The Listening Post

On The Listening Post this week: How media on different sides of the Syrian war portrayed the capture of Raqqa from ISIL. Plus, Lebanese media and the targeting of refugees. Competing narratives on Raqqa More than three years ago, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group (ISIL, which is also known as ISIS) captured the city of Raqqa and declared it the capital of its caliphate. Images that emerged from the city, of atrocities used as propaganda, have been some of the most gruesome and distressing media output to emerge from a war that continues to cause untold suffering. When the Syrian Democratic Forces finally rolled into al-Naim Square, Western journalists travelling with them told a story of triumph and liberation. The story that gets told, however, depends on who is telling it. The multiple governments implicated in the ongoing war imply multiple narratives and the job of untangling them continues. Contributors: Lina Khatib, head of the Middle East and North Africa programme, Chatham House Omar Al Ghazzi, assistant professor of Media, LSE AbdAlaziz Alhamza, cofounder, Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently Christa Salamandra, professor of anthropology, The City University of New York Bassam Haddad, co-editor, Jadaliyya On our radar Authorities in Russia investigated the attempted murder of a Moscow-based radio host who was critical of Kremlin. An Indian court serves an injunction against a news website that investigated the finances of a businessman with close ties to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Barcelona-based TV3, the media mouthpiece of Spain's Catalan, is under threat from Madrid as the Spanish government considers its dissolution. The fear and loathing of Syrian refugees in Lebanon Over a million Syrians have fled to Lebanon since the war began but their reception across the border has grown increasingly hostile. Pick up a Lebanese newspaper or turn on the TV and you think conclude that problems that have dogged Lebanon for years such as electricity cuts, a lack of jobs and chronic pollution all began with the arrival of the refugees. The toxic rhetoric often starts at the political level but since almost every news outlet in Lebanon has some kind of political affiliation the rhetoric often finds its way in the reporting. The Listening Post's Tariq Nafi reports. Contributors: Ayman Mhanna, executive director, Samir Kassir Foundation Kareem Chehayeb, journalist Diana Moukalled, tv producer and columnist Walid Abboud, editor-in-chief, MTV - 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: http://www.aljazeera.com/

On The Listening Post this week: How Hollywood and the media failed to expose sexual predator Harvey Weinstein. Plus, how the CIA and the Pentagon manipulate the movies. Weinstein, Hollywood and the media In Hollywood it was one of those open secrets, something widely known that no one was prepared to say out loud. Harvey Weinstein, one of the most successful producers in the movie business, is a serial sex abuser, using his immense power and influence to force women - staff, interns, but mostly actresses - to succumb to his will. But why has something that took place over decades not been reported until now? We examine what the Harvey Weinstein story - the one the US media failed to report until now - says about the relationship between the film industry and the news business. Contributors: Paula Froelich, journalist Jeet Heer, senior editor, The New Republic Francesca Viola, assistant professor of Journalism, Temple University Margaret Sullivan, media columnist, The Washington Post Lindsey Blumell, lecturer in Journalism, City University On our Radar In Malta, a journalist who used last year's Panama Papers data dump to expose corruption, has been killed by a car bomb. Iranians witnessed the end of a social media era this past week - when one of the country's oldest platforms, Cloob, announced it was shutting down. The government of Mauritania has closed five independent news outlets, for what the networks' journalists believe is their coverage of recent political unrest. Covert operations: How the CIA works with Hollywood The Weinstein story was suppressed by Hollywood, using its legal and financial muscle to keep a lid on it - until now. But there are also power centres in the US government that can dictate to Hollywood: the Pentagon and the CIA. We examine the US government's symbiotic relationship with Hollywood - how the Pentagon and the CIA attempt to shape their on-screen image. Contributors: Tricia Jenkins, associate professor, Texas Christian University Matthew Alford, author, National Security Cinema Nicholas Schou, author, Spooked More from The Listening Post on: YouTube - http://aje.io/listeningpostYT Facebook - http://facebook.com/AJListeningPost Twitter - http://twitter.com/AJListeningPost Website - http://aljazeera.com/listeningpost

