The Listening Post

The United States's support for Israel, usually at the expense of Palestine, has been unwavering - one of the most reliably bipartisan issues in US politics - with Republicans and Democrats standing with their Israeli allies through thick and thin. But times are changing; as is the narrative. You can see it online, in print, as well as in the halls of Congress. In this special episode of The Listening Post, Richard Gizbert travels across the US to examine some of the key moments that have revealed how the discourse on Israel is shifting. Contributors: Noura Erakat - assistant professor, George Mason University Batya Ungar-Sargon - opinions editor, The Forward Rashida Tlaib - US Congresswoman, Representative for Michigan's 13th district Rebecca Vilkomerson - executive director, Jewish Voice for Peace Lara Friedman - President, Foundation for Middle East Peace Marc Lamont Hill - former CNN contributor and Professor, Temple University Omar Baddar - deputy director, Arab American Institute George Hale - reporter, KETR radio 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/

In this special edition of the show, we hear from two groups of exiled journalists: those on the run from Turkey, and others who have found sanctuary there. Turkey: No country for bold journalists? Last month, Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan held a rare press briefing for journalists in the country's media capital, Istanbul. In his opening remarks, Erdogan said that freedom of the press was of "vital importance" to him. It was a statement that failed to square with the facts, let alone the numbers. Because for each of the last three years -- since July of 2016, when an attempted coup failed to depose the president -- Turkey has imprisoned more journalists than any other country. And alongside all of those jailed, the government has prosecuted a much longer list of media workers whose fates still hang in the balance. Following Ankara's post-coup purge of the Turkish judiciary, for many, a fair trial is a seemingly distant prospect; a situation that has driven many of the accused into self-imposed exile. In the first part of this special edition of the programme, The Listening Post's Flo Phillips speaks to three Turkish journalists - all former editors at newspapers critical of the ruling AK Party - about the cases against them, life in exile and the decline of press freedom in Turkey. Contributors: Mahir Zeynalov - editor, The Globe Post & former online editor, Today's Zaman Can Dundar - editor, Ozguruz & former editor, Cumhuriyet Cagdas Kaplan - reporter, Yeni Yasam In Ankara's defence: An interview with Cem Kucuk We wanted to get the Erdogan government's response to the allegations made by Can Dundar, Mahir Zeynalov and Cagdas Kaplan in the opening segment of this Listening Post special. We requested interviews with a number of senior government officials, however none of them agreed to speak with us. So we asked for an interview with Cem Kucuk, an Erdogan loyalist and a prominent face on the privately-owned TV channel, TGRT. Kucuk agreed, but with strict conditions. He said he did not want to answer any questions about the Turkish government's handling of specific journalists - in particular, the exiled newspaper editors we interviewed. He said our questions would be better answered by a representative of the state. He did however defend certain other statements about the media made by President Erdogan and one of his closest advisors. Contributor: Cem Kucuk - presenter, TGRT Istanbul: Turkish haven for Arab journalists Journalism may be under siege in Turkey, but there is a specific group of journalists - foreign ones - who are thriving there. In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, hundreds of reporters from Egypt, Syria, Yemen and Libya fled authoritarian governments, oppression, prosecution and in some cases war - to come to Turkey, finding a sanctuary in which to produce the kind of journalism that would be impossible back home. There are now more than a dozen Arab TV stations based in the country beaming their content back to news audiences across the Arab world. The irony, and apparent hypocrisy, to all this - Turkey jailing its own dissident journalists while playing host to those from other countries - is not lost on either Turkish reporters or their foreign colleagues. They understand the politics at play. The Listening Post spoke to three Arab journalists about life in exile, as well as the space that has been carved out for adversarial journalism aimed at the Arab world. Contributors: Hana Saleh - Yemeni journalist & executive manager, Belqees TV Nader Fotoh - Egyptian journalist & presenter, El Sharq TV Noor Haddad - Syrian journalist & presenter, Syria TV - 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/

