Articles Feature

How ‘Dr. Oz’ Duped the News Media

by richard02330

Tearful Victim Actually a Campaign Worker

Conservative Group: Coverage Favors Democrats
N.Y. Times Editorials to Take on Political Violence
Marsalis Says the Press Doesn’t Take Jazz Seriously
‘Racism and Abuse Toward Black Migrants’
Weak Immigration Coverage Has Consequences
BBC Details Beating Deaths of African Migrants
‘Jerry’ Vazquez of Telemundo Houston Dies at 54

Short Takes: Comics journalist Josh Neufeld and Kansas City reparations; News Leaders Association’s diversity survey; CCNMA: Latino Journalists of California; James Finch; Ron Claiborne; latest Hollywood diversity report; Andrew Humphrey; “NextGenRadio: Indigenous”; training “citizen journalists”in Salem, Ore., and Syracuse; reviving the Nashville Banner; documentary on displaced Black New Orleanians; Gloria Rojas; Latinos and proposed abortion bans; Los Angeles Times’ Día de Muertos digital altar,” Hawaii’s pop-up newsrooms; UC Berkeley’s Geeta Anand; Janet Wu;

Enlace Latino NC, Montana Free Press and Santa Cruz Local; deleting Liberian news site’s investigation; Britain’s first visibly Black TV journalist; changes for BBC’s Africa Service journalists; outsize coverage for anti-Arab, far-right Israeli politician; Russian funding of U.S. media; closing CBC’s Beijing bureau; unprecedented targeting of Sudan’s media; Pegasus spyware in Mexico; arrest of female Iranian journalists; Somali journalists killed with impunity

Homepage photo: In Philadelphia, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mehmet Oz talks with Sheila Armstrong, whose nephew and brother were fatally shot and killed. (Credit: Alejandro A. Alvarez/Philadelphia Inquirer)

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Oz/Trump supporters, most prominently Sheila Armstrong, confront a small group of Germantown residents protesting a Dr. Oz campaign stop in the East Germantown section of Philadelphia. (Danielle Finger/YouTube)

Tearful Victim Actually a Campaign Worker

“A touching moment at a recent campaign event for Dr. Mehmet Oz in Philadelphia — in which a Black woman broke down in tears as she described the fatal shootings of her brother and nephew, and was comforted by the Republican Senate candidate — made for riveting television, and brought to mind the former daytime TV host’s old namesake show,” Robert Mackey reported for the Intercept.

“Three weeks later, after the encounter was featured in local and national news reports, journalists who covered the event discovered that they had been duped by the Oz campaign into reporting as news a scene that had more in common with reality TV.

“The woman, Sheila Armstrong, sat next to Oz at a September 19 event his campaign described as a ‘community discussion’ in Philadelphia’s Germantown neighborhood. Armstrong held a handmade sign which said that her lost relatives were ‘gone but not forgotten,’ and her anguished tears were broadcast to the city that day by the local NBC News affiliate, and described in reports on the event by the Philadelphia Inquirer and KYW Newsradio.

“The emotional encounter between the candidate and a victim of gun violence who had suffered so deeply was brought to national attention this week by The Associated Press,” Mackey wrote Oct. 13, “in a feature story on the competition over Black voters in the Pennsylvania Senate race between Oz and his Democratic opponent, John Fetterman, the state’s lieutenant governor. When the AP story was first published on Tuesday, it began this way:

” ‘As Sheila Armstrong grew emotional in recounting how her brother and nephew were killed in Philadelphia, Dr. Mehmet Oz — sitting next to her inside a Black church, their chairs arranged a bit like his former daytime TV show set — placed a comforting hand on her shoulder.

” ‘Later, he gave her a hug, and said, “How do you cope?”

“That text account . . . was posted on the AP’s website, and distributed to the hundreds of news organizations that reprint AP reporting, accompanied by a photograph of Armstrong drying her tears as Oz leaned in to hug her.