When Colin Kaepernick, quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, took a knee in protest last year, sport fans, the media, and Americans in general, did not quite know what to make of it. Soon, other NFL football players were also taking a knee during the national anthem, to draw attention to police brutality against African-Americans and racial inequality in the US. Black Americans are three times more likely to get shot by police than whites are, and are considerably more likely to be shot while unarmed. In most cases, those pulling the trigger are never convicted of a crime. But that message has been hijacked - or at least overshadowed - by US President Donald Trump, who wants the protesting players fired. He calls them unpatriotic and says they're showing a lack of respect for the national anthem, the flag and the soldiers who often carry the flag into the stadium. "The president was trying to change the narrative and in fact, he, along with some other people in the media succeeded, so that you would hear less about Black Lives Matter and police brutality ... He converted it into, 'Boy if you're patriotic and you love your country then why wouldn't you stand up for the national anthem?'" says Mary Frances Berry, University of Pennsylvania. Trump's tactic seemed to backfire when the protests instantly grew in size. But NFL players, most of whom are black, were not Trump's target audience. Football fans, mostly white and watching on TV, were. "Donald Trump obviously is not interested in having a conversation about racial inequity in the United States. What he is interested in, fairly explicitly, is playing to the cultural resentments of a certain portion of his white base," says Eric Levitz, a writer for the New York Magazine. And the league they follow, the NFL, makes a habit of displays of patriotism. The pre-game national anthem usually has a military component to it - some of which, over the years, the Pentagon has paid for. From 2011-2015, the US military spent millions on the NFL, selling its brand in stadiums packed with thousands - and to television audiences in the tens of millions. Fans had no idea that the flyovers, the tributes to veterans, the soldiers saluting the flag were paid for with their tax dollars. The Department of Defense spends more on PR than the rest of the US government combined. That budget pays for all the recruitment ads Americans see during football games and other sports broadcasts. "There is a lot of potential for brand synergy between the NFL and the Pentagon. The stadium offers this stage on which to perform, it gives the Pentagon this opportunity for real spectacle, a real life living celebration of what the Defense Department stands for. It works both as a tool for recruitment, and also as... a propaganda tool to solidify the American people's support for the military and for American foreign policy, and expansive American foreign policy, more broadly," says Levitz. - 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: http://www.aljazeera.com/

On The Listening Post this week: Much of India's media spurns a scoop about the son of the Prime Minister's right-hand man, Jay Amit Shah. Plus, how the NFL became a platform for race politics. Jay Amit Shah, Modi and the media silence A telling media silence has followed a piece of investigative journalism by The Wire this week in India. The news website reported on the finances of Jay Amit Shah, the son of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's right-hand man, Amit Shah. The story tracked a sudden and exponential jump in the revenues of Jay Amit Shah's businesses after Modi came to power in 2014. Modi loyalists called the article a hit job; others called it strong adversarial journalism. Mainstream media, however, mostly shunned the story altogether. And that was before Jay Amit Shah took The Wire to court. Threats - of legal action or much worse - are something Indian journalists are having to contend with more and more often, a state of journalistic affairs the prime minister seems to support - at least tacitly. Contributors: Rama Lakshmi, opinion editor, The Print Rana Ayyub, journalist & author Rohini Singh, writer, The Wire Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, journalist & author Sudhir Chaudhary, editor-in-chief, Zee News On our radar - The New York Times and The New Yorker have created a worldwide media feeding frenzy after publishing allegations of sexual harassment against Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein – but this week we have learned the story could and perhaps should have come out much earlier. - Google joins Facebook in admitting it had Russian-bought political ads aimed at influencing the US presidential campaign on its platforms – a month after denying it had such content. - A freelance photographer has been found dead in Mexico – taking the number of journalists killed there this year to a record high. NFL as a platform for race politics Fans of one of the biggest industries on American television, NFL football, have another thing to keep score of this year. In addition to who won and who lost, the networks are telling them how many players are standing for the national anthem, how many are taking a knee in protest - and what President Donald Trump thinks of it all. The anthem protests began last year, over police brutality against African-Americans and racial inequality in the US. Donald Trump wants the protesting players fired. He calls them unpatriotic, a tactic that seemed to backfire when the protests instantly grew in size. But NFL players, most of whom are black, were not Trump's target audience. Football fans, mostly white and watching on TV, were. Contributors: Les Carpenter, writer, Guardian US Eric Levitz, writer, New York Magazine Mary Frances Berry, professor, University of Pennsylvania Solomon Wilcots, former NFL player and broadcaster 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

We examine Spain's polarised coverage in the aftermath of last week's independence referendum in Catalonia. 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

