Tag Archives: Washington Post

Report Exposes US Media for Framing Social Justice Protests as ‘Terrorism’

“Equating activism with terrorism is undemocratic and serves to silence dissenters,” said Deepa Kumar, who analyzed how major U.S. media outlets have covered protesters of “Cop City” in Georgia.

By Jessica Corbett. Published 11-7-2023 by Common Dreams

Stop Cop City solidarity protest in New York City March 2023. Photo: Felton Davis/flickr/CC

A paper published Tuesday by a media studies scholar explores what she calls “one of the enduring costs of the ‘War on Terror,'” mainstream outlets parroting police talking points on terrorism and “legitimating state violence while stifling democratic protest.”

Rutgers University professor Deepa Kumar’s paper—released by the Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs—focuses on how major U.S. media outlets have covered protesters of “Cop City,” Atlanta’s proposed Public Safety Training Center just outside of city limits in Georgia.

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Reported End to Facebook’s ‘Murky’ Deals With News Giants Sparks Call for ‘Truly Fair Marketplace’

“We can’t allow our free press to be captured by tech monopolies,” warned one advocate.

By Brett Wilkins  Published 6-10-2022 by Common Dreams

Image: Simon Steinberger/CC

Press freedom and antitrust advocates on Friday derided both Facebook and corporate media beneficiaries of the tech titan’s multimillion dollar spending spree following reporting that the company is rethinking its investments amid increasing regulatory pressures and a shift away from news partnerships.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Facebook in recent years has annually paid an average of more than $15 million to The Washington Post, as well as $20 million to The New York Times, and over $10 million to the Journal. The Journal deal is part of a larger $20 million agreement. Continue reading

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Big Pharma Spent ‘Horrifying’ Sums of Money to Weaken Drug Price Reform

The industry is expected to break its lobbying record after spending tens of millions of dollars to undermine a popular proposal to reduce prescription drug costs.

By Kenny Stancil.  Published 11-5-2021 by Common Dreams

Photo: Daniel Foster/flickr/CC

While progressive advocates are still optimistic that a limited drug pricing provision will be included in the Build Back Better Act, the Washington Post on Friday detailed the “massive, months-long advertising, lobbying, and political donation blitz” that Big Pharma and its allies carried out to kill a stronger and overwhelmingly popular proposal that would have done more to protect Americans from the industry’s deadly price gouging.

As Common Dreams has reported, pharmaceutical corporations and private health insurers spent $171 million on lobbying through the first nine months of the year, the most of any industry. Big Pharma’s 1,600 lobbyists outnumber members of Congress by a ratio of three to one. Continue reading

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Washington Post Publisher Says Biden DOJ ‘Intensified’ Trump-Era Attacks on Press Freedom

“The egregious acts by the outgoing Trump Justice Department, and the apparent doubling down on them during the Biden administration, should alarm all Americans, regardless of political persuasion.”

By Kenny Stancil, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 6-7-2021

The entrance to the Washington Post on 15th street Northwest DC. Photo: Dion Hinchcliffe/flickr/CC

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 practices in order to prevent such a “brazen infringement of the First Amendment rights of all Americans” from happening again.

Recent reporting revealed that during the last days of then-President Donald Trump’s term, DOJ officials authorized subpoenas to secretly obtain the phone and email records of reporters at the PostCNN, and the New York Times. In the wake of the revelations, Biden last month condemned the unconstitutional actions taken by his predecessor’s Justice Department and vowed that his administration would protect the rights of journalists and, by extension, those of the public. Continue reading

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Trump lost the election, but he won the online disinformation war

Social media platforms have allowed US conservatives to delegitimise the election and sow mistrust of democracy.

By Peter Geoghegan. Published 11-9-2020 by openDemocracy

Screenshot: WNCT

In late August, roughly five weeks before Americans went to the polls, a story appeared in The New York Times reporting new data about the reach of fringe US conservative outlets on Facebook. The numbers were staggering.

