FRANCE: Survival of the free press as France becomes first country to adopt EU.copyright reform

Essential for survival of free press': France becomes first country to adopt EU copyright reform.

Read more at:
https://www.euronews.com/2019/07/24/essential-for-survival-of-free-press-france-becomes-first-country-to-adopt-eu-copyright-r

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USA: freedom of expression challenged

Trump suggests revoking reporters' credentials.
Read more at: http://flip.it/.9MCF2

FREE press: Fight for a free and independent press – it's crucial to a democratic society

Imagine that the free press disappeared and you got all your news from rumor and social media. Imagine that there was no way to find out who wields power, who profits, who tells the truth, and who lies.

We came close to that this year, with fake news, warped news, timid news and confirmation-bias bubbles that offered reinforcement instead of challenge. But a free press – one that is independent and unfettered – is crucial to a free society

That’s why I’m writing to ask you for your support of the Guardian as 2016 comes to a close. Like many news publications that care about facts and truthful reporting, the Guardian is battling troubling attacks from Donald Trump and his allies. Last week, Breitbart News, the rightwing website founded by Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon, opened a new front in the war over fake news, accusing the Guardian of a liberal media campaign to mislead readers about immigration. Earlier in the week, Newt Gingrich, a longtime advocate for the president-elect, called journalists lying “propagandists” and said Trump supporters were entering “a world in which we get to tell the truth”.

If you’ve studied how societies fall apart and how dictatorships arise, you know that strangling an independent press is key. We talk about governments having intelligence and intelligence agencies, but a free country depends on our intelligence – on our informed understanding of the issues. An independent media is the people’s intelligence agency.

Read more: Fight for a free and independent press – it's crucial to a democratic society | Membership | The Guardian

Human Rights including freedom of religion under siege in Turkey - Latest Scapegoats: Christians -- by Aykan Erdemir

Pastor Brunson and wife Norine arrested in Izmir 
for "activities against national security"

The Globalist recently reported that Turkish police on October 7 detained the American pastor Andrew Brunson and his wife Norine – residents of Turkey for the last twenty years – for “activities against national security.” Authorities held the couple in isolation for twelve days, with no access to an attorney or U.S. consular officials.

Pastor Andrew Brunson had been leading the Izmir Resurrection Church, 

Although Turkey’s Directorate of Migration Management ultimately released the pastor’s wife, Brunson has been held in solitary confinement with no access to legal counsel for over 40 days.

As appalling as the couple’s treatment is, it is best understood as part of a wider campaign by the ruling Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) to intimidate and scapegoat Turkey’s Christians.

In the aftermath of the July 15 failed coup, government-held rallies and pro-government media have incited violence against Turkey’s religious
minorities.

Pro-government dailies slandered the Greek-Orthodox ecumenical patriarch for “plotting” the coup with the CIA, and published a fabricated Vatican passport to show that the coup’s alleged mastermind was a Catholic cardinal.

In the ensuing wave of violence, vigilantes targeted Protestant and Catholic churches and Armenian schools.

The AKP government’s involvement in the crackdown is disconcerting. On October 8, authorities banned the Protestant church in Antioch – an ancient cradle of Christianity – for conducting Bible study “without a permit.”

Soon after, two officials of Turkey’s Association of Protestant Churches reported that they had been questioned by the police concerning their pastoral work.

On October 17, airport officials denied entry to an American Protestant who headed the Ankara Refugee Ministry, insisting that – like the accusations against the Brunsons – he was a “national security threat.”

Earlier this month, authorities handed control of the Syriac church in the city of Urfa to a nearby university’s Faculty of Islamic Theology.

Turkey’s Christians are no strangers to intimidation. Brunson himself was the target of an armed attack in 2011. Assailants killed a Roman Catholic priest and bishop in 2006 and 2010 respectively.

A German Protestant and two Turkish converts were tortured and brutally massacred in a Bible publishing house in 2007, three months after the assassination of the editor of Turkey’s main Armenian weekly.

