The Listening Post

On August 31, 2018, Northern Irish journalists Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey awoke to loud knocks at the doors of their Belfast homes. "My street outside my home was filled with police," McCaffrey told The Listening Post's Daniel Turi. "They informed me they wanted to search my house for materials relating to the documentary, No Stone Unturned. The first thing they did was they sought to seize all digital materials: mobile phones, laptops, computers." No Stone Unturned, directed by Academy Award-winner Alex Gibney, investigates the Loughinisland massacre - the killing of six unarmed Catholics in 1994 - towards the end of Northern Ireland's 30-year sectarian conflict known as "the Troubles". The paramilitary group the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) claimed responsibility for the attack, but no one was ever brought to trial. No Stone Unturned presents new evidence - principally, a confidential draft of a report written by a police ombudsman, that states, during their original investigation, police identified one of their suspects as an informant embedded in the UVF. Birney, the film's producer, and McCaffrey, an investigative journalist, were arrested by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), a branch of the UK police force, but have not so far been charged. Among the reasons given by the PSNI for their arrests was suspected "unlawful disclosure of information" under the UK Official Secrets Act. At the time of writing, they are serving bail and have won permission to challenge the legality of the search warrants used. They informed me they wanted to search my house for materials relating to the documentary, No Stone Unturned. The first thing they did was they sought to seize all digital materials: mobile phones, laptops, computers. Barry McCaffrey, investigative reporter, No Stone Unturned The arrest of journalists in the UK is extremely rare. However, documenting Northern Ireland's Troubles has always been a contentious pursuit for British and Northern Irish journalists, because of both the continuing threat posed by the Irish Republican Army's (IRA) brutal bombing campaign - which targeted civilians, and also the counterinsurgency operation being waged by the British government - the so-called "dirty war" that included the incarceration and torture of terror suspects without trial. During the conflict, varying degrees of censorship were felt at media outlets across the industry, but especially in television. The best-known case is the so-called "Broadcast Ban of 1988-94", a law that prohibited the voices of members of certain political and paramilitary organisations being broadcast on TV or radio. Less widely known, however, is that journalists trying to televise the Troubles faced restrictions, albeit of a less formal nature, from much earlier. Starting in the early 1970s, following intense government pressure, the BBC required all items produced on Northern Ireland to be vetted by senior management. Documentaries were particularly suspect, especially those looking into the IRA or detailing abuses by British forces, and many were vetoed by the BBC's Controller for Northern Ireland. Government pressure on the BBC had a chilling effect. Regulators and executives at independent production companies, wary of the consequences of straying beyond certain boundaries, also began to censor. Overall, scores of productions - documentaries, news reports and even music videos - were banned, censored or delayed during the Troubles. Today, over two decades on from the Good Friday Agreement, Northern Ireland's historic peace deal signed in 1998, censorship is viewed as a thing of the past. However, while the conflict may be formally over, the estimated 3,000 unsolved killings left in its wake have kept the Troubles very much alive in the media. Cases involving allegations of "collusion" - shorthand for British government complicity in crimes committed by paramilitary groups, and where investigations by state authorities have often fallen short - have seen journalists take up the role of would-be detectives. It's a role that continues to cause controversy, as the fall-out over No Stone Unturned has demonstrated. "The point that the police ombudsman Michael McGuire made in relation to No Stone Unturned was that it couldn't be left up to just investigative journalists and the police ombudsman's office to investigate the past," says Susan McKay, a freelance journalist who writes for The Irish Times. "It's too big for that; there are too many unsolved cases, there are too many unanswered questions. So, while that is the case, inevitably journalism is going to step in." - 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: Following a bombing in Kashmir, there is talk of war on the Indian airwaves and hate mongering on social media. Plus, journalism and justice in Northern Ireland. Narratives of Rage & Revenge in India Last week, a suicide bomber killed 40 Indian soldiers in Kashmir. Jaish-e-Mohammed, a rebel group based in Pakistan, has claimed responsibility for what has been called the worst attack of its kind in decades. With Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government in New Delhi accusing the Pakistani government of backing the group, many Indian news outlets, not content with simply pointing the finger at Islamabad, are now calling for a crackdown on so-called 'anti-nationals' and 'terrorist sympathisers' at home. Meanwhile, on social media, Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp in India have been abuzz with hate speech and incitement. With a general election just months away, the bombing of Kashmir and the way it's being covered could well affect the outcome in what is the biggest electoral exercise on the planet. Contributors Shakuntala Banaji - Department of Media & Communications, LSE Rohit Chopra - Associate Professor, Santa Clara University Sanjay Kak - Documentary Filmmaker Kunal Purohit - Journalist On our radar Richard Gizbert speaks to producer Meenakshi Ravi about Facebook's suspension of Kremlin-funded media outlets; and the appointment of CNN's latest political editor, a former Trump administration official. Documenting the Troubles: Journalism and Justice over Northern Ireland The challenges for journalists covering conflict zones are well-documented, but digging for difficult truths in post-conflict situations can also be a contentious pursuit. Northern Ireland, and a period known as the Troubles - 30 years of sectarian violence that ended with the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 - is a case in point. During the conflict itself, journalists in Britain and Ireland faced varying degrees of censorship - especially those working in television. Although the fighting ended long ago, just last year two documentary makers were arrested over a film they made alleging that the British government was complicit in a 1994 massacre that remains - like so many cases from that era - unsolved. The Listening Post's Daniel Turi reports on the ongoing difficulties of documenting the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Contributors Ed Moloney - Author, 'A Secret History of the IRA' Susan McKay - Contributor, The Irish Times John Ware - Former reporter, BBC Panorama Ben Lowry - Deputy editor, The News Letter Trevor Birney - Producer, 'No Stone Unturned' Barry McCaffrey - Investigative reporter, 'No Stone Unturned' - 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: Mass demonstrations in Sudan continue despite a crackdown on protesters and the media. Plus, the Ambani brothers and India's media. Sudan: A crumbing regime puts the squeeze on the media A near total media blackout in Africa's third largest country, Sudan, and the protests there that threaten to undo 30 years of one-man rule, that of President Omar Al Bashir. The demands of those taking to the streets are straight forward: the end of the regime. And Bashir's response - the jailing of protestors and clamping down on journalism evokes echoes of the Arab Spring. Contributors Faisal Mohamed Salih - Journalist and columnist Shamael Al Noor - Journalist, Al Tayyar Khalid Al Eisir - Journalist and columnist Isma'il Kushkush – Freelance journalist On our radar Richard Gizbert speaks to producer Johanna Hoes about a scandal which has hit the French media about the online harassment of female journalists by their male colleagues. And in the Philippines a story about a website Rappler and its CEO Maria Ressa who got arrested on charges of cyber libel. Indian media & the Ambani brothers Mukesh Ambani is the most powerful media mogul in India and one of the richest men in Asia. He owns television networks that span regions and languages, news and entertainment. And the coverage he attracts is a study in brand power, a measure of the sway he has over Indian media outlets. Then there is his younger brother, who produces headlines of a different kind. For the past year, Anil Ambani has been a central figure in a corruption scandal involving the Indian government, some suspicious contracts and a multi-billion dollar deal for French fighter jets. Outlets reporting on this story have faced multiple lawsuits from Anil Ambani's companies alleging defamation and misreporting. Contributors Sevanti Ninan - Founding Editor, The Hoot Josy Joseph - Author, 'A Feast of Vultures' Investigative Journalist Siddharth Varadarajan - Founding Editor, The Wire Ashutosh - Co-founder, Satyahindi 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: Heralded as the future of the media, digital news outlets suffer a round of mass layoffs. Plus, the journalistic life of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. BuzzFeed and the digital media bubble It's been a bad couple of weeks for the digital news industry. More than 1,000 workers, many of them reporters, have lost their jobs at companies like BuzzFeed, Huff Post and Vice. Just five years ago, these digital news outlets were seen as the future of journalism. But the layoffs suggest that the business model the companies all rely on, click-based advertising revenue, doesn't add up to a profitable bottom line. Then there's the problematic reliance on Facebook and Google to distribute digital news content. The two tech giants are eating up the bulk of digital ad revenues - leaving the BuzzFeeds of the world in roughly the same place as newspapers and other legacy news organisations before them - trying to find new models to make their businesses work. Contributors Keach Hagey - media and tech reporter, Wall Street Journal Rasmus Kleis Nielsen - Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism Siva Vaidhyanathan - University of Virginia and author of Anti-Social Media Mathew Ingram - Columbia Journalism Review On our radar Richard Gizbert speaks to producer Marcela Pizarro about the latest from Israel ahead of the elections in April: Benjamin Netanyahu gets his own TV channel. Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Chronicle of a journalist untold We think of Gabriel Garcia Marquez as a fiction writer - we think of magical realism. But he saw himself first and foremost as a journalist. In fact, Garcia Marquez was thrown out of Colombia for his outspokenness - because ultimately, his form of journalism was unapologetically political - what today we might call advocacy journalism. The Listening Post's Marcela Pizarro explores how Latin American literature meets journalism in the work, and legacy of, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Contributors Juanita Leon - director, La Silla Vacia Jaime Abello - director, New Ibero-American Journalism Foundation Maria Jimena Duzan - journalist, Semana