Boris Johnson, the odds-on favourite to become Britain's next prime minister, had one distinct advantage going into the race to succeed Theresa May: name recognition. When the UK media drop that name - Boris - Britons know who exactly they are talking about. And that is partially because, as it happens, Johnson got his start in the news business. In the late 1980s, after getting fired from his first reporting job for inventing a quote, Johnson wound up as Brussels correspondent for The Daily Telegraph newspaper, known online as The Telegraph. In this role, he produced an assortment of Eurosceptic stories that people found amusing and that arguably sowed seeds in peoples' minds for leaving the European Union. It [Boris Johnson's Eurosceptic journalism] set the tone for 25 years of British media coverage of Europe," says Martin Fletcher, former Brussels correspondent for The Times. "Because every news editor in Fleet Street thought that what Boris Johnson was producing was much more interesting than the usual grey dull fare that came out of Brussels. And they demanded the same. I know this because I was the Brussels correspondent for three years myself at the end of the 1990s." Isabel Oakeshott, a former political editor for The Sunday Times, the largest-selling British national newspaper, does not think Johnson or his stories two decades ago are catalysts for what she calls "Britain's fundamental Euroscepticism." "It was immensely colourful, made great copy and people lapped it up. But I'm sure also people took it with a little bit of a pinch of salt," Oakeshott argues. But nearly 30 years later, Johnson became a key asset on the Leave side in the 2016 referendum campaign - saying the same kind of things about the EU as a politician he once did as a journalist. Johnson is well aware that most of the UK print media do have his back. But not all of them. Recently an expose was released about Johnson's ties with Steve Bannon, the alt-right former White House operative who has ties to white supremacists. Bannon was reportedly behind Trump's efforts to ban Muslims from entering the US. "We don't know all the specifics of the relationship between Boris Johnson and Steve Bannon, but in another way it doesn't matter," says writer and commentator Maya Goodfellow. "What matters is that he is trading on exactly the same kind of politics that Steve Bannon is. Boris Johnson likes to ramp up the hatred towards certain groups of people at particular times. And at this moment that is ramping up hatred towards Muslims which is an existing sentiment in Britain." Carole Cadwalladr, the journalist with The Guardian and The Observer who broke the Bannon story, says: "We in Britain, we're facing exactly the same problems that the American press is facing with Trump, which is, how do you hold a liar to account? In this day and age it's incredibly difficult because our media is very largely owned by oligarchs and they're overwhelmingly right wing. And you can see concerted elements of the press working together to promote their man - which is Boris Johnson." Johnson's ongoing relationship with The Telegraph and his weekly column remain central to his political ambitions. Because PM May resigned before her term was up, her successor will be selected on July 23 by the Conservative Party membership, not in a general election. "The Daily Telegraph is the bible of the Conservative Party," says Fletcher. "So his column in The Daily Telegraph is immensely important to him. I think it's quite extraordinary. To me, it breaches every code of journalistic ethics. I cannot understand how he or the Telegraph gets away with it." Contributors: Martin Fletcher - former Brussels correspondent, The Times Carole Cadwalladr - journalist, The Guardian & The Observer Isabel Oakeshott - former political editor, The Sunday Times Maya Goodfellow - writer and commentator - 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: Britain's media are front and centre in Boris Johnson's bid to become Conservative Party leader and prime minister. Plus, nostalgia in Iranian diaspora media. Boris Johnson and the UK media Boris Johnson, the odds-on favourite to become Britain's next prime minister, had one distinct advantage going into the race to succeed Theresa May: name recognition. When the UK media drop that name - Boris - Britons know who exactly they're talking about. As it happens, the news business is where Johnson got his start. As a correspondent in Brussels in the 1990s, Johnson produced a slew of Eurosceptic stories that readers found amusing; stories that could well have sowed seeds in peoples' minds for an eventual Brexit. Fast forward 30 odd years, and there he was as a key asset on the Leave side in the 2016 referendum campaign saying the same kinds of things about the EU as a politician that he once did as a journalist. These days, the British media finally seem to have clued in to the fact that entertainment value isn't everything: that Boris Johnson falls dangerously short of the qualifications for the job. But he already has one foot in the door of 10 Downing Street, so this media awakening is looking like too little, too late. Contributors: Martin Fletcher – former Brussels correspondent, The Times Carole Cadwalladr – journalist, The Guardian & The Observer Isabel Oakeshott – former political editor, The Sunday Times Maya Goodfellow – writer and commentator On our radar: Richard Gizbert speaks to producer Flo Phillips about the start of the US 2020 election coverage and the American media's continuing failure to call out President Donald Trump. Producing nostalgia: Iran diaspora TV's rebranding of the Shah The latest stare down between Washington and Tehran - over Iran's shooting down of a US drone - made for plenty of scary headlines. The situation is being closely followed by oppositional Iranian groups including Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former Shah of Iran. The prince recently offered many an 'exclusive' interview to western news outlets presenting himself as a credible democratic successor to Iran's Islamic leadership. And that's because the monarchy remains popular in large segments of the Iranian media diaspora - despite the fact that the prince's father ran an authoritarian regime protected by a brutal force of secret police that was toppled in 1979. That popularity is in large part thanks to TV channels - operating in exile - like Manoto TV, BBC Persian, Gem TV and Tapesh TV which have all pioneered a genre of television you might call 'nostalgia TV'. The Listening Post's Meenakshi Ravi looks at the Iranian diaspora media, its penchant for nostalgia and the rose-tinting of Iran's pre-revolutionary history. Contributors: Niki Akhavan - assistant professor of media, Catholic University of America Ali Ansari - history professor, University of St Andrews Nazenin Ansari - managing editor, Kayhan London Mostafa Azizi - TV producer - 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/

