Freedom of Press

Now, I’m not saying the Fake Hispanic is an antisemite. We can never know what lies in the true heart of a leprechaun.

The committee in charge of putting on the iconic ball drop in New York City’s Times Square this New Year’s Eve dedicated this year’s celebration to “press freedom.”

The Financial Times announced on Friday that the government of Hong Kong decided not to renew Asian news editor Victor Mallet’s work visa, effectively beginning the process of expelling him from the island. The decision stunned the international financial community and deeply alarmed press freedom advocates.

Democratic Sen. Cory Booker accused Wall Street Journal reporter Byron Tau of violating the U.S. Constitution with a question on Thursday’s misleading remarks about releasing “confidential” emails concerning Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

The imprisonment last week of citizen journalist and right-wing activist Tommy Robinson came to worldwide attention and resulted in protests outside 10 Downing Street with half a million people signing a petition for his release.

In a powerful address to journalists over the weekend, Pope Francis defended the principle of freedom of the press, while calling on journalists to avoid the “sins” of fake news and sensationalism.

Still scrambling to defend itself against an undercover exposé that revealed its alleged fetal tissue harvesting practices, abortion giant Planned Parenthood is now pushing a bill through the California state legislature that would punish undercover journalists for publishing and distributing recordings of private communication with a “health care provider.”

German historian Harriet Scharnberg has published an article claiming that the Associated Press actively worked with Nazi Germany in the Thirties.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has condemned the top court, which released two journalists arrested in November on terror and espionage charges.

On Tuesday, a South Carolina state representative who attempted to keep the Confederate flag flying outside the statehouse, and was investigated by the Post and Courier for his spending habits, introduced a bill designed to create a registry for journalists.

In a statement released Tuesday, the dean of the Journalism School at the University of Missouri announced that assistant professor Melissa Click may lose her “courtesy appointment” with the School of Journalism for her aggressive confrontation with student journalists.

Apparently the protesters’ success at forcing University of Missouri President Tim Wolfe to resign on Monday has already gone to their heads.

A group of students at Wesleyan University are demanding “safe space” for students of color and declaring they intend to “dispose of” copies of the school newspaper found on campus until their demands are met. The demands arose after the paper ran an opinion piece critical of the Black Lives Matter movement last week.

Turkey’s escalating crackdown on journalism has gone well beyond incarcerating the odd foreign journalist for covering stories the government wanted to ignore.

Turkish authorities are now targeting Doğan Media Group for “terrorist propaganda,” only days after mobs attacked the offices of Doğan-owned Hürriyet Daily News.

Police officers raided Turkish magazine Nokta after they published an illustration of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan taking a selfie next to a soldier’s coffin. The officers also seized remaining copies from the newsroom.

A former Canadian Liberal legislator is calling for a permanent ban on political television and radio ads in Canada, citing the status quo of restrictions on political messaging in Britain as his model. In Britain, John Milloy says, “major political parties” are each apportioned an equal amount of time by on government-licensed television stations to make their pitches.

The East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders Project (EHAHRDP) released a statement to encourage Somali authorities to do more to protect journalists, who face extraordinary danger in practicing their craft. They claim freedom of expression is under fire in the country due to numerous attacks on journalists.

An event held at the United Nations, aimed at exploring the topic of press freedom, had everything going for it but members of the press. As it happens, the event was ironically closed to the press by UN security.

Mexico’s efforts to silence critical media have proven successful with the recent firing of one of the few hard hitting journalists in that country along with her staff.

Last week, a number of independent news outlets announced a team effort to create an anti-corruption outlet called #Mexicoleaks. The effort called for brave citizens to leak documents to the group which after vetted would be published by all the outlets in an effort to make a dent in Mexico’s ever growing corruption. The effort went viral though Twitter and Facebook, however the news quickly turned away from the effort when one of the group’s leaders became a target of her own outlet.