Tag: Free Press

Is This Assault On Free Press?

The Trump retribution continues.

Around every corner someone is bitching about the loss of a free press….the Right says the Left is doing it….the Left is accusing of the Right of assaulting the press on many levels….but now there is yet even more and it stems from the trump admin.

Four major news outlets will no longer have highly coveted office space at the Pentagon after the Defense Department released an internal memo announcing it’s giving their space to other outlets. CNN’s Haley Britzky posted the memo on X that said NBC News, the New York Times, NPR, and Politico will each need to vacate their offices at the Pentagon on Feb. 14 to give space to the New York Post, One America News Network, Breitbart News Network, and the Huffington Post. As CNN reports, three of the outlets are relatively small and conservative organizations that are openly pro-Trump.

The internal memo said the Pentagon calls the plan its “annual media rotation program,” and spokesman Jonathan Ullyot said the outgoing outlets will remain full members of the Pentagon Press Corps with “the same media access” as before. But they won’t have office space in the building this year. Ullyot said the rotation program will “broaden access to the limited space of the Correspondents’ Corridor to outlets that have not previously enjoyed the privilege and journalistic value of working from physical office space in the Pentagon.” Officials chose one outlet each from print, online, radio, and TV mediums to give up their space for one year.

Members of the Pentagon press corps can only speculate if the decision is related to intense coverage of the Senate confirmation of Pete Hegseth as defense secretary last week. Hegseth is a former Fox News host, and his confirmation followed weeks of coverage about allegations of sexual abuse and heavy drinking. NBC News, which had reported on the allegations, released a statement saying, “We’re disappointed by the decision to deny us access to a broadcasting booth at the Pentagon that we’ve used for many decades. Despite the significant obstacles this presents to our ability to gather and report news in the national public interest, we will continue to report with the same integrity and rigor NBC News always has.”

You were wondering when Trump would make his move….well wonder no more.

Making sure the Liberal publications are excluded from the press conferences for the Pentagon.

Supposedly it is for only a year but my bet it will be continuing even after the year.

Controlling the narrative has always been Trump’s aim and now he has started…. where will it end?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

The First Amendment–WTF?

We have people telling us that the jack boots are on the way…..dismiss their thoughts if you will but think about this incident in Kansas…..

Police officers and sheriff’s deputies raided the offices of a Kansas newspaper on Friday, taking computers and cellphones, apparently in response to a confidential source providing documents to the paper’s staff. The officers seized “everything we have,” said Eric Meyer, owner and publisher of the Marion County Record. The message of the raid was clear, Meyer said, per the Kansas Reflector: “Mind your own business or we’re going to step on you.” With the equipment gone, Meyer said he’s not sure how the weekly’s staff will be able to send the next edition to press on Tuesday night.

The Record had run news articles about Kari Newell, a restaurant owner, having been convicted of drunken driving and continuing to drive without a license. Its reporters were expelled from a public session with Republican US Rep. Jake LaTurner, though he had invited them, by Newell last week, which the Record published a story about here. The officers brought a search warrant with them for the raid, which involved the City of Marion’s entire police force, but it seems to be in violation of federal law—which requires law enforcement officers to subpoena materials, not just seize them. The magistrate judge who signed the warrant did not answer a request by the Reflector for comment. Nor did the police chief immediately respond to a request by Courthouse News Service.

Police went to Meyer’s home at the same time with the warrant, which lists allegations of identity theft and unlawful use of a computer. The executive director of the Kansas Press Association said the police raid is unprecedented in the state. “An attack on a newspaper office through an illegal search is not just an infringement on the rights of journalists but an assault on the very foundation of democracy and the public’s right to know,” Emily Bradbury said. “This cannot be allowed to stand.” Meyer, whose journalism career has included nearly a half-century at the Milwaukee Journal and the University of Illinois, said he’s never heard of such a raid. “It’s going to have a chilling effect on us even tackling issues,” he said, and “a chilling effect on people giving us information.”