"The world is watching" - that is the chant on the streets of Hong Kong as images of mega-protests are beamed around the globe. Two million people in a territory of seven million went out to stop the passage of a controversial law that would allow suspected criminals to be extradited to mainland China. But even though the extradition bill was suspended, the black-clad, helmet-wearing protesters haven't stopped their demonstrations. Global news outlets have covered the movement's additional demand that Hong Kong's Beijing-backed leader, Carrie Lam, to resign and their accusations against police for using undue force against protesters. "Hong Kong's situation has been taken up by the international media, almost uniformly ... saying that Hong Kong is being threatened. They say this is a David and Goliath story," says Einar Tangen, a political and economic affairs commentator. When Britain handed Hong Kong back to China in 1997, the "one country, two system" framework that came into force promised citizens a "high degree of autonomy for 50 years" - which explains the lack of an extradition treaty with mainland China. But critics say there have been plenty of signs that Beijing is already influencing politics and the state of the media in Hong Kong. "It's not just about the bill but about China's attitude towards press freedom and its understanding of judicial independence," says Shirley Yam of the Hong Kong Journalists Association. "Several journalists and editors from Hong Kong have been harassed or even sentenced to jail by mainland authorities with charges that have nothing to do with their reports." According to Yuen Chan, a Senior Lecturer at the City University of London, "We've seen creeping self-censorship, we've seen businesses withdrawing their advertising under pressure from needing to do business with China. So, all those things are very real threats. But at the same time, compared to the press in mainland China, the Hong Kong media is far more vibrant, is out there exposing scandals and people are very proud of that. And the fact that the media can report on these demonstrations is very important to the people of Hong Kong." Yet, regardless of the extensive international news coverage, state-run news outlets in mainland China either ignored the demonstrations or echoed the party line, claiming that there's a Western conspiracy at play. "Some people ... have really been completely brainwashed into thinking that all these protests are initiated by 'foreign influences'. But that's just ridiculous. Like two million people on the street ... of course, that is not true and, but that's what they're trying to tell the public in China," says Denise Ho, singer and pro-democracy activist. The numbers on the streets of Hong Kong are considerably higher than the 2014 mass protests over proposed electoral reforms, because the stakes have grown larger with the passage of time. The city-state is now five years closer to losing what autonomy it has - the remnants of a democracy, the semblance of a free media - five years closer to 2047 and direct rule by Beijing. If Hong Kong were in control of its own future, those two million people on the streets would amount to real political power, a force to be reckoned with. But it's not. And there is a country of 1.4 billion people next door and a government in Beijing that, like the media that the state controls, is treating Hong Kong's protests as a non-story. - 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: As Hong Kongers come out in millions, China seeks to downplay the protests. Plus, the B-scheme films - movies of South Africa's apartheid era. Covering the Hong Kong protests "The world is watching" - that is the chant on the streets of Hong Kong as images of mega protests are beamed around the globe. Two million people in a territory of seven million went out to stop the passage of a law that would allow suspected criminals to be extradited to mainland China. We examine the dissonance between the coverage of the protests in Hong Kong and mainland China, as well as the effect the bill could have on journalists in the Special Administrative Region. Contributors: Denise Ho - singer and pro-democracy activist Yuen Chan - senior lecturer, City University of London Shirley Yam - vice chairperson, Hong Kong Journalists Association Einar Tangen - political & economic affairs commentator On our radar: Richard Gizbert speaks to producer Meenakshi Ravi about how arguably the biggest news story of the year in Egypt went barely noticed by Egyptian media - deliberately; and Heshmat Alavi is back - the reportedly fake Iranian activist is reinstated by Twitter The propaganda films of