Freedom of the Press
The less useful the media is for finding out the truth, the less likely it is to be censored.
I noticed that Trevor Noah gave the White House Correspondents’ Dinner speech this year. I only watched a minute of it, the portion that had been posted somewhere to demonstrate how amazing his support of journalism was. He spoke of how tough it was for journalists in Ukraine or Russia, where they are being persecuted and hounded for publishing unpleasant truths. This is unlike the States where you can publish whatever you want, even if it “makes people in power uncomfortable” What a load of hogwash.
On literally the same page, I saw that PayPal had canceled the accounts of MintPressNews and ConsortiumNews, two alternative news sources with high journalistic standards and excellent reporters. They canceled their ability to collect income without warning or explanation.[1] It is assumed that, because these sources don’t toe the established-media line on Ukrainian reporting, PayPal will no longer allow them to monetize their content through it. Presumably VISA/MasterCard will follow—or already have followed—suit.
Google also recently announced new rules demonetizing or canceling any channel that does not similarly toe the corporate-media/US State Department line on Ukraine. Unofficial sources are allowed to publish whatever they want—just not anywhere where someone might read or view it. They also have to be independently wealthy because income models available to those who toe the line are not available to those who do not.
What is Noah talking about? Is he not aware? Is he being disingenuous? Does he not realize that the only reason he doesn’t have to deal with that kind of crap is that he’s so mainstream and milquetoast in his views that he’s not only not dangerous, but actually useful to the State Department? Does he think he would have been giving that speech at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner if he were in any way controversial?
Chris Hedges had fled from one exploded platform to another. So has Abby Martin. So has Lee Camp. Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald are no longer welcome anywhere.
Julian Assange has been hounded nearly to death for his journalism. All of these people are acknowledged as being good journalists who generally ask the right questions.
What the fuck is Noah talking about?
[1]
See the article PayPal Has Begun Quietly Shuttering Left-Wing Media Accounts by Branko Marcetic (Jacobin) for more details.
“Regardless of what you might think about either publication’s output — like any publication, a reasonable reader will find pieces at both that they agree and disagree with — this is a frightening attack on press freedoms. Faceless tech bureaucrats have unilaterally cut two serious independent media outlets off from a vital source of funding with no prior warning, no ability to appeal, and no explanation besides a vague reference to “potential risk,” all at a time when critical debate about the most dangerous conflict in most Americans’ lifetimes is being stifled in a climate of fear and repression.”
The article PayPal’s IndyMedia Wipeout by Matt Taibbi (Scheer Post) covers the same issue.
“Adley believes the chief crime of MintPress is that it exists as an alternative to monolithic messaging surrounding issues like Ukraine. Moreover, she believes it’s in trouble with PayPal not for being false, but precisely for printing true uncomfortable things, like McLeod’s NATO-to-TikTok story, or Dan Cohen’s recent piece about the 150-odd Western public relations firms working with Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry. Several of these MintPress pieces about Ukraine have gone viral in recent weeks.”
↩“All of this is going on at a time when the Biden administration just announced the formation of a dystopian “Disinformation Governance Board,” preposterously headed by a bubbly former Kennan Institute fellow, Nina “The Singing Neoliberal” Jankowicz. In a detail Jonathan Swift couldn’t have written better, Jankowicz — who once cited the author of the greatest news hoax of our generation, Christopher Steele, as an expert on the “evolution of disinfo” — last year put out a video of herself as the “Mary Poppins of Disinformation.” In it, she sang a variation of “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” […]”