Journalism

"Some fear that without [Radio Free Asia], the world will forget the Uyghurs’ suffering. I do not share that fear."

"For nearly three decades, Radio Free Asia has provided critical Tibet coverage, serving as an information lifeline for Tibetan audiences living under China’s [totalitarian] rule and connecting them to Tibetans in exile – and all the while offering a rare window into life in the highly restricted region."

"Media reports on “cults” frequently show bias and hasty, inadequate research methods, and are shaped by a militant secularism that showcases a group’s weirdest beliefs without context or any explanatory framework. Many journalists openly declare their mandate to “unmask” the cults and their proto-criminal leaders. They will seek out apostates and whistleblowers who are dedicated to broadcasting the “bad news” about their former religion."

"…American sociologist George Yancey in his 2015 book “Hostile Environment” focused on American media bias against Christianity and conservative religion in general and found its roots in the fact that mainline U.S. journalism is a self-perpetuating caste. If you are an Evangelical Christian or do not agree with the prevailing liberal and secular ideology, particularly on moral matters, you will be thrown out of the first interview when you will try to be hired by one of the mainline media."

"Serious newspapers publish attacks against minority religions they would [feel] ashamed of printing if they were directed against Catholicism, Judaism, or Islam—without realizing that the doctrines of mainline religions would appear just as strange as those of these smaller groups to those who would encounter them for the first time."

"When media outlets abandon neutrality and adopt the grievances of activists, when courts are pressured to litigate ideology instead of law, and when murderers are rebranded as martyrs, we risk turning justice into baroque theater. …justice is not a popularity contest. In the age of media activism, even murder can be rebranded—if the story is compelling enough."

"The key principle of [World Press Freedom Day] is the right of every individual to receive and share truthful and impartial information. Indeed, free access to information is a cornerstone of a just society."

"In recent times, media trials have become more important than trials in courts. Our objectivity has given way to systematic undermining of facts. It took us about five thousand years to create diverse and deeply profound versions of the Mahabharat and the Ramayana, but in our present era, dubious versions of each contemporary tragedy, or farce, are ready within minutes. Truth, at various levels, has been the first casualty of the media. Infact, reality gets distorted so rapidly that it becomes unrecognizable."

"[O]ne of the first networks to develop open-source methods into a reporting style of their own and attract a critical mass of people who are good at this work."

"There are things that can be done as part of investigations that aren’t particularly difficult, but require the sort of personality that finds it rewarding to dig through huge amounts of rubbish to find that rare piece of gold that adds something to an investigation. And when working with social media and open-source information, that’s a pretty key trait."

"Bellingcat has been deemed such a threat to Russia that we've been declared a foreign agent. I guess this is the Russian Nobel Prize?"

"We are willing to continue our investigation and correct mistakes, provided the Kremlin takes a clear stand. It is up to the Kremlin to prove why the facts we have presented are mere coincidences. The Kremlin needs to prove us wrong."

"The advantage of having Bellingcat doing it is that you don’t have to have a sources-and-methods debate within your government."

"Bellingcat is an independent international collective of researchers, investigators and citizen journalists using open source and social media investigation to probe a variety of subjects – from Mexican drug lords and crimes against humanity, to tracking the use of chemical weapons and conflicts worldwide. With staff and contributors in more than 20 countries around the world, we operate in a unique field where advanced technology, forensic research, journalism, investigations, transparency,and accountability come together."

"Kissinger, with his professorial background, presented himself as someone who could handle criticism. But he hated leaks, once telling a Chinese delegation that “our bureaucracy doesn’t always speak with one voice, and … those who don’t speak with one voice usually speak to the New York Times.”"

"[We would] crack down on the unfair schemes that give big corporations a leg up. It’s time to deal in hardworking Americans and ensure the super-wealthy pay their fair share"

"These leaks are slowly and systematically destroying us.… It could destroy our ability to conduct foreign policy."

