Tag: journalists

The FBI raided a notable journalist’s home. Rolling Stone didn’t tell readers why

Last Oct. 18, Rolling Stone served up a foreboding scoop: The FBI had raided the home of a renowned journalist at the top of his game months earlier, and he had disappeared from public view.

It should have been a coup. Instead, acrimony inside the newsroom over how that scoop was edited led to accusations that the magazine’s brash leader pulled punches in overseeing coverage of someone he knew. The reporter who wrote the story, enraged, accepted a position at a sister publication two months later. And her complaints prompted a senior attorney for the magazine’s parent company to review what happened.

FBI raids on journalists are rare. News organizations often respond with formal protests and legal challenges. Under a 2021 Justice Department policy, raids, subpoenas and other compulsory means of obtaining materials from reporters are banned for any investigation of matters related to their journalism. The policy became the basis for a significant shift in the stance of the Justice Department toward the press.

The Rolling Stone story created a stir. Reporter Tatiana Siegel stated that the April 22 raid was “quite possibly, the first” carried out by the Biden administration on a journalist.

In this case, the journalist was ABC News national security producer James Gordon Meek. A former investigator for the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee, Meek had been with ABC News since 2013. He also was a producer of 3212 Un-Redacted, an investigative documentary that streamed on Hulu.

As published, the Rolling Stone article’s first two paragraphs lionized Meek’s record and swashbuckling style.

“Meek appears to be on the wrong side of the national-security apparatus,” it stated.

As the story noted, Siegel’s sources told her “federal agents allegedly found classified information on Meek’s laptop during their raid.” Siegel reported that Meek left his job at ABC after the raid; a publishing contract with Simon & Schuster evaporated.

As edited by Rolling Stone Editor-in-Chief Noah Shachtman, however, the article omitted a key fact that Siegel initially intended to include: Siegel had learned from her sources that Meek had been raided as part of a federal investigation into images of child sex abuse, something not publicly revealed until last month.

Why did Rolling Stone suggest Meek was targeted for his coverage of national security, rather than something unrelated to his journalism?

Neither Siegel nor Shachtman would comment for this story. This article is based on a review of some contemporaneous communications and also interviews with 10 people with knowledge of incidents described here, including several individuals at Rolling Stone, as well as people at ABC and federal law enforcement agencies.

Each asked not to be named because they were not authorized to disclose these matters publicly.

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Biden’s DOJ Is Pressuring Journalists to Help Build Its Case Against Assange

THE DEPARTMENT OF Justice and FBI are pressuring multiple British journalists to cooperate with the prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, using vague threats and pressure tactics in the process. I know because I am one of the British journalists being pressured to cooperate in the case against him, as someone who used to (briefly) work and live with him, and who went on to blow the whistle on WikiLeaks’ own ethical lapses.

Assange is facing extradition to the United States from the U.K., where he is currently in Belmarsh prison in south London, over charges related to dissemination of material leaked by Chelsea Manning and published by WikiLeaks and a coalition of five newspapers through 2010 and 2011. 

That material exposed details of the conditions and deteriorating mental and physical health of Guantanamo Bay’s detainees. And it revealed the details of hundreds of thousands of deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, including shedding new light on the deaths of two Reuters journalists via the shocking Collateral Murder video. 

Under Barack Obama, the DOJ decided it could not prosecute Assange without threatening U.S. journalists and their First Amendment protections — given that the 2010 charges relate to the handling and publication of classified documents in conjunction with reporters and organizations including The New York Times and other major outlets. But first under Donald Trump and then Joe Biden, the department has reversed itself.

The first approach to get me to cooperate with the Assange prosecution came via London’s Metropolitan Police in December 2021. On legal advice, I had stayed quiet about these attempts at the time. But now more journalists have told me that police have turned up on their doorsteps, too, in the last month. Those approached are former Guardian investigations editor David Leigh, transparency campaigner Heather Brooke, and the writer Andrew O’Hagan.

The prosecution of Julian Assange is already a threat to the free media, even before his first day in a U.S. courtroom. Law enforcement trying to coerce journalists into aiding that prosecution makes matters even worse. So I’ve decided to speak out. 

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The EU Wants To Make It Legal To Install Spyware on Journalists’ Devices

In a contentious turn, EU leaders have unveiled draft legislation permitting national security agencies to deploy spyware on journalists’ phones in certain circumstances. The move has obviously triggered an outcry from media and civil society organizations, who argue that the draft European Media Freedom Act could be a perilous weapon against the press.

Sophie in’t Veld, a Dutch Member of the European Parliament (MEP) who has been integral in the European Parliament’s inquiry into the use of Pegasus spyware against journalists and prominent figures, termed the reasoning behind the draft as mendacious. “I think what the council is doing is unacceptable. It’s also incomprehensible. Well, it’s incomprehensible if they are serious about democracy,” in’t Veld remarked.