apartheid-era South Africa We look at a slice of history: film-making in South Africa during the era of apartheid. Among the subsidies the government offered to the film industry back then was the so-called "B scheme". To qualify, filmmakers - who were mostly white back then - had to produce films with black casts, for black audiences, in a black South African language such as Zulu, Xhosa or Tswana. But why would the apartheid government - with its policies of racism, oppression and segregation - help bankroll movies that were made - ostensibly - for the entertainment of black South Africans? The Listening Post's Nic Muirhead explores. Contributors: Charles Mokatsane - cinema owner Benjamin Cowley - CEO, Gravel Road Productions Gairoonisa Paleker - senior lecturer, University of Pretoria Tonie Van der Merwe - filmmaker- 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 it comes to media coverage of Iran, all is not as it seems. Last week, American news outlet The Intercept published a piece questioning whether a well-published Iranian activist advocating regime change in the Islamic republic was an actual person. Heshmat Alavi, whose columns appeared on the websites of American business magazine Forbes, as well as The Hill, The Federalist and The Daily Caller, on the Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya, and on Voice of America's Persian website - is now under fire for being a fake. Alavi was once cited by the White House as a credible commentator on Iran but it turns out he is a fictional persona that reportedly was created by the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) - a group opposed to the Iranian government and supported by Washington. "We're talking about someone who they thought existed, but never bothered to verify in any way shape or form and I don't think you would ever see that happening on any other issue. I think this is an Iran-specific thing in which the standards and the bar in the US media - particularly on the right - is essentially non-existent," says Trita Parsi, founder of the National Iranian American Council. Alavi also occupied space on social media, with 30,000 Twitter followers. Maral Karimi, author of The Iranian Green Movement of 2009, had challenged him several times on misinformation he spread through online channels. "Heshmat never, never responded. So naturally, I attributed that to a journalist with a gigantic ego or someone who is very busy, but now we know," Karimi says arguing that "well-funded" news outlets like Forbes should have done a better job of verifying the fictitious character. Then there's the Iran Disinformation Project. The initiative is funded entirely by American taxpayers, apparently to fight back against Iranian propaganda through trolling on social media and sometimes smearing other Iranian-American commentators and journalists online. Parsi says the goal of the project was ostensibly to fight Iranian propaganda online but, instead, the initiative focused on "attacking critics of the Trump administration's Iran policy". "To make it worse, the fund that came from the State Department was actually designed to fight ISIS propaganda and Russian interference in the United States. Instead, the Trump administration diverted that money to fight critics of Trump's Iran policy,” he adds. Negar Mortazavi, consultant editor for The Independent, points out that any moderate and nuanced view of Iran has triggered attacks by the project. "I had been called a 'mouthpiece' and a 'lobbyist for the regime' … other people had been called 'apologists' or 'lobbyists' for simply voicing their either criticism against President Trump's policies or a nuanced view of what is going on inside Iran that wasn't seen as hardline enough by the Iran Disinfo group." The government in Tehran is no innocent player in all this. It also tries to engineer what gets said and read online. With ongoing tensions between Iran and the Trump administration, understanding the complexities of the debate is difficult at best. Tara Sepehri Far, an Iran researcher for Human Rights Watch, noted that media and news organisations must be careful about publishing pieces that attempt to address what is happening inside Iran. "For analysts, reporters, policymakers - anyone who is trying to make sense of Iran these days - if their only point of reference is what's happening on social media, they should think twice before publishing it as 'this is how Iranians feel about these things.' One thing that these two seemingly unrelated stories that have come out at the same time prove is that this space is highly manipulated. And it's far from a reflection of Iranian public opinion." - 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/