Caracas recently witnessed two swearing-in ceremonies, two weeks apart, both of which left much to be desired. On January 10, President Nicolas Maduro was sworn in for a second term as president, after an election last year that the United Nations, the European Union and the United States all said failed to meet accepted standards. On January 23, Juan Guaido, the head of the National Assembly, swore himself in as president, an office he has never run for, and the US and many other countries quickly announced that he is their man. "I think 80 percent of Venezuelans have no idea who this man is. But he is very well-known in DC," explains Abby Martin, host of The Empire Files. "We know that not only did [US Vice President] Mike Pence call Juan Guaido the day before he declared himself president but, in fact, the US government has been working with the opposition in Venezuela for decades." Juan Guaido was partly educated in the US and he is a protege of opposition figure Leopoldo Lopez, who the Maduro government has under house arrest. He was first elected to the National Assembly in 2010 and only became head of the body early last month. Guaido argues that his claim to the presidency is legally sound since the constitution allows for the head of the National Assembly to do that if the Assembly deems the office of the president to be vacant. However, Maduro's supporters argue that Guaido's move, and Washington's role in backing it, is tantamount to a coup. A side of this story that doesn't get much play in the US news media. "What we are seeing here is a mainly US-engineered attempt at a coup," says Oscar Guardiola-Rivera, lecturer at the University of London. "To call a spade a spade and an 'attempted coup' an 'attempted coup' is not to defend the Maduro administration." Selling a humanitarian intervention in Venezuela would be easier for the Trump administration, if not for to the US's long track record of engineering the overthrow of leftist governments in Latin America and elsewhere. According to Rory Carroll, "There are certain ominous echoes with [the Iraq War] 2003 in that now we have a very hawkish administration in Washington that is talking of intervening, and we have large sections of the US media in effect acting as cheerleaders ... I can only hope that peaceful change comes and some sort of negotiated settlement which would pave the way to free and fair elections," says the former Latin America correspondent for The Guardian. Maduro is trying to go around the mainstream media, taking his message online, in this case, directly to the American people. But none of his efforts bode well for him because there are shortages of food and medicine. There's also a surplus of discontent on the streets, one too many politicians calling him president and too much oil under the ground to go unnoticed in Washington. Contributors Alan McLeod - author, Bad News from Venezuela Jairo Lugo-Ocando - professor, Northwestern University in Qatar Oscar Guardiola-Rivera - lecturer, University of London Abby Martin - host, The Empire Files Rory Carroll - former Latin America correspondent, The Guardian and author of Comandante: Hugo Chavez's Venezuela - 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 nine weeks in Serbia, thousands have been taking to the streets of Belgrade, calling for an end to what they say are President Aleksandar Vucic's authoritarian tendencies and creeping control over the media. The protests have been dubbed "one in five million" - a name lifted directly from Vucic's own comment that "even if five million people were on the streets, [he] wouldn't cede to their demands" - and for many, they were a long time coming. "These protests are a logical consequence of accumulated anger and dissatisfaction," says Zeljko Bodrozic, vice president at the Independent Journalists' Association of Serbia. "Citizens saw that after several years of Vucic's reign, the story from the '90's - when he served as the minister of Information under [former President] Slobodan Milosevic - was being repeated. We no longer live in war hysteria now, but Vucic practices the same politics, just with other means and in a more subtle way". The anti-government demonstrations are the biggest since the fall of Milosevic in 2000, not that you would know that from watching the coverage on RTS, Serbia's public broadcaster. The weekly protests deliberately chart a course that stops right in front of the RTS building, yet they only get a two-minute bulletin at the very end of the channel's half-hour newscast. For some critics, it is a tangible sign that programming is completely in the hands of the ruling party. We no longer live in war hysteria now, but Vucic practices the same politics, just with other means and in a more subtle way. Zeljko Bodrozic, vice president, Independent Journalists' Association