journalism

Carl Bernstein, the journalist famous for exposing details related to the Watergate scandal, was on MSNBC and described the United States Justice Department’s seizure of phone records of reporters as a “matter of policy” that went all the way up to the president.
“The object of it is to try and intimidate people who talk to reporters, especially on national security matters. National security is always the false claim of administrations trying to hide information that people ought to know,” Bernstein added.

Elon Musk is creating a website where “…the public can rate the core truth of any article & track the credibility score over time of each journalist, editor & publication,” as he said in a tweet.
Interestingly enough, he plans on naming it Pravda.

The imprisoned desperate people of Gaza continue to grieve over the Israeli slaughter of over 60 civilians during protests coinciding with the dedication of the illegally re-situated U.S. embassy in Jerusalem. Parents and relatives in Texas were mourning the deaths of 10 students and teachers in yet another horrific school shooting at the Santa Fe High School, near Houston.

On Saturday afternoon, May 19, at 2pm, a Tribute to Robert Parry, Founder and Editor of Consortium News will be held at Berkeley Fellowship Hall, 1924 Cedar St. in Berkeley, CA.  Open to the public. Tickets at Brownpapertickets.com or at the door ($10, $15, $20 – sliding scale).

On Thursday 10 May 2018, an unprecedented exchange of strikes happened between Israel and Syria.

Progressive and independent journalists are raising grave concerns this week about Facebook’s plan to fashion itself as an arbiter of what news outlets should be deemed “trustworthy”—arguing that the social media giant’s new proposal will punish non-corporate news sources and journalists offering left-leaning news analysis that it finds to be “polarizing.”
Richard Kim, executive editor of The Nation magazine, was among those reacting critically to the social media giant’s announcement on Monday:

An apparent airstrike in the Homs / Aleppo area of Syria took place in the late evening hours of Saturday, 29 April. Videos shot of the explosions feature some large ones, and one in particular that seems to be very large and has many secondary flares. One can see that these look rather like the fireworks that sparkle and flash for many seconds after the initial detonation. This type of explosion is consistent with a munitions dump getting hit, with the munitions themselves exploding after being struck.

NEW YORK CITY — The dust had barely settled after last weekend’s U.S.-led bombing of Syria before a split in the political class developed. While some Beltway figures, media personalities and former officials hailed the bombings, others decried the “limited” nature of the airstrikes.

NEW YORK — In her 1993 bestseller, Volunteer Slavery: My Authentic Negro Experience, the African-American author Jill Nelson wrote that when newsrooms and police departments began to integrate following the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., white journalists and patrolmen often encouraged their new black co-workers to prove their professional loyalty by “shooting their own.”

Brian Heiss joins me today for another in-depth discussion discussion. We start off by touching on the recent gas attack in Syria and the bellicose rhetoric coming out of Washington. Brian and I discuss our issues with the claims that this was launched by Assad. We also talk about the Skirpal case and the recent appointment of John Bolton to National Security Adviser. Brian and I than turn out attention to Kurt Eichenwald, Justin Berry, and the child pornography scandal they were involved in.