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Fox News Pulls Ads Urging Impeachment

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Network Cites Viewers’ ‘Strong Negative Reaction’

Leaks Show How Multinationals Make Poor Poorer

Alarm Over Abrupt Closing of 7 Local News Sites

Journalists Reach for Words in Latest Mass Shooting

Teen Vogue to End Print Run at Its Most ‘Woke’

Paper: Photos of Firefighters Fired Over Noose Stay

Weinstein Tracked Journalists Trying to Expose Him

‘Face the Nation’ Host Weighs In on Monuments

Native Writer Links Heritage Months to Reparations

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“The clear and undisputed facts about Mr. Trump’s attempt to impede an FBI investigation demand an immediate impeachment inquiry by the House of Representatives,” Tom Steyer wrote in June.

Network Cites Viewers’ ‘Strong Negative Reaction’

“Fox News Channel says it won’t air any more ads from a wealthy Democratic donor advocating President Donald Trump’s impeachment due its viewers’ strong negative reaction,” the Associated Press reported Monday.

“One negative reaction was from Trump himself, who tweeted that donor Tom Steyer was ‘wacky and totally unhinged.’

“Steyer, a billionaire hedge fund operator, calls on television viewers to sign a petition urging Trump’s impeachment. His lawyer, Brad Deutsch, said Monday that 1.5 million people had signed the petition.

” ‘People in Congress and his own administration know that this president is a clear and present danger, who’s mentally unstable and armed with nuclear weapons, and they do nothing,’ Steyer said in the ad, which has also aired on CNN and other stations.

“Three times on the morning of Oct. 27, the ad aired during ‘Fox & Friends,’ the morning show popular with Trump and his fans.

“Trump tweeted about ‘Wacky and Totally Unhinged Tom Steyer, who has been fighting me and my Make America Great Again agenda.’

“Steyer had bought seven more ads for the following week on Fox News, Deutsch said, but the company called and canceled them.

“Due to the strong negative reaction to their ad by our viewers, we could not in good conscience take their money,” said Jack Abernethy, co-president of Fox News. . . .”

David Weigel added in the Washington Post:

“ ‘If Fox News is siding with Trump and trying to silence us, they must be afraid of what we have to say,’ Tom Steyer said in a statement. ‘It shows no respect for democracy.’

“Steyer, a hedge fund manager who has become one of the left’s biggest funders, launched his ‘Need to Impeach’ campaign last month with a website, a petition and a straight-to-camera TV commercial. . . .

“According to Aleigha Cavalier, a spokeswoman for Steyer, the network did not return the money from the ad buy.

“Steyer has begun a counterattack, starting with a letter from his legal counsel suggesting that the network is censoring a private citizen to curry favor with the president. . . .”

(Credit: International Consortium of Investigative Journalists)

Leaks Show How Multinationals Make Poor Poorer

“A trove of 13.4 million records exposes ties between Russia and U.S. President Donald Trump’s billionaire commerce secretary, the secret dealings of the chief fundraiser for Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the offshore interests of the queen of England and more than 120 politicians around the world,” the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reported on Sunday.

AllAfrica.com added, “The new leak of confidential records also reveals tax haven shopping sprees by multinational companies in Africa and Asia, and secretive deals and hidden companies connected to Glencore, the world’s largest commodity trader, and provides detailed accounts of the company’s negotiations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo for valuable mineral resources. . . .”

The Namibian, based in the southwest African country of Namibia, wrote, “The documents show how deeply the offshore financial system is entangled with the overlapping worlds of politics, wealth and corporate power, in schemes to avoid paying taxes through increasingly imaginative accounting manoeuvres.”

Referring to the leaked documents, dubbed the Paradise Papers, ICIJ named such corporate giants as Apple, Nike and Uber.

“One offshore web leads to Trump’s commerce secretary, private equity tycoon Wilbur Ross, who has a stake in a shipping company that has received more than $68 million in revenue since 2014 from a Russian energy company co-owned by the son-in-law of Russian President Vladimir Putin,” the consortium reported.