of Serbia "The protesters want RTS to stop being state television and take on more of a public service role where every social group, even if it criticises the government, can and should have its place. Vucic knows very well that the media are a very strong government tool and I think this is why so much has been done to control the media, why we don't have critical programmes and why most of the mainstream news is undercover propaganda and manipulation," explains Tanja Maksic of the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network. Ever since coming to power in 2012, Vucic has been accused of using a host of administrative, political and financial measures to reign in media outlets, public and private, that do not toe the official line. Critics in Belgrade have raised concerns over the deteriorating state of press freedom on the international stage, but say their concerns are falling on deaf ears. Filip Swarm, executive editor at Vreme, warns that in the midst of Serbia's bid for EU membership, politicians in Brussels care more about Serbia's stability, than about the country's media freedom. "Aleksandar Vucic's regime is what is called stable-ocracy. For the EU, the important thing is that there is no shooting. The important thing is that we are not at war with our neighbours. Apparently democratic freedoms, the state of human rights, and freedom of the media do not interest them anymore." The Vucic administration maintains that it is drafting new legislation aimed at improving conditions for Serbian journalists. But many fear this new set of laws will be just another list of unfulfilled promises aimed to please the European Union, doing little to satisfy the demands of the protesters who have been marching Belgrade's streets for weeks. Contributors Aleksandar Gajovic - state secretary, Ministry of Culture and Information Zeljko Bodrozic - vice president, Independent Journalists' Association of Serbia Filip Svarm - executive editor, Vreme Tanja Maksic - Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) - 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 the speaker of Venezuela's National Assembly proclaims himself 'President', we analyse international coverage of the crisis. Plus, Serbian media under Vucic. Venezuela's crisis and the geopolitics of news narratives When opposition figure Juan Guaido declared himself interim president in Venezuela last week, he was quickly backed by the US and many other governments. The US news media covered the push to remove President Nicolas Maduro, without saying what that attempt, if successful, would amount to - a coup. The coverage also mostly stayed away from the role successive American administrations - through economic sanctions - have played in handicapping the Venezuelan economy. As Iraqis, Iranians, Libyans and others would tell you, this isn't the first time the US has taken a disproportionate interest in the governance of a country loaded with oil. Washington has a playbook for this kind of thing. And so, apparently, do the US media. Contributors Alan McLeod - Author, 'Bad News from Venezuela' Jairo Lugo-Ocando - Professor, Northwestern University in Qatar Oscar Guardiola-Rivera - Lecturer, University of London Abby Martin - Host, 'The Empire Files' Rory Carroll - Former Latin America correspondent, The Guardian & Author, 'Comandante: Hugo Chavez's Venezuela' On our radar Richard Gizbert speaks to producer Flo Phillips about Sudan's crackdown on the media following weeks of anti-government protests, and the UK's Daily Telegraph story on Melania Trump that contained not one, but a heap of factual inaccuracies. Protesting Serbia's muzzled media Thousands of protesters marched in Belgrade this past weekend, the ninth straight week of mass anti-government demonstrations. But news outlets that either back or fear President Aleksandar Vucic, and that's the majority of the Serbian media, have either ignored the movement or minimised its news value. For protesters, this doesn't come as a surprise. They have been calling for an end to what they say are Vucic's authoritarian tendencies and his creeping control of the media. The Listening Post's Johanna Hoes reports from Belgrade, on the state of journalism in the Vucic era. Contributors Aleksandar Gajovic - State Secretary, Ministry of Culture and Information Zeljko Bodrozic - Vice President, Independent Journalists' Association of Serbia Filip Svarm - Executive Editor, Vreme Tanja Maksic - Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) 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: Eight years since the revolution, the squeeze on Egypt’s embattled media is tighter than ever before. Plus, President Sisi’s talk show bias. After spring came winter: The fall of the Egyptian media It's been eight years since the fall of Hosni Mubarak and the uprising that briefly liberated Egyptians and their media from life under one-man rule. Fast-forward to the present day and President Abdel Fattah El Sisi's government is doubling down - tripling down - on controlling the news media - measures that rights groups say are unprecedented in the country's recent history. With the margins of acceptable speech narrower than ever and journalists expected to demonstrate complete loyalty to the state, discerning truth in Egypt from propaganda, gets more difficult by the day. Contributors Marwa Maziad - Comparative Media and Politics researcher, University of Washington Dalia Fahmy - Associate Professor of Political Science, Long Island