This raid has caused one death….a 98 year old mother…..

The day after police raided the office of the Kansas newspaper she co-owned, along with her own home, Joan Meyer collapsed and died. Meyer co-owned the Marion County Record with her son Eric Meyer, the paper’s publisher, and along with the newspaper office, police also descended on their home Friday. According to the Record, Joan Meyer, who was 98 and “otherwise in good health for her age,” watched in tears as police seized her computer as well as a router used by her Alexa smart speaker (leaving her unable to use it for assistance, the paper notes), left a mess of cords tangled on the floor, and pawed through her son’s papers. She wasn’t able to eat or sleep after that, the paper says, and on Saturday, she collapsed at her home and died. The paper says the raids contributed to Meyer’s death, leaving her “stressed beyond her limits.”

  • “Died in the line of duty”: In an opinion piece at the Kansas City Star, Melinda Henneberger agrees with the Record‘s assessment, writing of Meyer, a journalist since 1953, “It is not hyperbole to say that this attack on the people’s right to know appears to have killed her.” Henneberger says that one of the last comments Meyer made was to tell a colleague of the police raid, “These are Hitler tactics.”
  • News organizations condemn raid: Thirty-four media outlets, including the AP, CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, signed a four-page letter to Marion’s police chief condemning the raid and calling on the department to immediately return all the materials that were seized, CNN reports. “There appears to be no justification for the breadth and intrusiveness of the search … and we are concerned that it may have violated federal law strictly limiting federal, state, and local law enforcement’s ability to conduct newsroom searches,” the letter reads.
  • Business owner’s involvement: The raid appears to be connected to local businesswoman Kari Newell. The Record received a tip that Newell had her driver’s license suspended after a DUI and yet continued to drive without a license; ultimately, suspecting the information had been leaked “as part of legal sparring” between Newell and her estranged husband amid divorce proceedings, the newspaper decided against publishing a story about it. (It did, however, publish a story about Newell kicking its reporters out of a congressman’s open forum and a follow-up story about Newell herself, at a city council meeting, falsely accusing the paper of having illegally obtained the DUI info about her; that story goes into great detail about the timeline of the paper’s involvement with Newell.)
  • Business owner’s statement: Newell released a lengthy statement on Facebook denying any involvement in the police raid. “It’s truly beyond me how people think I alone am capable of having a newspaper raided. Even in small town America we have the same processes any larger city does to make this happen,” she writes, going on to allege that identity theft was involved in gaining information about her.
  • As for those allegations: The newspaper denies Newell’s allegations, and explains that a reporter legally used her own personal information to obtain the same information that had been received in the tip, which was available publicly—and that, after deciding not to publish a story about the matter, the paper instead notified local police about the allegations that Newell drove without a license. Local police then alerted Newell to what was going on, and the raid followed.
  • Police respond: According to the Kansas Reflector, the Marion Police Department posted its own statement to Facebook Saturday claiming that while federal law protects journalists from searches and seizures, that law doesn’t apply if reporters are suspected of a crime (in this case, apparently, the supposed identity theft Newell alleges took place). “I believe when the rest of the story is available to the public, the judicial system that is being questioned will be vindicated,” the statement reads.

https://www.alternet.org/marion-county-record/

I know I bitch about the media and its antics but with all that aside I still believe in a free press….and that the people have a right to know the whole story.

SO if you do not believe we are heading in the wrong direction then maybe you should open your eyes and pay closer attention to what is happening in our beloved country.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–06Mar19

We Americans are proud of our rights….especially our freedom of the press thing……but where does the US fall in the grand scheme of freedom of the press?

There is a World Press Index…..

Freedom of the press. 1. Norway 2. Sweden 3. Netherlands 4. Finland 5. Switzerland 6. Jamaica 7. Belgium 8. NZ 9. Denmark 10. Costa Rica 11. Austria 12. Estonia 13. Iceland 14. Portugal 15. Germany ……40. United States……140. China……..(World Press Freedom Index)

Those “socialist” countries of Scandinavia lead the way in freedom of the press……but don’t tell conservatives and the GOP for it will screw up their rhetoric and narrative for decades.

