The Listening Post

On The Listening Post this week: The National Enquirer was once Trump's most strident cheerleader — now it's his latest headache. Plus, Radio Dabanga: Is Darfur losing its media lifeline? Catch & Kill: Could Trump's media allies hasten his downfall? The question in Washington these days is not just: Where is the Mueller investigation into US President Donald Trump going - but who is next? His lawyer, Michael Cohen and a business associate, Allen Weisselberg agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in exchange for immunity. Now, Trump's long-time friend, and a key media player David Pecker has done the same. Pecker is at the helm of American Media Inc which owns the tabloid 'National Enquirer' - part of the Trump story, mostly because of the stories it doesn't publish, a practice known as "catch and kill". If someone had a potentially damaging story about Donald Trump for sale - the Enquirer would buy it and bury it - so that bad news would never see the light of day. Contributors: John Nichols - Writer, The Nation Amanda Terkel - Washington Bureau Chief, HuffPost Elizabeth Anker - Associate Professor of American Studies and Political Sciences, George Washington University John Ziegler - Radio Host and Columnist, Mediaite On our radar Richard Gizbert speaks to producer Will Yong about why Facebook has banned 20 accounts in Myanmar; and how Sky TV in the UK is in hot water with the media regulator after airing ads paid for by Saudi Arabia. Radio Dabanga: Is Darfur losing its media lifeline? It's been more than 15 years since the conflict in Darfur in western Sudan began and there is no end in sight to the fighting. But with the authorities preventing journalists going in and information coming out - Darfur has turned into a black hole for news. One broadcaster, has proven critically important - Radio Dabanga. Beaming in from Amsterdam to remain beyond the reach of government censors, the station has become a rare source of independent news for what it says are its more than three million daily listeners. The Listening Post's Johanna Hoes reports from Holland on the radio station that broadcasts news and information to citizens left in the dark. Contributors: Kamal Elsadig - Editor-in-Chief, Radio Dabanga Hassan Berkia - Sudanese Journalists Network Abdul Azim Awad - Secretary General, National Council for Press and Publications Eric Reeves - Senior Fellow, Harvard University, Author: 'Compromising with Evil' Shammal Al-Nour - Reporter, Al-Tayaar Newspaper More from The Listening Post on: YouTube - http://aje.io/listeningpostYT Facebook - http://facebook.com/AJListeningPost Twitter - http://twitter.com/AJListeningPost Website - http://aljazeera.com/listeningpost - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

A few weeks back, we learned Google was developing something called "Project Dragonfly", a new search engine for the Chinese market that would function in compliance with Beijing's strict rules on censorship. In an organisation that talks up transparency, it is ironic that only a handful of the company's 88,000 employees knew about the project. When some of them caught wind of it, they leaked the story to an online news site, The Intercept, which broke the news and put Google's top brass on the spot. Google has ventured into China before but eventually left in 2010 because it couldn't live with the censorship rules. There was a time when Google's corporate slogan was '"don't be evil". That altruistic philosophy has since been amended from its code of conduct to "do the right thing". Nowadays in China, "doing the right thing is about trading off to lesser evils," explains Yuan Yang, Beijing economy and technology correspondent for the Financial Times. "Chinese friends actually many of them are hopeful that they can use Google in China because they would like there to be an alternative to the near-monopolist which is Baidu. It would be a really interesting scene if there were two big search engines in China duking it out rather than one big search engine in China." Google's decision to reverse its stance on operating in China is "a stunning turnaround," says Ryan Gallagher, Investigative Journalist at The Intercept, "because in China, nothing has changed. In fact, it's probably got worse in terms of the censorship. The laws that are in place that oversee these things have become a lot more draconian in that eight-year period. So for Google to say it's going to go back in, it's, it's an extraordinary story." Those monitoring online freedoms worry that Google's return would have dangerous real-world consequences, perhaps accelerating a great new wave of online restrictions in China and elsewhere. "The legitimate concern that people have, that if Google goes into China, that it's legitimising China's censorship regime," points out Ann Lee, economist at New York University. "If citizens are concerned about corporations becoming too powerful and becoming like nation states, then they should actually be asking the lawmakers to pass laws that require corporations above a certain revenue line to have, a different way of responding to public inquiries." Should Google succeed in getting back into China, it stands to gain access to more than three-quarters of a billion people online. But the company's competition there is way out in front. In Google's eight-year absence, Baidu, a Chinese search engine, has solidified its position and now has more than 75 percent of that market. So even if Google manages to clear the political hurdles currently standing in its way, it will have a lot of catching up to do. Contributors Ryan Gallagher - Investigative Journalist, The Intercept Yuan Yang - Beijing Economy and Tech Correspondent, Financial Times Siva Vaidhyanathan - Professor of Modern Media Studies, University of Virginia Ann Lee - Economist, New York University More from The Listening Post on: YouTube - http://aje.io/listeningpostYT Facebook - http://facebook.com/AJListeningPost Twitter - http://twitter.com/AJListeningPost Website - http://aljazeera.com/listeningpost - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

