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Number of journalists in jail reaches global high

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131–139 of 139 posts

Re: Number of journalists in jail reaches global high

#131
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well a journalist -a US citizen- (Jamal Khashoggi) was killed in a foreign (Saudi) embassy; evidence (including, Audio evidence) was presented of the killing and was found to be credible, CIA concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing.... then.... what happened? Nothing. In a world where you can kill a US journalist so brazenly without any repercussions, would you be surprised journalis…

A “US journalist” whose grandfather was the personal physician to the house of Saudi’s founder, whose billionaire arms dealing uncle was involved in Iran Contra, whose first cousin was in that car with Princess Diana … He was hilariously Saudi!

A “US journalist” who was a friend of Bin Laden, and worked with many Saudi royal family members from head of Intelligence Agency, Al Faisal to billionaire Al Waleed Bin Tallal "He also served with the Saudi Arabian Intelligence Agency, and possibly worked with the United States, during the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan." Wikipedia https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/from-travels-with-bin-l...

Re: Number of journalists in jail reaches global high

#132
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Roman Protasevich's airplane I don't know, Russia has a long tradition (with the USSR before it) to get creative with assassinations. Everything from poisoning tea with somewhat exotic isotopes to smearing the insides of underwear with neurotoxins, an icepick to the head, or simply gunning someone down in the street.

Not sure i see your point.

I wasn't making a rebuttal to the GP, just noting that the Russian government doesn't always go through the trouble of a show trial before conviction.

That point shouldn't be taken as me ignoring similar tactics by other world powers, I'm aware of those too. The US planned & tried some creative assassinations against Castro. Realpolitik is messy and cynical and hypocritical.

Re: Number of journalists in jail reaches global high

#133
post #61
post #10

Craig Murray, friend of Julian Assange, was just released from a Scottish prison for the crime of jigsaw identification of some of the accusers in the trial of former First Minister, Alex Salmond despite the fact that many journalists from mainstream media had published information that allowed their readers to identify some of the accusers explicitly. So it's not just a problem of dictatorships in second or third wo…

Well a journalist -a US citizen- (Jamal Khashoggi) was killed in a foreign (Saudi) embassy; evidence (including, Audio evidence) was presented of the killing and was found to be credible, CIA concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing.... then.... what happened? Nothing. In a world where you can kill a US journalist so brazenly without any repercussions, would you be surprised journalis…

Unless there was some other Jamal Khashoggi killed in a Saudi embassy, he was not a US citizen. Judging by the Tim Kaine's letter [1], he was not even a permanent resident of the US but a temporary worker on O-1 visa.

1. https://www.kaine.senate.gov/press-releases/connolly-kaine-l...

Re: Number of journalists in jail reaches global high

#134
post #87

I think this is a misleading title. Journalism as a profession shot up the last couple of years due to internet and media so the count should be normalized. What ratio of journalists are persecuted compared to total number of journalists out there?

Yeah, I would expect the number of journalists in jail to be at an all time high if the number of journalists (and, in fact, the number of humans) is at an all time high.

Not that it's good, of course.

Re: Number of journalists in jail reaches global high

#135
post #102
post #85

The article's framing of the problem (increased authoritarianism, decreased tolerance for reporting) leaves a lot to be desired without more evidence. The evidence is: - A small increase in total jailed journalists (roughly matching world population growth, and the delta is a small discrete count which would yield large error bounds) - Specific examples of horrific events (matching atrocities that governments have be…

I'm not sure that per capita is a very useful rubric to measure over time. Like I'm not saying there's no relation to population size, if you compare a tiny country to a large one, but it's not clear to me that there's a strong relationship - why a government would be expected to lock up 5% more journalists if the population grew by 5%. Or why if a country of 30 million jailed 100 journalists it should be necessarily…

Per capita naturally maps to the idea that people's behaviors are innate in aggregate -- given a particular context you would expect the same distribution of people to behave in a particular fashion (become journalists, become journalists who question authoritarianism at the wrong place and wrong time, have a fetish for murdering journalists, ...).

