It is an unprecedented case. And it risks triggering an unprecedented threat to journalism. The UK police have repeatedly tried to obtain the passwords to the phones of the British independent journalist, Richard Medhurst, the first reporter arrested in London under Section 12: his analyses and comments on Israel’s bloodbath in Gaza – which Amnesty International has characterised as genocide – have been interpreted by the police as support for organisations banned from the UK, such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
The British journalists’ union, the NUJ, and the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) publicly condemned his arrest and the use of anti-terrorism laws against journalists “simply for carrying out their work”.
As I prepare to watch the US slip into authoritarianism it pains me to see that, in some ways, the UK is already there.
If there’s one thing we’ve actually had in the United States it’s been the freedom of speech and the press. Nearly no one protected that freedom as absolutely as we did. Past tense. Thought crime legislation on the books by the end of January you watch.
Thé Washington Post cartoonist just resigned because its drawing has been canceled. Talk about free press. https://anntelnaes.substack.com/p/why-im-quitting-the-washington-post?triedRedirect=true
That has nothing to do with freedom of the press. The government was not involved in this at all. The cartoon wasn’t published because The Washington Post decided not to publish it.
There isn’t any country which has a law like “if an employee wants to publish something then the business must comply”.
Is this a case of the government shutting down a press because of something it printed or did it just get Dixie Chicks’d?
Not really a Dixie Chicks case, as that was mostly a sort of cancelling by the public at large.
This cartoonist quit over a cartoon in which she depicted rich people and corporations (like Mickey Mouse aka Disney) offering money and worship to a Trump statue. It was shut down, likely by directions the WaPo got from Bezos, same reason he killed the Harris endorsement and started meeting Trump.
In other words, the government didn’t shut it down. Fear for a Trump-led government did. Which honestly I’m not sure is better or even worse. Trump doesn’t have to censor shit, the corporate-owned “free” press will apparently self-censor to avoid his wrath in the first place.
*she
https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Telnaes
Whups, my bad. Normally I’m careful enough to use they if I don’t remember but I slipped up I suppose.
I’ve corrected it, thanks!
Welp, all I can say is the first three rounds of the class war have been fired, and they found their target.
I mean yes… You can see the cartoon right? It’s in your link. That is literally free press in action.
A cartoon that couldn’t be published is not free press.
The cartoon has been widely published though.
This is an example of free press in action. The Post is getting ruined by Bezos and his corporate interests, but they are free to publish the cartoons they want to and not publish those they don’t. More folks should be resigning from The Post.
The press? You can just buy it, USA style.