"The Blairs pay full tax on all their earnings. And have never used offshore schemes either to hide transactions or avoid tax."

"The ability to hide money has a direct impact on your life... it affects your child's access to education, access to health, access to a home"

"We're talking about presidents, we're talking about prime ministers. We're talking about rock stars. We're talking about porn stars and people that have been convicted of crimes all over the world"

"[ South Dakota and Nevada are among the U.S. states that have] adopted financial secrecy laws that rival those of w:offshore jurisdictions"

"We're able to see how this parallel universe really works in a way we've never been able to before"

"This scandal shows we cannot talk about the rule of law any more in Hungary. Our demand is the resignation of the government."

"The PM has assaulted democratic institutions by using the weapons grade spyware against them. For me, this is not a matter of privacy, it is an anti-national act, treason. The weapon was used against me, SC, other leaders, journalists, activists. Then why should we not debate the issue in Parliament? What is the reason the discussion is not happening. This is the question."

"Freedom of media, free press is one of the core values of the EU. It is completely unacceptable if this [hacking] were to be the case."

"No country is free from the slave media. The freedom from ‘Godi Media’ will bring new freedom."

"“99.99 per cent of Indian media is ‘Godi Media’, doing ‘chamchagiri’ of Narendra Modi, showing ‘bakwas’…. TV is making a fool of you, brainwashing you with bogus debates and propaganda”:"

"The POLITICO's goals are simple. Over the past several weeks, we set out to assemble the most talented and interesting collection of journalists -- established names as well as promising young people -- that we could find. Now, we will turn these reporters loose on the subject we love: national politics."

"POLITICO strives to be the dominant source for news on politics and policy in power centers across every continent where access to reliable information, nonpartisan journalism and real-time tools create, inform and engage a global citizenry."

"POLITICO, the world’s leading global news operation and information service specializing in politics and policy, today announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire E&E News, the renowned news organization focused solely on energy and the environment, now in its 22nd year"

"Wikipedia's notability policy can be confusing and difficult to explain, especially to new users. The general notability guideline's requirement of significant coverage in independent reliable sources is simply an approximation for deciding whether an article topic is notable... The concept of notability can also be described as a measure of the topic's impact, particularly with biographic articles. Think like an historian: Why will this topic be remembered? How did it impact the community? What is different now because this happened? How does knowledge about this topic help us to explain the world around us? These notability-proving impacts don't have to be total paradigm shifts in human thought. In short: who cares and why?...When evaluating the notability of people who might be known for one event, can that person's biographical details help people understand that event? If so, they are possibly notable. If they are merely participants in the event itself, that person is probably not notable."

"Notable... standing above others in rank, importance, or achievement Synonyms of notable:... bright, distinguished, eminent, illustrious, luminous, noble, noteworthy, outstanding, preeminent, prestigious... Words Related to notable: celebrated, exalted, famed, famous, glorious, honored, renowned, reputable, infamous, notorious, quotable, repeatable, indelible, unforgettable, newsworthy, citable, memorable, mentionable, noteworthy, observable, remarkable ... Antonyms of notable: forgettable, unmemorable, unremarkable Near Antonyms of notable: insignificant, minor, unimportant, average, inferior, mediocre, obscure... average, ordinary, prosaic, routine, run-of-the-mill, standard, unexceptional..."

"Notable: important and deserving attention"

"Regime changes in Iraq and Libya, Syria’s war, Venezuela’s crisis, sanctions on Cuba, Iran, Russia, and North Korea are reflections of a new global imperialism imposed by a core of capitalist nations in support of trillions of dollars of concentrated investment wealth. This new world order of mass capital has become a totalitarian empire of inequality and repression... Recognizing global imperialism as a manifestation of concentrated wealth, managed by a few hundred people, is of utmost importance for democratic humanitarian activists. We must stand on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and challenge global imperialism and its fascist governments, media propaganda, and empire armies."