Authorities have also been lenient towards assailants who target Christians. The five culprits of the publishing-house massacre were released in 2014, and the murderer of the priest walked free last year.

The Armenian editor’s assassin received a hero’s welcome when brought into the police station, where officers praised his courage and asked him to pose with the Turkish flag.

Unless the AKP government introduces safeguards against hate crimes, tackles the culture of impunity, and stops incitement against Christians, Turkey risks joining the long list of Middle Eastern states where ancient Christian communities are disappearing.

Religious minorities are historically canaries in a country’s coal mine. Once Turkey’s religious pluralism disappears, it likely will not take long for its political pluralism to evaporate alongside it, if it is not already happening at a very fast pace.

EU-Digest

TURKEY: Free press non - existent today

Stop the press: Turkey's crackdown on its media goes into overdrive http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/29/stop-the-press-turkey-crackdown-journalists-overdrive-since-coup?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Blogger

Middle East - Censorship: Saudis use Twitter to critique government and to avoid censorship- by Glen Carey and Deema Almashabi

When Saudi Arabia announced a program to provide ­people with affordable homes last month, only a few hours passed before online critics started attacking the performance of the Housing Ministry.

A man wrote on Twitter that the agency “is all promises but we have yet to see them implement anything”. Another said the ministry should solve problems with previous projects before starting new ones.
The ministry defended its plan the same day, in a rare government response to public discontent in an absolute monarchy.

In Saudi Arabia, which has the world’s largest proportion of internet users accessing Twitter, people are turning online to avoid the censorship of traditional media, and to question government in a way that’s transforming their relationship with the ruling Al Saud family.

While that might in the past have resulted in a jail sentence, the Saudi authorities are accepting greater online freedom since the Arab Spring uprisings started in 2011.

“Social media provides a space for interaction that isn’t permitted in public,” said Lori Plotkin Boghardt, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “Saudi leadership views the use of social media to express discontent as a fact of modern life that must be tolerated. Not allowing it might lead to further disgruntlement.”

A third of Saudi internet users access Twitter each month, the largest proportion in the world, according to data from PeerReach. YouTube and Instagram are the other two most popular social media sites in the kingdom.

Read more: Saudis use Twitter to critique government

China - Cyber War: Hackers target Western news organizations - by Michael Muskal and Jessica Guynn

More than 30 journalists and executives at Western news organizations in China, including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, have had their computers hacked, according to the news organizations and a security firm that monitors such attacks.

Over the last four months, the hackers managed to infiltrate the Times' computers, the newspaper reported Thursday. It said hackers had penetrated its computers and obtained passwords for reporters and other employees.

The hackers have been blocked and security tightened to prevent another attack, which followed an investigation by the paper into finances of relatives of Wen Jiabao, China's premier.

Mandiant Corp., a security firm brought into the case by the Times, said it found that hackers using techniques associated with the Chinese military stole emails, contacts and files from 30 journalists and executives and maintained a short list of journalists whose accounts have been repeatedly attacked.

Read more: Hackers target Western news organizations in China - latimes.com

UN Condemns The Imprisonment Of Chinese Dissident

"The UN human rights commissioner on Friday strongly condemned the 11-year prison term awarded to a prominent Chinese dissident.

'The conviction and extremely harsh sentencing of Liu Xiabo mark a further severe restriction on the scope of freedom of expression in China,' UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said. Pillay termed the imprisonment as the latest example of a crackdown on human rights in China."

For complete report goto: UN Condemns The Imprisonment Of Chinese Dissident

Market Watch: US Newspaper circulation declines 7% - by David Wilkerson

For the complete report from MarketWatch click on this link

The average daily circulation of U.S. newspapers declined 7% in the six-month period ending March 31, according to the latest data from the Audit Bureau of Circulations, reflecting an increased rate of decline over the last two measured periods. The data indicate that in the midst of a shift in consumer behavior that has led more people to get their news and information online, a depressed economy has induced still more readers to cancel their newspaper subscriptions. Among 395 daily U.S. newspapers, the average circulation totaled 34.4 million, compared with a total of 37.1 million in the March 2008 reporting period, according to preliminary figures, the ABC said.