All this is Making America Great Again, Mr. Trump……and you make it great again by attacking one of our best freedoms?

You people, Trump supporters, are a bunch of deluded slugs if you believe a word of the Trump Lie Machine.

So I have said…so I have written!

Turn The Page!

A Price To Pay To Criticize The Saudis!

The big international story right now is the possible assassination of a WaPo journalist, Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey…..

Missing journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed inside the Saudi Arabian consulate in Turkey by a 15-member team dispatched by Riyadh specifically to murder him, two Turkish officials tell the Washington Post. “It was a preplanned murder,” one says. A third backs up that account. “The initial assessment of the Turkish police is that Mr. Khashoggi has been killed at the consulate of Saudi Arabia in Istanbul,” the official tells the AP. “We believe that the murder was premeditated and the body was subsequently moved out of the consulate.” Khashoggi friend Turan Kislakci told the AP on Sunday that officials told him, “He was killed, make your funeral preparations. We called a few other places, these are lower officials, but they said: ‘We have evidence he was killed in a barbaric way.'” Khashoggi was made to “faint,” then dismembered, officials told him.

Khashoggi, who wrote for the Post and often critically of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was at the consulate to complete paperwork so that he could marry his Turkish fiance. Saudi Arabia, which contends that Khashoggi left the consulate without incident, pushed back on the report, saying that an official at the consulate “expressed doubt that they came from Turkish officials that are informed of the investigation or are authorized to comment on the issue.”

Further incidents keep pointing to some sort of wrong doing by the Saudis…..security film has gone “missing”……

Security camera footage was removed from the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and Turkish staff were abruptly told to take a holiday on the day the dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi disappeared while inside the building, Turkish authorities have claimed.

A week after Khashoggi vanished in the heart of Turkey’s biggest city, details of the investigation into his disappearance continued to point towards Riyadh having ordered Khashoggi’s seizure.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/09/khashoggi-case-cctv-disappears-from-saudi-consulate-in-turkey

At late events are changing almost momentarily…….Turkey will be given access to the Saudi consulate….but any evidence will be long gone, IMO……

Turkey said Tuesday it will search the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul as it investigates why journalist Jamal Khashoggi vanished there a week ago, an extraordinary probe of a diplomatic post amid Turkish officials’ fears the writer had been killed inside the building. That Saudi Arabia would allow foreigners to enter a consulate and search it shows the growing international pressure the kingdom faces over the disappearance of Khashoggi, a contributor to the Washington Post who has criticized the Saudi government. The Saudis have called allegations of any involvement in his disappearance “baseless,” but had no immediate comment on Turkey’s announcement. It remained unclear when the search would take place, reports the AP.

So far, the kingdom has offered no evidence in the past seven days to show the 59-year-old ever left the building, as a new surveillance photo surfaced that showed him walking in on Oct. 2 to obtain paperwork to marry his Turkish fiancée. The door Khashoggi used appeared to be the main entrance of the consulate in Istanbul’s 4th Levent neighborhood, a leafy, upscale district that’s home to several other consulates. The consulate has other entrances and exits as well, and Saudi officials insist he left through one of them, though they have offered no surveillance footage or evidence to corroborate their claims. Two Turkish officials previously told the Post they believe a 15-person team killed him within the consulate and possibly dismembered him, though Turkey has provided no evidence to that end. Read more on their claims here.

I have been waiting for someone in our government to do more than shake their head and say “those darn Saudis” under their breath…..Rand Paul steps up……

The latest fallout from the disappearance and presumptive murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi could see the Saudis losing their main source of arms. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) says he intends to force a vote on blocking further US arms sales to the Saudi kingdom.

Sen. Paul announced the plan on a local radio show, saying he hopes to force a vote in the Senate by the end of the week which would force a full halt to US arms shipments if there is “any indication” the Saudis are behind killing Khashoggi.

