Tag: journalist

Saudi Arabia was responsible for the "deliberate, premeditated execution" of Jamal Khashoggi, according to the first independent investigation into the journalist's death. CNN has reached out to the Saudi government for a response to the released report.

The arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange following his expulsion from Ecuador’s embassy in London on April 11 sparked debate among journalists about the dangerous precedents his case could set. Are the journalists who won awards reporting leaks Assange published hypocritical if they now support his arrest? Would successfully prosecuting Assange on accusations of a hacking conspiracy that involved helping Chelsea Manning crack passwords to disclose classified material allow the prosecution of journalists for reporting other classified materials leaked to them in the future? The Justice Department’s year-old indictment against Assange, which you can read here, includes an accusation of conduct that could arguably be considered a breach of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics: Assange agreed to help Chelsea Manning “crack” a password to a Defense Department computer. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, an advocacy group that provides pro bono legal representation to journalists, weighed in on Assange’s arrest with prescient discernment. “It bears repeating that no one is outside the protection of the First Amendment. The singular allegation that Assange may have attempted to crack a password takes this case out of the ‘easy’ category for press freedom advocates. The government would be mad, reckless — or, worse, actively anti-democratic — to bring a similar case without the password-cracking angle.” Assange’s case raises compelling questions about what the First Amendment protects and what it does not. Cultivating a source, protecting a source’s identity, communicating with a source securely—the indictment describes all of these activities as the ‘manners and means’ of the conspiracy.” Would the Justice Department necessarily prosecute other journalists for these daily news gathering practices if it wins its case against Assange? As the Committee writes, “time will tell how this plays out.”

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Reacting to the journalist April Ryan’s call for her to be fired, the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said, on Friday, that she has been the victim of the media’s “widespread anti-liar bias.” “From their obsession with fact-checking to their relentless attacks on falsehoods, the media have made no secret of their bias,” Sanders said. “It’s open season on liars in America.” “This is media hypocrisy at its very worst,” she added. “The same journalists who advocate freedom of speech want to take that freedom away from anyone whose speech consists entirely of lies.” “This is nothing more or less than a direct attack on the lying life style,” she said. “You take away my right to lie and you take away my ability to earn a living.” Kellyanne Conway, the White House senior counsellor, spoke out in support of Sanders, telling reporters, “An attack on one liar is an attack on all liars.” “Our country has seen some dark days, from the Bowling Green Massacre to the bugging of the White House microwave,” she said. “But this might be the darkest.”

Ari Melber presses fmr. AG Eric Holder on Wikileaks, Assange Ari Melber presses former Attorney General Eric Holder on whether a publisher like Wikileaks should be open to charges by the U.S. government. Holder says, if an organization is acting…

A neo-Nazi serving as a lieutenant in the US coast guard has been caught plotting to attack Democratic members of Congress, including congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and well-known media personalities, according to prosecutors. Christopher Hasson intended “to murder innocent civilians on a scale rarely seen in this country”, according to a filing to federal court in Maryland. Law enforcement officers seized 15 guns and 1,000 rounds of ammunition from his home. Prosecutors said Hasson was a “domestic terrorist” and should be detained. The filing said Hasson, a fan of the Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik, compiled a spreadsheet of apparent targets, including representatives Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar, and anchors from CNN and MSNBC. Since early 2017, Hasson had “routinely perused” a copy of a manifesto drawn up by Breivik, the Norwegian far-right extremist who killed 77 people in the country in 2011, according to US investigators. Prosecutors said that on 17 January, Hasson began compiling a spreadsheet of prominent people “consistent with the types of people who Breivik identifies as ‘traitors’ and targets for an attack”. Many on the list have also been frequent subjects of abuse from Republicans including Trump. The list included “poca warren”, which prosecutors said was an apparent reference to senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. It also included cable news presenters such as Scarborough, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes and Ari Melber, and CNN’s Don Lemon, Chris Cuomo and Van Jones.