University Amr Magdi - Researcher, Human Rights Watch Ahmed Samih - Director, Andalus Institute On our radar Richard Gizbert speaks to producer Marcela Pizarro about Israel, where Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government has made the media the target of its pre-election billboard campaign; and a Nicaraguan journalist who has fled the country for fear of the Ortega government. Spinning for Sisi: Egypt's talk show hosts Egyptians call them "emperors", and every night millions tune in to watch them lecture, entertain and rant their way through hours of television output. Talk show hosts form a key filter through which Egyptians have come to view politics and they have an outsized influence on the masses. Under Abdel Fattah El Sisi, talk show hosts are expected to legitimize his presidency and vilify his critics. When they don't, they have a habit of disappearing from the airwaves, just like that. The Listening Post's Tariq Nafi reports on the highly politicised world of TV talk shows in Egypt. Contributors Marwan Kraidy - Director, Center for Advances Research in Global Communication & Author, ‘The Naked Blogger Cairo’ Fatima El Issawi - Senior Lecturer, University of Essex Amr Khalifa - Analyst & Political Columnist - 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, Nicolas Maduro starts his second term as President of Venezuela, a country with empty shelves and shuttered newsrooms. Plus, political eulogies in the US media. Earlier this month, Nicolas Maduro was sworn in for a second term as Venezuela's president. The election that got him there has been widely condemned as having been rigged, and opposition voices were mostly absent from the airwaves. The case against Maduro's treatment of the media is compelling. His critics contend that since he first took office in 2013, 33 newspapers and almost 100 radio and TV stations have been censored or shut down, while 50 journalists have been prosecuted. Venezuelans now suffer not only under chronic shortages of food and medicine, but also of paper - adding a further barrier to the free flow of information in the country. Contributors Bernardino Herrera, Media scholar, Central University of Caracas Xabier Coscojuela, Director, Tal Cual Omar Lugo, Director, El Estimulo María Alejandra Diaz, Human Rights Commission of Venezuela's National Constituent Assembly On our radar Richard Gizbert speaks to producer Tariq Nafi about the Sudanese government's efforts to muzzle media outlets covering the country's ongoing protests, and the elaborate prank that saw the Wall Street Journal report a hoax as fact. 'Obit-omit': Political eulogies in US media Journalists occasionally serve up obituaries that are reverential. The US news media produced a few of them last year - first for the former senator and two-time presidential candidate John McCain and then for George H W Bush, the country's president from 1989 to 1993, who died in November. Bush's obituary suffered from a syndrome critics call 'obit-omit', focusing on attributes and achievements, while controversial aspects of his record - among them alleged war crimes were omitted. In doing so, such tributes often reveal more about the news organisations producing them than they do about the deceased. The Listening Post's Daniel Turi reports on the politics of eulogy and what can amount to the whitewashing of history, in real time. Contributors Jeet Heer - Contributing editor, The New Republic Jeff Greenfield - Political analyst & author Vijay Prashad - Author, 'The Darker Nations' Amy Goodman - Cofounder & host, Democracy Now! 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: An NBC News reporter's resignation letter excoriates US media coverage of foreign policy and national security issues. Plus, conspiracy theories and the media. William Arkin: An insider's critique of the US media When William Arkin, a veteran national security reporter with NBC and MSNBC, wrote his resignation email last week, he shared it with his colleagues. It was then leaked to other news outlets. Among Arkin's criticisms of his former employer that by incessantly covering the presidency of Donald Trump, the network is being held hostage by Trump; that in its reflexively anti-Trump coverage, it has become even more promilitary; that NBC and MSNBC are now captives of the security state. But American news consumers are tuning in to MSNBC, and its anti-Trump agenda, in record numbers. Armed with those kinds of ratings, what corporate-owned news channel would risk alienating its shareholders by changing tack? Contributors Eric Alterman - Columnist, The Nation William Arkin - Former defence reporter, NBC News Anoa Changa - Host, The Way with Anoa Aaron Mate - Journalist Cenk Uygur - Creator & host, The Young Turks On our radar Richard Gizbert speaks to producer Johanna Hoes about a Nigerian military raid on the offices of one of the largest newspapers in the country; and the CBS 60 Minutes' interview with President Abdel Fattah El Sisi that Egyptian media pretended did not happen. Conspiracy theories and the media Conspiracy theories are a growth industry and can affect politics. Last year, one such theory may have helped reelect Hungarian President Viktor Orban. And Donald Trump peddled a few of them on his way to the White House. The thing about conspiracy theories is that journalists don't really know how to cope with them. Debunking them fails to convince those who believe the media are lying to them. And the exposure that comes with countering them introduces people to conspiracies they had never heard of before. The Listening Post's Will Yong looks at conspiracy theories, the media and the consequences they can have in the real world. Contributors Travis View - Co-Host, QAnon Anonymous Podcast Kelly Weill - Reporter, The Daily Beast Shannon McGregor - Communications Professor, University of Utah 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/

