Tag: journalists

FBI orders Blaze Media reporter Steve Baker to self-surrender over alleged J6 ‘non-violent misdemeanors’: report

The FBI is planning to arrest a Blaze Media reporter on Friday over his coverage of the US Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

Steve Baker, an investigative reporter for Blaze Media, announced on Tuesday that his legal team had been notified by the FBI that there is a signed warrant for his arrest. Baker says he has been ordered to self-surrender to federal authorities for “alleged J6 crimes” on Friday in Dallas, Texas.

The Blaze Media reporter nor his attorneys have been properly informed about the charges Baker faces, other than that they are “non-violent misdemeanors” according to the reporter. Failure to inform about charges could be a Sixth Amendment violation, which grants individuals accused of a crime to “be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation.”

The Department of Justice first informed Baker about his looming arrest in December, but the FBI notified him that the self-surrender date would be postponed until after Christmas, according to Blaze Media. The outlet reported that “the powers that be won’t tell [Baker’s] attorney about the charges because they believe Baker will post them on social media.”

“We do not yet know the specific charges,” Baker wrote on X. “Technically … they are still ‘under seal’ until the warrant is served. All else is as yet unknown. By this weekend, I will officially be a misdemeanor domestic journo-terrorist. (Something like that.)”

Baker explained in a thread on X that he has been ordered to turn himself in to the FBI at 7:00 am where he will then be transported to the Dallas courthouse before a 10 am scheduled hearing before the magistrate

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Biden DOJ Indicts Journalist for Tucker Carlson Leaks

A Florida journalist who accessed and made public unaired video footage of an interview that former Fox News host Tucker Carlson conducted with the rapper Ye was arrested this week and hit with more than a dozen federal charges stemming in part from the disclosure, raising immediate concerns from press freedom advocates.

Timothy Burke, a Tampa-based media consultant and former Daily Beast staffer, obtained and disseminated clips of the 2022 Ye interview — during which the rapper formerly known as Kanye West made antisemitic remarks that were edited out of the final version — as well as behind-the-scenes footage of Carlson, who left Fox last year.

The 26-page indictment against Burke, revealed on Thursday, accuses him of “utilizing compromised credentials to gain unauthorized access to protected computers” and “scouring those protected computers for electronic items and information,” among other alleged crimes.

Though the indictment doesn’t explicitly mention Fox or Carlson, the Tampa Bay Times reported that it says Burke “accessed a video stream of an interview featuring a show host for a ‘multinational media company based in New York City’ on Oct. 6, 2022 — the same day Carlson’s interview with West aired.”

Burke and his legal team have denied any wrongdoing and rejected claims that Fox was “hacked,” maintaining that he accessed the video footage using information “publicly posted to the internet.”

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Russian journalist promising to release details of ‘gigantic corruption’ found dead on side of the road

A journalist who took aim at Russian officials and promised to release details of “gigantic corruption” was found dead near a roadside over the weekend, but the circumstances of his death remain shrouded in mystery.

“It will be almost impossible to determine whether foul play was involved Rybin’s death or whether he died of heart disease as some Russian media outlets claim,” Rebekah Koffler, a strategic military intelligence analyst and the author of “Putin’s Playbook,” told Fox News Digital.

Alexander Rybin, 39, was found near a highway some 130 miles outside the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, where he had spent time reporting on the Russian invasion.

The official cause of death was that he died from “cardiomyopathy” after an autopsy, The Sun reported, citing Russian state media.

Some outlets have described Rybin as a pro-Kremlin journalist, but in the last few weeks of his life he had grown highly critical of officials in the region.

He blamed rampant corruption for the slow rebuilding of the city and Donetsk region. 

In one of his last reports, Rybin reported that Mariupol had “gigantic money” and “gigantic opportunities for corruption.”

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Just 3.4 Percent Of American Journalists Identify As Republican

The percentage of full-time U.S. journalists who identify as Republicans has dropped significantly over the last decade, while journalists who said they are Democrats and Independents have increased, a study finds.

According to a survey by Syracuse University titled “The American Journalist Under Attack,” only 3.4 percent of journalists in 2022 identified as Republicans, compared with 36.4 percent of Democrats and 51.7 percent of Independents in the profession.

At the time the survey was concluded in April last year, 28 percent of Americans considered themselves Republicans, 28 percent identified themselves as Democrats, and 42 percent viewed themselves as Independents, according to a Gallup poll.

The survey found that the percentage of Republicans in the journalism industry has declined substantially over the decades.