(antiwar.com)

I would like to see this criticism go deeper than Paul for he has proven to be a media whore looking for headlines more than change.

The more we see of this crown prince ,MbS, the more savagery we see around him….is this the ally we want in an unstable region?

Freedom Of The Press

We Americans pride ourselves on our freedoms…..freedom of religions and the biggie freedom of the press.

But for over a year now we Americans have been having this tug of war with our press freedom….some say “fake news” is everywhere….I disagree…..yep there is some form of fake news but is it widespread….nope only in the small minds of certain people.

President Donald Trump, who recently said he would announce the “MOST DISHONEST & CORRUPT MEDIA AWARDS OF THE YEAR,” has been awarded the title of the world’s most oppressive leader toward press freedom by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Trump claimed the journalism organization’s top prize for “overall achievement in undermining global press freedom,” and joins four other leaders, including strongmen like Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Russian leader Vladimir Putin, who “have gone above and beyond to silence critical voices and weaken democracy,” the Committee to Protect Journalists said Monday.

The group said its awards were for “recognizing world leaders who have gone out of their way to attack the press and undermine the norms that support freedom of the media.” Though CPJ determined that countries like Russia and China hold the tightest grip on their national media, it declared Trump the winner for “overall achievement.”

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-oppressor-press-freedom_us_5a54bc75e4b003133ecc3439

I have a pretty good idea on who will win the Trump fake news award…..fair is fair….tit for tat….all those cliches.

Could the “award” be a violation of ethics?

Every awards show has its critics, but President Donald Trump’s much ballyhooed “Fake News Awards” has drawn attention from a group beyond the usual peanut gallery: ethics experts who say the event could run afoul of White House rules and, depending on what exactly the president says during the proceedings, the First Amendment.

The White House has not yet said what form the awards presentation, scheduled by Trump for Wednesday, may take. But Norman Eisen, the former special counsel for ethics for President Barack Obama, and Walter Shaub, the former head of the Office of Government Ethics, have both tweeted that if White House staff members were involved, they would be in violation of the executive branch’s Standards of Ethical Conduct, which ban employees from using their office for “the endorsement of any product, service or enterprise.”

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/15/trump-fake-news-awards-ethics-339183

Hate Speech vs. Free Speech

After the last shooting, the one that claimed a Congressman (since there are so many I wanted to clarify which shooting) there has been much written about the aftermath…all the hate filled post and Tweets.

Rabid conservs attack libs as the cause of the horrible attack and then it is the Libs turn to attack conservs and along the same lines…..all in all it is hate speech disguised as “news”.

That leads us to the debate on “free speech”.

Whenever someone mentions how destructive hate speech can be there will inevitably bring about some person harping on the first amendment…..and how trying to control hate speech will inevitably lead to the end of our republic.

I have tried to take on this topic in the past…..

Source: That Thing Called “Free Speech” – In Saner Thought

I recently read a piece of this subject written by a law professor……..

Since its inception as America’s founding political document, there have been 27 amendments to the United States Constitution. Even the most adept scholars can rarely name and define each one. Many amendments are obscure and deal with legal nuances like changes in representation and how to handle US citizens who come into a foreign title of nobility. While these constitutional adjustments rarely get public attention, the First Amendment continues to spark controversy across a wide swath of the US population. What is free speech? What does the Constitution protect? What is the difference between hate speech and free speech? With the recent attention on the safe space movement on college campuses, it’s increasingly important to understand the legal parameters of the First Amendment.

………

The wording of the First Amendment is relatively straightforward. At the core, Americans receive protections to exercise their religious beliefs freely, with specific prohibitions against the government passing laws to restrict religious practice. In addition, free speech is protected as well as a free press, with no restriction on citizens assembling peaceably. The confusion comes when people don’t understand what each of those things means, or when broader interpretations are applied to legal definitions that are, in reality, more narrow.