On The Listening Post this week: With different accounts of the violence in Catalonia, we ask if public TV is serving the people or its political masters. Plus: Vietnam's bloggers under siege. Catalan Referendum: Media, politics and independence For the second week in a row, we're taking a look at the media coverage in the aftermath of the independence referendum in Catalonia, where hundreds of would-be voters were injured by police trying to stop an electoral process that the Spanish government deemed unconstitutional. But with the national and regional broadcasters, Spain's TVE and its Catalan version TV3, serving their political masters in Madrid and Barcelona, a private TV channel, La Sexta, has found itself filling the information gap and drawing criticism from all sides in the process. Contributors: Alejandro Caballero, president of the Journalists Committee, TVE Raquel Sans, presenter, TV3 Ferran Monegal, TV critic, El Periodico Ana Isabel Fernandez Viso, Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona On our radar: In India, at least half a dozen journalists say they may be at risk after being subjected to death threats delivered on the messaging platform, WhatsApp. Google and Facebook have come under criticism over their handling of false news in the aftermath of Las Vegas shooting. Prosecutors in Turkey want to use Interpol's "red notice" to extradite a prominent Turkish journalist now living in exile in Germany. Vietnam's imperilled bloggers Since unification in 1975, Vietnam has been governed by a communist party that maintains tight control over the airwaves. However, bloggers pose a challenge to state-sanctioned narratives for one of the largest online audiences in Southeast Asia. Mainstream outlets are often forced to follow up on stories where bloggers have led the way, sometimes on issues usually declared off-limits by government media managers. The Listening Post's Meenakshi Ravi reports on the supine state of Vietnam's mainstream media and the government's attempts to silence the country's bloggers. Contributors: Tran Le Thuy, director, Centre for Media Education and Consultancy Shawn Crispin, senior Southeast Asia representative, Committee to Protect Journalists Nguyen Van Hai, exiled Vietnamese blogger 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

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In a country as geographically and culturally diverse as Mexico, community radio stations provide local news and views that mainstream outlets do not. Sometimes they counter official narratives that are part of a larger political and media agenda, bringing them into conflict with the authorities and, more perilously, drug gangs - with sometimes deadly results. Now, a new law is offering community radio stations a small piece of the federal government's advertising budget, but could it be a double-edged sword? Could the funding threaten the stations' much-valued independence? 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

As Catalans go to the polls in an unofficial referendum on independence this weekend, Spain's media landscape approaches peak polarisation. Much of the coverage of the referendum by Spanish and Catalan media has looked like one part journalism and one part propaganda. On the one hand, much of the national, Madrid-based media - notably Spain's public broadcaster TVE, stand accused of denying pro-independence voices a fair hearing. On the other, critics charge Catalan outlets like the widely watched TV3 with indoctrinating Catalans rather than informing them. "Catalan public television is broadcasting the advertising calling for participating in the referendum, although it's been forbidden by the constitutional court," says lecturer Ana Fernandez Viso from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. "Catalan media have established a frame of reference which reflects only the nationalist version of reality," adds Arcadi Espada, columnist, El Mundo. "They haven't even had to work at it too hard. They've simply excluded more than half Catalonia's population from their frame of reference." On the print side of the Catalan media, there is diversity to be found. But it's on television where one sees the difference between a diversity of views and a balance of views. And it's not just TV3's news broadcasts, the lack of balance is glaring on what Spaniards call tertulias - daytime talk shows. Tertulias are cheap to produce, long on opinion, short on fact and far from balanced - where anti-independence voices are drowned out. To call Spain's national broadcaster, TVE, a mirror image of Catalonia's TV3 would be an oversimplification. TVE has greater reach, and broadcasts nationwide, whereas TV3 is regional only. But on the question of Catalan independence, and the referendum, the imbalance issue plagues both channels. "The influence of the government on public TV is not a problem that affects only Catalonia, it affects the whole country," points out Enrico Hernandez, the director of El Periodico. "It is very easy to fake pluralism. This is what happens on TVE, but their advantage is that they have presence across the whole of the Spanish territory that can portray a deformed message to the rest of Spain." Al Jazeera has contacted TVE numerous times, offering the network a chance to respond to its critics. Our request went nowhere. As for international news coverage, the Catalan government has clearly outmaneuvered its rivals in Madrid. Catalonia's pro-independence President Carles Puigdemont, himself a former journalist, has been busy courting international media in an attempt to bend the global narrative towards the independence agenda. Independence movements that export their stories are often seen as underdogs by distant news outlets that are less familiar with the granular detail of a contemporary political conflict and more prone to cultural and historical cliches. "There is something really quite tragic going on here, as far as journalism is concerned," explains Espada. "Journalists are always looking for sensational stories. Any foreign journalists, the Anglo-Saxon ones, in particular, are forever looking for even the slightest trace of the Spanish civil war in contemporary events. So, the sensational approach is to say that we are dealing with a rebellion, an uprising that signals the end of the Spanish constitutional state. That's the approach our foreign colleagues are taking." Contributors: Eric Hernandez, Director, El Periodico Vicente Sanchis, Director, TV3 Arcadi Espada, Columnist, El Mundo Ana Fernandez Viso, Associate lecturer in Media systems at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and at Blanquerna-Ramon Llull 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