In its first survey in 1971, 25.7 percent of journalists said they were Republicans. In 1982, the number dropped to 18.8 percent and further declined to 16.4 percent in 1992. It showed a slight increase in 2002 with 18 percent but plummeted to 7.1 percent in 2013 and to 3.4 percent last year.

The trend for journalists identifying as Democrats has remained relatively steady at around 35 percent over the decades. Last year’s figure of 36.4 percent marked the third-highest percentage of journalists identifying as Democrat since 1971, the survey noted.

Notably, the survey showed that 60.1 percent of journalists said journalism in the United States was headed in the wrong direction. In comparison, only 22 percent said it was going in the right direction.

“When asked about the ’most important problem facing journalism today,’ the journalists mentioned these issues most often: Declining public trust in the news media (20.8 percent); shrinking local and community news coverage (12.8 percent); perceived bias and opinion journalism (12.7 percent); fake news (9.9 percent); disrupted business model (9.3 percent).”

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Over 100 Journalists Killed in Less Than Three Months

Nearly 100 journalists have been killed in less than three months in Palestine. And that’s not by accident. They aren’t collateral damage. They weren’t human shields. Most were targeted deliberately. Their offense: exposing the deceit behind the propaganda flushed out by the Israeli government, and our own government, our president, and the mainstream media, many of whom don’t function as journalists. Instead, they act like stenographers for the state, for the military-industrial complex. Which is profiting massively off of this slaughter, banking on people being uninformed and indifferent to it.

Well, real journalists are preventing that, because the real journalists are standing in defiance of power, standing in the face of the war machine, and are bravely documenting its crimes. Documenting the daily horror raining down on millions of civilians trapped on a small slice of land.

So the powerful want these journalists silenced, by any means necessary, because they are proving to be very powerful themselves. I’ve gone to many rallies for Palestine over the years, and I’ve never seen the groundswell like we are witnessing now.

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Blaze journalist who covered Jan 6 to be charged by Biden DOJ

Journalist for The Blaze Steve Baker has been notified by the FBI that he is going to be charged by Biden’s Department of Justice for his work covering the protest and riot at the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021. He was told to surrender to authorities on Tuesday and has not yet been made aware of the charges.

He said that he entered the Capitol on that day, “like about 60 other journalists, but “Did no damage or parading or violence.”

Info Wars journalist Owen Shroyer just served a nearly 2 month sentence for having been on the Capitol grounds on that day. Other journalists have also been arrested and tried. 

Far-left journalist John Sullivan, who sold his footage of J6 to mainstream media outlets, was also charged after covering the event. He was charged with Obstruction of an Official Proceeding; Civil Disorder; Entering and Remaining in a Restricted Building or Grounds; Disorderly and Disruptive Conduct in a Restricted Building or Grounds; Disorderly Conduct in a Capitol Building; Parading, Demonstrating, or Picketing in a Capitol Building; and Aiding and Abetting, per the Department of Justice.

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Journalist Files “Cease and Desist” Letter with the CIA

A journalist has sent a “Cease and Desist” letter to the Central Intelligence Agency, citing violations of her 4th, 5th and 14th Amendment rights.

Janet Phelan, who has authored an intelligence exposé, “EXILE,” as well as a book on the pandemic, “At the Breaking Point of History,” levels accusations that agents and assets of the CIA have repeatedly attacked her with unconventional chemical weapons, resulting in a health crisis and hospitalization.

Phelan states that she chose to send this letter to the CIA as this is the agency that is involved in overseas surveillance and operations. Phelan fled the U.S. in 2008 and currently resides in Mexico. She states that the Cease and Desist letter was sent prior to filing a formal legal request for an injunction against the Agency. She has also filed a Form 95, preparatory to suing under the Federal Tort Claims Act.

Phelan is best known for her investigations into U.S. biological weapons violations and her research into mortgages as a vehicle for judicial bribes and payoffs. Her articles appeared in the Moscow-based publication, New Eastern Outlook, for a number of years. She currently writes for Activist Post.

Upon learning of her intent to file for a formal injunction, a lawyer who is conversant with her work on judicial corruption, sputtered, “But this will have to go in front of a judge!”

Indeed, recent legal efforts in a similar vein were all dismissed by a judge, including CAIR’s lawsuit challenging targeting of Muslim-Americans and a lawsuit by a former CNN journalist covering Syria, which alleged that the US tried to blow him up in a number of drone strikes.  Federal judge Rosemary Collyer dismissed this lawsuit on reasons of “state secrets” thereby striking a blow against legal protections for both First Amendment violations as well as any constitutional protections against government abuse.

