Tag: journalists

Israel kills three journalists in south Lebanon after strike on press vehicle

The Israeli army killed veteran Al-Manar correspondent Ali Shoeib, Al-Mayadeen journalist Fatima Ftouni, and her brother, photojournalist Mohammad Ftouni, during a double-tap drone strike on a press vehicle in southern Lebanon on 28 March.

The Israeli attack wiped out the entire media team traveling together to deliver coverage of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon’s south. Media officials confirmed the team was inside a clearly marked “PRESS” vehicle when it was bombed.

Images show the car was moving along a forested road in the town of Jezzine with very little traffic due to the forced displacement of residents, confirming a deliberate targeted strike.

The area was then targeted again with a second strike after people attempted to provide aid. The Israeli military broadcast video of the attack, claiming that Shoeib was a “terrorist in the intelligence unit of Hezbollah’s Radwan Force.”

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SCOTUS Rejects Citizen Journalist’s Case Against Officials Who Arrested Her for Asking Police Questions

Priscilla Villarreal built a following in the way modern news often grows now. Not through printing presses or broadcast towers, but through a Facebook page that drew more than 200,000 people into its orbit.

In Laredo, Texas, under the name La Gordiloca, she reported quickly, conversationally, sometimes uncomfortably close to the raw edge of events.

In 2017, she texted a police officer to confirm the identities of two victims, one from a suicide, one from a car accident. She received answers. She published them.

Months later, she was arrested.

The law used against her had been sitting unused for 23 years. It makes it a felony to solicit nonpublic information from a government official “with intent to obtain a benefit.”

In Villarreal’s case, authorities argued that the benefit was popularity, more followers, more attention, more reach.

In other words, doing well at the job became the job’s alleged crime.

A state judge dismissed the charges, finding the statute too vague to stand. That might have sounded like a resolution, the system correcting itself in the end.

Instead, it became the beginning of a second act.

Villarreal filed a civil rights lawsuit against the officials involved in her arrest. The response was immediate and familiar within legal circles: “Qualified immunity.”

The doctrine protects government officials from liability unless there is already a court decision declaring nearly identical conduct unconstitutional.

No case had ever addressed the idea of arresting a journalist for asking a question over text.

A three-judge panel initially sided with Villarreal, stating, “If the First Amendment means anything, it surely means that a citizen journalist has the right to ask a public official a question, without fear of being imprisoned. Yet that is exactly what happened here: Priscilla Villarreal was put in jail for asking a police officer a question. If that is not an obvious violation of the Constitution, it’s hard to imagine what would be.”

The clarity of that statement did not last.

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Pentagon Wants It to Be Illegal for Reporters to Ask “Unauthorized” Questions

A judge last week struck down the Pentagon’s restrictions on journalists seeking “unauthorized” information, siding with the New York Times in its lawsuit against the government. In response, the Pentagon on Monday added some meaningless window dressing and essentially reissued the same restrictions. The administration pledged to “immediately” appeal the decision on the original policy, and on Tuesday, the Times filed a motion to compel the administration to comply with the judge’s order. 

As alarming as the Pentagon’s antics are, the Times’ lawsuit is not the only case about whether reporters have the right to ask questions. It’s not even the only one in the news this week. 

In 2017, police in Laredo, Texas, arrested citizen journalist Patricia Villarreal under an obscure and never previously used law making it a felony to ask government employees for nonpublic information for personal benefit. Her supposed crime was asking a police officer about two local tragedies — a suicide and a deadly car wreck.

Her arrest was widely ridiculed, and a judge quickly threw out the charges. When Villarreal sued over her arrest and mistreatment by officers, the legal question wasn’t whether the charges against her were permissible but whether they were so obviously bogus that she could overcome qualified immunity, the unjust and expansive legal shield that protects government employees from liability for all but the most blatant violations. That issue went to the Supreme Court twice, but on Monday, the Court declined to review a federal appellate court’s ruling that the officers were shielded from liability. 

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SHOCK! CBS News Reporter Lands Job With Left-Wing Activist Group Days After Firing

Former CBS News correspondent Scott MacFarlane has got himself a job at the left-wing MeidasTouch Network just nine days after being fired from the network.

MacFarlane announced Monday that he will join MeidasTouch as chief Washington correspondent and host a daily program titled Scott MacFarlane Reports.

The move comes after his departure from CBS News, where he covered Congress and the Justice Department, including cases related to January 6th and prosecutions of President Trump.

Despite joining a network known for its links to the Democratic Party, MacFarlane insisted he is not shifting into opinion journalism.

“I’m not an opinionist, not an editorialist,” MacFarlane said in a message posted on X.

“I’m far from a politician. I’m an enterprise reporter. Have been for a quarter century.”

“What I’ll do is bring this enterprise reporting to all the components of the MeidasTouch network, all the contributors of the MeidasTouch Network.”

“It’s important when we underscore how significant this moment is, this moment of unique political toxicity and unique political danger.

“MeidasTouch and I have long shared this same philosophy — you don’t platform lies. You don’t platform conspiracy theories. And you don’t allow for the whitewashing of history.”