More than 20 years ago, a psychology student doing his training at one of Argentina's oldest psychiatric wards kept being asked by his family and friends what it was like to work in there. So he came up with an idea: to let the patients explain in their own words. The first radio station to broadcast from inside a mental hospital was born. Radio La Colifata - slang for loon, or crazy person, has been on air from Hospital Jose Borda in Buenos Aires every Saturday afternoon for 23 years - to confront the stigma around mental illness, breaking through the wall in AM, FM and now online. In-patients produce and present the shows that range from politics to sports - and over the years, millions of Argentinians have been tuning in. Today, the radio frequencies have reached further, with around 50 stations based on the Radio Colifata model in Latin America, Europe and Asia - and soon, it will be setting up outside the asylum, hosted by former patients. The radio was never intended as a serious journalistic enterprise per se. But the voices it includes, the things that are said, the way the stories are told - are enough to make anyone in the mainstream world of journalism stop, listen and think about how their own voices are repressed, censored and sedated - and how truth lies beyond what has been prescribed. This week, we hear what the Colifatos have to say in a special collaboration between The Listening Post and Radio La Colifata. 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/

There is an exquisite and oft-quoted moment in an interview between BBC journalist Andrew Marr and Noam Chomsky in which Marr asks: "How can you know that I'm self-censoring?". "I'm not saying you're self censoring. I'm sure you believe everything you're saying. But what I'm saying is that if you believed something different, you wouldn't be sitting where you're sitting." Wry as ever, Chomsky exposed the slightly delusional pretensions of the journalistic establishment - and not far behind, the complicities of the media industry with political power. Harsh? Perhaps. True? All too often. For many of us who work at The Listening Post, Chomsky's ideas on the media in Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media have provided us with a guide, full of cautionary tales and ideas that are still controversial to this day. The book was published in 1988 - a year before the end of the Cold War when it was announced that western liberal democracy had triumphed, heralding the end of ideology, authoritarianism, and propaganda. In the past 30 years, we have seen the mass communications industry multiply, providing an illusion of choice, echoing the rhetorics of freedom - of press, of expression - but not necessarily yielding the pluralism liberal democracies had promised. In that way, the book continues to resonate. But like all revered texts, Manufacturing Consent also calls upon us as active readers, journalists, citizens to interrogate its premises. Does the book's denunciatory tone risk overstate the power of the media establishment? Does it underestimate the critical faculties of the public? Is the media so homogenous an entity that power can be wielded top-down? Where are the lapses, the blind spots? Where do journalists find pockets of power that serve to disrupt? We spoke to three journalists who have their careers being disruptive and asked them about the ideas that had influenced them in Chomsky and Herman's book: Matt Taibbi, whose reporting for Rolling Stone has provided one of the most critical accounts of US political history in recent years; Indian editor-in-chief Aman Sethi who questions the premises of Chomsky's book and Amira Hass, the Haaretz correspondent for the Occupied Territories. The first thing we asked Hass was what she thought about Chomsky's statement: "the general population doesn't know what's happening, and it doesn't even know that it doesn't know". "This is a very humanist and optimistic statement," she responded. "The belief that when people are informed they may act, things may change. In Hebrew, the words knowledge and awareness are all made of the same root. Yedda and Mudaoot. And so awareness is connected to Mudaoot in Hebrew. And this is how I started working in Gaza, aware that the Israeli public knows nothing about the occupation and what it means. But the people do not pick up this information. They have access to it but they choose not to access it." Hass has been covering Palestine for the best part of 30 years - in that time, sources of information have multiplied, but public outrage? "Today we have so much access to information in other ways that we are on a collision with the fact that people are not interested in what does not serve immediately their interest," she said, with resignation, "and this is a very sad realisation." Aman Sethi put it like this: "It's easy to say that people believe what they believe because their consent has been manufactured. But what if people know exactly what's going on and still believe what they believe, right? Then that's terrifying." 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/