These days, Palestinians find themselves surveilled and censored online from all directions. The general assumption is that all Palestinians are under some kind of surveillance. In the past, Israel's security services monitored specific targets using fake accounts; befriending someone to try to get information. But their methods have grown much more sophisticated. Israel has since developed a "predictive policing" programme - a programme that would not sound out of place on the pages of George Orwell's 1984. It tries to identify would-be Palestinian attackers by building profiles based on things like age, location and the types of posts they write on Facebook. "He probably doesn't even know it yet, but technology predicts that according to certain conditions, he will commit the next attack," says Nadim Nashif, 7amleh's executive director, "and so he gets interrogated, investigated, threatened along with members of his family, and even jailed." These days, if you're Palestinian and you've written something online that the Israelis don't like, you're likely to end up getting arrested and charged with "incitement". The Israeli government says Palestinians use social media to incite violence against Israelis. But many of those charged are simply guilty of criticising Israel and its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. While the Listening Post's Tariq Nafi was in Palestine, the well-known writer Lama Khater, as well as six other journalists, became the latest victims of incitement charges. What we had not anticipated was just how controlled Palestinian speech is by their own authorities. Much like their Israeli counterparts, the Palestinian Authority security forces have also used incitement as a means to silence dissent. Just a few years ago, it was not uncommon to hear stories about journalists being arrested by Palestinian security officers who did not know the difference between a Facebook "post" and a "tag". Not any more. "There's been a marked evolution, they [the Palestinian Authority] now have special units dedicated to social media ... as a result, the fight over civil liberties has become much harder," according to Naela Khalil, bureau chief for Al Araby Al Jadeed. "Why harder? Because the entire social media output of journalists is now monitored." Armed with a restrictive Cybercrimes Law that was passed by presidential decree in 2017, the Palestinian Authority, the PA, can now target anyone expressing opposition online. Journalists are regularly summoned by the Palestinian Preventive Security for posts they write on Facebook. Sometimes they are shown the entire contents of their private messages, adding to the fear that social media is no longer a safe space. "There is now total awareness among a lot of journalists that social media platforms are no longer secure, and that internet service providers can no longer be trusted," says Khalil. "You feel as if we've somehow become like that TV programme, Big Brother. Everyone is watching you. Israel is watching you, the PA is watching you and you're the journalist, the one who's meant to be uncovering the story as it is." Contributors Nadim Nashif - Executive director of 7amleh, The Arab Center for Social Media Advancement Naela Khalil - West Bank bureau chief, Al Araby Al Jadeed Rania Muhareb - Legal researcher, Al Haq Elia Zureik - Professor emeritus in sociology, Queen's University, Canada More from The Listening Post on: YouTube - http://aje.io/listeningpostYT Facebook - http://facebook.com/AJListeningPost Twitter - http://twitter.com/AJListeningPost Website - http://aljazeera.com/listeningpost - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

On The Listening Post this week: Google’s planned Chinese search app comes under fire – not least from its own staff. Plus, surveillance and censorship in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Bowing to Beijing? Google's Project Dragonfly A few weeks back, we learned Google was working on something called ‘Project Dragonfly’, a new search engine for the Chinese market – one that would function in compliance with Beijing’s strict rules on censorship. In an organisation that talks up transparency - it is ironic that only a handful of the company's employees knew about the project. When some of them caught wind of it - they leaked the details to an online news site, The Intercept. Google has ventured into China before, in 2010. But back then it decided it couldn’t live with the censorship rules. So it pulled out. This potential re-entry into China signals a major policy u-turn, involving one the biggest tech companies on the planet and the world’s largest market. Contributors Ryan Gallagher - Investigative Journalist, The Intercept Yuan Yang - Beijing Economy and Tech Correspondent, Financial Times Siva Vaidhyanathan - Professor of Modern Media Studies, University of Virginia Ann Lee - Economist, New York University On our radar Richard Gizbert speaks to producer Johanna Hoes about an informative CNN report covering aspects of the war in Yemen that don’t usually get much attention from the media. Censored and Surveilled: The Digital Occupation of Palestinians Palestinian journalists and activists are faced with two inescapable realities: surveillance and censorship. Since 2015, the authorities in Israel have arrested an estimated one thousand Palestinians for content published or shared online and the state has also taken down hundreds of Palestinian social media accounts - developing algorithms and a “predictive policing” program that monitors Palestinians in anticipation of them committing a ‘crime’. But Palestinians also have to contend with their own authorities, the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza, neither of which is known for tolerating dissent or criticism online. The Listening Post's Tariq Nafi reports from the Occupied West Bank. Contributors Nadim Nashif - Executive Director of 7amleh, The Arab Center for Social Media Advancement Naela Khalil - West Bank Bureau Chief, Al Araby Al Jadeed Rania Muhareb - Legal Researcher, Al Haq Elia Zureik - Professor Emeritus in Sociology, Queen's University, Canada More from The Listening Post on: YouTube - http://aje.io/listeningpostYT Facebook - http://facebook.com/AJListeningPost Twitter - http://twitter.com/AJListeningPost Website - http://aljazeera.com/listeningpost - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