“As the text and photo accounts of the exchange between Oz and Armstrong were reproduced by news organizations across the country that subscribe to the AP’s wire service, Fetterman’s campaign manager, Brendan McPhillips, complained on Twitter that the AP had failed to share a pertinent fact with readers: that Armstrong is not an ordinary voter but a paid member of the Oz campaign staff,” with Armstrong earning more than $2,000 at the end of June, according to FEC data.

“Although the AP updated the text of its report to add a reference to Armstrong’s employment . . . it seems clear that the news organization only became aware of her status after publication. ‘As soon as AP learned of Armstrong’s campaign affiliation and confirmed it, we updated our story,’ a spokesperson for the news organization told me in an email. . . .

“There is nothing new about a political campaign carefully stage-managing a public event to get good publicity or using the news media to broadcast a favorable message to the public. But by inviting reporters to cover a community discussion with Oz and not revealing that a featured speaker, Armstrong, was a paid staffer, the former TV host’s aides seem to have successfully tricked reporters into presenting a staged, reality TV scene as if it were news.

“What’s more, despite Armstrong’s suggestion that the whole point of the event was to discuss gun violence, the four-part plan to ‘fight for Black communities’ Oz unveiled during his visit to Philadelphia that day made no mention of any measures to take guns off the city’s streets. . . .”

Conservative Group: Coverage Favors Democrats

“Four years ago, TV’s midterm coverage hammered Republican candidates and then-President Trump with 88 percent negative spin while sparing Democrats similarly bad press,” Rich Noyes wrote Nov. 1 for the right-wing Media Research Center.

“This year, Democrats are in charge of the White House and both chambers of Congress, yet a new Media Research Center study of ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts finds that Republicans are receiving coverage that is just as negative (87% negative) as in 2018, while Democrats — including the President — are drawing far less scrutiny than the party out of power.

“And another favor for Team Blue: the dominant topics within these campaign stories — GOP candidate controversies, abortion rights and the danger of ‘election deniers’ — perfectly match the topmost items in Democrats’ campaign playbook. Our study shows discussion of these issues within campaign stories far eclipsed that of the economy and inflation, issues that voters deem most important. . . .”

Members of the Ku Klux Klan and others set fire to a boat representing Vietnamese shrimping boats in 1980. “There is no federal anti-paramilitary law, though Congress should consider one,” the New York Times editorializes. “States, however, do have legal instruments to deal with these extremist groups, even if they rarely show the will to use them. When they do, these laws are effective.” (Credit: Houston Metropolitan Research Center, Houston Public Library)

N.Y. Times Editorials to Take on Political Violence

“On Thursday, The New York Times editorial board introduced a series called ‘The Danger Within,’ urging readers to understand the danger of extremist violence and possible solutions,” Tom Jones reported for the Poynter Institute. The first piece is headlined, “America Can Have Democracy or Political Violence. Not Both.”

In an accompanying column, Kathleen Kingsbury (pictured), Opinion editor of the Times, wrote, “Americans are right to be nervous about the coming midterm elections, and not only about the results. It will be the first time that the nation’s electoral machinery will be tested after two years of lawsuits, conspiracy theories, ‘audits’ and all manner of interference by believers in Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election.

“I’m nervous for another reason as well: the embrace of violent extremists by a small but growing faction of the Republican Party. Today’s editorial, the first in a series on violent extremism, will explore this peril and what we can do about it. . . .”

Kingsbury concluded, “In the past few years, there have been plenty of points at which it feels as if the future of the nation hangs in the balance. Peaceful politics are all we have to manage our deeply divided democracy. Lose that and the country is headed for a dark place — that’s what this series of pieces on extremism is trying to help avoid.”

(Credit: David Rubenstein Show/YouTube)

Marsalis Says the Press Doesn’t Take Jazz Seriously

“The average white jazz writer is actually a rock fan who’s for a long time wished that jazz could actually be something else without Black folks at the core of it, or that maybe jazz would just die away,” according to Wynton Marsalis, the esteemed trumpeter who is managing and artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center.

The center says its 2022-23 season “illuminates, actualizes, and reaffirms the notion of jazz as a global language and the music’s power to bridge divides and coalesce distinct communities.”

