from a federal judge to restore the operations of Voice of America, a government-funded news organization that Mr. Trump had ordered shuttered a year ago in an executive order.

A spokesman for The Times said Judge Friedman’s ruling “reaffirms the right of The Times and other independent media to continue to ask questions on the public’s behalf,” adding that “Americans deserve visibility into how their government is being run, and the actions the military is taking in their name and with their tax dollars.”

 

Bari's "Both Sides-sim" Proves to Be a Bust

CBS News finally released the “60 Minutes” segment “Inside CECOT,” last night-- one month after cosplaying editor-in-chief Bari Weiss abruptly stopped it from airing.  The delayed segment centered on the Trump administration sending Venezuelan migrants to CECOT, the infamous prison in El Salvador known for its cruel and inhumane conditions. Although Weiss halted it from airing in the U.S., a 13-minute version was temporarily released in Canada and widely shared online.

The decision from "Both Sides Bari" made headlines and caused significant backlash.  She claimed that she wanted to include an on-camera interview with a member of the Trump administration despite the administration’s refusal to do so.  “We need to be able to make every effort to get the principals on the record and on camera,” Weiss reportedly said during an editorial meeting after pulling the package. 

In an internal note at the time, correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi described Weiss’ move as “political” because the segment had already met internal reporting standards. It is not clear whether Bari (who doesn't have a reporting background) was familiar with CBS' reporting standards.  In a statement, Alfonsi said: “We requested responses to questions and/or interviews with DHS, the White House and the State Department. Government silence is a statement, not a VETO. Their refusal to be interviewed is a tactical maneuver destined to kill the story.  If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a ‘kill switch’ for any reporting they find inconvenient.”

The Wall Street Journal reported that Weiss, Alfonsi, CBS News President Tom Cibrowski and other “60 Minutes” leaders met in New York “in recent days.” Alfonsi and a film crew also traveled to Washington, D.C., in an attempt to land interviews with Trump officials for the segment. Weiss, who has ties to the current administration, also attempted to lock down an interview with a Trump official but failed, per The Washington Post.  So the end result from Bari's stunt resulted in no significant updates to the story-- just a delay in reporting that waters down its impact.

There were some changes to the piece, however.  Alfonsi included additional commentary which noted: “Since November,  '60 Minutes' has made several attempts to interview key Trump administration officials on camera about our story. They declined our requests.”  Because of the delay in airing the episode, the new version also featured information about Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who was kidnapped two weeks ago with his wife, Cilia Flores by U.S. forces.

Bari's spokesperson tried to put a sheen of competence on her stunt: “CBS News leadership has always been committed to airing the 60 MINUTES CECOT piece as soon as it was ready.”   The fact remains that Alfonsi had already tried to get a Trump official to go on camera-- and they refused.  Bari obviously doesn't trust her reporters and cares more about her phony "both sides-ism" than real reporting.

 

CBS Is Embarrassing Itself

Network staffers and insiders are so far unimpressed with Tony Dokoupil’s “embarrassing” debut as the new CBS Evening News anchor, raging about the program’s “MAGA” pivot and all agreeing that Dokoupil is practicing “journalism malpractice” by spouting pro-Trump propaganda. “It’s state TV,” one network staffer declared.

 Dokoupil embarrassed himself further this week by sucking up to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and regurgitating right-wing propaganda about the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Discussing Rubio’s role in the abduction of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and the administration’s widely criticized rhetoric about taking over Greenland, Dokoupil's use of AI-generated memes lionizing Rubio generating considerable mocking by most observers.  “Marco Rubio, we salute you,” Dokoupil said in one of his most pathetic exchanges. “You’re the ultimate Florida man.”

On the same edition of the program, Dokoupil reported on the fifth anniversary of Trump supporter’s January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. But instead of accurately stating the facts of the story, he portrayed the Trump administration’s revisionist history of the riot as merely the other side of the story. “President Trump today accused Democrats of failing to prevent the attack on the Capitol, while House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries accused the president of ‘whitewashing it,’” Dokoupil said.  "High-profile CBS News staffers were aghast when Dokoupil's brief mention of the Jan. 6 anniversary was a both-sides mess,” CNN’s Brian Stelter reported on Wednesday,

The perennially third-place show is already racked by internal chaos, which included last-minute changes by Weiss and the optics of Dokoupil using a private plane to bounce from city-to-city on a “Live From America” tour.  The network’s initial debut plans had to be scrapped due to the invasion of Venezuela and capture of deposed leader Nicolás Maduro. 