“In all, the offshore ties of more than a dozen Trump advisers, Cabinet members and major donors appear in the leaked data.

“The new files come from two offshore services firms as well as from 19 corporate registries maintained by governments in jurisdictions that serve as waystations in the global shadow economy. The leaks were obtained by German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and shared with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and a network of more than 380 journalists in 67 countries.

“The promise of tax havens is secrecy — offshore locales create and oversee companies that often are difficult, or impossible, to trace back to their owners. While having an offshore entity is often legal, the built-in secrecy attracts money launderers, drug traffickers, kleptocrats and others who want to operate in the shadows. Offshore companies, often ‘shells’ with no employees or office space, are also used in complex tax-avoidance structures that drain billions from national treasuries.

“The offshore industry makes ‘the poor poorer’ and is ‘deepening wealth inequality,’ said Brooke Harrington, a certified wealth manager and Copenhagen Business School professor who is the author of ‘Capital without Borders: Wealth Managers and the One Percent.’ . . .”

About 30 reporters and editors of the now-defunct DNAinfo and Gothamist news sites joined union members, elected officials and others at New York’s City Hall Park Monday to call out their owner for the company’s sudden shuttering, am New York reported.

Alarm Over Abrupt Closing of 7 Local News Sites

“Chicago Cubs fans should demand that their team spend big in free agency this offseason,” Callum Borchers wrote Friday for the Washington Post. “With all the money that the club’s owners are saving by skimping on journalism, they can surely afford another ace pitcher or all-star slugger.

“Billionaire Joe Ricketts, whose family owns a majority stake in the Cubs, abruptly shuttered seven local news sites on Thursday, saying in a statement that the financial return ‘hasn’t been sufficient to support the tremendous effort and expense needed to produce the type of journalism on which the company was founded.’ ” Coincidentally, the workers had recently voted to unionize.

Borchers also wrote, “Ricketts pointed to his bank account when he announced the decision to close New York news sites DNAinfo and Gothamist, along with sister sites in Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Shanghai. . . .”

“Society just lost some of its last watchdogs,” Andy Campbell wrote Saturday for HuffPost.

“ ‘The implication is huge — the major dailies do not cover local news on a granular level in the way that DNAinfo and Gothamist did,’ said Newsweek Breaking News Editor Gersh Kuntzman, who once competed against the outlets during his time as editor of The Brooklyn Paper (and, full disclosure, was my boss at that time).”

Perry Stein wrote Friday for the Washington Post, “The archives initially were unavailable on each site, but were restored on Friday. . . .”

Journalists Reach for Words in Latest Mass Shooting

“Within a day of the massacre of men, women, and children in a Texas church, President Donald Trump made three claims,” David M. Perry wrote Monday in the Nation. “First, he maintained it wasn’t a guns problem. Second, he said the shooter was stopped by someone else with a gun. Third, he blamed mental illness. Together the statements made one thing very clear: There is no amount of violence or sympathetic victims that will ever shame today’s Republican Party to take action on guns. . . .”

” ‘Here we are again. Another week, another mass shooting in America,’ George Stephanopoulos said at the start of Monday’s ‘GMA,’ ” Brian Stelter reported Monday for CNNMoney.

” ‘We have seen them in offices and schools, we’ve seen them in concerts and movie theaters, Walmarts and Starbucks. This time the killer and his gun entered a small church in a small town in Texas.’

“Journalists reached for words to adequately describe the horror at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. Authorities say 26 churchgoers were killed on Sunday by a man who died nearby a short time later. . . .”

Meanwhile, Jonathan Capehart observed in the Washington Post, “You know what? Something’s missing from all the talk about what happened on Oct. 31, the deadliest terrorist attack in New York since the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. I mean, we’re talking about the obvious stuff: terrorism, the Islamic State, immigration, visa programs. But in all this talk, no one demanded that President Trump go to his home town to show solidarity before he took off for Asia. . . .”