"The federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) continues to push ahead with their latest attempt to lease land near Chaco National Historical Park in New Mexico and other sites, which are sacred to Native American tribes, to oil and gas drilling companies... There has been little to no media coverage regarding...the BLM’s plans for these sacred grounds."

"In 2009 Illinois legislators signed into law the Video Gaming Act which legalized video gambling and paved the way for rapid and massive installation of such machines across the state. These machines were supposed to solve the state’s woeful finances—instead, a decade later, the state has lost over $1 billion on video gambling and has opened the gates to a flood of new problems—including a whirlwind rise in gambling addiction... Coverage of video gambling in Illinois has been limited... The Chicago Tribune—Illinois’s largest paper—has ignored the negatives of video gambling, and no other major national paper has covered the topic in any depth."

"International opinion largely opposes Donald Trump’s current and threatened intervention in Venezuela, but that’s not the impression you get US corporate news media, who appear to be all-in with Trump’s push for the ouster of democratically elected President Nicolás Maduro... In reality, 75 percent of the world’s countries reject the US anointing of Juan Guaidó—whom most Venezuelans hadn’t heard of when Trump declared him their leader. And the UN has formally condemned US sanctions on Venezuela, which a special rapporteur compared to a “medieval siege.”...Corporate media’s fealty to the idea that the United States has the right if not the duty to overthrow other countries’ leadership to suit our—some of our—interests doesn’t begin and end with Venezuela. But the history of coverage of the country is especially illustrative of what it looks like when elite media work strenuously to maintain the storyline on an “official enemy.”"

"While the New York Times has been sandbagging Sen. Bernie Sanders (Ind.–Vermont) for years (Rolling Stone, 3/15/16), last weekend’s headline: “Bernie Sanders Is Making Changes for 2020, but His Desire for Control Remains” (3/1/19) is a particularly overt example... Unless one reads past the headline, which most Americans don’t, one is left wondering about what exactly Sanders desires to “control.” Is it the country? The media? When one actually digs into the Times’ article, written by Sydney Ember and Jonathan Martin, one quickly discovers that what Sanders desires to control is his own campaign, and that his oppressed victims were his highly paid media consultants, who quit because Sanders was “not willing to empower them.” Left unreported by the Times were statements by the consultants themselves (CNBC, 2/26/19) claiming that they were leaving on a “very positive note” over “differences in a creative vision,” and that they would be happy to assist his campaign again in the future. In the Times version, instead, we’re given anonymous sources described as “Democrats directly familiar with the episode” who give the impression the consultants were “enraged” over their “humiliation.”"

"It’s vital to have a discussion of such abuses, backed by $3 billion in annual US military aid to Israel. Instead, we got another debate on how to label Ilhan Omar. Which was exactly her point."

"WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should never have been punished for working with a whistleblower to expose war crimes.... The material exposed atrocities perpetrated by the US military, as well as other disgraceful acts—like US diplomats strategizing on how to undermine elected governments out of favor with Washington, spying on official US allies and bullying poor countries into paying wildly exorbitant prices for life-saving drugs... The point of journalism is to expose horrific crimes like this so that the powerful people who order them pay legal consequences, not the ones who expose them."

"But none of this appears to matter to the Western media, which have portrayed Camacho as a “conservative protest leader” (BBC, 11/13/19), “a firebrand Christian” (Financial Times, 11/12/19) and a “civic leader” (Reuters, 11/7/19)."

"...We live in a society where some people have a great deal of power, and most people have very little. And that this works out well for the few and not so well for the many. This plays out in the political realm with the few using their power to support candidates who would maintain that power. In the past..[news] outlets told us very little about which candidates were beholden to whose interests,,, ensuring that few people outside the donor class were aware of who was doing the donating. A funny thing happened in the 21st century: The development of digital technologies made it much cheaper to create and distribute information... this ability allows us to have conversations about politics that we’ve always needed and never have had until now... These discussions of candidates’ financial and policy histories can look like negativity—because it’s seldom good news when a line can be drawn between where politicians gets their resources and how they do their jobs. But the possibility of picking nominees based on who can best serve the interests of voters rather than donors is really one of the most positive developments in modern politics."