Marsalis made the comments on PBS’ “The David Rubenstein Show: Peer-to-Peer Conversation.” (video). The interview was recorded Oct. 31, 2020, but shown this past week.

Rubenstein, who is also a billionaire investor and philanthropist, asked Marsalis, “Do you feel that in the music world you are not treated as you would be if you were white?”

Marsalis replied, “Yes, I feel that.

“I feel it in the level of patronization that I receive. The low level of criticism of our music.

“I’m subject to things, of course, nothing like what I grew up with, nor do I make a habit of complaining about it constantly, because I’m also treated in a way — with so much respect by so many people that for me to complain would be past gratuitous.

“So if you ask me the question directly, yes, I have been treated unfairly by newspapers, something like The New York Times; the way our institution, Jazz at Lincoln Center, has been covered is abominable.

“Even though we get articles, the quality of those articles [is] always very poor, poorly researched. The writers oftentimes down through the history lack the intelligence and depth of engagement with the form to be qualified to speak on it in the paper of record, but because it’s jazz, it doesn’t matter. So that’s only in direct response to your question. I don’t want to confuse it with when I was growing up or the situations that I found myself in, or my father’s situation or grandfather’s or let’s go back in the generations.

“I’m not doing that, and I’m very, very grateful for how I’ve been treated by people all over this country of all kinds.”

One can’t separate the way jazz, “our national art form,” is treated from how African Americans are, Marsalis continued.

“The central question of jazz’s position in our country concerns the relationship of slavery to the American identity in our mythology as a country. Black Americans by and large in our country have little or no knowledge of jazz, and jazz is the greatest achievement of the Afro-American culture in the context of the American culture, meaning it’s Afro-American but it applies to all Americans, as many things in American culture apply to all Americans.

“Our poor public education system makes sure that a certain group remains ignorant, and the average white jazz writer is actually a rock fan who’s for a long time wished that jazz could actually be something else without Black folks at the core of it, or that maybe jazz would just die away.

“That’s why if you study jazz, there’s a longstanding tradition of article after article in decade after decade saying, ‘Is jazz dead?’ That’s probably one of the most questions that’s been asked since the 1930s. Now all of this investment in the destruction of jazz is to further obscure a big lie that jazz uncovers, and it’s important to look at this because it’s a serious thing to consider if we are to transform our nation.

“If we say our nation is based on human freedom, and we’re the first on Earth founded on the glorious celebration of human freedom, dignity and rights, how do we then reconcile and correct the systemic dehumanizing ownership and brutalizing of a large underclass of people for free labor because of their skin color?

“It’s too much injustice to correct, so we’re forced to say that those people are responsible for the problem, they’re less than human, and it’s just their condition, but if they aren’t, it’s not their condition, it means that our mythology and belief about ourselves is not true. Now is Elvis going to not be the king? Man, where you gonna put jazz if Elvis is the king? . . .”

A New York Times spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

U.S. Border Patrol agents deter Haitians from returning to the United States on the bank of the Rio Grande after migrants crossed back to Mexico for food and water in Del Rio, Texas, on Sept. 19, 2021. (Credit: Omar Ornelas/El Paso Times)

‘Racism and Abuse Toward Black Migrants’

“After analyzing the records of nearly 17,000 calls between 2016 and 2021 from its national immigrant detention hotline, Freedom for Immigrants released a report Wednesday that it and other advocacy groups say indicates a pattern of racism and abuse toward Black migrants,” Andrea Castillo reported Oct. 27 for the Los Angeles Times.

“Among the findings of the report, the groups concluded that 28% of 2,200 abuse-related reports came from detainees from predominantly Black countries, despite accounting for 6% of the detained population in 2019, according to their analysis of the most recent population data by country of origin from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonpartisan data research organization at Syracuse University. Freedom for Immigrants and the other groups behind the report, including the Black LGBTQIA+ Migrant Project, the Black Alliance for Just Immigration and the UndocuBlack Network, advocate for the abolition of immigrant detention.

“According to the study’s methodology, the analysis assumes that detainees calling from Black-majority countries are Black. The authors filtered call records for phrases indicating verbal or physical abuse, such as ‘medical neglect,’ ‘assault,’ and ‘N Word.’