Capehart concluded, “You could say that Trump dissed New York in its time of need by not showing it the same attention he gave other stricken communities. But you could also say his home town didn’t notice — or even care.”

Teen Vogue to End Print Run at Its Most ‘Woke’

Elaine Welteroth

“When Women’s Wear Daily reported Thursday morning that Condé Nast would shutter Teen Vogue in print, the overwhelming response was: Why now, when the brand seemed more in the spotlight than ever?,” Bonnie Wertheim wrote Saturday for the New York Times.

Wertheim also wrote, “Elaine Welteroth, the print magazine’s second and final leader, had been a mentor . . . . Ms. Welteroth took over from [former editor Amy] Astley in 2016 and was officially named editor in chief this spring, in a grim climate for magazines aimed at the older-teen set (R.I.P. CosmoGirl, YM, Teen People, Elle Girl).

“The youngest-ever editor in chief at Condé Nast — she is 30 — Ms. [Welteroth] quickly became an Instagram celebrity and received heaping praise for the magazine’s newly ‘woke’ tone. Teen Vogue 2.0, as she reimagined it, wasn’t just about clothes and makeup; it was about news, politics and social justice, too.

“It wasn’t until 2015, after a decade of mostly white, mostly famous cover stars, that Teen Vogue changed course, with a cover featuring three little-known black models. The issue became the year’s best seller, underscoring the appetite for fashion magazines that reflect some version of real life. . . .”

Sydney Ember wrote Thursday in the Times, “It appears that Ms. Welteroth will stay on at Teen Vogue — she is scheduled to lead the coming Teen Vogue summit — and Condé Nast is also considering an additional role for her. . . .”

Several Miami firefighters are accused of taking an African American lieutenant’s family photos from inside a fire station, removing them from their picture frames and drawing penises on them. The pictures were reinserted in their frames and then placed back on a shelf, according to termination letters. A noose made of thin white rope was then hung over one of the photos. (Credit: Miami Herald)

Paper: Photos of Firefighters Fired Over Noose Stay

“After releasing the pictures of six firefighters fired over an incident in which someone hung a noose over a black lieutenant’s family photos inside a fire station, the city of Miami is now demanding that the media stop showing their pictures,” David Smiley reported Friday for the Miami Herald.

“Just after midnight Friday morning, an assistant city attorney wrote an email to multiple news outlets demanding that the media ‘cease and desist from further showing the [firefighters’] pictures in your coverage of this event.’ Jones said the photos of the six men had been released accidentally.

Smiley also wrote, “Firefighters William W. Bryson, Kevin Meizoso, David Rivera, Justin Rumbaugh, Harold Santana and Alejandro Sese were fired Wednesday, as first reported by the Miami Herald. Another five employees remain under investigation and are subject to possible discipline. . . .”

Smiley added, “The Miami Herald has made the decision to leave the firefighters’ photos online. Attorneys representing the newspaper said there is no obligation to take them down, since they were legally obtained.

“ ‘The photos of the firefighters are part of this story. If we had received them from any other source, they also would have been published without hesitation,’ Rick Hirsch, Miami Herald managing editor, wrote in an email. ‘We have no intention of un-publishing them.’ . . .”

Weinstein Tracked Journalists Trying to Expose Him

“In the fall of 2016, Harvey Weinstein set out to suppress allegations that he had sexually harassed or assaulted numerous women,” Ronan Farrow reported Monday for the New Yorker.

“He began to hire private security agencies to collect information on the women and the journalists trying to expose the allegations. According to dozens of pages of documents, and seven people directly involved in the effort, the firms that Weinstein hired included Kroll, which is one of the world’s largest corporate-intelligence companies, and Black Cube, an enterprise run largely by former officers of Mossad and other Israeli intelligence agencies.

“Black Cube, which has branches in Tel Aviv, London, and Paris, offers its clients the skills of operatives ‘highly experienced and trained in Israel’s elite military and governmental intelligence units,’ according to its literature.