On The Listening Post this week: As Catalonia pushes for independence, we look at how the story is being told in Madrid and Barcelona. Plus, diverse voices on Mexico's community radio. Catalonia referendum: One country, two stories As Catalans go to the polls in an unofficial referendum on independence this weekend, Spain's media landscape approaches peak polarisation. Much of the coverage of the referendum by Spanish and Catalan media has looked like one part journalism and one part propaganda. On the one hand, much of the national, Madrid-based media - notably Spain's public broadcaster TVE, stand accused of denying pro-independence voices a fair hearing. On the other, critics charge Catalan outlets like the widely-watched TV3 with indoctrinating Catalans rather than informing them. Meanwhile, Catalonia's pro-independence President Carles Puigdemont, himself a former journalist, has been busy courting international media in an attempt to bend the global narrative towards the independence agenda. Contributors: Eric Hernandez, director, El Periodico Vicente Sanchis, director, TV3 Arcadi Espada, columnist, El Mundo Ana Fernandez Viso, associate lecturer in media systems at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and at Blanquerna-Ramon Llull University On our radar: An investigation is underway in Turkey after two exiled Syrian activists, who opposed the Assad regime, were found murdered in Istanbul. In India, the revelation of a meeting between the owner of the Hindustan Times and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has ignited speculation about the reasons for the departure of the paper's editor. The government of Cameroon's crackdown on journalists in its English-speaking region continues, with dozens of reporters suspended and others targeted under anti-terror laws. Community Radio in Mexico In a country as geographically and culturally diverse as Mexico, community radio stations provide local news and views mainstream outlets do not. Sometimes they counter official narratives that are part of a larger political and media agenda, bringing them into conflict with the authorities and, more perilously, drug gangs. Now, a new law is offering community radio stations a small piece of the federal government's advertising budget - but could it be a double-edged sword? Some worry that the funding could also threaten stations' much-valued independence. The Listening Post's Will Yong explores the world of Mexican community radio, what it means to audiences and what the future holds. Contributors: Socrates Vasquez, member, Radio Jenpoj Elfego Riveros, legal representative, Radio Teocelo Veronica Galicia, founding member, Radio La Voladora Aleida Calleja, advocacy coordinator, OBSERVACOM

Hillary Clinton's new memoir, What Happened, blames, in part, the US news media for her defeat in the 2016 US presidential election. Clinton starts out by accepting responsibility for her failure to win the White House before moving on and sharing the blame. That's where the US media come in. Clinton's primary grievance with the coverage was the fixation on one story: that during her time as secretary of state she used her family's private email server for official communications. She says that story overshadowed any substantive reporting of her policies, and that that helped put Donald Trump in the White House. But is that really what happened? Or was Clinton killed by the same media ecosystem that helped make her what she is, or was? 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