“Alexxis Pons Abascal, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said in a statement to The Times that the agency is committed to ensuring that everyone in custody is safe and under the appropriate conditions of confinement. He said ICE encourages people to report allegations of misconduct.

” ‘Personnel are held to the highest standards of professional and ethical behavior, and when a complaint is received, it is investigated thoroughly to determine veracity and ensure comprehensive standards, which ICE is required to follow, are strictly maintained, and enforced,’ Pons Abascal wrote.

“Black migrants are placed in solitary confinement at higher rates than non-Black migrants, according to the Black Alliance for Just Immigration. In some facilities in the South, including Etowah County Jail in Alabama, Stewart Detention Center in Georgia and Richwood Correctional Center in Louisiana, Black people were almost twice as likely to report experiencing abuse compared with detainees of other races, the groups’ report notes. . . .”

Define American video points out inadequacies of news coverage of immigrants in North Carolina media.

Weak Immigration Coverage Has Consequences

“The failure to reflect the full diversity of the immigrant population came through in our content analysis of 22 news outlets that spanned the state and media type,” Liz Robbins of the group Define American, founded by former reporter Jose Antonio Vargas, wrote Oct. 27 for the Poynter Institute.

Robbins was referring to Define American’s report “Reimagining Immigration News: North Carolina’s Case for the Nation,” which used the state as “a bellwether for the nation” in analyzing immigration coverage.

North Carolina’s “media landscape also reflects wider trends in the journalism industry: a collapse of legacy news, reliance on early-career reporters to cover underrepresented communities, and the rise in nonprofit niche outlets.”

Robbins continued, “Conducted by the Media Ecosystems Analysis Group, the analysis showed that while Latinx communities dominated, news outlets severely neglected Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. They represent nearly a third of all immigrants in the state (compared to the half that are Latinx), but were only featured in less than 5% of news stories.

“Consistent coverage of immigrant communities matters because of the prevailing misinformation that news consumers receive about immigrants. The University of Florida’s Center for Public Interest Communications conducted a survey of 1,160 North Carolinians for our report. Those who said they knew the most about immigration actually knew the least –- and were most likely to believe harmful stereotypes.

“We found, however, that good journalism can help shift those perspectives.”

Jaskaran Malhotra, captain of the Morrisville Cardinals, right, laughs with teammates before a match between the Cardinals and the Atlanta Param Veers during the inaugural Toyota Minor League Cricket Championship at Church Street Park in Morrisville, N.C., on Aug. 8, 2021. The story was cited as an example of productive coverage of immigrants. (Credit: Ethan Hyman/News & Observer)

Other key findings:

  • “Immigration reporting often reinforces stereotypes. Among the negative connotations, the most prevalent was the representation of immigrants as either criminals or victims of crime.
  • “Legacy newsrooms are missing a significant business opportunity in not covering the diverse communities around them. Stories highlighting burgeoning immigrant communities can bring in new audiences, subscriptions, and advertising.”

Robbins added for Poynter, “In 2021, the News & Observer of Raleigh published a story about immigrants from India who established a local minor league cricket team.

The piece, by a former Report for America corps member, Laura Brache, showed how the players encouraged the town to build world-class cricket facilities that drew crowds and spurred the local economy.

“In our survey, 46% of the audience said they believed that immigrants took jobs and opportunities away from those born in the United States. We don’t know if they changed their minds about this, but we know that after reading the story, 94% of the participants saw the immigrants in the story, at least, as ‘good citizens for our country.’

“The lesson is a powerful one: Immigration coverage shouldn’t just be about policy, but people. . . .”

BBC Details Beating Deaths of African Migrants

“At dawn on 24 June, a large group of African migrants surged towards a border fence separating Morocco from the tiny Spanish enclave of Melilla“ (map) on the African continent, Ed Thomas, Adam Walker and the BBC Africa team reported Tuesday under the headline, “How Spain looked on as dozens were crushed to death at its border“ (story and videos).

