One of the issues closest to my heart is a free press. Of course, I’m biased because it’s a subject I’m close to as I’ve been in the newspaper industry since 1989, but even without that experience, I know that a nation can’t be democratic without a free press.
Goons don’t appreciate a free press despite that it benefits them just as much as it benefits liberals. Donald Trump and his supporters don’t even know what legitimate news is and often call real reporting “fake news.” They claim that legitimate news outlets like CNN, The New York, Times, The Washington Post, etc, etc have a liberal agenda and lie, though they can never back up these claims. Even U.S. outlets that lied and said Trump won, or the 2020 election was stolen, or that Jan. 6 terrorists were merely tourists and protesters are still broadcasting.
The First Amendment guarantees our right to a free press and the Constitution protects Breitbart and Fox News just as much as it protects The New York Times and The Boston Globe. The Constitution doesn’t play favorites.
For a nation to be a full-fledged democracy, it has to have a free press. Today, Israel is more fascist than democratic because Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has shut down a news outlet for publishing information he doesn’t like. Bibi’s cabinet has agreed to the closure while the war in Gaza is ongoing.
The Israeli government shut down Al Jazeera, a news a Qatari-based news outlet, branding it a “mouthpiece for Hamas.” Al Jazeera called claims it was a threat to Israeli security a “dangerous and ridiculous lie.”
Bibi didn’t just turn off the power to Al Jazeera in Israel. The government raided Al Jazeera’s office in Jerusalem and took communication equipment. The office is located inside a hotel. To double down on this fascist system banning a news outlet, other outlets like the BBC weren’t allowed inside the hotel to report on the raid.
The Foreign Press Association (FPA) said Israel now joins “a dubious club of authoritarian governments to ban the station,” a club that includes Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Maldives, Mauritius, Mauritania, and Bahrain. Al Jazeera is headquartered in Qatar. The FPA said the shutdown should be “a cause for concern for all supporters of a free press” and Netanyahu now has the power to target other foreign outlets that he considers to be “acting against the state.”
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) filed a request to the country’s Supreme Court to issue an interim order to overturn the ban. The group said claims that the broadcaster was a propaganda tool for Hamas were “unfounded”, and that Sunday’s ban was less about security concerns and more to “serve a more politically motivated agenda, aimed at silencing critical voices and targeting Arab media.”
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) Program Director Carlos Martinez de la Serna agreed with ACRI, saying, “The Israeli cabinet must allow Al Jazeera and all international media outlets to operate freely in Israel, especially during wartime.”
The United Nations Human Rights office also called upon the Israeli government to reverse the ban, posting on Twittter/X: “A free & independent media is essential to ensuring transparency & accountability. Now, even more so given tight restrictions on reporting from Gaza.” Foreign journalists are banned from entering Gaza.
Last month, the Israeli parliament passed a law giving the government power to temporarily close foreign broadcasters considered a threat to national security during the war against Hamas.
An investigation by the Committee to Protect Journalists found that at least 97 journalists and media workers were among the more than 35,000 killed in Gaza since the war began on October 7.
Vladimir Putin has also banned news outlets from operating in his nation and has created new laws making it illegal to report honestly on his illegal invasion of Ukraine. Benjamin Netanyahu is in a very exclusive club. Maybe if Trump, who has openly advocated to dismantle the First Amendment, wins or steals the 2024 presidential election, the United States will join that club too.
We’re supposed to support Israel in its war against Hamas, a terrorist group, but it’s hard to keep supporting the good guys when they keep acting like the bad guys.
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I love your detailed funny informative Cartoons! They remind me of “Life in Hell”, but in color!
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But, there’s, not going to be, “free enough” press, as the political parties, buy out the newspaper press, and eventually, a country will have, NOTHING but the news that the political governing party wants the people to read, and we won’t have any other opinions save for the ones that our individual governments want to brain wash us with…
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Your newspaper headlines really hit hard as the current reality overtaking our world. I never thought I would see such times in my lifetime and yet here we are.
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“Babi” ‘Yahoo has once again proved he is not a democratic leader. He is a tyrant looking to end democracy in Israel, just like he is trying to end Palestine. He cannot be allowed to abuse power any more. If he “cleanses” israel, you can bet he will try to grow an empire. He won’t be satisfied until there are no Arabs in the Middle East.
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There are so many sick people in power, it feels like the world is just over run with them. He’s really out of control.
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We haven’t had a free press in the US since the Fairness Doctrine debacle. All media is profit driven here and motivated to adjust the narrative to increase viewership. CNN jumped that shark some years ago and the NYT definitely has shown a bias towards “both-siderism” rather than objective reporting.
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Even if everything you said is true, that’s still a free press.
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NPR? It receives about 5% of its operating expenses from the government and the rest from listeners/foundations, etc. They are said to have a liberal bias (center-left, with emphasis on the center)and they do a pretty credible job of reportage.
Of course, in the hyper capitalist US system, the press will be biased in favor of making a profit. Why should we expect a different outcome than that which you describe? Never has the US press been mission driven if the mission was to keep people informed. But the fights of today are of greater consequence, although they were pretty nasty in 1800 when Whigs and Democratic Republicans slimed each other in broad sheets. I get the feeling that the people in Lawrence, KS in the late 1850s were receiving news that was wholly different from that was being heard in MO. Horace Greeley, editor of the NY Herald, was often sued for libel. And he was by no measure the most inflammatory newspaperman of his generation. Later, Pulitzer and Hearst fought each other and started a war to sell papers.
Is Muhammed Speaks still sold in NYC? In These Times, I believe, currently published. If you really want diversity of opinion, it can still be found. Get off your TV and read some magazines: The Nation; the New Yorker; The NACLA report. It’s not just the fairness doctrine (which only applied to broadcast news, in any case), it’s the nature of the media by which one acquires one’s news. The written word can carry nuance. Televised news only contains – often misleading – headlines. Commercial radio news is, generally worse, containing only [inflammatory] headlines.
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