Dokoupil’s pro-administration propaganda is part of CBS News’ right-wing restructuring under new editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, a conservative activist.  Late last year, CBS recently came under widespread criticism after it abruptly shelved a “60 Minutes” report on the Trump administration’s use of a notorious prison in El Salvador.

Weiss has also worked to purge the networks standards department.

Democrats have warned CBS’ parent company, Paramount, that it will likely become the subject of investigations under a Democratic House majority after Paramount chose to pay Trump a multimillion-dollar bribe near the beginning of his new term. The network settled a frivolous lawsuit brought by Trump, and soon after, the administration approved a merger between Paramount and Skydance.

CBS also chose to cancel “The Late Show,” hosted by longtime Trump critic Stephen Colbert.

With the recently installed Dokoupil leading the network’s key news show, the content already sounds more like the right-wing rantings of Fox News than the historic journalism the outlet was known for.  Walter Cronkite must be rolling over in his grave.

 

Botched Trump Interview Shows That CBS is Now a Propaganda Machine

In his interview with “60 Minutes” that aired on Sunday, convicted felon Donald Trump gloated over CBS’ decision to bribe him and praised the news division’s new right-wing leader—but the network did not air these comments during their telecast.

The comments about the payoff did not make the program’s televised edit, but CBS posted them online later, along with the rest of the interview. Ironically, the payout to Trump was based on his complaint that edits to an interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 amounted to election interference.

Legal experts say Trump’s suit was without merit, but CBS chose not to defend its own journalism, instead pursuing a cozier relationship with Trump amid its parent company’s major merger. Congressional Democrats recently launched an investigation into the matter, suggesting the payoff was “an offer of payment and benefits to a government official designed to achieve a specific outcome from the government—in other words, a bribe.”

In other comments that CBS also chose not to air, Trump praised the network’s newly appointed editor-in-chief Bari Weiss as “a great person.” Weiss is a conservative columnist who most recently led The Free Press, a right-leaning media outlet, and who has begun to shift CBS’ news operation further to the right.

During the on-air segment Trump was asked about his pardon of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, replying, “I don’t know who he is.” Asked about Zhao’s apparent role in boosting a crypto coin benefitting the Trump family, he responded, “I know nothing about it, because I’m too busy doing the other thing.” 

For years, Trump has argued that former President Joe Biden was unfit for office based on claims he was mentally unstable. And yet Trump has been accused of mental instability by several prominent political figures.  By paying off Trump, hiring Bari Weiss to run the news division, and then trying to hide damning comments made during the interview, CBS continues to demonstrate that it is a compromised media organization. The network continues to lurch to the right, and shouldn't be trusted as a news source.

 

New Pentagon Press Corps is a Joke

The Trump administration has announced that a group of far-right media outlets have been given press access to the Pentagon.  The announcement comes a week after actual journalists staged a walkout and refused to sign on to new rules that require all reporting to be pre-approved by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Even Fox News stood against the new rules.

Among the Pentagon’s new pool of outlets is Timcast, conspiratorial racist Tim Pool’s podcast, on which he has claimed that “multiculturalism” is behind mass shootings and that women should face public shame for how many sexual partners they’ve had.  Pool has been given Pentagon access even though he was among a group of right-wing influencers paid by the Russian government to spread disinformation. He received payments from the Russian Tenet Media to make politically divisive videos to weaken the U.S. government and its opposition to Russia.  Russia likely had no idea that one of its paid stooges would be given a front-row seat to the inner workings of the U.S. military.

Similarly, MyPillow founder and election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell’s outlet, LindellTV, will now regurgitate Hegseth’s nonsense to the public. Lindell was among the Trump sycophants who have falsely insisted that Trump won the 2020 election.

Gateway Pundit, the conservative blog founded and operated by Jim Hoft, also received Pentagon credentials. Hoft, once described by the media watchdog group Media Matters for America as the “dumbest man on the internet,” has spent decades promoting debunked right-wing conspiracy theories and other falsehoods.  More recently, Gateway Pundit paid out a settlement in a 2024 defamation lawsuit brought by two Georgia election workers after it falsely accused them of rigging the 2020 election results. 

Pentagon reporting is of dire importance at the moment.  The Trump administration is engaged in warfare in South America, which some experts say is illegal. Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin has ignored Trump’s halfhearted attempt to end Russia’s war on Ukraine, which has most recently included the bombing of a kindergarten with children present. And in the Middle East, Israel’s conflict with Hamas has continued despite Trump’s claims that he secured a “peace deal.”

The Pentagon’s new right-wing press corps is beyond ill-equipped to handle independent reporting. But when it comes to producing stories that get Hegseth’s approval, it’ll pass with flying colors.