Calls are continuing to grow for the release of award-winning photographer and social activist Shahidul Alam who was detained by Bangladeshi police for "provocative comments" about student-led protests in the country. The protests that set this story into motion quickly morphed into something larger, more political. And with an election coming later this year, it's a politically sensitive time there. "The government's approach is to control the narrative as well as the situation, according to Ikhtisad Ahmed, contributor at Scroll. "Situations they control with violence. Narrative they control by silencing any form of dissent, so that the only message you are getting is what the government is saying." The Rohingya crisis has put Bangladesh in the spotlight, so "They do not want the international community to know about the other bad things that this government is doing," explains Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia Director for Human Rights Watch. "And therefore, when Shahidul Alam raised those concerns, they clearly felt that this was undermining their image internationally." When he goes to trial, Shahidul Alam is likely to be charged under the Information, Communications and Technology Act, a law passed long ago, in 2006. Sheikh Hasina's government took power in 2009 and amended the law four years later. The changes it made to Section 57, dealing with content people post online - and the frequent prosecutions since - have been criticised by media watch NGOs outside Bangladesh and protested by free speech activists inside the country. Online content there is undeniably an issue. Some of it, dealing with politics and religion, is nasty and dangerous. Violence has resulted; people have been killed. However Section 57 is so vaguely worded, it allows the authorities prosecute the government's critics easily and selectively. "...what the government seems to be doing is, using that as a pretext to clamp down much more widely on any kind of criticism as a way of intimidating and scaring people, so they won't comment on social media in the in the future," says journalist David Bergman. The arrest of Shahidul Alam, the silencing of one voice; the chilling of others is something the government knew would draw criticism. It's a price that, in an election year, the authorities were clearly willing to pay for a message they seemingly wanted to send. The heat is on in Bangladesh. And journalists are among the many who feeling it. Contributors: Meenakshi Ganguly - South Asia Director, Human Rights Watch David Bergman - Journalist Bangladeshi Journalist (anonymous) Ikhtisad Ahmed - Author, "Yours, Etcetera" and Contributor, Scroll Hasanul Haq Inu - Bangladeshi Minister of Information More from The Listening Post on: YouTube - http://aje.io/listeningpostYT Facebook - http://facebook.com/AJListeningPost Twitter - http://twitter.com/AJListeningPost Website - http://aljazeera.com/listeningpost - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

I'll be honest. I really had no idea if this piece was going to work or not. In the world of news, and in the world of meta-news which is the better way of describing our programme, we deal with the present. Sometimes we insert a voice-over that gives a bit of historical context - it usually comes two thirds of the way in to the piece (not to give too much away) - but for the most part, we stick to the ever-giddy 'now'. But I wanted to go back in time, to the sixties and actually, I wanted to talk less about journalism and the politics of misrepresenting the facts, our staple, and more about the merits of literature and fiction. I wasn't trying to be original for the sake of it: it's just that for years, I had been across (another way of saying I knew of their existence but had not strictly speaking actually read them) a group of journalists whose writings, disperate in style, subject, content came to mark a rupture from the orthodoxies of more conventional forms of reporting of the time. Out with the straight laced, neutral tones of the traditional reporter. Zzzzzzzzzz. In with the renegades, the bohemians, the artists who wanted to get into the cracks of the story, because that's where the poison, or the truth, lies. WAKEY WAKEY!!! We are talking about the sixties, a time of political, sexual, cultural, revolutionary change in which the traditional forms of storytelling were out of sync with the new realities. Until then, editors at magazines like The New Yorker, Esquire, Rolling Stone, wouldn't have given such lowly or banal subjects the time of day - that was the stuff of novelists, surely. But these writers erupted on the scene and gave us what we would now call 'long reads' - 30,000 word articles destined to irritate the empirically obsessed journalistic establishment - and destabilise the literary world which felt robbed or that their art form had been degraded. Anyway, the point is that there was something about The New Journalism that spoke to me. It was a different kind of embedded journalism. Tom Wolfe rode across the country with a group of hippies. Hunter S. Thompson probably overstayed his welcome with the Hell's Angels. Joan Didion delved into California dreaming and came up with nightmares. Terry Southern hung out with baton twirlers in the deep South and unearthed the racial politics of the time. One of our contributors, Dan Bischoff, told me that he thinks "words have declined in importance". "All of today's journalism aspires to be this and it can't, there isn't room for it anymore," said Bischoff, an art critic at the Star Ledger. "You wanna write 30,000 words about oranges, okay, you're gonna mount it on your site and maybe somebody'll read it, you know?" "Several of these New Journalism pieces changed my life," he adds. "I mean, Hunter Thompson changed my life. Gay Talese. These things changed your life. Made you feel that you're not on this planet just by yourself with other people like you...You know, you met other people through these pieces." You met other people in these pieces. People who, today, wouldn't be on your Facebook page, Twitter feed - they would be in another echo chamber, in a parallel universe. You may not have 'liked' what they said, you may not have 'shared' their world views. But you would have engaged with them. That might have made a difference. So, to state the glaringly obvious - this piece we just made, full of glitchy, saturated archive: it's not just about the past, it's about the present and the future. If nostalgia is cheap, then so be it: These writers took risks, they went out there, beyond the confines of their cosmopolitan comfort zones, they stayed a while - enough time for all the clear lines that mark the Manichean narratives of us and them, good and bad, to blur beyond recognition - or to blur into another kind of story, less polarised, more curious, less certain, more real. More from The Listening Post on: YouTube - http://aje.io/listeningpostYT Facebook - http://facebook.com/AJListeningPost Twitter - http://twitter.com/AJListeningPost Website - http://aljazeera.com/listeningpost - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