Hillary Clinton's new memoir What Happened blames, in part, the US news media for her defeat in the 2016 US presidential election. Clinton starts out by accepting responsibility for her failure to win the White House before moving on and sharing the blame. That's where the US media come in. Clinton's primary grievance with the coverage was the fixation on one story, that during her time as Secretary of State she used her family’s private email server for official communications. She says that story overshadowed any substantive reporting of her policies, and that that helped put Donald Trump in the White House. But is that really what happened? Or was Clinton killed by the same media ecosystem that helped make her what she is, or was? "I do think there's some validity to it," explains journalist Sarah Jones of The New Republic. "Major outlets like the New York Times kind of made of a mistake by treating the email scandal with the same weight that they treated Trump's scandals, when in fact there is never as much evidence to support that anything too nefarious went on with Clinton and her emails. But I think she overstates its influence a little bit." Clinton is hardly the only losing candidate to decry the mainstream media's lack of substantive coverage of policy. It is a common refrain. However, the aversion to substance during campaigns is not limited to the journalistic side, it also occurs at the other end of the news cameras. "Hillary Clinton raised hundreds of millions of dollars, spent much of that money on television and radio ads, and most of those ads were not policy based. They focused on demonising Trump. She didn't run any national television ads explaining her position on health care, on the environment, on taxes. That being said, it's also the media's fault. We did see a very tabloid style coverage of the campaign. A lot of kind of personal discussion, about personal attributes of the candidates - at the expense of a serious policy discussion," says Lee Fang, journalist, The Intercept. Other politicians have faced the dilemma on how much substance, how much exposure is best for the campaign. But no other American presidential nominee has been a woman. Gender is a recurring theme in Clinton's book. She talks of a continuing double standard, the need to be better and work harder than male politicians. And the one she was up against - debating against - was repeatedly labelled as a misogynist. "The media didn't necessarily, in its entirety, treat her misogynistically, but it was refracting an incredibly structurally misogynistic society, that does not envisage a woman as being president, and I think she had to fight against that," says Jon Allsop, Columbia Journalism Review. "In this country, leadership qualities that are valued - charisma, and strength - and people love it when Donald Trump flaps his arms around and gets really angry. Hillary Clinton couldn't do any of those things, because when a man does it, it's considered to be charismatic and strong, and when a woman does it, it's considered to be hectoring, or screechy," he adds. It is hard to argue with what Hillary Clinton says about journalism and gender - or her criticism of the media failing to properly scrutinise candidate Trump sufficiently, until late in the election cycle. But what she fails to mention are the advantages she had with the Washington press corps and news networks that crowned her the presumptive Democratic nominee well before the first vote was cast in the primaries. "In the year leading up to the Democratic primary, the major network media outlets provided 120 minutes of coverage to Clinton, and her campaign, and only 20 minutes to Bernie Sanders. "The network news failed in many ways...," says Fang. Contributors: James Fallows, national correspondent, The Atlantic Sarah Jones, journalist, The New Republic Lee Fang, journalist, The Intercept Jon Allsop, Columbia Journalism Review 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

On The Listening Post this week: Hillary Clinton's election post-mortem blames the media, among others, for her loss. Plus, the contrasting depictions of North Korea in US and South Korean media. 'What happened': Clinton's memoir takes aim at the media Hilary Clinton's new memoir, What Happened, blames, in part, the US news media for her defeat in the 2016 US presidential election. Her primary grievance with the coverage is the fixation on one story, that during her time as Secretary of State she used her family's private email server for official communications. She says that story overshadowed any substantive reporting of her policies, and that that helped put Donald Trump in the White House. But does her take on what happened tell the full story? Contributors: James Fallows, national correspondent, The Atlantic Sarah Jones, journalist, The New Republic Lee Fang, journalist, The Intercept Jon Allsop, Columbia Journalism Review On our radar: The FBI investigates the Russian state-owned news service Sputnik, as part of an investigation into the Kremlin's alleged meddling in last year's US presidential election. Cambodia clamps down on the media ahead of the 2018 elections, and US-funded broadcaster Radio Free Asia is its latest victim. The trial begins in Turkey of 31 journalists from the now-defunct Zaman newspaper who are accused of involvement in last year's attempted coup. Covering the North Korean threat: US vs South Korean media Covering the escalating war of words between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is a delicate balancing act. It's all about reporting on the possibility of nuclear war without creating panic. We look at how American and South Korean media deal with the facts of the story and the history behind it, as well as North Korea's propaganda and Trump's bravado. Contributors: Robert E Kelly, Pusan National University Haeryun Kang, managing editor, Korea Expose Sokeel Park, director of Research & Strategy, Liberty in North Korea Andray Abrahamian, contributing writer, 38 North 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