Leveraging the fact that more than 2 billion people around the world have Facebook accounts and allow the company to track their location and even realtime location through their IP addresses and smartphone app, Facebook uses this information to track users it believes pose a threat to the company, creating geofencing alerts when they come near Facebook facilities. Asked about the ethics of using user location data, the company noted that users consent to allow the company to do whatever it wishes with their realtime location information, per its Data Policy: “Data from device settings: information you allow us to receive through device settings you turn on, such as access to your GPS location, camera or photos.” It is worth noting that that the line above, which Facebook cited in defense of its location tracking program, also permits it to access the user’s camera and photos stored on their phone. Asked whether it has ever tracked journalists that have exposed confidential business practices or policymakers that have threatened legislation that would curtail the company’s business activities, a spokesperson reiterated that it has very specific policies governing how it decides to use location tracking and that location tracking is permitted for physical threats. Asked to state for the record that Facebook has never tracked the location of a journalist in order to determine their confidential sources or a policymaker to determine who they are meeting with, a company spokesperson responded that the company would not be commenting. Facebook’s ability to use user location data for its own purposes suggests governments are likely using the same capability to track dissidents and others they dislike. Asked whether Facebook has complied with lawful court orders from the US or foreign governments to track individuals around the world for any purpose, the company noted that it has an obligation to comply with legal requests and did not deny doing so. A dissident fleeing a repressive government can no longer escape surveillance, with their government able to turn to Facebook not only to track them around the world, but observe who they meet with. Even if the dissident does not use Facebook, anyone they meet with who does will be tracked. Putting this all together it is nothing short of extraordinary that Facebook not only is secretly mapping the locations of users it considers “threats” but that it refuses to deny on the record having used that capability to track journalists and policymakers that pose a threat to its business activities rather than a physical threat. With a flip of a switch, Facebook could create a map that tracks the location of every policymaker and their aides, every journalist and every business leader that has installed the Facebook app, tracking them worldwide in every country and watch them travel around the world, having a global intelligence map rivaling that of the NSA.

27-year-old journalist Abeer Kapoor has been covering elections, all over India, for a number of years now. It was during the Karnataka elections though, that Kapoor started to work on the idea of an election-related board game. We all quickly discovered that this board game is a first of its kind, anywhere in the world. “It is to get conversations going about things that matter,” Kapoor said at the launch. The game may seem simple yet fun, but do not mistake this for a board game you can take to a party full of unsuspecting people. These policy cards, in turn, allow one to make campaign promises which the players have to defend. Little did I know that things could turn 360* during the campaigning phase. In the midst of campaigning, players spend their money (each party is given equal wealth at the start of the game) in order to play certain cards that boost their influence or nullify others’ influence. The goal of the game, as in elections, is to win, no matter whether anyone remembers your campaign promises or not. At the launch, Kapoor and his team said that they are working on a two-player version for the bipolar fights that take place across the country and around the world.

“They look at it like food on the plate ? some people don’t like the veggies and the mashed potatoes touching,” Hill said on “The Late Show” Thursday. “But in this case, they’ve always touched, they’ve always mixed together.” Hill, a staff writer for The Atlantic covering sports, race and politics, was responding to Colbert’s question on whether sports and politics were “more connected now than ever” ? particularly as President Donald Trump routinely interjects himself into controversies involving sports, the late show host added. On the Colbert show, she discussed the Showtime documentary “Shut Up and Dribble,” which she narrated. NBA superstar LeBron James served as executive director for the series, which derives its title from Fox News’ Laura Ingraham infamously saying that James and fellow NBA premiere player Kevin Durant should “shut up and dribble” after they criticized Trump. Hill joked that Ingraham inadvertently gave her “another check” with her dismissive remark. ‘Shut up and dribble’ — Fox News’s Laura Ingraham to LeBron and Kevin Durant after their criticism of President Trump pic.twitter.com/0BlokQDIIl — Sports Illustrated (@SInow) February 16, 2018 Hill found herself in the spotlight last year after she criticized Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones on Twitter for threatening to bench NFL players who kneeled during the national anthem to protest racial inequality. Weeks prior to the suspension announcement, Hill tweeted that Trump is “a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself [with] other white supremacists.” Colbert said Hill’s tweet “has held up like a fine wine.” Hill said the peaceful protests by some athletes that have attracted attention should not necessarily be viewed as political. “Some of this is just simply right and wrong,” she said. “To me, politics is when you have a pro argument, and a con argument. Is anybody out there pro-police brutality?”

Some Trump supporters tell reporters they do not believe the Trump administration’s announcement about the bombing suspect, one telling NBC News Obama and Clinton may have sent the packages to themselves. Former GOP Nevada Chair, Amy Tarkanian, tells Ari Melber…