By Kenny Stancil* – Common Dreams In an opinion piece, the Washington Post‘s publisher on Sunday accused President Joe Biden’s Justice Department of exacerbating the Trump administration’s assault on press freedom and called for a “full accounting” of the Biden DOJ’s recent… Continue Reading
By Hazel Henderson* All nations evolve their infrastructure along with their peoples’ knowledge and technologies. From our distant past as small bands of nomadic hunter-gatherers, we learned the use of fire to smelt iron and tin — progressing from the… Continue Reading
By Siva Vaidhyanathan* – The Guardian The reality is that Trump used Facebook most effectively as an organizing and fundraising tool, not as a platform for ‘posting’ The world is a lot better off without Donald Trump as president of… Continue Reading
Deutsche Welle (DW) * The Burmese military regime has routinely arrested journalists and banned independent media. But reporters continue to work underground — under pressure from the ruling junta, but also from the opposition. Myanmar’s military government, which overthrew the… Continue Reading
By Thalif Deen* UNITED NATIONS, May 2021 (IPS) – In the contemporary world of journalism, female reporters face a double jeopardy: they are increasingly targeted both as journalists and as women– particularly in repressive regimes and misogynistic societies. As the… Continue Reading
By Michael De Dora* WASHINGTON, Apr 30 2021 (IPS) – When Myanmar’s military seized power from the elected government in February, one of its first actions was to further squeeze the already restricted free flow of information in the country.… Continue Reading
By Joshua Carroll and Tin Htet Paing (*) – Columbia Journalism Review In early April, about fifteen soldiers showed up at an outdoor market in the north of Myanmar’s main city of Yangon. The country’s military staged a coup on… Continue Reading
By Channing Gerard Joseph* – The Nation History must be acknowledged before justice can be done I found my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather on my mother’s side listed for sale in an old newspaper advertisement: “Stephen, 50, sawyer and sailor.” The announcement, headlined… Continue Reading
By Sara Torsner and Jackie Harrison (*) – The Conversation Press freedom: A government’s fear of scrutiny and criticism often determines how repressive it is toward the press. The greater the fear, the greater the loss of press freedom. Of… Continue Reading
By Héloïse Hakimi Le Grand* WASHINGTON DC, Apr 15 2021 (IPS) – Gender stereotyping in the media has a significant impact on how women and gender minorities are perceived. In turn, it affects their opportunities to fully and effectively participate… Continue Reading
Phil Heimlich* – Opinion contributor, Cincinnati Enquirer I’ve noticed a disturbing trend around the world: A leader is democratically elected and then gradually transforms his country into a dictatorship. In Turkey, ruled by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, “the tweet has been… Continue Reading
Timothy Garton Ash* – The Guardian A planned ‘coronavirus tax’ on revenues and attacks on foreign-owned media threaten to cut away democracy piece by piece Democracy dies in darkness. One of the European Union’s most fragile democracies, Poland, now faces… Continue Reading
By Fábián Tamás – Telex.hu (*) Over the past few weeks, the state of Hungary’s media has become the focus of intense public debate both domestically and across Europe. After the exclusively Fidesz-chaired Media Council revoked the oppositional Klubrádió’s frequency… Continue Reading
By !!444 InsightHungary!!! (*) Hungary and Poland on Thursday launched a challenge with the European Court of Justice over a so-called rule of law mechanism in the European Union’s budget that would link payment of EU funds to upholding of democratic standards.… Continue Reading
By Robert Lipsyte* – TomDispatch As Do Pestilence, Famine, War, and Death The Four Horsemen of our media apocalypse — Rush Limbaugh, Roger Ailes, Rupert Murdoch, and Donald Trump — have ridden roughshod over us this past half-century leaving their… Continue Reading
By Ishaan Tharoor* – The Washington Post Three-quarters of the people on earth live in countries where freedom is declining. That’s one of the grim takeaways in an annual report produced by Freedom House, the Washington-based pro-democracy think tank and… Continue Reading
By Peter Molnar* – The Nation The government shut down a station that connected many listeners—particularly the elderly—to their country and the world When the faithful listeners to Klubrádió, a talk radio station that has been a beacon of free speech… Continue Reading
Marina Hyde* – The Guardian This is about more than Facebook and news – it’s about the pursuit of power in a world where companies are stronger than countries You can say Mark Zuckerberg puts you in mind of a… Continue Reading
By Roberto Savio* In a robustly entertaining – and thoroughly informative – book on the lighter side of the United Nations, Thalif Deen, a former UN Bureau Chief and Regional Director for Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency, has just… Continue Reading
Organizations for the defense of freedom of expression, human rights institutions, journalists’ unions and reference media all over the world have shown growing concern about the autocratic decisions of the supposedly democratic governments of Hungary and Poland due to the… Continue Reading