According to the latest figures, there are nearly 400,000 Muslim-majority Rohingya that have been forced from their homes in Myanmar. The UN says it looks like a "textbook example" of ethnic cleansing. The country's leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has been widely condemned for lack of moral leadership and compassion in the face of the crisis, denting the Nobel Peace Prize laureate's reputation. However, the story is not just about Aung San Suu Kyi. It is primarily about the Myanmar military, the flames and bullets it has used to dispossess the Rohingya and chase them from the country. And it's about a government information campaign that reeks of propaganda. "A huge amount of the media focus has been on Aung San Suu Kyi and almost all of it has been condemnatory ... but she's not the one carrying out the ethnic cleansing," says Mark Farmaner, executive director of Burma Campaign UK. "It's Min Aung Hlaing, the head of the military. He's not even being referred to in any of this media coverage." The Myanmar constitution limits the powers of its civilian government. Aung San Suu Kyi and her ministers do not have authority over the military, which surrendered absolute power less than three years ago, after more than a half-century of military rule. But Aung San Suu Kyi does have the power to criticise. And she has not criticised the forced eviction of hundreds of thousands of Muslim Rohingya, nor the military's burning of Rohingya villages to the ground, nor questioned the role of the military. Instead, Aung San Suu Kyi and her government have criticised the international news media and the UN workers documenting the Rohingya refugee story - dismissing their reports as fake news. "Dismissal and denial of well-documented accusations, allegations and evidence is part of genocide. Dismissing the reports of hundreds of women who have been wronged and violated and Suu Kyi dismissing them as fake news, fake rape. That was what you read on Aung San Suu Kyi's official Facebook page: fake rape," says Maung Zarni, a Burmese human rights activists. The state is feeding the domestic news media the same narrative and it's being reinforced online. And while the relatively recent opening of Myanmar's media and internet space has empowered new voices, it's also provided Buddhist nationalists with new platforms to dispense fear and hatred of the Rohingya. Back in the days of military rule, journalists from Myanmar fought hard for their freedoms. Some set up news outlets in exile. A news magazine called Irrawaddy based itself just across the border in Thailand, pushing a pro-democracy agenda. The magazine now operates out of Yangon and - like most of the domestic news media - has adopted the government's position on the Rohingya story. Its English-language site refuses to call Rohingya citizens of Myanmar. It calls them Bengalis instead. The magazine's editor, Aung Zaw, was interviewed on CNN earlier this month. His line on the Rohingya is in perfect harmony with the state's, that they do not belong to Burma. In 2014, Zaw and his magazine were lauded by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists for coverage of Myanmar that the CPJ called "authoritative and independent". "The media organisations that were based in exile were much more professional, were much more balanced in their reporting. But now, even some of them are toeing the government line. It's very worrying for the whole future of press freedom, and where people in Burma get their information," says Farmaner. Contributors: Maung Zarni - adviser, European Centre for the Study of Extremism and Burmese human rights activist Oliver Slow - chief of staff, Frontier Myanmar Htaike Htaike Aung - executive director, Myanmar ICT for Development Mark Farmaner - executive 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

On The Listening Post this week: behind the Rohingya crisis, a vicious media campaign has steadily intensified the pressure on an embattled people. Plus, the media black hole in Sinai, Egypt. Rohingya: Hate speech, lies and media misinformation The number of Rohingya Muslims forced from their homes in Myanmar is now around 400,000. The UN says it looks like a "textbook example" of ethnic cleansing. And the country's de-facto leader - a former winner of the Nobel peace prize and darling of the international news media - is being seen in an entirely new light. Aung San Suu Kyi and her government are on the defensive. She has taken to talking about fake news and a "huge iceberg of misinformation." Suu Kyi's refusal to condemn the violence is a troubling angle for many western journalists to cover, given the way they have venerated her in the past. Contributors: Maung Zarni - Adviser, European Centre for the Study of Extremism/Burmese Human Rights Activists Oliver Slow - Chief of Staff, Frontier Myanmar Htaike Htaike Aung - Executive Director, Myanmar ICT for Development Mark Farmaner - Executive Director, Burma Campaign UK On our radar: The murder of a journalist in India - and some of the online habits of the prime minister there - leads to the birth of a new, trending hashtag: Block Narendra Modi. A racially charged campaign in South Africa leaves a PR company with a PR problem even it cannot spin. Fox News is making more changes to its evening line-up, necessitated by another high-profile anchor losing his job under scandalous circumstances. The silence in Sinai We are taking a second look at a story that you do not hear much about. It is unfolding in a place that - by government design - has become a black hole for news. Just this week, at least 18 policemen were killed there in the latest attack carried out by an ISIL affiliate. The area has been under an almost constant state of emergency since 2014. It's northern Sinai, in Egypt, and the fighting there is a major headache for President Sisi - who has sold himself, at home and abroad - as the only possible guarantor of Egypt's security and stability. Sisi's government, which has already put dozens of journalists in jail, has placed a lid on independent reporting in Sinai. The Listening Post takes a look at the stories there going untold. Contributors: Nancy Okail - Executive Director, Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy Maged Mandour - Egyptian Writer and Researcher Sherine Tadros – Head, Amnesty International's New York Office Joe Stork - Deputy Director for Middle East and North Africa, Human Rights Watch 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