That isn't always a relevant idea, but it's a useful model that adequately describes a wide variety of phenomena. On the surface it seems applicable to journalist jailings; the count of journalists increases per capita, and if their behavior is independent of world population then you would expect (absent other information or constraining factors) for behaviors leading to imprisonment (not assigning blame -- this could be as simple as wrong-place-wrong-time "behaviors") to also increase per capita.

Re: Number of journalists in jail reaches global high

#136
post #88
post #85

The article's framing of the problem (increased authoritarianism, decreased tolerance for reporting) leaves a lot to be desired without more evidence. The evidence is: - A small increase in total jailed journalists (roughly matching world population growth, and the delta is a small discrete count which would yield large error bounds) - Specific examples of horrific events (matching atrocities that governments have be…

The first sentence in the article compares 2021 to 2020 and reflects a 4% increase in jailed journalists. This is 4x larger than the typical 1% population growth. Sure, more numbers would help. I'm not sure what sort of mindset would make someone immediately jump to defending the jailing of journalists though. > The article's framing of the problem (increased authoritarianism, decreased tolerance for reporting) leave…

> 4x vs 1%

Very true, but the _discrete_ counts of journalists involved are also miniscule, presenting (the aforementioned) large error bounds on exactly how great the driving force is on journalist incarcerations. 4% isn't meaningfully distinct from 1% given the actual data. It's not that unlike a fun xkcd [0]

[0] https://xkcd.com/1102/

Re: Number of journalists in jail reaches global high

#137
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What strawman would that be?

The idea that he represents some "unbiased, independent left-wing view" is the strawman. The only people I've seen suggest that Glenn Greenwald represents the left are people on the right looking to make some political point. Could you point me to any of his articles about the 2020 Senate Intelligence report? It seemed to prove many of the things he claimed were just conspiracy theories. I can't find any articles on…

He himself says he is on the left. I think you get two kinds of activists/journalists (on the left or right) - those that are right/left wing, and those that are hacks for the left/right wing party.

I would say Glenn Greenwald (and Rose MacGowan as another example) are not party hacks, and won't hesitate to call out their "own side" for wrong doing.

Re: Number of journalists in jail reaches global high

#138
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a bit confused by this statement about separation of powers. The function of a prosecutor is not a judicial function in the context of an adversarial legal system such as the common law.

Moreover, how is this really different from the CPS in the rest of the UK?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_Prosecution_Service

"The Attorney General for England and Wales superintends the CPS's work and answers for it in Parliament, although the Attorney General has no influence over the conduct of prosecutions, except when national security is an issue or for a small number of offences that require the Attorney General's permission to prosecute."

So yeah, it's much more arms-length than Scotland.

Re: Number of journalists in jail reaches global high

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that he represents some "unbiased, independent left-wing view" is the strawman. The only people I've seen suggest that Glenn Greenwald represents the left are people on the right looking to make some political point. Could you point me to any of his articles about the 2020 Senate Intelligence report? It seemed to prove many of the things he claimed were just conspiracy theories. I can't find any articles on…

He himself says he is on the left. I think you get two kinds of activists/journalists (on the left or right) - those that are right/left wing, and those that are hacks for the left/right wing party. I would say Glenn Greenwald (and Rose MacGowan as another example) are not party hacks, and won't hesitate to call out their "own side" for wrong doing.

I provided a clear example of him not being "unbiased" or "independent" and you just moved right past it. When a report was released that negated his narrative, he ignored it and moved on to the next narrative. There are plenty more examples from which to choose, like how he completely accepted Tucker Carlson's claims of NSA spying without any of the evidence he constantly demands from his opponents (media, DNC, NSA, FBI).

==He himself says he is on the left.==

Which is my entire point. North Korea calls itself a democratic republic, fortunately we can look at their actions and conclude they are neither democratic nor a republic. Creating a persona of "being on the left" is different than actually being on the left.

That said, I agree with Greenwald on a many of his points (the US has an awful human rights record and props up multiple violent dictators). My problem is his constant whataboutism and deflecting everything back to Assange and Snowden. He has a clear bias and it's ok to accept that for what it is.

Anyways, my original claim was about the dubious classification of Project Veritas as journalism, not Greenwald.

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