Source: Hate Speech vs. Free Speech: A Critical Analysis by Constitutional Law Expert Sujit Choudhry

We could solve this problem with a little civility toward each other and refuse to repeat words from the haters (people that live to hate)……there is no dishonor in being civil with each other.

Why Not Hide From The Press?

The back and forth of the Trump goons against the press has taken a really cool turn…..

We all know that he banned certain press groups from a briefing…..

Shortly after President Donald Trump vowed to “do something” about the “cunning” media who he’s called “the enemy” of the American people, CNN announced on air it, and other members of the press, had been barred from today’s White House briefing.

CNN reports The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and Politico also were told they were not on the White House list for today’s off-camera briefing. The Washington Post reports it did not have a reporter present, at the time.

The New York Times also reported that it, CNN and Politico were not allowed to enter White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s office, calling it “an unsual breach of protocol.

It does not stop there.  Trump has decided that he will not appear at the “Nerd Prom”, the Correspondence Dinner, for whatever reason.

Well as could be predicted there has been a bunch of ink wasted on this turn of events…..it is nothing new for him to hide from the press…..

About here it is time for another of the Professor’s historical perspectives…..

Our 3rd president, Thomas Jefferson (another Repub, go figure), had his problems with the press of his day…..

Trump is by no means the first American leader to fall out with the press and fail to see the joke. Thomas Jefferson, the third US president, complained bitterly about what would now be called fake news, a subject close to Trump’s heart. “Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle,” Jefferson wrote in 1807.

Luckily for him, perhaps, Jefferson did not have to break bread with journalists in front of television cameras. The WHCA was not formed until 1914 and its annual dinners began in 1921. But age-old tensions were not dispelled.

Source: Donald Trump is not the first US president to boycott press events | US news | The Guardian

Jefferson’s problems with the press seems to have been a harbinger of things to come for Republican presidents…..and it never ended….now did it?

Personally I think Trump had to not go to this Nerd Prom for his fragile ego would not let him sit there and take what is dealt out…..that is without some sort of retaliation.

Will There Be Freedom Of The Press?

Praise the internet gods!  My connectivity has returned……(for now)…….

In the past year there has been an uproar about “fake news”….both sides claim the other is the fake and no one but them can know what is true and what is false.  Of course when this type of debate rages there will always be one side or the other that claims something about the freedom of press, which usually includes that old thing about free speech.

I wrote a post earlier about “free speech” and what it means……

Source: That Thing Called “Free Speech” – In Saner Thought

The 1st amendment and the 2nd are about the only ones that most Americans know by heart (that may be a bit of a stretch)…..but just in case….

The right, guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, to gather, publish, and distribute information and ideas without government restriction; this right encompasses freedom from prior restraints on publication and freedom from Censorship.

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reads, in part, “Congress shall make no law… abridging the Freedom of Speech, or of the press.” The courts have long struggled to determine whether the Framers of the Constitution intended to differentiate press freedom from speech freedom. Most have concluded that freedom of the press derives from freedom of speech. Although some cases and some legal scholars, including Justice Potter Stewart, of the U.S. Supreme Court, have advocated special press protections distinct from those accorded to speech, most justices believe that the Freedom of the Press Clause has no significance independent of the Freedom of Speech Clause.

Okay I got you caught up a bit……

The reason I brought up the quick lesson was because of something that is happening….looks like the FBI will have an easy time spying on journalists…..

Secret FBI rules allow agents to obtain journalists’ phone records with approval from two internal officials — far less oversight than under normal judicial procedures.

The classified rules, obtained by The Intercept and dating from 2013, govern the FBI’s use of national security letters, which allow the bureau to obtain information about journalists’ calls without going to a judge or informing the news organization being targeted. They have previously been released only in heavily redacted form.

Media advocates said the documents show that the FBI imposes few constraints on itself when it bypasses the requirement to go to court and obtain subpoenas or search warrants before accessing journalists’ information.