“In the hours-long chaos, many of the migrants were beaten, and crushed between an 8m-high (26 feet) fence and Moroccan border guards, who deployed batons and tear gas. Videos circulated online show dozens of people packed in one area of the border post, some lying motionless, some bleeding, others visibly in distress.

“At least 24 migrants died, but the death toll is believed to be higher as more than 70 people are missing. What happened that day at the heavily fortified border crossing known as Barrio Chino — a gateway into Europe?

“In the days after the incident, Spanish and Moroccan authorities defended their actions, saying the migrants had been violent, and reasonable force had been used.

“But a BBC investigation has uncovered new details about the events, raising questions about the official versions.

“We can reveal that:

  • “Lifeless bodies were dragged by Moroccan police from an area the BBC was told was Spanish-controlled
  • “The Spanish Ministry of the Interior has been accused of withholding crucial CCTV [closed circuit television] evidence from formal investigations
  • “Law enforcement officers fired rubber bullets at close range into a group of migrants on the Spanish side of the border crossing
  • “More than 450 people who made it into the Spanish enclave to claim asylum were detained and pushed back to Morocco — some claim they were then beaten unconscious by Moroccan border guards
  • “Moroccan police entered Spanish land to take migrants back, and some migrants were beaten while Spanish border guards watched on
  • “Spanish authorities were aware the African migrants were coming to the crossing in large numbers . . . .”

Jerry Vazquez in center with Ubaldo Martinez, Alejandro Mendoza, Crystal Ayala and Carlos Robles (2018 photo taken for mikemcguff.com courtesy of Telemundo Houston KTMD)

‘Jerry’ Vazquez of Telemundo Houston Dies at 54

“Gerardo ‘Jerry’ Vazquez, 54, the Vice President of News for Telemundo Houston KTMD, has lost his battle with cancer,” television blogger Mike McGuff reported Monday.

“Vazquez joined KTMD in August 2014 where he rebuilt the station’s news department after Comcast bought the NBCUniversal owned station from General Electric.

” ‘When you have the right team in place together you can accomplish anything,’ Vazquez told me in 2018. ‘In my opinion we have assembled a team of the best producers, anchors, reporters, photographers and assignments desk!’

“Under the leadership of Vazquez, President and General Manager Tony Canales, Vice President of Marketing JC Perez and others, KTMD moved to the top of the ratings in Houston.

“Vazquez came to KTMD from abc13 KTRK (2001 to 2014) where he oversaw the 5, 6 and 10pm newscasts as executive producer when the newscasts were the number one shows in their timeslots. . . .”