On The Listening Post this week: protests in Dhaka are about more than road safety, but the government will not let that message air. Plus, how the late Tom Wolfe inspires journalists today. Speaking the unspeakable in Bangladesh It is rare for traffic accidents to result in international headlines. But that is what happened in Bangladesh - where two road fatalities triggered weeks of protests and landed a renowned photojournalist in prison. Award-winning photographer Shahidul Alam was arrested and charged for making 'false' and 'provocative' comments in a TV interview on Al Jazeera. He criticised the alleged excessive use of force on protesters demanding road safety and questioned the legitimacy of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's government. There's a general election coming up later this year, and the government has grown increasingly intolerant of critical voices, especially on the internet. The authorities rely on a vaguely worded law, the Information and Communications Technology Act, which can land anyone publishing 'fake and obscene material' online behind bars. The effect, on journalism in Bangladesh, has been chilling. Contributors Meenakshi Ganguly - South Asia Director, Human Rights Watch David Bergman - Journalist Bangladeshi Journalist (anonymous) Ikhtisad Ahmed - Author, "Yours, Etcetera" and Contributor, Scroll Hasanul Haq Inu - Bangladeshi Minister of Information On our radar Richard Gizbert speaks to producer Tariq Nafi about President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's assertions that fabricated news stories may have contributed to the weakening of the Turkish lira; and Facebook's controversial moderation standards that saw the English language page of Telesur, a high-profile Venezuelan outlet deleted – then restored. The Intersection of Literature & Journalism American writer Tom Wolfe, who died earlier this year, is best known for his work as an author - books like "The Right Stuff" and "Bonfire of the Vanities". But in the 1960s and 70s he was at the forefront of another movement: New Journalism. Wolfe and others pioneered a new type of reporting, borrowing some techniques from novelists and using them to write non-fiction to produce journalism. The initial reviews were not stellar, especially among reporters who saw New Journalism as an affront to their profession. However, it revolutionised reporting and its impact is felt to this day, not just in the US, but around the world and not just in mainstream media, but also online. Feature contributors Dan Bischoff - Art Critic, The Star Ledger Emily Witt - The New Yorker - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