For the past four months, millions of Algerians have been hitting the streets of cities and villages across the country, demanding change. Protesters have already succeeded in toppling the country's long time president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, but they are far from done. Their next target is nothing less than a comprehensive dismantling of the ruling system. Their rallying cry: #Yetne7aw_ga3, "They must all go!" A key catalyst of the protests has been the emergence of a new generation: tech savvy, politically conscious, and hungry for change. Growing up in a context of rising inequality and limited opportunities, and faced with a moribund official media ecosystem - long closed to any dissenting voices - millions of young Algerians have had to forge their own alternative spaces, principally on social media platforms. Leading the charge, a wave of YouTube pioneers, operating from their bedrooms and their neighbourhoods, posting videos chronicling - with wit, irreverence and candour - the daily realities and tribulations of their lives and those of their fellow Algerians. Boasting high production values and delivered in the colloquial idiom, these videos stood in marked contrast to the stuffy, crude offerings of official media. As Anes Tina, one of Algeria's most prominent YouTubers, told The Listening Post "...we reflected people’s daily realities and we did so in the language of the street…" We also spoke to Raja Meziane, a Prague-based musician whose political outspokenness, both in her music and her public comments, led to her blacklisting by the country's media establishment. Facing enormous pressure to toe the official line, she found herself forced into exile, both physically and artistically. As she told us, "YouTube became the only avenue for me to express myself…" For much of the past decade, people like Raja Meziane and Anes Tina have produced hard-hitting work tackling social injustice, corruption, and inequality. Many of their videos were squarely and explicitly aimed at the super-rich elite - living it up in obscene opulence with the country's oil revenues while the majority of the population struggled to meet basic needs. Their bravery earned them the respect and devotion of millions of followers and the opprobrium and condemnation of the ruling system and its supporters. Today, their impact, and that of YouTube and other social media platforms more broadly, in shaping the political awareness and aspirations of young Algerians cannot be underestimated. Myriad slogans deployed by the protesters echo, visually and thematically, the messages of their social media idols. Fittingly enough, and bringing things full circle, the protests have themselves elicited countless responses on YouTube and elsewhere, inspiring a new generation of artists and creators. Unsurprisingly, Raja Meziane and Anes Tina have been at the forefront of the artistic response to the revolution, producing videos which celebrated the protesters and articulated their grievances and demands. These videos, whether Meziane's "Allo Le System" and "Toxic", or Anas Tina's "No You Can't" have since garnered tens of millions of views in the space of a few weeks, offering for many an unofficial soundtrack for the fledgling revolution. Whether the protesters will succeed in securing the radical overhaul they demand remains to be seen, but one thing is certain: having been instrumental in creating the conditions for the current revolution, Algeria's YouTube pioneers have no intention of sitting out the next chapter. As Raja Meziane put it, "we are all in the same boat ... I have no option but to side with our people." - 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: Taxpayer-funded smears and a well-published but fake activist - worrying twists in the US-Iran online battle. Plus, the YouTube influencers of the Algerian protests. US-Iran debates: Fake writers and state-funded trolling As the Trump administration continues with its hawkish talk on Iran, we need to look at how that story is being crafted and by whom: Heshmat Alavi was once cited by the White House as a credible commentator on Iran. Shame he doesn't exist. It turns out he is a fictional persona reportedly created by the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), a shadowy group opposed to the Iranian government and supported by Washington. Then there is the Iran Disinformation Project funded entirely by the American taxpayer, ostensibly to counter Iranian propaganda, it trolls and sometimes smears Iranian-American commentators and journalists online. And the government in Tehran is no innocent player in all this. It also tries to engineer what gets said and read online. Contributors Negar Mortazavi - consultant editor, The Independent Maral Karimi - author, The Iranian Green Movement of 2009 Trita Parsi - founder, National Iranian American Council Tara Sepehri Far - Iran researcher, Human Rights Watch On Our Radar Richard Gizbert speaks to producer Johanna Hoes about the situation in Hong Kong - amid mass demonstrations over a controversial bill that would allow extradition to mainland China, journalists there have been among those criticising the law. Why? Algeria: The revolution will be YouTubed "They must all go" - that is the rallying cry from the streets of Algeria. For four months now, millions of Algerians have been hitting the streets demanding political change. While they have succeeded in toppling the country's long-time President - Abdelaziz Bouteflika - they are not done and are demanding a comprehensive dismantling of the ruling elite. And many Algerians are far too politically aware to trust the state-owned media, which initially underplayed the protest story and continues to spin it. Instead, they have their own outlets. Long before the demonstrations began, a generation of YouTubers emerged as unofficial spokespeople for Algeria's youth. We spoke with two of them - Anes Tina and Raja Meziane - about the grievances they articulate, the political and social change they advocate - in the slick videos they have produced, videos that are now part of the soundtrack of the Algerian revolution. Contributors Anes Tina - comedian Raja Meziane - musician - 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 