Short Takes

  • “I spent all summer working on a new comics piece on the topic of reparations and health inequities, and it’s just been published! “comics journalist” Josh Neufeld writes. “Part of Harvard Public Health magazine’s special issue on structural racism, my piece, “Kansas City and the Case for Restitutional Medicine,” focuses the spotlight on KCMO. . . . KC Mayor Quinton Lucas . . . is part of a group of U.S. mayors who have committed themselves to create reparations programs in their cities as a model for future federal action. . . .”
  • CCNMA: Latino Journalists of California celebrated its 50th anniversary Friday at a celebration dinner in Los Angeles, where it bestowed awards. “CCNMA is planning different events during the 50th anniversary year and is looking for volunteers to help us commemorate this milestone,” according to its website. “Still thriving, it’s helped launch and advance the careers of hundreds of journos while working to improve news coverage of Latinos. And it helped to jump-start the amazing NAHJ,” the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, Frank O. Sotomayor, co-founder of CCNMA and a 35-year veteran of the Los Angeles Times, wrote on Facebook. Pictured: A delegation from the L.A. Times (Twitter)
  • Ron E. Claiborne, who retired from ABC News in 2018 after 32 years as a national and international news correspondent, describes his elation at discovering his roots among the Ashante people of Ghana in a piece that ran in the Deseret News of Salt Lake City, workplace of a former colleague, on Oct. 14. After Claiborne wrote in 2005 about DNA technology helping African Americans discover their ancestry, his producers “asked me to tell the story about the DNA tests through my own experience — they wanted me to take the genetic test and reveal the result” on “Good Morning America.” That led to a trip to Ghana, where “I felt something like what I had seen and envied in my classmates so many years before when they had proclaimed their ethnic pride. These were my people. Tough and independent. Unconquerable.”
  • In Salem, Ore., Capital Community Media has hired Meghan Jonas as community news director, “leading their effort to create a program that trains citizens in journalism ethics and reporting to help improve the diversity of local reporting,” Abbey McDonald reported Oct. 27 for the Salem Reporter. “Jonas’ long term goal for the department is to have a team of trained citizen journalists doing in-depth reporting on their own communities. She said she hopes to reach communities who aren’t typically represented in traditional media, including the LGBTQ+ community, BIPOC community and youth. . . .”
  • “The Stand, a nonprofit news outlet covering the south side of Syracuse, encourages residents to become contributors to the news outlet,” the American Press Institute reported, summarizing a story Tuesday in Current. “During a workshop about community issues, residents said they were curious about Bernard Cannon, a man who stands on the street with a poster reading ‘Stop the Senseless Killing of Our Youth.’ A community contributor and student photographer covered Cannon’s campaign and his life story, which has been deeply impacted by violence. In future sessions, readers said that Cannon’s backstory gave them a new appreciation for a man they had previously dismissed. . . .”
  • Longtime Nashville news anchor Demetria Kalodimos and Steve Cavendish, former editor of the alternative Nashville Scene, are reviving the Nashville Banner, which served as the city’s afternoon paper for 122 years until it closed in 1998. This incarnation “will be web-based, but we will be free to everyone,” Cavendish told Chris Davis of Nashville’s WTVF on Oct. 26. ” ‘We’re not going to do opinion; we’re not going to have an editorial board; we’re not going to endorse candidates,’ said Cavendish, who is also a veteran of other publications like the Chicago Tribune and The Washington Post. . . . When the new Banner fully launches in 2023, they’ll also become news partners with NewsChannel 5, meaning Demetria’s familiar face will finally return to Nashville television. . . . “

  • Gloria Rojas (pictured), who died Feb. 2 at 82, ” broke through mainstream television as the first Puerto Rican woman and Latina on-air journalist in New York City,” Aurora Flores-Hostos wrote Oct. 24 for the Women’s Media Center. Flores-Hostos worked with Rojas in the WABC newsroom. “The only time Gloria’s name came up was when the assignment desk couldn’t decide who to send to the ‘c-nt conferences’ Producers constantly threatened to replace us with people who would do this ‘glamor’ job for free. One particularly ornery producer was appalled that I would ‘admit’ to being Puerto Rican. ‘Don’t you know you people are the bastards of the Caribbean,’ he yelled. ‘You can’t speak Spanish or English.’ . . . Our best tribute to her, to the [Glorias] of now and the future, would be to insist on dismantling racism and sexism.”
From left, Cerise Castle, Mc Nelly Torres and Elisa Lees Muñoz at the International Women’s Media Foundation Courage in Journalism awards on Oct. 27. (Credit: Philip Salata)
  • “From public arrests to digital hacks, Cerise Castle and Mc Nelly Torres’ groundbreaking investigations inform the imperative to protect female journalists in newsrooms and beyond,” reads the subhead over a story from Vani Sanganeria at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Castle, who is Black, queer and a recipient of the nternational Women’s Media Foundation’s Courage in Journalism Award, joined USC Annenberg Dean Willow Bay, Torres and IWMF Executive Director Elisa Lees Muñoz in an Oct. 27 discussion with students and faculty. Torres, an editor at the Center for Public Integrity, said, “This is a very racist industry, and now that I’m an editor in a newsroom I started last year, I’m not going to sit down and allow anybody to come and attack my reporters who are people of color.” Castle was honored for a 15-part investigative series that exposed 18 sheriff’s deputy gangs, 19 documented murders — all of whom were people of color — and over $100 million in paid lawsuits by the LASD as of March 2021. The reporting has caused her to fear for her safety.