Last November, the Russian government-sponsored news outlets, RT and Sputnik News, registered as foreign agents in the US at the orders of the Department of Justice. Soon after, a congressional committee stripped them of their accreditation to report from the US Congress. These moves followed allegations by US intelligence agencies that the organisations formed part of the Kremlin "propaganda machine" alleged to have interfered in the 2016 presidential election. As debates about the influence of foreign-funded media on the American public spilled from the halls of Congress into TV studios and newsrooms, a fact commonly overlooked was that the US government itself is hardly a stranger when it comes to broadcasting into other countries. Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty are the flagships in a network of TV and radio stations that spans 100 countries. Today, the operation is overseen by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, a federal agency whose budget - which, at $685m dwarfs the Kremlin's estimated annual spend on foreign media - comes from the Department of State after approval from Congress. US international broadcasting began with Voice of America, which was started during World War II by the Office of War Information as a vehicle to counter Nazi propaganda. Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty began life during the early years of the Cold War as products of "psychological warfare" projects run by the CIA, which provided their funding and even senior staff into the 1970s. According to Arch Puddington, a historian of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and a former journalist there, "the idea behind Radio Free Europe was that this would be like an opposition broadcasting station in the Communist world. When you look back at the broad history of the Cold War, RFE and RL played an important role, and the evidence is that when these countries got their independence, their leaders and their freedom fighters, if you will, gave great credit to RFE and RL journalists." The CIA's involvement in funding Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty was exposed and swiftly terminated in the early 1970s. Likewise, an official charter was signed into law in 1976 that brought an end to the close relationship between the United States Information Agency - the body within the Department of State that oversaw Voice of America - and the CIA by introducing a barrier, a kind of firewall, to prevent government interference. US foreign-funded media undoubtedly do provide public-interest journalism in countries with limited press freedom. Yet the umbilical relationship between VOA and RFE/RL and the US government has led many to dispute their claims to be providing objective news to their audiences around the world. "Their budget comes from the state. There is no independence," maintains Hamid Dabashi, a professor of Iranian Studies at Columbia University. "Yes, news is being communicated. But in a way that pushes forward a mobilisation of support, solidarity, ideological conformity with American foreign policy." That notion, that US state-sponsored broadcasters are merely a soft facade for the Department of State's often more brutish behaviour, is one that Amanda Bennett, the current VOA director, rejects out of hand. "We are journalists, and we believe that we promulgate American values by promulgating the basic things that are important to America ...The legal charter under which we operate specifically addresses the fact that we're to operate independently of the US government," she says. Yet Dan Robinson, VOA's former chief Washington correspondent, insists that in his experience such a separation, between journalism and government influence, was sometimes more theory than reality. "For example, in the run-up to the 2003 invasion [of Iraq] … one of the discussion shows received a very specific message that we didn't want to go into too much of the information regarding developments in Iraq at the time, and in fact, one of the main correspondents … was kind of taken off doing these shows because of this kind of pressure," says Robinson. In response to US actions against RT and Sputnik, Moscow has since forced Voice of America and Radio Free Europe to register as foreign agents in Russia. Whether one considers their output journalism or propaganda, the US's attack on Kremlin-funded media may well have ended up jeopardising their own state-sponsored media operation. Contributors: Amanda Bennet, director, Voice of America Arch Puddington, author, Broadcasting Freedom: The Cold War Triumph of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty Dan Robinson, former chief Washington correspondent, Voice of America Hamid Dabashi, professor of Iranian Studies, Columbia University - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

On The Listening Post this week: An undercover sting exposes the Indian media giants willing to peddle propaganda dressed up as news, for a fee. Plus, the US government's global media operation. Caught on camera: Indian media outlets and paid news In India this week, newspapers and television channels were conspicuously silent on a story that should have been major news. Twenty-seven news outlets were the target of a sting operation - a reporter from Cobrapost, an investigative news site, posed as a Hindu nationalist, offering to pay media executives to publish some polarising, religious propaganda in advance of next year's general election. The media executives seemingly accepted the offer. The Listening Post's Meenakshi Ravi reports on the ethical debates in India around both paid content disguised as news and hidden camera operations. Contributors: Aniruddha Bahal, editor-in-chief, Cobrapost Chitra Subramaniam, cofounder, The News Minute and editorial adviser, Republic TV Angshukanta Chakraborty, editor, The Leaflet Raju Narisetti, founder, Mint newspaper On our radar Richard Gizbert speaks to producer Johanna Hoes about the continuing trend of journalists found dead in Mexico; and the real case of fake news, the resurrection of Russian reporter, Arkady Babchenko, who was reportedly killed. Journalism or propaganda? US state-sponsored media Last November, the Russian-sponsored media outlets, RT and Sputnik News were forced to register as foreign agents in the US at the orders of the Department of Justice. The requirement came after allegations that the organisations formed part of the Kremlin's alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election. But what about the flip side of that: namely, the US government's own state-funded media operations? It is undeniable that outlets like Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty do provide reliable reporting in countries with limited press freedom. However, like RT and Sputnik, they have also been accused of producing propaganda dressed up as news at the service of their sponsors in the Department of State. The Listening Post's Flo Phillips reports on whether US state-sponsored media are producing journalism or propaganda. Contributors: Amanda Bennet, director, Voice of America Arch Puddington, author of Broadcasting Freedom: The Cold War Triumph of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty Dan Robinson, former chief White House correspondent, Voice of America Hamid Dabashi, professor of Iranian Studies, Columbia University Source: Al Jazeera News - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