 

 

Cronkite and Murrow Are Rolling Over in Their Graves

Former CBS News anchor Dan Rather has criticized CBS News for making journalist Bari Weiss its editor-in-chief.  Rather said that the hiring of the "anti-woke" opinion writer, as well as CBS coming under the control of billionaire David Ellison (whose father is a friend of President Donald Trump) meant that CBS News will be catering to the Trump agenda.  “The American people will pay the price for this move, as will the journalists of CBS News who can no longer credibly serve as watchdogs because the ones they are meant to hold to account are signing their paychecks and hobnobbing with the president,” the veteran journalist wrote.  He warned, “It is a dark day in the halls of CBS News.”

Bari Weiss is the whiny opinion writer that quit her job at the New York Times because she thought she was being bullied by co-workers and that her editors seemed to take their cues from Twitter discourse.  She liked to make herself the champion of 'anti-wokesters', but Weiss crying about ‘cancel culture’ when she spent her college years trying to get Arab professors fired for criticizing Israel has always been laughable.  Her NYT resignation letter bounced back and forth between trying to argue that "cancel culture" is this massive problem to then whining that the New York Times bosses wouldn't fire her coworkers who say her works sucks. You can't have it both ways, Bari.

CBS’ parent company, Paramount, named Weiss the editor-in-chief of CBS News following the company’s acquisition of “The Free Press” for $150 million. The move angered journalists and media figures, as Weiss’ outlet has made waves for challenging DEI, gender ideology, and supporting Israel.

Rather also questioned Weiss’ credentials.  “The former opinion writer for The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times is not a reporter. She has never worked in television news and she has never led a staff larger than a few dozen,” Rather wrote. “That all changed this week when David Ellison, whose Skydance Media recently acquired CBS, installed Weiss in a position created for her. She will not report to the president of CBS News — as one might expect — but to David Ellison directly.”

The former CBS anchor also addressed Weiss’ recent statement that she wants to combat illiberalism on both the right and left in her new role, criticizing her for going after both sides when one side has Trump.  “While one must keep an open mind, it is hard to do so when such a statement portends a push for ‘both-sidesism’ and arguments reliant on false equivalences. There can be no equivalences drawn between the two political extremes in this country, especially when one extreme is led by a man who rarely speaks without lying.”

Weiss’ hiring comes months after Paramount’s merger with Skydance that resulted in Ellison, the former Skydance CEO, being named CEO of the new joint company. In addition to being close to Trump, Ellison’s father, Larry, is a pro-Israel tech mogul worth around $300 billion.

Rather continued, saying that the deal and hiring of Weiss are “signals to everyone, especially to the man in the Oval Office, that CBS is no longer independent, but under the tutelage of a conservative billionaire who is putting more than his thumb on the scale.”  “Anything that runs afoul of Trump’s agenda may be flagged and is unlikely to be aired unaltered, if aired at all. No journalist or their work can remain unaffected by toiling in such an environment,” he said.   “It is a dark day in the halls of CBS News, where the portraits of television news pioneers once hung — Cronkite, Murrow, Sevareid, Collingwood. They were journalists who made television a trusted source of information. Whom and what are we to believe today?” Rather asked.

 

New York Times Sued by So-called "Porn Addicted" Brazilian Tribe

Last year, the Marubo Tribe, a 2,000-member Indigenous group in the Brazilian Amazon, was the subject of countless news stories around the world falsely accusing its people of becoming addicted to porn after being given Internet access. According to the Marubo, the spread of this false narrative is all The New York Times’ fault—and it’s suing.

The tribe was the subject of a 2024 story by the Times, which profiled the group’s first exposure to the Internet via Elon Musk’s Starlink, along with the technology’s benefits and challenges. For instance, the story said that while the Internet allowed the Marubo to video chat with loved ones who live far away and call for help during emergencies, it also affected the youth.  “Young people have gotten lazy because of the internet,” Tsainama Marubo, a 73-year-old woman, said. She explained that the tribe’s younger members are less interested in traditional activities, such as making jewelry out of snail shells. “They’re learning the ways of the white people.”

But the Internet also brought the tribe access to porn. The Times story says that minors were now watching porn, which had unsettled some in the tribe. It quoted Alfredo Marubo, leader of a Marubo association of villages and the biggest critic of the tribe’s new access to the Internet.  According to the Times, Alfredo Marubo said that young men were sharing mature adult content in group chats. The spreading of that type of content marked a strong contrast with the tribe’s culture, which disapproves of kissing in public.  “We’re worried young people are going to want to try it,” Alfredo Marubo said, referring to the graphic sex shown in the videos being shared.  Alfredo Marubo added that some tribal leaders had told him of young men displaying more aggressive sexual behavior.