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Western silence allows Israel to get away with killing journalists

On March 19, RT war correspondent Steve Sweeney and his cameraman Ali Rida Sbeity were injured by an Israeli strike meters from where they stood in southern Lebanon.

Sweeney was on camera reporting on recent Israeli attacks on southern Lebanese towns and infrastructure when he heard the sound of an incoming projectile. Ducking and running, he managed to escape the brunt of the impact.

According to the journalists, an Israeli aircraft fired a missile at their filming position near Al-Qasmiya Bridge, where Sweeney was reporting on, “the targeting of bridges and the forced displacement of one million people, an ethnic cleansing operation on a larger scale than the Nakba,” as he later stated, referencing the violent displacement of Palestinians which accompanied the creation of the Jewish State in the late 1940s.

The men were treated for shrapnel injuries. Sweeney said, adding “I’m amazed that we survived. We were incredibly lucky to come away with the injuries we did.”

Just a day prior, Sweeney had posted on X about the Israeli targeted airstrike on Lebanese journalist and Al-Manar TV presenter Mohammad Sherri and his wife. Both were killed. Sweeney reposted the news with the words, “Targeting journalists is a war crime.”

The next day, he himself was targeted.

This deliberate targeting of journalists wearing press vests is another Israeli war crime, in a long list of Israeli war crimes which include killing at least 261 Palestinian journalists in Gaza in the past two years alone, as well as previously killing Lebanese journalists and bombing Iranian media repeatedly.

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Clinton Judge Rules Hegseth’s New Pentagon Press Policy is Unconstitutional

A federal judge on Friday ruled that the Pentagon’s new press policy restricting press credential of reporters is unconstitutional.

In October, Pentagon reporters turned in their badges after they refused to sign Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s new security rule.

“Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth demanded that reporters agree by 5 p.m. Tuesday to a new policy, under which they would need to pledge to not obtain or use any unauthorized material, even if the information is unclassified — or hand over their press badges in the next 24 hours,” The Hill previously reported.

By that afternoon, Pentagon reporters turned in their badges.

The reporters turned in their badges and left the building.

The Pentagon Press Association previously released a statement blasting Hegseth.

“Today, the Defense Department confiscated the badges of the Pentagon reporters from virtually every major media organization in America. It did this because reporters would not sign onto a new media policy over its implicit threat of criminalizing national security reporting and exposing those who sign it to potential prosecution,” the PPA said.

“The Pentagon Press Association’s members are still committed to reporting on the US military. But make no mistake, today, Oct. 15, 2025 is a dark day for press freedom that raises concerns about a weakening US commitment to transparency in governance, to public accountability at the Pentagon and to free speech for all,” the statement said.

The Pentagon press pool now includes conservative outlets, including The Gateway Pundit.

The New York Times filed a lawsuit to stop the Pentagon from enforcing its new policy.

On Friday, US District Judge Paul Friedman, a Clinton appointee, blocked the Pentagon from enforcing its new policy and said it violated the First Amendment.

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Trump suggests treason charges for journalists as Iran war spins out of control

You know a war probably isn’t going well when the President starts threatening media outlets with treason charges.

This weekend, President Trump unleashed one of his infamous Truth Social rants. This one targeted the Wall Street Journal, for reporting an Iranian strike that hit five U.S. Air Force refueling planes at an air base in Saudi Arabia.

“The five U.S. Refueling Planes that were supposedly struck down and badly damaged, according to The Wall Street Journal’s (WSJ) false reporting, and others, are all in service, with the exception of one, which will soon be flying the skies,” he wrote.

This assertion doesn’t refute any part of the reporting, as the WSJ story says the planes weren’t destroyed.

Trump’s post equates the WSJ report with AI-generated videos of U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln burning, which began spreading after the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Navy falsely claimed it had attacked the aircraft carrier. Outlets like the New York Times have debunked the authenticity of those videos, but Trump imagines that they have been shared by U.S. media in collusion with Iran’s government. He then suggested that these news organizations be charged with treason, which carries a maximum penalty of death.

“The story was knowingly FAKE and, in a certain way, you can say that those Media Outlets that generated it should be brought up on Charges for TREASON for the dissemination of false information!,” wrote Trump. “The fact is, Iran is being decimated, and the only battles they ‘win’ are those that they create through AI, and are distributed by Corrupt Media Outlets.”

The President embraced the same narrative while talking to reporters aboard Air Force One. “Iran is known for a lot of fake news,” he declared. “I actually think it’s pretty criminal because our media companies, who have no credibility whatsoever, are putting out information that they know is false.”

Trump’s latest maniacal fantasy comes just days after Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr threatened to take away the broadcasting licenses of networks that failed to “operate in the public interest” while covering the war on Iran.

“The American people have subsidized broadcasters to the tune of billions of dollars by providing free access to the nation’s airwaves,” tweeted Carr. “It is very important to bring trust back into media, which has earned itself the label of fake news.”