this week's The Listening Post: Events in Sudan take a turn - security forces rampage through protest sites and a media blackout is enforced. Plus, the toxicity of British poverty porn media. Cracking down on demonstrators, controlling the message Nearly two months after mass anti-government demonstrations led to the overthrow of Sudan's long-time president, Omar al-Bashir, a mostly peaceful political transition has turned violent. This past week, soldiers taking orders from the military regime that now rules Sudan opened fire on protesters, killing more than 100 people. The junta imposed a communications blackout - blocking access to social media, disrupting phone traffic, severely restricting the news and information flow. Over the past few weeks, many foreign journalists, including those from Al Jazeera, have had their licenses revoked and their offices raided, meaning stories of alleged mass murder and rape at the hands of the security services do not make it beyond Sudan's borders. When the generals took power, they promised new media freedoms, space for independent reporting. However, their tolerance for those telling the stories of this revolution has run out, and they are using tactics straight out of Omar al-Bashir's playbook. Contributors: Khalid Albaih - Sudanese political cartoonist Eric Reeves - Senior fellow, Harvard University Isma'il Kushkush - Journalist Yassmin Abdel-Magied - Writer and broadcaster On our radar Richard Gizbert speaks to producer Meenakshi Ravi about police raids on two news outlets in Australia that have put media on high alert; and a BBC report on army abuses in north west Pakistan which the military has claimed is "a pack of lies." Myths and money in Britain's poverty porn industry "Poverty porn" is a British TV genre that follows a simple formula: take what Brits call a benefits scrounger - someone who's milking the state's welfare system for all it's worth - throw in a dash of stereotyping, a little demonisation, add a pinch of reality TV and presto: you have a television show. British TV channels and tabloid papers have long been hooked on stories about people claiming money from the state. But it's a dependency that comes at a cost. Among the problems associated with poverty porn output: it might entertain audiences, but it also often misleads them about the reality of the welfare system - and that can have implications for the people who depend on it. Contributors: Rossalyn Warren - Freelance journalist Rachel Broady - Lecturer, Liverpool John Moores Univ. Bob Jefford - Co-executive producer, Benefits Britain Barry Tomes - PR agent Ruth Patrick - Lecturer, 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/

On The Listening Post this week: The indictment of Julian Assange under the Espionage Act and the threat it poses to the media. Plus, the erasure of Palestinian history in Israel's archives. The US indictment against Julian Assange When WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was dragged out of the Ecuadorean embassy in London seven weeks ago, the site's editor, Kristinn Hrafnsson, told The Listening Post that the legal charges waiting for him in the United States were "just the tip of the iceberg". Last week, he was proven right. US prosecutors have expanded the indictment against Assange by another 17 counts, with the US Department of Justice now going after him using the 100-year-old Espionage Act. The law has been used against whistleblowers before, including WikiLeaks source Chelsea Manning, but never against a publisher. The precedent such a prosecution would set has been setting off alarm bells - including at mainstream media organisations - ever since. Contributors Caroline DeCell - staff lawyer, Knight First Amendment Institute Kevin Gosztola - managing editor, Shadowproof Trevor Timm - executive director, Freedom of the Press Foundation Gabe Rottman - project director, Reports Committee for Freedom of the Press On our radar Richard Gizbert speaks to producer Marcela Pizarro about the debate that turned the US-China trade war into a television spectacle - with an American news anchor in one corner and a Chinese presenter in the other. History suppressed: Censorship in Israel's archives Historical documents that would shed further light on Israel's treatment of Palestinians have, for years, sat under lock and key inside Israel's State and Military Archives. Under the pretexts of "security" or "privacy", more than 98 percent of those files are classified under a form of censorship that even the former chief archivist of Israel has criticised. For Palestinians, it is part of wider trends of cultural erasure and historical denial that have gone hand-in-hand with the decades-long theft not just of their land, but of their story. The Listening Post's Tariq Nafi reports on the silencing of Palestinian history in Israel's archives. Contributors Sherene Seikaly - associate professor, UC Santa Barbara Rona Sela - Israeli researcher on visual history and lecturer Mahmoud Yazbak - professor, University of Haifa 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: Hyped-up headlines, 'anonymous' sources and unspecified threats - Iran is back in the news in the US. Plus, the online horrors faced by female journalists. And our own network - Al Jazeera - comes under fire. We set the record straight. The media momentum for war with Iran This wouldn't be the first time the US media have made the case for war on the basis of vague, anonymously