You might remember Maria Butina as the Russian spy who was convicted in the United States and later deported back to Russia, her boyfriend pardoned by Trump. In 2021, she was elected to the State Duma as a member of United Russia. The BBC host here was gobsmacked by her replies, calling her answers “preposterous.”
Source: Putin Propagandist Claims Ukraine Is Bombing Itself | Crooks and Liars
The US will have 300 gigawatts of wind and solar by the end of 2022. We also have about 100 gigawatts of hydroelectric power. That is 400 gigawatts. If we can get enough battery storage to make full use of the sun and of strong winds, that would amount to a third of the 1200 gigawatts of electricity generation capacity in the US.
Source: Good Climate News: US will increase Solar Power by nearly 50% in 2022, and add 29 Gigawatts of Wind
Gladys, whose involvement with a corrupt boyfriend where she either deliberately ignored his behaviour or was dangerously incompetent at noticing, resigns before an investigation and there’s a general bashing of teeth at the unfairness of it all. This is the middle of a pandemic and changing leaders is not something anyone should want. Dan, who may or may not be appearing in an IBAC investigation which may or may not be about his behaviour, is « refusing » to stand aside and « stubbornly » continuing to lead his state and refusing to answer questions that may be a breach of the law were he to talk about the inquiry which may or may not exist. We’ll probably know more in the coming days. And if it’s discovered that Andrews has appeared then it’s only right that he should be placed in the stocks and publicly flogged, even if he was only appearing as a witness where he is cooperating to help bring to light branch stacking in the Labor Party. (Branch stacking doesn’t occur in the Liberal Party; they only have aggressive recruitment).
The battle against misinformation can very often become a battle against information you do not particularly like or want people to access. The line on this is not always clear, though hope springs eternal that the marketplace of ideas, to use that increasingly empty expression, can sort the wheat from the chaff. Twitter’s calculating pivot towards this new information landscape shows a new strategy to anchor itself in an ecosystem already marginalising independent journalism. In doing so, it is courting the high priests who determine what counts as news and what doesn’t. Soon, a sanitised platform will simply be code for a censored one.
Fox had to cover Biden’s first prime time address after b**tching for days about no presser. So they lined up “pundits” to pan the speech afterwards. Fox News has given up having anything to do with news.
Fox News Liars Call Biden ‘Senile’ After Speech | Crooks and Liars
Defending democracy is part of a journalist’s job
Never let Trump’s accomplices live down their attacks on democracy | Media Matters for America
When ABC director of news Gaven Morris warned his staff against focusing on “inner city left-wing elites” last week he could easily have been citing from the Coalition playbook. The phrase reflects the perception of a city/country divide and a gulf between inner city and outer suburban values, and marginalises “progressive” issues as the sole preserve of a small coterie of ivory-tower inhabitants out of touch with the concerns of “real” Australians. But was Morris right to urge his staff to look beyond this audience? And do these “inner city left-wing elites” even exist?
Does the inner city left-wing elite exist?
What Sky News pundits don’t report the Workers Strike strike at Spotless (ODT)
At the Spotless Laundry in Melbourne’s southeast, employers demanded that work continue despite escalating numbers of COVID-19 cases. The workers refused to allow the company’s profit to be placed above their safety — and won.
Melbourne’s Spotless Laundry Workers Went on Strike to Stop COVID-19
Murdoch’s business model has created a product sold as news for years and to call it blurred is to be complicit in its support. It ought not to be allowed to be sold as news. Peter Foster Australia’s great con man was jailed time and again for selling tea as something that could be regarded as blurred. Murdoch sells something that’s clearly organized and fake (ODT)
No Blame it’s “THEM” says Trump again (ODT)
USA and the Coalition UK and Australia read it in the Murdoch news (ODT)
“When I saw my photo crossed out in a secret government database, I realized the secondary screening and interrogation wasn’t random. I was being targeted by my own government for reporting on conditions at the border.”
—Bing Guan, photojournalistFive journalists who were tracked, detained, and interrogated by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for reporting on conditions at the southern border in 2018 and 2019 brought a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration Wednesday for what the ACLU called an “unprecedented, coordinated attack on the freedom of the press.”
It’s a fact Fox News is the most highly rated Cable News Ch in America and some people believe it’s REAL …Trump does.(ODT)
via Too Many People Think Satirical News Is Real | Crooks and Liars
This is the man the Christian man who saw political opportunity in the Cronulla riots in 2005. He’s been denying it ever since. Is he believable or is it an “on the water moment”? (ODT)
Anonymity of Liberal Party voices and the Press that’s the news andit smacks of little more than PR. (ODT)
And then there is the traitor-in-chief, Malcolm Turnbull. This week Turnbull reacted strongly on Twitter against a story published in The Australian. In it, an anonymous source asserted “his hands were all over” Banks’ defection. Turnbull mocked the idea as paranoid.
The same story also reported Turnbull was in contact, via text message, with his successor in Wentworth, independent Kerryn Phelps.
This was a cause for “concern” among Liberals who are angry at Turnbull being “unwilling to provide public backing to Liberal candidate Dave Sharma” during the Wentworth byelection. Never mind that Turnbull’s contact with Phelps was as part of a job handover, which shows he is doing the right thing by his former constituents. Who cares about those constituents now that they have voted the wrong way?