  • “Like it did last year, the Los Angeles Times built an online space for people to share memories of those they’ve lost with a Día de Muertos digital altar,” Kristen Hare reported Wednesday for the Poynter Institute. ” ‘Now, because we were so blown away by the success of this project last year, we wanted to improve upon it,’ said Fidel Martinez, the Times’ editorial director for Latino initiatives and author of the Latinx Files newsletter. . . . .”
  • “Civil Beat is going on the road,” Patti Epler wrote Oct. 23 for Honolulu Civil Beat. “For the next couple of months editors, reporters, photographers and multimedia producers plan to spend at least one day a week working out of a public library somewhere in Hawaii. We’re working with the Hawaii State Public Library System and individual librarians throughout the state to pull this off. We’re calling this concept ‘pop-up newsrooms’ and it’s aimed at getting our journalists out into parts of the state that we normally don’t spend much time in. . . .”
  • “To the many Israelis shocked by the meteoric rise of Itamar Ben Gvir, an anti-Arab far-right politician set to be at the center of Israel’s next government, media analysts offer a simple explanation: excessive airtime,“ Shira Rubin and Claire Parker wrote Thursday for The Washington Post. “ ‘He got media coverage with no comparison to any other politician or candidate in Israel,’ said Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler of the Israel Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem-based think tank. Even former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who will use Ben Gvir’s votes to return to power, said the media coverage of him was overblown. . . .”
  • “Months after Russia invaded Ukraine and media companies dropped the country’s state programming, Russian government funding continues to flow into U.S. media,” Hailey Fuchs, with Daniel Lippman, wrote Oct. 27 for Politico. “Between April and the end of September, Russian state media group Rossiya Segodnya funneled $3,284,169 to Ghebi, a company that produces articles, newswires and a number of radio shows. During that same period, Ghebi spent $2,183,640.72 on behalf of its client, according to an October filing with the Department of Justice made under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. POLITICO Influence reported in August that Ghebi and the agency, which controls the media outlet Sputnik, had renewed their contract, with a yearlong budget set for $7 million, the biggest since Ghebi began reporting its contracts to the Department of Justice. Although companies including YouTube and DirecTV have dropped Russian state media, the country’s government appears to continue to see value in media spending, even as it wages war in Ukraine. . . .”
  • “Closing the Beijing bureau is the last thing we want to do, but our hand has been forced,“ Brodie Fenlon, editor in chief and executive director of programs and standards for CBC News, wrote Wednesday for the Canadian Broadcasting Co. “Our commitment to covering China and East Asia is steadfast. We will begin the process of finding a new home base in the months ahead. Until then, we will deploy to the region when it makes sense. And [correspondent Philippe] Leblanc will work from a new post in Taiwan for the next two years. We hope China will someday open up again to our journalists, just as we hope Russia will one day reconsider its decision to expel us. . . .”
  • The Sudanese Journalists Syndicate said that the media in Sudan have faced unprecedented targeting since the October 2021 coup, Dabanga Sudan reported Oct. 26. Marking the first anniversary of a coup that derailed Sudan’s transition to civilian rule, the organization said, “The Sudanese press suffers from oppression, threats, brutal beatings, revenge attacks, summons and detentions, in addition to raids of press offices, destruction of equipment, and obscene verbal abuse against men and women journalists and photographers in an unprecedented way since the military coup. . . . Authorities blocked internet access nationwide yesterday, echoing actions taken last year during the coup.”
  • “According to data collated by the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ), 54 journalists have been murdered over the past decade,” Omar Faruk Osman (pictured), secretary general of the group, wrote Wednesday for Al Jazeera. “The most recent victim, TV journalist Mohamed Isse Hassan was killed on October 29 in a car bombing while he and others were covering another explosion in the capital Mogadishu. The twin bombings killed more than 100 people in total. Yet, barring one conviction earlier this year, those responsible for these killings have never been brought to justice. Nor have those who ordered the assassinations. . . . Amid the conflict between different armed groups and the government that continues to rage in the country, there is a lack of political will from any major actor to end this deadly violence against journalists. Each political side wants to control and manipulate news and information, and independent and critical journalism draws retaliation. There is an unstated compact between political forces that there need be no fear of any accountability for such crimes. . . .”

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