“Two private investigators from Black Cube, using false identities, met with the actress Rose McGowan, who eventually publicly accused Weinstein of rape, to extract information from her.

“One of the investigators pretended to be a women’s-rights advocate and secretly recorded at least four meetings with McGowan. The same operative, using a different false identity and implying that she had an allegation against Weinstein, met twice with a journalist to find out which women were talking to the press. In other cases, journalists directed by Weinstein or the private investigators interviewed women and reported back the details. . . .”

Meanwhile, Michael Oreskes, the NPR senior vice president for news who resigned Wednesday after accusations of sexual harassment, has stepped down as secretary of the American Society of News Editors, the society said in a one-sentence announcement Monday. As secretary, Oreskes was on the ladder to become president of the organization.

The “Silent Sam” statue at the University of North Carolina was erected in 1913 as a memorial to UNC students who died in the Civil War. Students have been staging protests, such as this one in 2015, seeking to remove it. Black students say it insults slaves who built the original UNC campus. (Credit: WTVD-TV, Raleigh)

‘Face the Nation’ Host Weighs In on Monuments

John Dickerson, host of CBS-TV’s “Face the Nation,” delivered a surprising commentary Sunday about Confederate monuments.

“Every generation reinterprets the Civil War,” he began.

“Our reexamination has been prompted by the debate over Confederate monuments.

“This week, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly warned about misunderstanding Civil War history, only to be rebuked by Civil War historians, who said he misunderstood his Civil War history.

“We have these discussions because history is the best instruction manual we have as a country. It tells us who we are, which guides us towards who we want to be.

“Churchill said, the further back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.

“We must be humble in evaluating leaders of the past to understand them in their time. This context helps us recognize why our [forebears] were flawed, how those flaws were remedied, and how we can avoid similar flaws today.

“But that lens we use to understand is different than the gaze we reserve for what we revere. [One] of the lessons of the Civil War is that it was possible to do the right thing then by the moral standards of today.

“Abolitionists opposed slavery because it was a moral and human wrong, contrary to the principles of the nation founded on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Those who fought slavery pushed the country to be better, when it was opposed by custom, habit, and eventually bullets.

“That example is worthy of reverence because we face similar choices today, how to keep faith with standards and morals, when it is easier to do the other thing, when the system encourages you to do the other thing.

“It requires character, self-sacrifice and wisdom. It’s not easy, but that’s why not everyone deserves a monument — back in a moment.”

Native Writer Links Heritage Months to Reparations

Gyasi Ross

In noting that November is Native American Heritage Month, Native writer Gyasi Ross, Blackfeet, recalled Thursday for HuffPost that “When I was younger and more radical I literally loathed multi-cultural and diversity programs like Native American Heritage Month, Black History Month, even affirmative action etc.

“They were corny, condescending and ultimately pointless. . . .”

However, Ross continued, “they serve as a placeholder, keeping the conversation fresh for future generations to have a more formal conversation about reparations. . . .”

Ross also wrote, “there are ways for the institution — the government — to contend with past bad deeds and create structures to help create future equity and fairness just like in the civil case of Rodney King,” beaten by police officers in 1991, whose case was “wrongfully decided at the criminal trial” but who received “some small level of justice at the civil trial.”

“One example is to adequately fund Native American health care; Indian Health Services is currently criminally underfunded,” Ross continued. “Another is to ensure that Native students never have to pay for college. Ever.

“A by-product of displacement and the destruction of Native economies and kidnapping of Native children is we have always been at a huge disadvantage in our pursuit of western white educational achievement. There are exceptions, of course, but structurally — just like black students — the ghosts of yesteryear rightfully still [prevent] many from fully buying into this system.

“Making sure that Native students do not have to worry about paying college tuition would normalize college and, understanding that the land will not end up back with us, give some level of equity in our ability to learn and earn and protect our homelands. . . .”

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