The references to porn and sex in the story were limited to five sentences. Nowhere did the Times story call the Marubo people porn addicts or suggest it was a huge problem.  But that wasn’t the story heard round the world, though. Instead, countless media outlets ran pieces about how the Internet had caused the tribe to become addicted to porn, a claim that was untrue. TMZ ran a story with the headline, “Elon Musk’s Starlink Hookup Leaves A Remote Tribe Addicted To Porn.”

The New York Post also had a headline in the same vein: “Remote Amazon tribe finally connects to internet — only to wind up hooked on porn, social media.”   A little more than week later, the “porn addict” framing had become so widespread that the Times published a follow-up story. In the story, the outlet said that more than 100 websites worldwide had published the false claim.  “The Marubo people are not addicted to pornography. There was no hint of this in the forest, and there was no suggestion of it in The New York Times’s article,” Jack Micas, the author of the piece, wrote.

But in the eyes of the Marubo people, the damage had already been done. This week, the tribe filed a defamation lawsuit against the Times, TMZ, and Yahoo News in Los Angeles Superior Court, Courthouse News reported. The suit says that TMZ and Yahoo News are also defendants because their stories amplified and misrepresented the original. The tribe is seeking $180 million from each of the media outlets.

 

Associated Press Wins in Court Against Trump

The White House’s decision to punish The Associated Press by eliminating its access to convicted felon  Donald Trump’s events, the Oval Office and Air Force One is unconstitutional, a federal judge said Tuesday. The preliminary injunction issued Tuesday afternoon against the White House by Judge Trevor McFadden, a first-term Trump appointee, is a major blow to the administration’s efforts to curtail the AP’s access to the president based on news coverage it dislikes.

And it’s a critical legal victory for one of the world’s biggest news outlets and wire services, whose reporting has been hamstrung by an administration with an axe to grind against it.  “The Government offers no other plausible explanation for its treatment of the AP. The Constitution forbids viewpoint discrimination, even in a nonpublic forum like the Oval Office,” McFadden, of the US District Court in Washington, DC, wrote in the 41-page ruling. 

Earlier this year, Trump imposed a ban on the AP to punish the news organization over its decision to continue using the phrase “Gulf of Mexico” after Trump tried to rename the body of water the “Gulf of America.”

“The AP seeks restored eligibility for admission to the press pool and limited-access press events, untainted by an impermissible viewpoint-based exclusion,” McFadden wrote. “That is all the Court orders today: For the Government to put the AP on an equal playing field as similarly situated outlets, despite the AP’s use of disfavored terminology.”

 

Trump and His War on Free Speech

In a rambling tirade in front of a subdued audience, convicted felon Donal Trump once again lashed out at the media, calling CNN and MSNBC “corrupt” and “illegal” for reporting negatively about him. Trump’s attacks on the media are nothing new, but his choice of venue was-- the Justice Department, where, in his campaign-like speech before prosecutors, he also attacked political opponents.

“I believe that CNN and MSDNC, who literally write 97.6 percent bad about me, are political arms of the Democrat party, and in my opinion, they are really corrupt and they are illegal,” Trump said, again using his nickname for MSNBC. 

He also bashed other outlets, including CBS, NBC, ABC, The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, for their reporting. He claimed that the mainstream outlets were influencing judges and “I don’t believe it’s legal.”    (Here's a hint-- it is!)  Media outlets are protected by the First Amendment.

Trump has made attacks on news outlets a primary part of his political persona. But in his second term, his administration has taken steps to try to chill or even intimidate the media. His FCC chairman, Brendan Carr, has launched inquiries into CBS over the way that 60 Minutes edited an interview with Kamala Harris.  The FCC has also launched an investigation of  Comcast for its diversity, equity and inclusion policy.

Trump’s White House has banned the Associated Press from Oval Office and other events because the news organization has not changed its Stylebook guidance to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico. The White House also has taken control of who will be members of the press pool (the dozen or so reporters who have access to smaller events with limited capacity).  The White House Correspondents’ Association, a non-profit run by journalists, had previously (for decades) coordinated the press pool..

The Trump administration has also issued instructions to Executive agencies to cancel government subscriptions to news outlets, costing major organizations significant amounts of revenue.

 

A Preview of the Next Four Years

Trump held a press conference yesterday-- a humdinger for the ages.  He rambled on and on-- ranting and raving about getting "the itch" from electric heaters, low-flow washing machines, gas stoves, retaking the Panama Canal, changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico, windmills and whales, how Hezbollah was involved in January 6 (it wasn't), invading Greenland and Canada, and so much (meaningless) more.  But Trump employed his usual crazy bluster and ridiculous blather to obscure another tirade of lies, which I will try to document (and refute) for you:

Butt-Kissing Bezos Continues to Lose Talent From Wash Post

Another high-profile member of the Washington Post editorial staff has left the paper--cartoonist Ann Telnaes, who had been at the outlet for 16 years.  She quit after WAPO brass killed her cartoon featuring president-elect Donald Trump.