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CIA Prepares Criminal Referral of Tucker Carlson, as Israel and its Loyalists Demand His Arrest

On Friday morning, I taped an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s program to discuss the ongoing Iran War, growing Israeli influence in the U.S., and proliferating attacks on free speech in the West in the name of shielding that one foreign country from critique (I presume it will air in the next few days). Perhaps the most notable part of our conversation was what Tucker told me prior to the cameras rolling.

Tucker said he had learned from several high-placed sources — and he obviously has many within the Trump administration — that the CIA was preparing a criminal referral about him to the DOJ. The subject of the agency’s report of suspected crimes: conversations he allegedly had with Iranian officials and others in Iran prior to the start of the Trump/Netanyahu war. The clear implication was that Tucker had committed acts of subversion or even treason by speaking to Iranians in advance of the war that was about to be launched on their country.

Despite how innately shocking this claim is, I had and still have zero doubt that Tucker was telling the truth about what he heard. I have known him for many years, spent much time talking to him both in front of a camera and away from one, and never once has he lied to me or mislead me. Tucker has been in public life as a journalist and media figure since his 20s. There have been many harsh criticisms launched against him during those decades, many of which — as he will be the first to tell you — were ones that were quite valid.

Notably, many of the harshest attacks on Tucker came from me during my first decade after becoming a journalist (last year, Tucker discussed our friendship in a podcast conversation Chris Cuomo and he noted that, during the War on Terror and his ongoing war cheerleading, “nobody was meaner to me than Glenn Greenwald”; Cuomo said the same was true of him).

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Tucker Carlson Says CIA Has Been Reading His Texts and is Preparing a Criminal Referral Against Him for Alleged FARA Violation – “You Should Know What the Stakes Are”

Tucker Carlson alleged in a video statement on Saturday that the Central Intelligence Agency has been spying on him and is preparing a criminal referral against him for alleged violations of the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA).

Under the law, it is a crime to act on behalf of a foreign principal without proper registration.

Carlson has come under fire recently for his criticisms of Israel and the war in Iran, even prompting Trump to disavow him. Following the initial Operation Epic Fury strikes in Iran on February 28, Tucker responded, calling the war “absolutely disgusting and evil.”

Trump responded to Tucker, saying he “has lost his way” and is “not MAGA.”

Many of Tucker’s other critics on the right, including Fox News host Mark Levin, have attempted to claim that Tucker is paid by Qatar to broadcast his opinions on Middle East conflicts. Most notably, failed presidential candidate Ted Cruz has ramped up his attacks on Tucker, recently smearing him as an antisemite and “the single most dangerous demagogue in this country.”

Carlson said he was “talking to people in Iran before the war,” and the CIA read his text messages to prepare a criminal referral to the Department of Justice, but that he’s “not too worried about an actual criminal case.”

“One, I’m not an agent of a foreign power. Unlike a lot of people, commenting on US politics and global affairs, I have only one loyalty, and that’s the United States and have never acted against it. Its interests are the only interests I care about because I’m from here and I have a lot of kids, so that’s not a concern. I’ve also never taken money from anybody. Don’t need it, don’t want it, and that’s provable,” he said.

“And moreover, it’s my job to talk to everybody all the time and try and figure out what’s happening around the world. That’s literally what I do for a living. And I’m not going to stop doing that, nor should I, I don’t think. I’m also an American. I can talk to anybody. I have no secrets to divulge. So, legally, I think the case is ludicrous, and I doubt it will even become a case.”

He says, “there are some people who are mad at me for my views about Israel,” and they may be filing a criminal referral to justify a warrant or as part of a humiliation and intimidation campaign, the existence of which may be leaked to the media in the near future.

“None of this, in my judgment, as of right now, is a huge threat to me. So, I’m not making this video to complain about it or whine or ask you to send me money because I’m under attack. I’m saying it because it’s true, and you should know what your own government is doing, and you should know what the stakes are, and you should know that a lot of what happens in this country that affects outcomes happens behind the scenes. Some of it is legal; some of it is not, including what I’m describing now, but it has an effect,” Tucker added, comparing the apparent investigation to the Russiagate scandal.

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US News Orgs Nearly Silent on Israel’s Violent Suppression of Journalism

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) recently published two meticulous reports that further expose Israel’s violent repression of journalism, in its ongoing genocide in Gaza and elsewhere.

CPJ published a report on February 19 titled ‘‘’We Returned From Hell’: Palestinian Journalists Recount Torture in Israeli Prisons.” CPJ collected 59 in-depth testimonies from Palestinian journalists released from Israeli custody since October 7, 2023.

The report goes into excruciating and painstaking detail about the experiences of 56 journalists, who told CPJ they were “repeatedly beaten inside prisons by authorities, as well as during arrest and transfer to the facilities.”

Less than a week later, CPJ published a report (2/25/26) that found “Israel was responsible for two-thirds of all journalist and media-worker killings in 2025”—86 of the 129 deaths CPJ recorded.

That was an uptick from 2024 (when Israel was responsible for 85 out of 124) and 2023 (78 of 99), CPJ revealed.

Taken together, these reports added more evidence of Israel’s illegal and shameless targeting of the journalists who cover its war crimes.

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