… on a quiet day, I can hear her breathing

Category: neo-con

  • Ofcom warns broadcasters over politician presenters ahead of general election

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    https://leftfootforward.org/2024/04/ofcom-warns-broadcasters-over-politician-presenters-ahead-of-general-election/

    Ofcom warns breaches could result in ‘statutory sanctions’.

    Media regulator Ofcom has issued a warning to broadcasters about using politicians as presenters, ahead of the general election.

    The media regulator issued a statement in which it said it was putting ‘broadcasters on notice that they must maintain the highest editorial standards ahead of a General Election’ and that breaches could result in ‘statutory sanctions’.

    It comes after Ofcom found GB News in breach of broadcasting rules when three Conservative MPs acted as newsreaders across five different episodes of its programmes.

    Ofcom found that two episodes of Jacob Rees-Mogg’s State of the Nation, two episodes of Friday Morning with Esther and Phil, and one episode of Saturday Morning with Esther and Phil, broadcast during May and June 2023 had broken impartiality rules. These episodes broke the part of the Ofcom code that says, “News, in whatever form, must be… presented with due impartiality” and “No politician may be used as a newsreader, interviewer or reporter in any news programmes unless, exceptionally, it is editorially justified.”

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    https://leftfootforward.org/2024/04/ofcom-warns-broadcasters-over-politician-presenters-ahead-of-general-election/

  • GB News begins redundancy round, cutting 40 roles

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    https://leftfootforward.org/2024/04/gb-news-begins-redundancy-round-cutting-40-roles/

    Nigel Farage presents on GB News.

    GB News has begun a round of redundancy, seeking to cut 40 roles, amid an operating loss of £42.4m.

    Chief executive Angelos Frangopoulos announced the redundancy plans to staff last week, with Press Gazette reporting: “The business is currently appealing for staff open to taking voluntary redundancy to come forward, offering up to two months’ salary and possible payment in lieu of notice as enticement.

    “One staffer at the channel told Press Gazette there was “a real ‘last days of Saigon’ vibe in the office right now”.

    The right-wing channel announced last month that its operating losses had grown 38% to £42.4m in the year to May 2023.

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    https://leftfootforward.org/2024/04/gb-news-begins-redundancy-round-cutting-40-roles/

  • Revealed: The shocking number of complaints to Ofcom about GB News since its launch

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    https://leftfootforward.org/2024/04/revealed-the-shocking-number-of-complaints-to-ofcom-about-gb-news-since-its-launch/

    GB News presenter Nigel Farage.

    Time for Ofcom to take tougher action…

    Right-wing Channel GB News, which has made a mockery of broadcasting rules, has had over 20,000 complaints made about it since its launch in 2021.

    The shocking figures were revealed after a freedom of information request from the i, which found that in 2021, the year GB News was launched, Ofcom received 3,481 complaints – an average of around 290 complaints a month.

    Between 2021 and until 12 March 2024, GB News has had a total of 21,671 complaints made against it.

    The paper reports that overall, ‘complaints about news broadcasters have soared almost seven-fold since the launch of GB News and Talk TV’.

    GB news is no stranger to controversy and has had a number of high profile incidents which have resulted in complaints being made against the channel, having platformed bigoted and racist views and conspiracy theories.

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    https://leftfootforward.org/2024/04/revealed-the-shocking-number-of-complaints-to-ofcom-about-gb-news-since-its-launch/

  • HOW THE WESTERN MEDIA HELPED BUILD THE CASE FOR GENOCIDE IN GAZA

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    https://www.declassifieduk.org/how-the-western-media-helped-build-the-case-for-genocide-in-gaza/

    From obscuring the West’s role in starving Gaza to sensationalised accounts of mass rape by Hamas, journalists are playing the role of propagandists, not reporters.

    Israel has reduced Gaza to ruins. (Photo: UNRWA)

    The past five months have been clarifying. What was supposed to be hidden has been thrust into the light. What was supposed to be obscured has come sharply into focus.

    Liberal democracy is not what it seems.

    It has always defined itself in contrast to what it says it is not. Where other regimes are savage, it is humanitarian. Where others are authoritarian, it is open and tolerant. Where others are criminal, it is law-abiding. When others are belligerent, it seeks peace. Or so the manuals of liberal democracy argue.

    But how to keep the faith when the world’s leading liberal democracies – invariably referred to as “the West” – are complicit in the crime of crimes: genocide?

    Not just law-breaking or a misdemeanour, but the extermination of a people. And not just quickly, before the mind has time to absorb and weigh the gravity and extent of the crime, but in slow motion, day after day, week after week, month after month.

    What kind of system of values can allow for five months the crushing of children under rubble, the detonation of fragile bodies, the wasting away of babies, while still claiming to be humanitarian, tolerant, peace-seeking?

    And not just allow all this, but actively assist in it. Supply the bombs that blow those children to pieces or bring houses down on them, and sever ties to the only aid agency that can hope to keep them alive.

    The answer, it seems, is the West’s system of values.

    The mask has not just slipped, it has been ripped off. What lies beneath is ugly indeed.

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    https://www.declassifieduk.org/how-the-western-media-helped-build-the-case-for-genocide-in-gaza/

  • Journalist Owen Jones leaves Keir Starmer’s genocide-supporting ‘Labour’ party

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    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/21/labour-party-cancelling-membership-policies

    …

    The assault on Gaza, the great crime of our age, adds moral indecency to the pile of dishonesty and vacuity. When Starmer declared Israel had the right to cut off energy and water to Palestinian civilians, he did so as a human rights lawyer who understands the Geneva conventions. After letting shadow cabinet ministers defend him, he claimed it “has never been my view that Israel had the right to cut off water, food, fuel or medicines”. We all have political red lines: mine is supporting what would amount to war crimes against innocent civilians, toddlers and newborn babies among them, then gaslighting the public over doing so.

    Where is my gratitude for Starmer delivering a now inevitable landslide victory, you may ask? Well, he didn’t force Boris Johnson and his cronies to violate their own pandemic rules, or to trash the NHS, or oversee the worst squeeze in living standards in history. Nor did he propel to power Liz Truss, whose unhinged economic experiment crashed the economy – the moment when the electorate turned on this Tory party for good.

    The absolute power a landslide victory will give Labour should scare you. When Starmer allies deployed antisemitic tropes – with one joking about a “run on silver shekels” when two Jewish businessmen missed out on peerages, and another calling a Jewish Tory donor a “puppet master” – an apology was deemed to be sufficient. When another racially abused a journalist and had a sexual harassment complaint upheld, they were reinstated after investigation.

    Contrast this with Diane Abbott, Britain’s first Black female MP, who was suspended after immediately apologising for an Observer letter in which she argued that Irish, Jewish and Traveller people are not subject to racism “all their lives”. She has been left in limbo for 10 months and counting while the party investigates – only for Labour to use the racist abuse directed at her by a Tory donor for political capital, while still refusing to reinstate her.

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