“The cartoon that was killed criticizes the billionaire tech and media chief executives who have been doing their best to curry favor with incoming President-elect Trump,” the Pulitzer-Prize winning cartoonist wrote on Substack under the title “Why I Quit The Washington Post.”

“There have been multiple articles recently about these men with lucrative government contracts and an interest in eliminating regulations making their way to Mar-a-lago,” she wrote. “The group in the cartoon included Mark Zuckerberg/Facebook & Meta founder and CEO, Sam Altman/AI CEO, Patrick Soon-Shiong/LA Times publisher, the Walt Disney Company/ABC News, and Jeff Bezos/Washington Post owner.” 

Netanyahu Takes Al-Jazeera Off the Air, Saying it's a "Security Threat"

Israel's government has shut down the operations of the Al Jazeera television network in the country, branding it a mouthpiece for Hamas.  Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the cabinet agreed to the closure while the war in Gaza is ongoing.

Police raided the Qatari broadcaster's office at the Ambassador hotel in Jerusalem on Sunday. Al Jazeera called claims it was a threat to Israeli security a "dangerous and ridiculous lie".   The channel said it reserved the right to "pursue every legal step".

Israel's Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi said equipment had been taken in the raid.  A video posted by the minister on X shows police officers and inspectors from the ministry entering a hotel room.  According to Reuters news agency, the Israeli satellite service Yes displayed a message that read: "In accordance with the government decision, the Al Jazeera station's broadcasts have been stopped in Israel." The channel is still accessible through Facebook in Israel.

The shut down of Al Jazeera in Israel has been criticized by a number of human rights and press groups.  The group said that claims that the broadcaster was a propaganda tool for Hamas were "unfounded", and that Sunday's ban was less about security concerns and more to "serve a more politically motivated agenda, aimed at silencing critical voices and targeting Arab media".

The Foreign Press Association (FPA) urged the Israeli government to reconsider its decision, saying the shut down of Al Jazeera in the country should be "a cause for concern for all supporters of a free press".  The FPA said in a statement that Israel now joins "a dubious club of authoritarian governments to ban the station", and warned that Mr Netanyahu has the authority to target other foreign outlets that he considers to be "acting against the state".

The Committee to Protect Journalists' (CPJ) Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna echoed the same concerns, saying: "The Israeli cabinet must allow Al Jazeera and all international media outlets to operate freely in Israel, especially during wartime."

The UN's Human Rights office also called the Israeli government to reverse the ban, saying, "A free & independent media is essential to ensuring transparency & accountability. Now, even more so given tight restrictions on reporting from Gaza."

For years, Israeli officials have accused the network of anti-Israeli bias.  Al Jazeera has also accused Israel of deliberately targeting its staff. Journalists including Hamza al-Dahdouh, the son of Al Jazeera Gaza bureau chief Wael al-Dahdouh, have been killed by Israeli strikes. Israel denies targeting journalists.

"Israel's suppression of free press to cover up its crimes by killing and arresting journalists has not deterred us from performing our duty," the network said in its response to Sunday's ban.

 

Chuck Todd Finally Getting the Boot From 'Meet the Press'

After a long nine years, the head honchos at NBC finally came to their senses and are dumping Chuck Todd from their once-flagship Sunday show, "Meet the Press" (MTP).  

When Todd was elevated to host of "Meet The Press" in 2014, we already knew it was the potential death knell for a show whose legacy was built by the great Tim Russert.  In an NPR interview, Chuck Todd made it clear that he didn't believe it was his job to educate viewers and inform them when politicians spread misinformation.  Todd thinks his job is merely to convey politicians  pronouncements-- with no care about whether they are true or false.   But the fact is that scrutinizing claims (particularly those from powerful officials) is an essential part of journalism.  It should have been an embarrassment to Todd to have media observers cite such elementary principles to one of the nation’s most influential reporters-- but the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics (under the heading “Seek Truth and Report It”) says that the very first tenet implores journalists to “test the accuracy of information from all sources.”

Joan Walsh, National Affairs Correspondent for The Nation, once said that Todd was the poster model for journalistic ineptitude, and that his claim to fame may be his inability to push back on fallacious claims and outright lies.  His performance at the first 2019 Democratic presidential debate was widely criticized, after viewers were left with the impression that the debate was more about Todd pontificating about the issues instead of giving the candidates a forum for their views.  That assessment was actually backed by data: A tally of words spoken during the debate showed that he spoke more than seven of the candidates-- despite having four other moderators, no less!