A striking aspect of the draft’s release was the absence of an in-person meeting involving ministers in charge of media affairs, which typically precedes such announcements.

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UKRAINE BLOCKS JOURNALISTS FROM FRONT LINES WITH ESCALATING CENSORSHIP

AFTER UKRAINIAN FORCES regained control of the port city of Kherson last November, following eight months of Russian occupation, some journalists entered the liberated city within hours. Without formal permission to be there, they documented the jubilant crowds welcoming soldiers with hugs and Ukrainian flags. Ukrainian officials, who tightly control press access to the front lines, responded by revoking the journalists’ press credentials, claiming that they had “ignored existing restrictions.” 

In the months since then, as Ukraine has sought to liberate more territory occupied by Russia, the Ukrainian government has intensified its efforts to control the narrative of the war by tightening journalists’ access to the conflict. “After that, things started getting worse. … They have tried to place more control on journalists,” Katerina Sergatskova, editor-in-chief of Zaborona Media, an independent Ukrainian publication, told The Intercept. “Now it’s really hard to make reports from Kherson, for example.”

Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion last year, Ukrainian authorities have threatened, revoked, or denied press credentials of journalists working for half a dozen Ukrainian and foreign news outlets because of their coverage, the news outlet Semafor reported earlier this month. In one recent example, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense did not renew the press credentials of a Ukraine-based photographer who accused the country’s security services of subjecting him to interrogations, a lie detector test, and accusations that he was working against Ukraine’s “national interest.” Government officials restored Anton Skyba’s accreditation last week, following a pressure campaign by colleagues and press freedom advocates, who have been denouncing tightening restrictions on media access to the front lines. But the episode put a spotlight on tensions between Ukrainian authorities and the journalists covering the conflict that have quietly escalated in recent months. Veteran war correspondents, for their part, are accusing Ukrainian officials of making reporting on the reality of the war, with rare exceptions, nearly impossible.

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Journalists Are Asking Ukrainian Soldiers To Hide Their Nazi Patches, NYT Admits

The New York Times has been forced to very, very belatedly deal with something which had long been obvious and known to many independent analysts and media outlets, but which has been carefully shielded from the mainstream masses in the West for obvious reasons. 

The surprising Monday Times headline said that “Nazi Symbols on Ukraine’s Front Lines Highlight Thorny Issues of History.” This acknowledgement comes after literally years of primarily indy journalists and geopolitical commentators pointing out that yes indeed… Ukraine’s military and paramilitary groups, especially those operating in the east since at least 2014, have a serious Nazi ideology problem. This has been exhaustively documented, again, going back years. But the report, which merely tries to downplay it as a “thorny issue” of Ukraine’s “unique” “History” – suggests that the real problem for Western PR is fundamentally that it’s being displayed so openly. Ukrainian troops are being asked to cover those Nazi symbols please!–as Matt Taibbi sarcastically quipped in commenting on the report.

The authors of the NYT report begin by expressing frustration over the optics of Nazi symbols being displayed so proudly on many Ukrainian soldiers’ uniforms. Suggesting that many journalistic photographs which have in some cases been featured in newspapers and media outlets worldwide (typically coupled with generally positive articles on Ukraine’s military) are merely ‘unfortunate’ or misleading, the NYT report says, “In each photograph, Ukrainians in uniform wore patches featuring symbols that were made notorious by Nazi Germany and have since become part of the iconography of far-right hate groups.”

The report admits this has led to controversy wherein news rooms actually must delete some photos of Ukrainian soldiers and militants. “The photographs, and their deletions, highlight the Ukrainian military’s complicated relationship with Nazi imagery, a relationship forged under both Soviet and German occupation during World War II,” continues the report. 

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British police detain journalist Kit Klarenberg, interrogate him about The Grayzone

British counter-terror police detained journalist Kit Klarenberg upon his arrival at London’s Luton airport and subjected him to an extended interrogation about his political views and reporting for The Grayzone.

As soon as journalist Kit Klarenberg landed in his home country of Britain on May 17, 2023, six anonymous plainclothes counter-terror officers detained him. They quickly escorted him to a back room, where they grilled him for over five hours about his reporting for this outlet. They also inquired about his personal opinion on everything from the current British political leadership to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

At one point, Klarenberg’s interrogators demanded to know whether The Grayzone had a special arrangement with Russia’s Federal Security Bureau (FSB) to publish hacked material.

During Klarenberg’s detention, police seized the journalist’s electronic devices and SD cards, fingerprinted him, took DNA swabs, and photographed him intensively. They threatened to arrest him if he did not comply.

Klarenberg’s interrogation appears to be London’s way of retaliating for the journalist’s blockbuster reports exposing major British and US intelligence intrigues. In the past year alone, Klarenberg revealed how a cabal of Tory national security hardliners violated the Official Secrets Act to exploit Brexit and install Boris Johnson as prime minister. In October 2022, he earned international headlines with his exposé of British plans to bomb the Kerch Bridge connecting Crimea to the Russian Federation. Then came his report on the CIA’s recruitment of two 9/11 hijackers this April, a viral sensation that generated massive social media attention.