Posts by far-right news site Breitbart had been shared three times as often as posts from the official pages of every Democratic member of the US senate combined in the previous 30 days. Conservative firebrand Ben Shapiro had chalked up 56 million interactions, more than the main pages of ABC News, NBC News, The New York Times, The Washington Post and NPR put together. Continue reading

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‘Naked Attack on the Free Press’: Trump Allies Reportedly Raising $2 Million for Campaign to Discredit Journalists

“Intimidating reporters to influence coverage is a tactic of dictators and has no place here,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley

By Jake Johnson, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 9-3-2019

Donald Trump talks to the press in October of 2018. Screenshot: Fox News

Right-wing operatives allied with President Donald Trump are attempting to raise at least $2 million to fund a campaign to discredit journalists and editors at major U.S. media outlets like the Washington Post, Buzzfeed, New York Times, and HuffPost.

That’s according to a three-page fundraising pitch for the effort reviewed by Axios, which reported Tuesday that the group of Trump allies “claims it will slip damaging information about reporters and editors to ‘friendly media outlets,’ such as Breitbart, and traditional media, if possible.” Continue reading

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‘For Taking Great Risks in Pursuit of Greater Truths,’ Journalists Under Attack Named TIME Magazine’s Person of the Year

“They are representative of a broader fight by countless others around the world…who risk all to tell the story of our time.”

By Julia Conley, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 12-11-2018

Jamal Khashoggi and some of the Capital Gazette staff were included in TIME magazine’s Person of the Year issue, which honored journalists who have been killed, imprisoned, and attacked in the past year. (Photo: TIME Magazine)

Capping off a year marked by accusations of “fake news,” hurled at journalists by President Donald Trump and other global threats to press freedom, TIME magazine selected as Person of the Year journalists who have spent the past year fighting increased hostility toward their work—including those who lost their lives as a result of their reporting.

Calling journalists under attack “guardians” of the truth, the  magazine announced the selected Tuesday as it prepared to release four covers of the yearly issue. Continue reading

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Accusing Trump of Crossing Constitutional Line, PEN America Sues Over Threats and Reprisals Against Free Press

“When President Trump crosses the line and threatens to use his authority to punish the media, or actually does so, it is vital for the courts to step in and affirm that such threats and reprisals are unconstitutional.”

By Jon Queally, staff writer for  Common Dreams. Published 10-16-2018

The lawsuit filed by PEN America and its partners seeks “to stop President Trump from using the machinery of government to retaliate or threaten reprisals against journalists and media outlets for coverage he dislikes.” (Image: PEN America)

Arguing that President Donald Trump has crossed the line from “verbal attacks on the press” that are protected under the his First Amendment rights into using his authority to punish journalists and media outlets he dislikes with threats of intimidation or reprisal, the literary rights group PEN America has announced a lawsuit against the president in order to bring an end to such attacks.

The lawsuit (pdf) brought in a Manhattan federal court on Tuesday—with PEN joined by the nonpartisan nonprofit Protect Democracy and the Yale Law School Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic—states that while Trump has constitutionally-protected rights and “is free to criticize the press vehemently,” the president “is not free to use the  power and authority of the United States government to punish and stifle it.”   Continue reading

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Could Killing of Washington Post Writer by Saudi ‘Murder Team’ Finally Put Crack in US Support of ‘Criminal Regime’?

“If this is true – that the Saudis lured a U.S. resident into their consulate and murdered him – it should represent a fundamental break in our relationship with Saudi Arabia,” declared Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) in response.

By Jon Queally, staff writer for Common Dreams. Published 10-7-2018

Saudi Consulate officials claimed Khashoggi left the Consulate building shortly after his arrival, but his fiancee waiting outside states he never came out after going inside. While many initially believed he was being held by the Saudis inside against his will, Turkish officials have now said they believe the writer was tortured and then murdered by a Saudi hit team. Jamal Khashoggi a Saudi writer critical of the Kingdom and a contributor to the Washington Post was living in self -imposed exile in the U.S. Photo: Media Menagerie/Twitter

Spurring fresh outrage among those who criticize the cozy relationship between the U.S. government and the Saudi monarchy—with emphasis on Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS)—political dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi Arabia national living in self-imposed exile abroad, was tortured and killed last week by a Saudi  government ‘murder team,’ according to Turkish sources, while inside the Saudi consulate building in Istanbul, Turkey. Continue reading

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