"In addition to whitewashing Áñez, corporate journalists have sought to sanitize the image of the figure widely considered to be the real force behind the coup: Christian fundamentalist multimillionaire Luis Fernando Camacho."

"Camacho is quite literally a fascist who got his political start in the sieg-heiling Santa Cruz Youth Union, an ultra-right paramilitary outfit that was instrumental in the Santa Cruz oligarchy’s 2008 US-backed secessionist plot which ultimately failed."

"It’s easy enough to find reporting in major US news outlets describing the hardships many Americans are facing. But lamenting inequality is one thing, and acknowledging—or, God forbid, highlighting—efforts to rectify it are very much another for corporate media."

"Though it was not their intention, Ilhan Omar’s critics did her a favor: They proved the very point she made at the Progressive Issues Town Hall at Busboys and Poets bookstore in Washington, DC, last week. ...Omar’s points: The United States’ allegiance to Israel, right or wrong, is unwavering, and any questioning of Israeli policy and the Palestinian plight is “unacceptable” and will be linked to antisemitism in order to squash debate... Journalists wore their bias on their sleeve. At the Washington Post (3/4/19), Dana Milbank likened Omar’s bigotry to that of Donald Trump, accusing her of “using President Trump’s playbook.” And Henry Olson, who (3/4/19) likened her to Rep. Steve King (R.-Iowa), the congressmember who embraces white nationalism, demanded that Omar be punished even if she had done nothing wrong..."

"Abrams’ public record in Latin America and elsewhere, as an official under Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, ought to be central in any reporting on his current Venezuelan adventure. But it only really got on media’s front burner when Abrams’ was confronted with it by Rep. Ilhan Omar in a House Foreign Affairs Committee meeting, an exchange then subsumed in media’s “Hot Controversy of the Day” framework. After the exchange with Representative Omar, Elliott Abrams sent a message to the Washington Post that described his role in the Reagan administration, saying, “It’s a remarkable record of support for Latin democracy, of which Representative Omar is obviously unaware and in which she is uninterested.” And he added, “That was clear from her conduct, which constituted attacking rather than questioning a witness.” The idea that Omar was speaking from ignorance—set aside her purported incivility as the conduct with which we should be concerned—but the idea that she was factually wrong, that she doesn’t know her history; for reporters to let that stand, as if to say, “who’s right depends on who you like”—it feels like an abdication of duty."

"It’s the power of the people, and people are in the streets—hundreds of thousands of people in the streets in US cities, and in cities around the world—in support of the Movement for Black Lives, and against police brutality... we can’t rely on the legal system, but it’s a tool that we have to use... my organization, the National Lawyers Guild, is front and center in the middle of legal defense for the protesters... to witness what the police are doing... they have been the target of police brutality and violence... there is an ACLU lawsuit... asking for an injunction against these federal agents targeting legal observers, and targeting journalists as well, because the last thing in the world that the Trump administration and his goons want are witnesses, are media that are witnessing what’s happening... there are lawsuits being filed in support of the real power, and that is the power of the people."

"It’s critically important that media provide accurate reporting on what our governments are choosing to do, and what price we are likely to pay for their choices. Instead, Newsweek is giving us the latest fashion reports on the emperor’s new clothes."

"In order to have a legal arrest, you need probable cause to believe that the person committed a crime. And these snatches, by unidentified federal officials in unmarked vehicles, snatching peaceful protesters off the streets, transporting them to unknown locations without informing them of why they’re being arrested, and later releasing them with no record of their arrest, violates the law. And this “proactive” arrest that the Department of Homeland Security is intending to carry out, violates the Fourth Amendment, which requires that, as I said, an arrest be supported by probable cause.... There is nothing in the law that allows “proactive arrest.”"