Student Newspaper Breaks Through Veil of Secrecy Over Coach's Suspension

A few weeks ago, when student journalists at the Daily Northwestern saw that revered coach Pat Fitzgerald had been suspended, they suspected there was more to the story. What they uncovered was years of hazing allegations. 

The university's initial press release announcing the coach’s two-week suspension was short and matter-of-fact.  It acknowledged that an investigation found evidence to support a complaint about hazing within the football program but provided few details — except that university officials strongly disapproved and changes would be made. Released on a late summer Friday, it drew minor media attention, and the story easily could have ended there. 

But reporters for Northwestern’s student newspaper wasted no time digging into what they saw as holes in the administration’s announcement.  Within a few days, systemic hazing within the Northwestern football program was a national news story-- with the university divulging shocking details from its investigation — and firing revered coach Pat Fitzgerald outright. 

“It seemed clear that there were things unsaid in the [university’s initial] statement,” Alyce Brown, a print managing editor of the Daily Northwestern said.  “We saw the announcement the same as everybody else,” added Nicole Markus, the paper’s summer editor in chief. “And then, through that, we just started trying to do our own independent reporting.” 

The result was a detailed report that filled in the gaps of the university’s announcement with specific new details about the hazing allegations. The students secured an interview with the anonymous former football player whose complaint to university officials had prompted the initial investigation. He revealed that the hazing allegations under investigation included coerced sexual acts forced on junior players by masked upperclassmen in a dark locker room. And a second unnamed player corroborated the whistleblower’s claim that Fitzgerald knew about and encouraged the hazing. 

Hours after the story was published in the student newspaper, Northwestern University President Michael Schill sent an apologetic email to the campus community, saying he failed to fully consider the situation before handing down Fitzgerald’s initial punishment. And as the Fitzgerald story gained traction over the weekend and was picked up by national news organizations, the Daily Northwestern reporters continued to follow leads. The next Monday, they published a story detailing what three former players described as a racist culture within the football program. They told the paper that members of the coaching staff, including Fitzgerald, made racist comments or racially coded remarks and had different standards for Black players, who were told to cut longer hairstyles to comply with what Fitzgerald called the “Wildcat Way.” 

In his statement announcing Fitzgerald’s firing, Schill acknowledged that new revelations in the media about the systemic nature of the hazing prompted him to reevaluate his original decision to simply suspend the coach.  “As much as Coach Fitzgerald has meant to our institution and our student-athletes,” he wrote, “we have an obligation — in fact a responsibility — to live by our values.” 

The Daily Northwestern operates independently from the university. It is published by a nonprofit organization called the Students Publishing Company, which is overseen by a board of directors composed of alumni, faculty, staff and student volunteers.  “Our philosophy is the newsroom is independent, and the board is just there to support,” Chairman John Byrne, a lawyer and former editor in chief, said.

The firewall between the university and the newspaper is doing its job; the student journalists told The Post that Northwestern did not try to interfere with their reporting on these stories. And they emphasized that the story about Northwestern’s football program is ongoing.   “The story doesn’t just go away just because Coach Fitzgerald has been fired,” Markus said. “There’s a lot more going on, and so we’re looking now to next steps.”

 

NY Times Complicit in the Rehabilitation of Gym Jordan

Last month, the New York Times ran a profile on Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, and it’s a load of absolute bullshit. The article portrays Jordan as a fighter, saying, “he has made a name for himself with bare-knuckled partisan tactics and a penchant for picking fights with his adversaries.” The story does not detail exactly how “partisan” these “tactics'' are, but that is just one problem with it.

There are five former wrestlers from Ohio State University, (where Jordan was once an assistant coach) who once said he was aware that a team doctor abused 177 athletes over two decades. Did the Times connect “bare-knuckled” partisan hack Jordan with the full breadth of the accusations against him?  Hardly.  

The "paper of record" makes sure to just barely scrape the surface of the accusations against “Gym” Jordan, even while giving the impression that those allegations have been somewhat settled.  

 "When a sexual abuse scandal at Ohio State University threatened to derail his political career, Mr. Jordan punched back in characteristic fashion, details of which have not been previously reported, calling a wrestler’s aging parents and asking them to persuade their son to back off the charge that Mr. Jordan knew about the abuse and did nothing, according to interviews conducted for this article."

