Tag: journalists

Israeli Attacks on Journalists Stifle Reporting on Gaza Horrors

The Israeli communications minister’s attempt to shut down Al Jazeera’s bureau in Jerusalem—on the grounds that the Qatari news outlet is biased in favor of Hamas and is actively endangering Israeli troops (Reuters, 10/15/23)—should inspire some déjà vu. In the last war in Gaza, an Israeli air strike destroyed a Gaza building housing both Al Jazeera and Associated Press offices (AP, 5/15/21). And just months ago, Al Jazeera (5/18/23) reported that “the family of Shireen Abu Akleh,” a Palestinian-American AJ journalist killed by Israeli fire while on assignment, “has rebuked Israel for saying it is ‘sorry’ for the Al Jazeera reporter’s death without providing accountability or even acknowledging that its forces killed her.”

Since the launch of the network’s English service, Americans interested in Middle East news beyond what can be found in US broadcasting have often turned to Al Jazeera, and even more so as the BBC’s foreign service has declined (Guardian, 9/29/22).

But the ability of Al Jazeera and other Arab reporters to cover the assault on Gaza is jeopardized by the alarming number of newspeople Israel has killed since the crisis began. The Committee to Protect Journalists (10/18/23) has counted 13 Palestinian journalists killed by Israel in Gaza since the crisis began, with two more missing or detained. Three Israeli journalists were also killed in Hamas’s October 7 attack, with another taken prisoner.

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Family of man wanted for killing Josh Kruger says the 19-year-old and the journalist shared sex and drugs

The family of Robert Davis, 19, who is accused of killing local journalist Josh Kruger, said that Davis was just 15 when he and Kruger began a years-long relationship involving drugs — and that Davis told them Kruger was threatening to post sexually explicit videos of him online before, police say, Davis shot Kruger.

Those assertions by Davis’ mother and older brother in recent interviews with The Inquirer add troubling new complexities to a killing that has garnered national attention. Their account, they said, is drawn from recent conversations with Davis, and from the years of watching his life unravel as he tried to keep the relationship and his drug addiction hidden.

Kruger, 39, was killed after a man entered his Point Breeze home in the middle of the night, police said, and shot him seven times at the base of his stairs. Surveillance video near the scene and tips from Kruger’s friends and family led detectives to Davis, and a warrant was issued for his arrest a few days later. Police described the pair as acquaintances, and said Kruger “was trying to help [Davis] get through life.”

The family’s contentions come as detectives separately discovered and are investigating what multiple law enforcement sources have called explicit photos and messages in Kruger’s phone. The sources, who requested anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation, did not say whether the images or messages were connected to Davis, but said they were “disturbing” and have been turned over to the department’s Special Victims Unit for further analysis.

Deputy Police Commissioner Frank Vanore said the contents of Kruger’s phone are part of the investigation as detectives seek to learn more about why he may have been killed. But critical details of what happened, he said, lie with Davis, who remains at-large.

“I think he could answer a lot of questions if he comes into custody and surrenders,” Vanore said. “It might help us put all this together.”

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Leftist journalist who downplayed violent crime gunned down in his Philly home

Josh Kruger, a leftist journalist and activist who was based in Philadelphia, was shot and killed inside his home on Monday. Kruger had a long history of downplaying violent crime in the city, often openly mocking those who expressed concerns about homicides in Philadelphia.

“Look, it’s that lawless land of liberals in Philly where shootings are…dropping to levels not seen in years,” read a past post by Kruger.

“Some idiot just said you’re more likely to get shot and killed than die of COVID in Philly to make some insensitive rhetorical point for ‘his side.’ Folks, four times as many Philadelphians have died of COVID than gun shots this year. I understand math is hard but do better,” stated another. 

The 39-year-old Kruger was shot seven times at a residence in the 2300 block of Watkins Street around 1:30 am Monday, reports 6 ABC.

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Ukrainian plot to assassinate RT editor-in-chief thwarted – FSB

Russian law enforcement has thwarted assassination plans targeting RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan and journalist Ksenia Sobchak, which were prepared by Ukrainian intelligence, the Federal Security Service (FSB) has announced.

In a statement on Saturday, the agency declared that, together with the Interior Ministry and the national Investigative Committee, an unspecified number of “neo-Nazis from the Paragraph 88 group who were gathering information at the work and home addresses of Simonyan and Sobchak” had been arrested.

Those detained were caught carrying out reconnaissance on Friday in Moscow and Ryazan Region, according to the FSB.

During the operation, law enforcement personnel seized a Kalashnikov assault rifle, 90 cartridges, rubber hoses, knives, brass knuckles, and handcuffs, the FSB said. Officials added that “computers with information confirming criminal intentions” were also found.

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Elite Journalists Love Big Brother

Journalists aren’t always consistent fans of liberty; over a century ago, The New York Times editorialized against self-defense rights—a tradition it continues today. Still, in the past when there was more ideological variety among elite media than now (a flaw alternative outlets seek to address), reporters from all sorts of publications generally favored free speech, opposed broad surveillance, and supported restrictions on search and seizure. If nothing else, they knew they were high on the list of targets for abusive officials. But that was then; now, elite media love Big Brother.

On Independence Day, U.S. District Court Judge Terry Doughty issued a powerful First Amendment decision in an ongoing case brought by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana. “If the allegations made by Plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history” he said of government pressure on social media companies to suppress speech at odds with official messaging. The judge barred further arm-twisting, though with significant exceptions. It was a clear win for free speech, which you would expect to be applauded by people who make their living from speaking and writing. That’s not what happened.

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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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