In the six months ended Sept. 30, daily circulation was down 4.6% from the same period a year earlier. In the March 2008 period, daily circulation fell 3.6%.

With 557 U.S. newspapers reporting their Sunday numbers, average circulation fell 5.4% in the March 2009 period, to 42.1 million.

Helium: The difference between government-controlled media and corporate-controlled media - by Andrew Weeraratne

For the complete report from Helium click on this link

The difference between government-controlled media and corporate-controlled media - by Andrew Weeraratne

" I grew up in the Third World where the government controls the press. The good thing about a system like that is almost every citizen, save the dumbest, knows that the press is full of lies. They just read the news for entertainment. But in America things are way sophisticated. The government has no hand in controlling the press except a government that gives welfare to the corporations that control the press; in that situation such a government controls the press indirectly. And under a condition like that only the very insightful people would recognize the bias in the US major media to help out a handful of people in the country at the expense of the whole society. There was a time people enjoyed true freedom of press. But starting the 1980s it slowly stared decaying. This is disturbing since every corrupt and fascist regime in history first terminated freedom of speech as the first step towards their climb to fascism. This never happens in one swing but in gradual but steady steps. This has to be a concern not only of American citizens but also of all people. The USA has the power to blow up any part of the world in a matter of seconds with almost no opposition. Therefore, it is essential that the USA will continue to have sane and rational leaders who are not easily corruptible. One of the best ways to assure this is to have transparency and that comes only from a full and free press. So long live Internet journalists.

Online Journal: Economy - Visualize the Dow at 6,000 - by Mike Whitney

For the complete report from the Online Journal click on this link

Visualize the Dow at 6,000 - by Mike Whitney

What we are seeing today in openly in America and in a more controlled form elsewhere in the financial markets is a hybridized version of capitalism, “Paulson’s Scatterbrain Capitalism,” a hodge-podge of taxpayer bailouts, government intervention and free market mumbo-jumbo supported by a corporate controlled press. It’s a toxic mix of off-balance sheets operations, over-the-counter “unregulated” derivatives, dark pool trading, opaque hedge funds, dodgy Enron-style accounting, and complex, hard-to-pronounce debt-instruments wrapped up into one, cheesy, unsustainable shell game, managed by Harvard-educated flim-flam men and backed by a 100 percent government guarantee. That’s the system we’re supporting with our tax dollars and that’s the system that is dragging us headlong to ruin. It ain’t capitalism, my friend. It’s a crooked system run by corporate carpetbaggers and banking scalawags who’ve shot the Golden Goose in hopes of keeping the larder at the cottage on the New Jersey coast chock-full of Dom Perignon and halibut fillets. They created this nightmare and they’ve doomed us all. As long as we prop up the existing system, the economy will continue to flounder, unemployment will continue to rise, foreclosures will continue to soar, banks will continue to be shuttered, and the wobbly old greenback will continue its inexorable march towards Pesoville.

At an improvised press conference last week, US President George Bush gave what might have been the most comical performance of his eight-year presidency. Looking like the skipper on the flight-deck of the Hindenburg, Bush tried his best to reassure the public that “all’s well” with the economy and that everyone’s deposits were perfectly safe in the rapidly disintegrating US banking system.

CFP: The Implosion of the Mainstream Media - by Bruce Walker

For the complete report from CFP click on this link

The Implosion of the Mainstream Media - by Bruce Walker

Three polls in the last three months show that the public sees the news media as biased toward Barack Obama. Gallup at the end of May, when Hillary was still in the race, showed that thirty-seven percent of Americans thought the media had been too easy on Obama, higher than either McCain or Hillary. In July, with both parties’ nominees chosen, Rasmussen published a poll that showed nearly sixty percent of voters thought that journalists gave preferential treatment to Obama, compared with only fourteen percent who thought that McCain got preferential treatment from journalists.