The profile then moves on to detail Jordan’s rise to power within the Freedom Caucus, his early allegiance to Donald Trump, and his current position as the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. After a brief bit of lip service to how utterly ineffective Jordan has been for over a decade in both the Ohio Statehouse and the House of Representatives, the Times quickly finds out how Jordan feels about himself. Stop the presses!  Jordan thinks he’s doing a great job. 

After talking about all of  the fundraising money and his very symbiotic relationship with Trump for a few more paragraphs, the article finally gets to these pesky wrestlers and their 2018 accusations that Jordan knew Dr. Richard Strauss, the former Ohio State University medical doctor who treated athletes while Jordan was an assistant coach, was molesting and being sexually inappropriate with athletes.

What is truly vacuous about this reporting and what makes the entire piece such a puff pastry is that the Times seems to have an “exclusive” interview that tells us nothing new. The writer creates an illusion that the Ohio State wrestling scandal is basically settled, because there is no deeper dive into the implications revealed by this exclusive interview.  

In 2018, after Jordan denied any knowledge of wrongdoing in the wrestling program, The Wall Street Journal quoted former Ohio State wrestler Michael Coleman as saying, “There’s no way unless he’s got dementia or something that he’s got no recollection of what was going on at Ohio State. I have nothing but respect for this man, I love this man, but he knew as far as I’m concerned.” About one month later Coleman clarified his statement to news outlets, saying that he didn’t have personal knowledge of Jordan ignoring the wrestlers’ pleas. 

In the interview, Coleman said Dr. Strauss routinely took 45-minute showers to ogle the athletes, including Mr. Jordan.  “Jim got stared at; I got stared at. Unless he has Alzheimer’s, Jim Jordan knew,” Coleman said. “But I have no knowledge of anyone being abused reporting it to Jim Jordan.”

And that is that. Nothing about the other wrestlers, who spoke pretty openly about Jordan’s work behind the scenes to get them to change their stories and make statements that contradicted the accusations. It doesn’t cover the 2020 CNN story quoting six former wrestlers who said Jordan lied when he said he was ignorant of Dr. Strauss’ actions.   Nobody in the media should be letting this creep off the hook with puff pieces like this.

 

India's Modi Now Using Tax Officials to Harrass Journalists

BBC offices in India were searched as part of an investigation by income tax authorities. The searches come weeks after the broadcaster aired a documentary critical of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The BBC said that it was "fully co-operating" with authorities. "We hope to have this situation resolved as soon as possible," a short statement added.  Although the documentary was broadcast on television only in the UK, India's government has attempted to block people sharing India: The Modi Question online, calling it "hostile propaganda and anti-India garbage" with a "colonial mind-set". Last month, police in Delhi detained students as they gathered to watch the film.

The documentary focused on the prime minister's role in anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat in 2002, when he was chief minister of the state.  The general secretary of the opposition Congress party, KC Venugopal, said the search "reeks of desperation and shows that the Modi government is scared of criticism".  "We condemn these intimidation tactics in the harshest terms. This undemocratic and dictatorial attitude cannot go on any longer," he tweeted.

The Editors Guild of India - a non-profit group which promotes press freedom - said it was "deeply concerned" about the searches.  They are a "continuation of a trend of using government agencies to intimidate and harass press organizations that are critical of government policies or the ruling establishment", it said.

But Gaurav Bhatia, a spokesman from Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), described the BBC as the "most corrupt organization in the world". 

The documentary tracks Modi's first steps into politics, including his rise through the ranks of the BJP to his appointment as chief minister of the western state of Gujarat.  It highlights a previously unpublished report, obtained by the BBC from the UK Foreign Office, which raises questions about Modi's actions during the religious riots. The rioting began the day after a train carrying Hindu pilgrims was set on fire, killing dozens. More than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, died in the subsequent violence.  The Foreign Office report claims that Modi was "directly responsible" for the "climate of impunity" that enabled the violence.  In 2005, the U.S. denied Modi a visa under a law that bars the entry of foreign officials seen to be responsible for "severe violations of religious freedom".  Modi has long rejected accusations against him, and has not apologised for the riots.

The targeting of organizations seen as critical of Modi's Hindu nationalistic government is not uncommon in India.  In 2020, Amnesty International was forced to halt its India operations, with the group accusing the government of pursuing a "witch-hunt" against human rights organizations.   Oxfam was also searched last year along with other local non-government organizations.

In 2020, India's press freedom rank dropped to 142 out of 180 countries in the Press Freedom Index, an annual ranking of countries published by Reporters Without Borders (RWB), an international non-governmental organization dedicated to safeguard the right to freedom of information.  In 2020, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting blocked the MediaOne TV temporarily for covering a news about the "mob attacks on Muslims" in the country's capital New Delhi.  The Jammu and Kashmir police, a law enforcement and counterinsurgency agency, often interrogate (and sometimes arrest) journalists over national security reportage and critical news stories involving the Modi government.