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The untimely death of a witness and defendant in govt. spying on me

An historic victory of sorts was had in my case, Attkisson v. DOJ, in the government spying on me, when I received a clerk’s default against one of the defendants: a seedy character named Ryan Dark White. It is the first known such default in a case of the government spying on a journalist.

White had admitted to being part of one of the government surveillance operations against me. He provided us some details, some of which we were able to verify, and then disappeared and refused to respond shortly after we named him as a defendant in the lawsuit.

White said the rogue group he worked with under then-US Attorney Rod Rosenstein spied on “hundreds” of US citizens. I just happened to have sources who helped me prove it, in part by unearthing unique government IP addresses in my computer used as part of the surveillance. White said the group included then-Secret Service agent, Shaun Bridges, who was later convicted and sent to prison in a separate government corruption case.

With the government refusing to hold its own agents accountable, the Dept. of Justice has fought my lawsuit every step of the way, and provided private attorneys to defend Bridges– funded by your tax money, of course.

I learned throughout the years that the courts don’t necessarily care that we have forensic proof of the government intrusions. I once thought that such irrefutable evidence sealed the deal. Case closed. Instead, they require that you, in advance of a trial and discovery, point to who, specifically, knew what and when, and provide evidence of that. Assuming the guilty parties aren’t going to tell on themselves and turn over damning documents, the only real way to get the information the court requires is through the process of “discovery.” But the only way to get discovery is to first obtain the information the court wants. But the only way to get it is through discovery. It’s a senseless loop.

The Dept. of Justice is fighting discovery, instead of cooperating. One could ask why they would spend tax money and all these years fighting… if their agents were innocent? If they would simply provide the necessary documents, we’d see that we’re barking up the wrong tree– if that were the case.

With the government withholding documents, interviews, and information that we need; and the court requiring us to have it in order to proceed, it puts us in a tough place.

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Chilling and familiar: suspected govt spying on a journalist

As my lawsuit against the government for its forensically-proven spying on me continues, the spying surely continues. Undoubtedly I wasn’t the first journalist surveilled by the government and, since nobody was held accountable, I certainly wasn’t the last. Below, you can read a familiar-sounding account from journalist Breanna Morello, who has been covering the January 6 pro-Trump demonstrations and riots at the US Capitol.

It’s worth mentioning that one government agent who admitted being part of the surveillance against me (who recently turned up dead) said that the rogue unit he was part of under then-US Attorney Rod Rosenstein at the US Attorney’s office in Baltimore was spying on “hundreds” of US citizens–not just me and not just other journalists. NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed improper surveillance by our government on a massive scale. Nobody was ever punished. (Except for the whistleblower, Snowden.)

And there have been numerous documented cases of our intel agencies spying on members of Congress and their staff.

There was a time when any single instance of this type of unconstitutional activity by our government would have generated international headlines and outrage. Today, it’s become normalized.

Spying on Trump and other political opponents? Well, they deserve it.

Spying on journalists? Who cares? I’m not a journalist.

Spying on innocent US citizens? So what, if they have nothing to hide?

The complacency surrounding my case and others likely means there are dozens if not hundreds of government units and operations conducting illegal surveillance with impunity.

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When the First Casualty of War Is Truth, Journalists Are the Second

Truth – and journalists – are the first casualties of the war on Gaza. As Israel’s 7-week bombardment of the Gaza Strip has killed over 14,000 Palestinians, 5,000 of whom were children, courageous Palestinian journalists, working in Gaza under unbelievably difficult and dangerous circumstances, are being killed, one by one. This week, a grim milestone was reached, as the number of journalists killed in the conflict surpassed 50. While a negotiated pause gives civilians in Gaza a brief respite, and 50 Israeli hostages held in Gaza will be released, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised the violence will continue immediately afterwards.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), at least 53 journalists and media workers have been killed in what the organization calls “the deadliest month for journalists since CPJ began gathering data in 1992.” To date, 46 Palestinians, four Israelis and three Lebanese reporters have been killed. Eleven have been injured, three remain missing, and 18 Palestinian journalists have been arrested by Israel.

“We’ve never seen anything like this. It’s unprecedented,” Sherif Mansour, CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa program coordinator, said on the Democracy Now! news hour. “For journalists in Gaza specifically, the exponential risk is possibly the most dangerous we have seen.”

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