On The Listening Post this week: Which came first? Public support for far-right movements or media coverage of them? Plus, Ethiopia's new prime minister and the hope for media reform. Grappling with the far right on the UK's airwaves In seeking to explain the rise of far-right, anti-immigration movements in countries like Great Britain, many are asking what role the media have played: do such movements and the support that they attract drive media coverage - or is it the other way around? Do the news media, through excessive coverage, help manufacture that support? Take Tommy Robinson, a far-right agitator who calls himself a warrior for freedom of speech on issues such as migration. When he rails against the supposedly creeping influence of political Islam over UK society, it resonates with certain audiences. But what came first: his new-found popularity or the media's coverage of him? Contributors Claire Fox - Director, Academy of Ideas Richard Seymour - Author and commissioning editor, Salvage Justin Murphy - Assistant professor, University of Southampton On our radar Richard Gizbert speaks to producer Johanna Hoes about the arrest of Bangladeshi journalist Shahidul Alam after his allegedly "provocative" interview on Al Jazeera, and the change of tune at Hungarian channel Hir TV following its takeover by an ally of Prime Minister Viktor Orban. How social media shaped Ethiopia's political revolution After years of protests that culminated in a state of emergency, in February 2018 Ethiopia saw an unexpected change of its political guard. The surprise resignation of Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn led to Abiy Ahmed, a leader of the Oromo tribe, taking power. In the four months since he took office, Abiy has forged an historic agreement to end the 20-year standoff between Ethiopia and Eritrea and made bold, wide-ranging promises to end the authoritarianism of his predecessors. The media, specifically social media, are central to this story: it was Ethiopians' constant use of platforms like Facebook and Twitter to coordinate protests, beyond the reach of government censorship, that preceded the recent power shift. The Listening Post's Flo Phillips reports on how social media have shaped Ethiopia's political revolution, and what some of the most influential Ethiopian journalists are hoping for under Abiy. Contributors Jawar Mohammed - founder, Oromia Media Network Tsedale Lemma - editor-in-chief, Addis Standard Tamrat G. Giorgis - managing editor, Addis Fortune Eskinder Nega - journalist and blogger Ahmed Shide - Ethiopian communications minister More from The Listening Post on: YouTube - http://aje.io/listeningpostYT Facebook - http://facebook.com/AJListeningPost Twitter - http://twitter.com/AJListeningPost Website - http://aljazeera.com/listeningpost - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

From France's National Front to Germany's Alternative for Germany (AfD) to the neo-Nazis of Golden Dawn in Greece, far-right populists are grabbing the headlines and seem to be on the rise across Europe. A recent academic study suggests right-wing anti-immigration political parties such as the UK Independence Party (UKIP) owe more of their success to the news media than they'd care to admit; that news outlets do far more than just reflect the story. In seeking to explain the rise of far-right, anti-immigration movements in countries such as Great Britain, many are asking what role the media have played: do such movements and the support that they attract drive media coverage - or is it the other way around? Take Tommy Robinson, a British far-right agitator who calls himself a warrior for freedom of speech on issues such as migration. When he rails against the supposedly creeping influence of political Islam over UK society, it resonates with certain audiences. But what came first: his new-found popularity or the media's coverage of him? In the name of public interest, covering such figures "actually ends up being a feeding frenzy ... that boosts these figures further and further into public support", points out Justin Murphy, assistant professor at the University of Southampton. But should media outlets in a democratic society censor such voices? "I don't think that the media should be in the business of making moral decisions about what kind of voices are heard on the media. I don't think the media is to blame for the rise of Tommy Robinson," explains Claire Fox, director at the Academy of Ideas. "Tommy Robinson has opinions which should be heard, argued over, discussed. And that's not the same as saying that you endorse those opinions. Depriving him of mainstream media coverage just means that he kind of gains a certain mystique, as though his ideas are so frightening that you have to keep them out of the mainstream." Beyond the censorship factor, journalists don't seem to know enough about these groups, according to Richard Seymour, author and commissioning editor of Salvage. "What turns out to be the case is that journalists know very little about the history of the far right. About the history of the individuals they are arguing with, about their politics or even about how to engage with or challenge their most offensive claims. In the end, they end up being played by the far right." So has the coverage of far-right groups made them more popular? Murphy points to his research. "We found that media coverage is a predictor of public support in future periods, but we did not find any evidence that public support is a predictor of media coverage. So there appears to be a unique causal effect between media coverage of these far right-wing populist parties and their rise in electoral significance." "Generally, journalists are relatively inhospitable to extreme, fringe, far-right wing, populist viewpoints. But once those actors do force themselves onto the agenda then there's a feeding frenzy that occurs. So that's how I think media and journalists specifically can produce a reality that they actually don't really want to see," Murphy says. With the governing Conservatives divided over Brexit, the opposition Labour Party split over the same issue - and the mostly pro-Brexit tabloid press still pushing its agenda, British politics is already in a messy state. And when the broadcast media, even with the best of journalistic intentions, put the likes of Tommy Robinson on their air so that they can grill him, they find they cannot do so without giving him the exposure he craves. They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. That is where Britain seems to find itself today. And the news media aren't just reporting the story. Many times, they have a hand in driving it. Contributors: Claire Fox - director, Academy of Ideas Richard Seymour - author and commissioning editor, Salvage Justin Murphy - assistant professor, University of Southampton - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/ More from The Listening Post on: YouTube - http://aje.io/listeningpostYT Facebook - http://facebook.com/AJListeningPost Twitter - http://twitter.com/AJListeningPost Website - http://aljazeera.com/listeningpost

When Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed delivered his inauguration speech on April 2, 2018, the bold rhetoric suggested a political revolution for the East African nation. "You could take it as a sort of Obama moment for Ethiopians," says Tamrat G Giorgis, the managing editor of the Addis Fortune newspaper, referring to the former US president. Abiy's speech promised a new era for ethnic unity, democracy and freedom of speech. It was a radical departure for a country embroiled in long-standing ethnic and political divisions and notorious for its repressed media. Ethiopia's newfound hope was no coincidence; it was the culmination of hard-fought political activism that had forced change upon the authoritarian nation. Since 1991, Ethiopia has been ruled by the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) coalition and functioned as a de facto one-party state. Until 2012, the country was led by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, a cunning hardliner who consolidated power around his minority ethnic group, the Tigrayans, and cemented Ethiopia's political order. After his sudden death six years ago, he was replaced by Hailemariam Desalegn, who largely continued the status quo. During the past few decades, Ethiopia's diverse ethnic groups were often subjugated and politically marginalised. This was primarily felt among the two largest groups, the Omoros (34 percent) and the Amharas (27 percent). Crafty legislation, like 2009's anti-terrorism law, silenced criticism of the political order. Prisons became crammed with opposition politicians and journalists who reported governmental abuses. "Critical media was being decimated one way or another, and journalists were leaving the country," says Tsedale Lemma, the editor-in-chief of Addis Standard. "We became at some point, the second-largest country producing journalist asylum seekers." In 2015, a critical turning point ignited the political upheaval. Large-scale demonstrations erupted against the government's plans to extend Addis Ababa's borders into Oromo territory. The peaceful Oromo protesters were violently suppressed by the government, and numerous people were injured or killed. The protests garnered international attention and soon inspired a nationwide demand for change. Essential to the protest's success was the use of social media. "You cannot imagine this revolution, this change without social media," says Jawar Mohammed, the founder of the Oromia Media Network based in Minnesota, United States. "People from all corners of the world will snap a picture, record a video and send it to us through WhatsApp or through Facebook. We take that, we verify it, we edit it and we air it back to them." Jawar Mohammed became a central player in the Oromo protests and exemplifies how social media affected change. Working mainly from the US, Jawar was one of many diaspora journalists who took advantage of social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook to bypass strict government censorship. Through these mediums, he helped orchestrate demonstrations and broadcast undeniable proof of the government's abuses to millions of followers. "[Jawar] was the one central figure that played a very decisive role in galvanising the protest," says Lemma. "I always say he has become a virtual space for the gathering of the message of the protesters who have been silenced, who have been killed, who could not trust the media on the ground." Aided by social media, the protests soon paid dividends. Opposition members and journalists were released from prison; critical websites were unblocked; and Hailemariam resigned as prime minister, Soon after, the EPRDF elected the country's first Oromo leader, Abiy. Now, with a guarantee from the government that journalists can report freely, an opportunity exists to hold the new government to account. "If Abiy Ahmed does not deliver the promise of democracy, then we'll be back to social media," says Eskinder Nega, an Ethiopian journalist recently released after six years behind bars. "I'm prepared to go back to prison again. So, whether there's democracy or no democracy, it's back to work. There's no choice." Contributors Jawar Mohammed - founder, Oromia Media Network Tsedale Lemma - editor-in-chief, Addis Standard Tamrat G. Giorgis - managing editor, Addis Fortune Eskinder Nega - journalist and blogger Ahmed Shide - Ethiopian communications minister More from The Listening Post on: YouTube - http://aje.io/listeningpostYT Facebook - http://facebook.com/AJListeningPost Twitter - http://twitter.com/AJListeningPost Website - http://aljazeera.com/listeningpost - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

On The Listening Post this week: Which came first? Public support for far-right movements or media coverage of them? Plus, Ethiopia's new prime minister and the hope for media reform. Grappling with the far right on the UK's airwaves In seeking to explain the rise of far-right, anti-immigration movements in countries like Great Britain, many are asking what role the media have played: do such movements and the support that they attract drive media coverage - or is it the other way around? Do the news media, through excessive coverage, help manufacture that support? Take Tommy Robinson, a far-right agitator who calls himself a warrior for freedom of speech on issues such as migration. When he rails against the supposedly creeping influence of political Islam over UK society, it resonates with certain audiences. But what came first: his new-found popularity or the media's coverage of him? Contributors Claire Fox - Director, Academy of Ideas Richard Seymour - Author and commissioning editor, Salvage Justin Murphy - Assistant professor, University of Southampton On our radar Richard Gizbert speaks to producer Johanna Hoes about the arrest of Bangladeshi journalist Shahidul Alam after his allegedly "provocative" interview on Al Jazeera, and the change of tune at Hungarian channel Hir TV following its takeover by an ally of Prime Minister Viktor Orban. How social media shaped Ethiopia's political revolution After years of protests that culminated in a state of emergency, in February 2018 Ethiopia saw an unexpected change of its political guard. The surprise resignation of Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn led to Abiy Ahmed, a leader of the Oromo tribe, taking power. In the four months since he took office, Abiy has forged an historic agreement to end the 20-year standoff between Ethiopia and Eritrea and made bold, wide-ranging promises to end the authoritarianism of his predecessors. The media, specifically social media, are central to this story: it was Ethiopians' constant use of platforms like Facebook and Twitter to coordinate protests, beyond the reach of government censorship, that preceded the recent power shift. The Listening Post's Flo Phillips reports on how social media have shaped Ethiopia's political revolution, and what some of the most influential Ethiopian journalists are hoping for under Abiy. Contributors Jawar Mohammed - founder, Oromia Media Network Tsedale Lemma - editor-in-chief, Addis Standard Tamrat G. Giorgis - managing editor, Addis Fortune Eskinder Nega - journalist and blogger Ahmed Shide - Ethiopian communications minister - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