sourced intelligence. In 2003, it was Iraq - in 2019, it's Iran. Much of American news reporting on US-Iran relations glosses over President Donald Trump's role and the history of American aggression against Iran. While Islamic Republic - ruled by authoritarians and involved in wars in Syria and Yemen - is far from an innocent player, inflammatory headlines, unnamed sources, and decades of misinformation in the US media over Iran don't help. Contributors Negar Mortazavi - Consultant editor, The Independent Ali Vaez - Iran Project director, International Crisis Group Narges Bajoghli - Middle East Studies, Johns Hopkins University Monalisa Freiha - Associate editor, An-Nahar Newspaper On our radar Richard Gizbert speaks to producer Tariq Nafi about an offensive AJ+ Arabic video on the Holocaust taken down shortly after being published. Yaser Bishr, the executive director of Digital at Al Jazeera Media Network, responded to The Listening Post: "We at Al Jazeera deeply regret the mistake and the offense caused by content to individuals and communities across the world. I want to reiterate that Al Jazeera does not tolerate any such material on any of the Network's platforms and we are ensuring that additional processes are being put in place so that this type of error doesn’t happen again." They also talk about how Julian Assange now faces more charges in the US, with precedent setting implications for mainstream news outlets. Trolls and threats: Online harassment of female journalists Reporters have always had to defend their work, and the trolling of journalists is now routine. But many female media professionals deal with the kind of hate messages men will never see; comments about their gender, appearance and sexuality. The language can be ugly and violent, and threats of sexual assaults and rape have grown alarmingly common. For trolls, hiding behind an online profile is easy, and the anonymity of social media has made the dissemination of abuse and hate as easy as a simple click. The Listening Post spoke to two journalists - Maria Ressa in the Philippines and Sagarika Gauche in India - about their experience with online harassment, and the impact it's had on their work and wellbeing. Contributors Maria Ressa - CEO, Rappler Sagarika Ghose - Consulting editor, The Times of India Hannah Storm - Former director, International News Safety Institute - 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: A perfect storm of activism, science and politics pushes the biodiversity crisis up the news agenda. Plus, patriotism in Chinese cinema, past and present. A change of climate in the media? It is one of those news stories, maybe the only one, that seems almost too big to cover: climate change and the scientific consensus that the planet is almost at the point of no return. The evidence is overwhelming. A UN report last week warned that roughly one million plant and animal species face extinction. News outlets struggle to find the right way to cover the story, the relentless onslaught of the evidence – the data. But there are signs that things are changing. Corporate media, which have fed off natural disasters, floods and famines, while shying away from larger, causal issues, are now starting to examine and link the global economic system to an issue that has brought us to the brink. Movements like Extinction Rebellion and terms like the Green New Deal are trending – and for far longer than the standard 24-hour news cycle. Are the news media finally giving the climate change story the coverage it deserves? Contributors Ehsan Masood - Science journalist George Barda - Activist Kate Aronoff - Contributor, The Intercept Vishwas Satgar - Associate Professor, University of the Witwatersrand On our radar Richard Gizbert speaks to producer, Johanna Hoes, about WikiLeaks whistleblower Chelsea Manning, who has been sent back to prison for the second time this year. And the British programme - The Jeremy Kyle Show - that has been taken off air after a guest took their own life. When Propaganda Sells: Blockbuster Films & The Chinese State For all the attention Hollywood and Bollywood attract, the past two years have produced the three highest grossing movies in China's cinematic history. 'Wolf Warrior 2', 'Operation Red Sea' and 'The Wandering Earth' have different settings and themes – they are all action films. But look beyond the gratuitous violence, implausible plotlines and special effects and you will detect some jingoistic themes that are very much in line with President Xi Jinping's brand of national assertiveness. Cinema has always played a central role in the media strategy of the Communist Party. Are we simply seeing more celluloid-based propaganda – revamped for the 21st century? Or just a market-based response to the demands of Chinese movie-going audiences? The Listening Post's Meenakshi Ravi reports on the new blockbusters of Chinese cinema. Contributors Chris Berry - Professor of Film Studies, King's College London Patrick Frater - Asia Bureau Chief, Variety Sabrina Yu - Senior lecturer, Newcastle University Stanley Kwan - Film Director 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/