As a Chilean, when I travel to Latin America to cover a story, I usually understand what my interviewees are telling me. I am able to pick up on the finer points and ask follow up questions that get me nearer to the story. But this time round, I didn't understand a word, because my interviewees were speaking in Quechua - one of the main indigenous languages in Peru. I was speaking to Clodomiro Landeo and Marisol Mesa, presenters of the news show 'Nuqanchik', which means "us" in the Quechua language. 'Nuqanchik' has been broadcasting in Quechua for the past year. The show is part of a drive on Peru's public TV channel to counter the racist consequences of colonial representational power. When it comes to representation on the public stage, Peru's indigenous populations are, at best, fetished, commodified, orientalised. At worst, they are spoken about, spoken for, spoken at – even laughed at. But there are signs that this could be changing, albeit at a snail's pace. This week, a comedy show called 'La Paisana Jacinta' (Jacinta, the Peasant), which had been ridiculing indigenous women for years, was taken off air and off line, after a judge ruled in favour of a group of indigenous women from Cuzco who had accused the show of violating their human rights. The ruling was welcomed by indigenous groups around Peru. However, there is a long way to go when it comes to achieving political and economic equality in historically meaningful ways. Ever since the arrival of the Spanish five centuries ago, the Peruvian state has been oligarchical and racist. The tension between Western and Indigenous culture exists at the heart of the country to this day. When Nuqanchik goes to air at 5:30am every morning, it does more than just broadcast in a different language – the intention is to reflect a different reality, a perspective that isn't mainstream in Peru. "Just because the programme is in Quechua, it doesn't mean we are going to just see folk music and dance. These are important and valuable aspects of that culture, but its fundamental purpose is to address people's needs," says media anthropologist, Raul Castro. The question is whether newscasts will have political impact? What will they change for the millions of indigenous people? Beyond exulting the indigenous rights to education, information, culture - will this kind of public broadcasting create a truly democratic space in which to rectify the material premises of their oppression? To echo Peru's most famous journalist, Jose Carlos Maritegui, who was writing about Peruvian class structure and the oppression of the Quechua-speaking Indian in the 1920's: "We are not satisfied to assert the Indian's right to education, culture, progress, love, and heaven. We begin by categorically asserting his right to land." Contributors Clodomiro Landeo, TV presenter, Nuqanchik Marisol Mesa, TV presenter, Nuqanchik Hugo Coya, director, TV Peru Raul Castro, media anthropologist Patricia del Rio, host, Radio Television Peru - 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/

Facebook released its 2018 Year In Review last week, marking various global events - elections, celebrity weddings and sporting occasions - that drove engagement on the site. What it did not look at was itself and the kind of year it had including the Cambridge Analytica and Russian disinformation scandals, and its role in spreading hate speech against Rohingya in Myanmar. "Facebook was caught flat-footed", explains Ina Fried, chief technology correspondent at Axios. "It was used to getting a relatively favourable reception from the press. And after Cambridge Analytica, the public and the media changed their tune and that lack of being able to see itself the way the world did certainly hamper Facebook throughout 2018, as it tended to under-react, under anticipate the level of scrutiny that it would get." Facebook suffered another reputational blow last month, the latest of many, at the hands of the New York Times. Based on leaked internal communications, the NYT reported that Facebook had hired a Washington-based PR firm called Definers to investigate and smear some of Facebook's critics. That did not exactly square with CEO Mark Zuckerberg's sugary words of 'connecting people, building community, and bringing the world closer together'. "The report spoke to a certain level of chaos within the company," says David Gilbert, tech reporter at Vice News. "Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg came out and said they didn't realise that the company had hired Definers." He says that while their departing head of communications Elliot Schrage admitted fault, "it just added to the sense that Facebook is a company that you couldn't really trust and that they were doing things that Facebook shouldn't really be doing". The bottom line on Facebook will always be the numbers, and they're mixed. It has 2.2 billion users worldwide and is still growing in Asia and Africa. However, growth is stagnant in Europe and the Americas, where most of the revenues come from. And that has shaved about $1.2bn off Facebook's share value, a drop of about 30 percent. The real threat to Facebook though, the one Mark Zuckerberg must be thinking about comes from governments and their regulators. They have been as slow to react to the Facebook problem as the company has. But more and more of them are talking about - and inching towards - reining in the social media giant. "The only potentially effective regulatory action I've seen against Facebook has