Among Klarenberg’s most consequential exposés was his June 2022 report unmasking British journalist Paul Mason as a UK security state collaborator hellbent on destroying The Grayzone and other media outlets, academics, and activists critical of NATO’s role in Ukraine.

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The Number Of Jailed Journalists Reaches Record High

In 2022, more journalists than ever before were imprisoned for doing their job.

As Statista’s Martin Armstrong reports, some 363 journalists were imprisoned in 30 different countries last year, according to data from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

By 2021, the number of detainees had already exceeded 300 – roughly doubling since 2015. An alarming trend that, according to the experts, is a sign of the deterioration of press freedom worldwide.

In 2022, the largest number of journalists were held in an Iranian prison (62 people), in China (43), and Myanmar, where 42 people were locked away at the end of the year.

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WSJ Reporter Arrested in Russia Sought Classified Information From Government Official

The Wall Street Journal reporter who was recently arrested in Russia for espionage sought classified information from a Russian government official in the period of time leading up to his arrest.

American-born Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, whose parents fled the Soviet Union due to rumors that Jewish citizens would be exiled to Siberia, formerly worked for The New York Times and The Moscow Times. He was arrested in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg on March 29th, prompting a massive outcry from American corporate media publications, which have accused Russia of waging war on the free press.

Despite the narrative being presented to the American People and the wider NATO world, Gershkovich wasn’t arrested for merely reporting the news, but for attempting to gain classified information regarding “military enterprises” from a Russian government official – something that Russia claims he was doing on behalf of the US government.

According to a Russian legislator who Gerschkovich was trying to extract information from under the guise of conducting an interview, the Wall Street Journal reporter was looking for details on the “military-industrial complex of Yekaterinburg,” and was even trying to gain information on the Wagner Group, the Russian private military company that’s conducting military operations in Ukraine, perhaps most notably in the besieged Donbass city of Bakhmut.

“What the employee of the American publication The Wall Street Journal was doing in Yekaterinburg had nothing to do with journalism,” Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote in a statement defending the arrest that was published on her Telegram channel.

“Unfortunately, this is not the first time that the status of a ‘foreign correspondent’, a journalist visa, and accreditation have been used by foreign nationals in our country to cover up activities that are not journalism. This is not the first famous Western individual who has been caught red-handed,” Zakharova explained.

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) echoed Zakharova’s claims in a public statement of its own, reporting that an investigation had “established that Gershkovich, acting as an agent for the American side, collected top-secret data about the activity of an enterprise of the Russian military-industrial complex.”

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Russian Journalist Killed by Hand-Delivered Explosive in St. Petersburg Cafe

Russian journalist Vladlen Tatarsky was killed today in a St. Petersburg cafe after opening what he thought was a packaged gift, which was hand-delivered to him by a young woman and turned out to be an improvised explosive device. Tatarsky, who has reported from the front lines in contested regions of Ukraine, was at the cafe as part of a public gathering in support of the Russian war effort and was slated to address the crowd as a guest speaker.

Vladlen Tatarsky, a Russian journalist with more than half a million followers on his Telegram channel, was killed in an explosion at a St. Petersburg cafe, where he was set to speak to a crowd of Russian patriots about the ongoing war effort in Ukraine and his time spent on the front lines and elsewhere, covering the conflict.

According to eyewitnesses to the explosive attack, a young woman with blonde hair hand-delivered a package, disguised as a gift and containing a small statue, to Tatarsky. The package though was a bomb, and the explosion that followed its opening ended Tatarsky’s life, and injured sixteen other people.

“At 6:13 PM on April 2, 2023, the police received information about a blast in Universitetsjaya Embankment 25. As a result, one person was killed. It was war correspondent Vladlen Tatarsky. Sixteen people were wounded,” Russia’s Interior Ministry revealed in a statement announcing the bomb attack.

Security footage taken from the cafe shows a young woman, who is suspected to be the attack culprit, carrying a box. Russian authorities are circulating the image in an effort to hunt her down.

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Biden’s IRS goons dropped by Twitter Files journalist Matt Taibbi’s house while he was testifying before Congress … I wonder why?

While one of the journalists behind the Twitter Files was testifying about his finding in front of Congress, he was also being harassed by government goons who showed up to his house unannounced.

Matt Taibbi was in DC in early March to testify about the evidence he found of the government’s abuse of its relationship with Twitter and big tech to censor speech and control what Americans saw on their social media feeds. Meanwhile, the IRS had sent their folks out to Taibbi’s home to make an unscheduled visit.

TOTALLY NOT AN INTIMIDATION TACTIC!

The Wall Street Journal reported that Taibbi was visited because his previous tax returns from 2018 and 2021 had been rejected.

But they decided that an in-person visit was warranted instead of an electronic communication like you would normally expect.

It’s “not clear” why.

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