It's been just over a month since the first votes were cast in the largest democratic exercise on the planet: India's general election. Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants a second term, and his party, the BJP, seems destined for victory. Over the past financial year, the BJP's publicity budget has been 20 times that of the main opposition party, the Congress. That's a lot of extra billboards, rallies and social media ads – spent to brand Modi as the leader Indians need, the antithesis to what the BJP calls the country's weak, anti-national and anti-Hindu opposition. Throw in a few dozen celebrity endorsements, Bollywood style, a mainstream news media whose support the BJP mostly gets for free – and it adds up to an election that looks like Narendra Modi has well in his grasp. "Now India has a parliamentary election, but since Mr. Modi has arrived on the scene, our national election has repeatedly been described as 'presidential style'," says Raghu Karnad, contributing editor, The Wire. The kind of visibility and name recognition Narendra Modi benefits from does not all come for free. For the financial year 2017-18, the BJP spent the equivalent of more than $80m in election publicity. More than all the other parties combined. And that was before the campaign had formally begun. For one period earlier this year, the party spent $100k on Google advertising alone, and that's 10 times more than its Congress party challengers. Modi's BJP is also India's biggest Facebook advertiser. Those are among the places the BJP's money is going to. Then comes the issue of where that money is coming from. According to Supriya Sharma, executive editor, Scroll.in, "The BJP has found a way to cloak these funds that it receives in absolute secrecy. It has introduced a new system of electoral bonds which allows for completely anonymous donations. We don't even have a way of tracking who exactly is giving this money to the BJP and why? What are they getting in return?" News outlets are also acutely aware that the BJP-led government is the country's biggest media advertiser. And the party wields that money tactically. The other medium Modi's BJP has mastered is film, through the prime minister's courtship of Bollywood A-listers, tweeting at them, taking selfies with them – even being interviewed by them. On April 24th, two weeks after voting had begun, Modi had a series of softball questions lobbed his way by Bollywood actor, Akshay Kumar who was playing the role of an interviewer. "When you sit through the interview you realize that Narendra Modi loves mangoes," explains Joyojeet Pal, associate professor, University of Michigan School of Information. "He was a poor person - he made it a point to point that out and it highlights how he is a self-made man and this is really important because the son he is standing against, Rahul Gandhi, is the son of a prime minister, he is the grandson of a prime minister who is the great grandson of a prime minister and Narendra Modi comes across in this interview as everything that the common average Indian is or aspires to be." Contributors Raghu Karnad - Contributing editor, The Wire Joyojeet Pal - Associate professor, University of Michigan School of Information Supriya Sharma - Executive editor, Scroll.in Parth MN - Journalist 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: India's political parties are deploying big money, strategy, and celebrity sparkle to win votes. Plus, the news network telling the Rohingya story. Big money, high stakes – playing the media game as India votes Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants a second term, and his party - the BJP - seems destined for victory in India's general election. How much of that is due to Modi's genuine popularity, and how much is down to the BJP's sprawling publicity machine - is another question. Over the past financial year, the BJP's publicity budget has been 20 times that of the main opposition party, the Congress. That's a lot of extra rallies, billboards and social media ads spent to brand Modi as the leader Indians need. Throw in a few dozen celebrity endorsements, Bollywood style, a mainstream news media, most of whose support the BJP gets for free, and it adds up to an election that looks like Narendra Modi's to lose. Contributors Raghu Karnad - Contributing editor, The Wire Joyojeet Pal - Associate professor, University of Michigan School of Information Supriya Sharma - Executive editor, Scroll.in Parth MN - Journalist On Our Radar Richard Gizbert speaks to producer Tariq Nafi on the battle of Donald Trump versus the White House press corps, as well the latest on Arab activist Iyad al-Baghdadi who does a lot of work on Saudi Arabia and who may now have a target on his back. Reporting Myanmar's Rohingya story In breaking news out of Myanmar this past week after more than 500 days behind bars, two Reuters reporters, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, have been released by the government. The men had been jailed for their investigation into the killing of 10 Rohingya Muslims by Myanmar security forces. News of their release was welcomed by journalists and activists around the world. In Myanmar though, reporting the Rohingya story remains challenging. Since 2017, almost three-quarters of a million Rohingya Muslims have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh - and Myanmar's government has been aggressive in its attempts to control the narrative. One network however, Rohingya Vision TV, has been reporting the story from the inside. Contributors Muhammad Noor - Co-founder and Managing Director, Rohingya Vision TV Aye Aye Win - Former Myanmar Bureau Chief, AP Francis Wade - Author 'Myanmar's Enemy Within' Mark Farmaner - Director, Burma Campaign UK 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/