come out of the European Union with the introduction in 2018 of the General Data Protection Regulation," says cultural historian and media scholar Siva Vaidhyanathan of the University of Virginia. "The very fact that now companies that take our data have to allow European citizens to explicitly offer their permission for the use of the data, I think is crucial. Those are important rights that I wish the rest of the world had." Bernie Hogan of the Oxford Internet Institute believes that there will be more examples of governments around the world cracking down on Facebook in 2019. "I imagine within the next year we'll probably see the first example of a government just outright shutting down Facebook in that country and seeing what happens. I don't know which country it'll be, or how long it'll be for. But I imagine some government is going to want to test their resolve relative to Facebook and that will be interesting." Contributors Siva Vaidhyanathan - University of Virginia, author 'Anti-Social Media' David Gilbert - Tech reporter, Vice News Bernie Hogan - Oxford Internet Institute Ina Fried - Chief Technology correspondent, Axios 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/

They're known as ICE raids, seemingly indiscriminate, often undercover operations to root out illegal immigrants and they happen across the United States, day in, day out. ICE stands for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, and while it existed under President Barack Obama, ICE arrests in the workplace went up by more than 600 percent in the last year under President Donald Trump. With the president's ceaseless talking and tweeting about threats like a government shutdown if Democrats refuse to fund his border wall, or that migrant caravan from Honduras, stories about ICE and its sister agency, CBP - Customs and Border Protection - are right up there on the mainstream media's agenda. But the role the media play in this particular narrative goes well beyond just covering the story. Over the past year, NGOs and legal advocacy organisations have collaborated with media outlets to track cases of enforcement abuse. And they train communities to use their own media tools to document wrongdoing. Cases like that of Perla Morales-Luna, Juan Hernandez, or Romulo Avelica Gonzalez are just three examples of thousands that surfaced because they were caught on camera, explains Palika Makam, programme coordinator, WITNESS. "Eyewitness footage has been so crucial in exposing ICE's manipulative tactics. Romulo Avelica-Gonzalez was arrested by two ICE agents who were in unmarked vehicles, wearing jackets that only said 'police'. There's a reason why they don't identify themselves, they are trying to use manipulative tactics to get information from immigrants or people who they've racially profiled in order to arrest and deport them." While ICE is not a new body, Trump's gone further than any other president to arrest and deport undocumented immigrants. As such, there's been "a substantial Eyewitness footage has been so crucial in exposing ICE's manipulative tactics. Palika Makam, programme coordinator, WITNESS increase in interest" in stories of family separations, deportations, and arrests across the country, says Ryan Devereaux, immigration reporter at The Intercept. An uptick in stories about how ICE racially profiles people on the street, picks up immigrants at routine court check-ins, uses contentious surveillance tactics, and makes mass arrests have helped to expose the administration's predatory actions. Some of the journalism does more, by providing extensive collaborations between news organisations and advocacy groups; groups that have done the research and can show people how to protect themselves when ICE agents are raiding their neighbourhoods. ICE watch projects like The Marshall Project-New York Magazine are particularly interesting because, "seeing the mapping up here, what has actually happened, is useful to immigrant New Yorkers who can actually turn the ambient buzz of rumours about what might be happening into a sense of what has actually happened and can navigate their own lives accordingly," points out Dara Lind, immigration reporter at Vox. Other grassroots movements across the country are taking place in the form of crash course video journalism workshops, where people learn how video can be used to help immigrant communities expose injustices, advocate for asylum seekers and defend against deportations. It teaches people not just how to document ICE and Border Patrol abuses but how to do it safely and ethically. "For ICE, an unauthorised immigrant is a lawbreaker," points out Muzaffar Chishti, director at the Migration Policy Institute. "But for the advocates of that unauthorised person, he or she is not just a lawbreaker, but he or she is also a parent, he or she is also a contributing member of the community, he or she is also someone who has roots in this place. They want to portray that aspect of the person, and these tools have become very important in making that happen." Contributors Palika Makam - Programme coordinator, WITNESS Ryan Devereaux - Immigration reporter, The Intercept Muzaffar Chishti - Director, Migration Policy Institute Dara Lind - Immigration reporter, Vox Contributors Palika Makam - Programme coordinator, WITNESS Ryan Devereaux - Immigration reporter, The Intercept Muzaffar Chishti - Director, Migration Policy Institute Dara Lind - Immigration reporter, Vox 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/