In this special edition of The Listening Post, we track the making and breaking of The West Africa Leaks, an investigative series looking into the offshore financial dealings of the rich and powerful in the region. With more than a dozen journalists from 11 countries, the West Africa Leaks is the largest media collaboration in West African history. It's the latest major investigation coordinated by the DC-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) which teamed up with the Norbert Zongo Cell for Investigative Journalism (CENOZO) in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. As Will Fitzgibbon, the Africa Projects Coordinator for ICIJ told us: "What we've seen with global and media collaborations, not only is it the more the merrier, but the more the punchier." The Listening Post followed the investigation since February this year when the journalists involved first met in Dakar, Senegal to lay the groundwork for the project. During a two-day workshop set up by the ICIJ and Cenozo, the journalists were given access to data in six major leaks held by the ICIJ, all relating to the murky world of offshore finance, and were shown how to navigate their away around roughly 30 million documents. West Africa accounts for more than one third of the estimated $50bn that leaves Africa each year illegally, which is more than the GDP of six of its poorest countries combined. Governments in the region seem to lack the ability, or the will, to prevent the illicit flow of money offshore. West African news outlets are typically owned by politicians, or those close to them, so coverage veers away from holding the elite to account. All of which contributes to a climate of impunity in West Africa that has allowed this kind of corruption to go unchecked for decades. And this is why it didn't take long for the journalists in this media collaboration to start uncovering some newsworthy stories in the data. In Niger, an ambitious government-funded project never materialised despite large amounts of money changing hands. In Togo, a businessman with close ties to the ruling family tried to wire money out of the country while two state companies in his charge were on the verge of bankruptcy. Contrary to the Vienna Convention, a former Ghanaian ambassador to the United States set up an offshore company while in office to apparently conceal his share of a lucrative oil deal. And in Liberia, it looks like a close friend of the former president was able to leverage her government connections to land a controversial mining license for a foreign company. On May 22, the West Africa Leaks went live. The journalists had overcome a number of obstacles along the way to produce a series of stories that were published simultaneously across the region. The stories lit up social media, but the traction beyond that, the official reaction was muted. That governments were slow to respond to the revelations in the West Africa Leaks - or ignored them completely - came as no surprise. What was more concerning was the lack of response from other news outlets in the region. One would expect stories about high-level corruption and financial irregularities in some of the poorest countries on earth to top the news agenda. However, the subjects of these investigations are the very people who - in large part - control what gets reported in West Africa, and what does not. For the journalists involved however, the impact of projects like West Africa Leaks isn't to be measured in the here and now. As Emmanuel Dogbevi of Ghana Business News told us: "What no-one can take away from the West Africa Leaks is the fact that it's historic, it's the first time you have this number of journalists within the sub-region collaborating and working together on a project, which itself adds to the value of the work we do as journalists. And we hope that in the long term, that collaboration will serve as inspiration for other, for other African journalists." Contributors: Will Fitzgibbon, Africa Projects coordinator, ICIJ Sandrine Sawadogo, reporter, L'Economiste du Faso Maxime Domegni, reporter, L'Alternative Alloycious David, reporter, The News Emmanuel Dogbevi, managing editor, Ghana Business News Moussa Askar, editor, L'Evenement Daniela Lépiz, coordinator, Cenozo - Subscribe to our channel: http://aje.io/AJSubscribe - Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AJEnglish - Find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aljazeera - Check our website: https://www.aljazeera.com/

When Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan delivered his re-election victory speech last week - he spoke of "one nation, one flag, one state". He could have taken it a step further and talked about one media and one voice - his own. Because that's the way the election campaign was covered. The main state-owned TV channel TRT acted as if it was state-run; and privately-owned broadcasters weren't much better. One might ask, what actually constitutes critical coverage, or the opposite, a lack of objective analysis. The latter may be defined by TRT's apparent priorities throughout the month leading to the election, devoting 67 hours of airtime to President Erdogan and less than seven hours to rival Muharrem Ince.