In a democracy when private citizens do much more actual reporting and much more objective analysis than those corporations which have a near monopoly upon mass communication, then the long descent of the mainstream media into a moral and an intellectual irrelevance is the result. We have reached a point in which even those individuals who benefit from mainstream media bias have stopped seriously denying the bias. The implosion of the mainstream media is complete.

EUobserver: Pursuit of profit hurting the media, say MEPs - Leigh Phillips

EUobserver: "For the complete report from the EU Observer click on this link

The pursuit of profit is putting the historic role of the press as the watchdog of democracy at stake, MEPs from all political parties have warned. Measures to protect editorial independence and quality of content are desperately needed in order to prevent interference from owners, shareholders or governments, says a report adopted Tuesday in the European Parliament's culture committee.The cases of unrestricted ownership concentration or of scarce content pluralism in the media are endangering cultural diversity and freedom of expression not only within national markets but also at European level," said Socialist committee chair Katarina Batzeli. Passing 33 votes to one, with no abstentions, the report had the support of all parties. Liberal MEP Marielle de Sarnez said in the wake of the vote that Europe needed to pay attention to "the risk to independence posed by the existence of media groups owned by large companies."

FMNN: Americans Slam News Media as interest in Europe for written Press declines

For the complete report from the Free Market News Network click on this link

Americans Slam News Media as interest in Europe for written Press declines

The perception is growing among Americans that the news media attempts to influence public opinion -- from 79.3% strongly or somewhat agreeing in 2003 to 87.6% in 2007. And, 86.0% agreed (strongly or somewhat) that the news media attempts to influence public policies -- up from 76.7% in 2003. Americans surveyed provided poor ratings for the national news media on six different characteristics measured. The average overall positive rating across all six characteristics measured was 33.4%. The highest positive rating, 40.7%, was recorded for quality of reporting followed by accuracy of reporting at 36.9% and keeping any personal bias out of stories (33.3%). Other low positive ratings included: fairness (31.3%), presenting an even balance of views (30.4%) and presenting negative and positive news equally (27.5%).

"Americans know bias and imbalance when they see it and they don't like it. When most service organizations strive for consumer satisfaction ratings in the high eighties to low nineties, an overall positive rating of 40.7% is dismal," said Jerry C. Lindsley, director of the Sacred Heart University Polling Institute. He added, "Americans know that it's just not that hard to present both sides and keep personal bias at home." By four-to-one margins, Americans surveyed see The New York Times (41.9% to 11.8%) and National Public Radio (40.3% to 11.2%) as mostly or somewhat liberal over mostly or somewhat conservative.

Time Magazine Book Excerpt:: USA - The Assault on Reason - by Al Gore

For the complete report in TIME Magazine click on this link

USA - The Assault on Reason - by Al Gore

Not long before our nation launched the invasion of Iraq, our longest-serving Senator, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, stood on the Senate floor and said: "This chamber is, for the most part, silent—ominously, dreadfully silent. There is no debate, no discussion, no attempt to lay out for the nation the pros and cons of this particular war. There is nothing. We stand passively mute in the United States Senate."

It is too easy—and too partisan—to simply place the blame on the policies of President George W. Bush. We are all responsible for the decisions our country makes. We have a Congress. We have an independent judiciary. We have checks and balances. We are a nation of laws. We have free speech. We have a free press. Have they all failed us? Why has America's public discourse become less focused and clear, less reasoned? Faith in the power of reason—the belief that free citizens can govern themselves wisely and fairly by resorting to logical debate on the basis of the best evidence available, instead of raw power—remains the central premise of American democracy. This premise is now under assault.