Source: Secret Rules Make It Pretty Easy for the FBI to Spy on Journalists

This does NOTHING to protect the concept of a “Free Press”….and Obama help this process before he left office……

Source: The Birth Of The “Ministry Of Truth” – In Saner Thought

Do you feel much safer now?

The War Against Alternative Information

I recently wrote a piece about the establishment of the US “Ministry of Truth”…..something that the government wants to add to an existing bill so they can decide what is “truth” and what is “fake”…..

Does anyone recall the “Ministry of Enlightenment and Propaganda”?

Do not hurt yourself diving for Google…..it is the title that Hitler bestowed on Joseph Geobbels…..there was a governmental agency that had a lock on the “Truth”….why do I bring this up?

I am so glad that you asked that one important question.

Source: The Birth Of The “Ministry Of Truth” – In Saner Thought

Since I wrote that op-ed back in the closing days of 2016….others have started commenting on this new “Ministry of Truth”……

The U.S. establishment is not content simply to have domination over the media narratives on critical foreign policy issues, such as Syria, Ukraine and Russia. It wants total domination. Thus we now have the “Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act” that President Obama signed into law on Dec. 23 as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2017, setting aside $160 million to combat any “propaganda” that challenges Official Washington’s version of reality.

The new law mandates the U.S. Secretary of State to collaborate with the Secretary of Defense, Director of National Intelligence and other federal agencies to create a Global Engagement Center “to lead, synchronize, and coordinate efforts of the Federal Government to recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining United States national security interests.” The law directs the Center to be formed in 180 days and to share expertise among agencies and to “coordinate with allied nations.”

Source: The War Against Alternative Information – Consortiumnews

Very soon the government will decide what news you are going to see and hear….not exactly what a free press means to me….how about you?

Feed the fear of the ignorant and you control the game….chuq–09Jan17

The Birth Of The “Ministry Of Truth”

Does anyone recall the “Ministry of Enlightenment and Propaganda”?

Do not hurt yourself diving for Google…..it is the title that Hitler bestowed on Joseph Geobbels…..there was a governmental agency that had a lock on the “Truth”….why do I bring this up?

I am so glad that you asked that one important question.

While you were out wasting your hard earned cash on gifts for people that probably could care less our present president, the one we have now…not the one waiting in the wings for the helm of the government……signed a bill into law…..

President Obama quietly signed the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act into law, which authorizes a military spending budget of $611 billion, and includes the dangerous Counter Disinformation and Anti-Propaganda Act.

This bill, as we reportedly previously, will “Criminalize ‘Fake News, Propaganda’ on the Web,” a key piece of legislation meant to crack down on free speech and independent media. In Layman’s terms, the act will allow the government to crack down with impunity against any media outlet it deems “propaganda.” The next piece of the legislation will provide substantial amounts of money to fund “counter propaganda,” to make sure the government’s approved stories drown out alternative media and journalists who question the status quo.

The “right to free speech and freedom of the press,” is guaranteed by the First Amendment to The U.S. Constitution. It is a foundation of American values, put in place by our Founding Fathers to protect our liberties, is now being endangered by this new law.

(A post on Free Speech would be a good way to start 2017)

This is not the first time that the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) was used to disguise a piece of legislation. Back in 2012, Obama signed a law that allowed for the “indefinite detention of American citizens” without a judge or jury. Then in 2013, Obama signed an NDAA bill that packaged an end to the Smith-Mundit act that prevented the government from using propaganda against its own citizens enabling the government again to legally produce propaganda.

What does that mean for you if you are an independent journalist or blogger? You can read more here, but it means that for simply writing this and asking questions and pointing out that Obama always signs these bills around the holidays like I did in this poem, if I am accused of “fake news” or propaganda, I could face criminal charges.

In other words the stage is now set for the U.S. government to legally crack down on every media outlet that the they deem to be “foreign propaganda.” The ministry of truth is setup. Welcome to 1984.

Plus we have a leader that has much animosity toward the media….how will that play out after 20Jan?