Modi's government has also banned the Times of India, The Hindu and Telegraph India from running government ads on government platforms.  Prominent journalists Sagarika Ghose and Ravish Kumar have publicly said that they have been subjected to harassment, intimidation including death and rape threats when they were skeptical of Modi's Bharativa Janata Party (BJP) government. 

 

Piss-Poor Media Relations in Sudan

Six journalists in South Sudan have been detained over the circulation of footage showing President Salva Kiir appearing to wet himself at an official event, according to the national journalists union.

The footage from December showed a dark stain spread down the 71-year-old president’s gray trousers as he stood for the national anthem at a road commissioning event. The video never aired on television but subsequently circulated on social media.

The journalists, who work with the state-run South Sudan Broadcasting Corporation, were detained this week, said Patrick Oyet, president of the South Sudan Union of Journalists.   They “are suspected of having knowledge on how the video of the president urinating himself came out,” he told Reuters.

Kiir has been president since South Sudan gained independence in 2011. Government officials have repeatedly denied rumors circulating on social media that he is unwell. The country has been embroiled in conflict for much of the past decade.

The detained journalists are camera operators Joseph Oliver and Mustafa Osman; video editor Victor Lado; contributor Jacob Benjamin; and Cherbek Ruben and Joval Toombe from the control room, Oyet said.  “We are concerned because those who are detained now have stayed longer than what the law says,” he added.

By law, South Sudanese authorities are allowed to detain suspects for only 24 hours before bringing them before a judge.  The incident “matches a pattern of security personnel resorting to arbitrary detention whenever officials deem coverage unfavorable,” said the sub-Saharan Africa representative for the Committee to Protect Journalists, Muthoki Mumo. 

 

Journalists Under Attack by Israeli Forces

Journalists continue to come under attack across the globe-- this time in Israel.  Al-Jazeera's Shireen Abu Aqleh was covering unrest in the Jenin refugee camp (a historic flashpoint in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) when she was shot in the head and killed earlier this month. The Qatar-based TV channel said Israeli forces shot Abu Aqleh deliberately and "in cold blood".

"The Israeli occupation forces assassinated in cold blood Al Jazeera's correspondent in Palestine,” said Al Jazeera.  It called on the international community to hold the Israeli forces accountable for their "intentional targeting and killing" of the journalist.

Another Al Jazeera journalist, producer Ali al-Samudi, was wounded in the incident, the broadcaster added.  Al-Samoudi and other journalists at the scene said there were no Palestinian fighters present when the journalists were shot, directly disputing an Israeli statement referencing the possibility that it was Palestinian fire.  “We were going to film the Israeli army operation and suddenly they shot us without asking us to leave or stop filming,” said al-Samoudi. Abu Aqleh was wearing a press flak jacket when she was shot.  The Israeli army later confirmed it had conducted an operation in the camp.   

Shatha Hanaysha, a local journalist who was standing next to Abu Akleh when she was shot, also told Al Jazeera that there had been no confrontations between Palestinian fighters and the Israeli army. She said the group of journalists had been directly targeted.  “We were four journalists, we were all wearing vests, all wearing helmets,” Hanaysha said. “The [Israeli] occupation army did not stop firing even after she collapsed. I couldn’t even extend my arm to pull her because of the shots being fired. The army was adamant on shooting to kill.”

Abu Akleh, who was a dual Palestinian-American national, was one of Al Jazeera’s first field correspondents, joining the network in 1997. Palestinian MP Khalida Jarrar said that Abu Akleh was the voice of Palestinians and was killed by “the monstrosity of Israeli colonialism and occupation”.  Palestinian Authority (PA) government spokesperson Ibrahim Melhem described it as a comprehensive crime committed against a well-known journalist. “The killing was deliberate… There will be an autopsy by Palestinian medics, which will be followed by a report including all the details of the killing,” Melhem told Al Jazeera.  “However, all the witnesses present at the scene of the crime ensures that it was an Israeli sniper that committed the crime in a deliberate way.”

Israeli forces compounded their deliberate cruelty by attacking mourners of the journalist and creating chaos at her funeral.  While thousands flocked to Jerusalem to pay their respects to the Aqleh, disturbing footage from the funeral showed Israeli security forces attacking the crowd of mourners.  A group of people carrying the casket from the hospital towards a church in the Old City can be seen being hit by the forces with batons.  At one point the coffin toppled to the ground as chaos ensued when the officers also fired tear gas.