An anonymous Liberal was quoted as saying the contact between Phelps and Turnbull “speaks for itself and confirms everybody’s suspicions”, which is as conspiratorial as it gets.
via Liberals descend into tribalism under the cover of ‘loyalty’
Saudis have learnt from Trump and Fox News just yell “fake news” hard and for long enough and a good bit of policing and you will get the support of your people and some from outside as well. After all Trump is onside. (ODT)
In Saudi Arabia, major media outlets have cast the disappearance and apparent murder of Saudi dissident and Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi as a foreign conspiracy to denigrate the image of the kingdom. The media accounts, which come from outlets run with the backing of Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf monarchies, are spinning the coverage of Khashoggi’s disappearance as a plot by rival governments and political groups to hurt the kingdom — going so far as to make false claims about the Washington Post’s owners.
via Saudi Media Casts Khashoggi Disappearance as a Conspiracy, Claims Qatar Owns Washington Post
Wilson’s is the latest of multiple lawsuits alleging either discrimination or harassment at the hands of Fox News or Fox Business personalities. In 2016, the network infamously lost its founder, Roger Ailes, after former Fox host Gretchen Carlson sued him for sexual harassment, prompting many more women to come forward with their stories. The following year, Fox fired its biggest star, Bill O’Reilly, after reporting revealed he paid $32 million in hush money for a previously unreported harassment report, which was “at least the sixth agreement” that O’Reilly or Fox entered into to silence his accusers. Other Fox employees have been reported as having committed sexual harassment, assault, and rape. And Fox itself is also facing a lawsuit from a former employee who says she was terminated in retaliation for getting pregnant.
via Fox’s Laura Ingraham sued by former personal assistant for pregnancy discrimination
In this case which came first the media or the politicians? In this case the politicians came from behind and were just media puppets pulled by the strings of Murdoch Media. It’s a case when neither the politicians or the media represent us. They merely try to service us in a prick of a way (ODT)
The communications minister Mitch Fifield and Australian Conservatives senator Cory Bernardi both complained about a segment in which a candidate for Bernardi’s party Kevin Bailey was called a “cunt”.
“I would say the majority of people are not offended by the word, they are more offended by the C at the end of the AB than they are about the C-bomb that was used in the sketch,” Anderson, a Triple M Hot Breakfast co-host, told Guardian Australia.
“The majority of people who are offended by these jokes are not really offended by these jokes. They are, by their very nature, offended by the very idea of the ABC and they want to prosecute an agenda against the ABC. This is just an example of something they can use to prosecute an agenda.”
Getting it right: the best reporting on white supremacists and neo-Nazis
Media coverage of white supremacist groups has faced severe criticism but the past year has seen some exemplary reporting
via Getting it right: the best reporting on white supremacists and neo-Nazis | World news | The Guardian
Most TV news reports over the weekend cherry-picked Friday’s data on January’s jobs. The statistics were a mix of good news and bad. Total jobs increased. But so did people looking for work. The jobless rate for women decreased. But for men, it increased. The overall jobless rate did not go up. It did not go down either. Wages increased over the year. So did inflation.
Naturally, the pro-Trump media highlighted only the positive — in stark contrast to their approach through the Obama years.
via News Corp expands its pro-Trump #fakenews despite failing U.S. economy
It’s a familiar sight in the current news landscape – panels of suited men rambling loudly on some polemical hot topic, all throbbing veins and manufactured conflict.
For ABC News boss Tim Ayliffe, it’s the right time to go back to basics.
This news model also allowed climate denialists and before them cigarette cancer denialists to manipulate the system. If every story has two points of view and they are equal, then you have to present both. But where one side in this debate is factually incorrect, it means you are doing the opposite of journalism. You are diluting the truth with false, paid-for propaganda.
Cable news is now pumping out Trump talking points hourly to millions of people around the globe, because of their broken business model. It is degrading our society and our human values. The editors and the CEOs need to look at themselves in the mirror and decide if they really want brown shirts beating up their children in the streets, because that is where this thing is going.
via The worst thing about Year One of Trump: Fascistization of Cable News | Informed Comment
“We have to be their check on power,” declares Post editor Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks), as he argues the case for printing the story with publisher Katharine Graham (Meryl Streep) while she wrestles with the possibility of losing her business and winding up in prison in the process. “We have to hold them accountable. If we don’t, who will?”
“In the absence of the governmental checks and balances present in other areas of our national life, the only effective restraint upon executive policy and power in the areas of national defence and international affairs may lie in an enlightened citizenry – in an informed and critical public opinion which alone can here protect the values of democratic government,” he wrote. “For this reason, it is perhaps here that a press that is alert, aware, and free most vitally serves the basic purpose of the first amendment. For, without an informed and free press, there cannot be an enlightened people.”
However then came Murdoch and Fox News and now Sinclair
An anti-intellectual alliance of misogynists and white nationalists is using cult tactics to harass and abuse Americans. They systematically attempt to discredit reputable sources. They replace logic with paranoia. They horrifically harass perceived political opponents. And this campaign, which has dangerous historical precedents, has been empo
Source: Misinformer Of The Year: The Ecosystem Of Fake News And The “Alt-Right”
Melbourne’s international airport, a Qantas jet and St Paul’s Cathedral are included in a new Islamic State propaganda video.
Seven leading Israeli news outlets went to the same briefing with a senior defense official, and wrote six entirely different stories about it. In an era when few people read beyond the headlines, how we…
Source: What keeps the IDF up at night? Depends on where you get your news | +972 Magazine
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