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Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

theguardian.com

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Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#101

Post by oivey »

taf2 wrote: post #64
brabel wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU has banned many Russian and Belarussian news sources since the invasion of Ukraine. The USA seems to not have followed through (as far as I know - as Russian news sites seem to be available).

We definitely did block or at least make them less available, as I recall prior to the invasion RT was commonly on when walking into a hotel room or in Youtube recommendation lists. Post invasion in US I never see it in any hotels or recommended on Youtube... was it censored or maybe just wildly boycotted, not sure... but seems appropriate as a response to me

This is a government ban. It is not at all comparable to your perception that private businesses are playing less Russia origin media.

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#102

Post by bentley »

verdverm wrote: post #8

Reporters Without Borders gathers data and produces some interesting graphics. They recently released their World Press Freedom Index https://rsf.org/en https://rsf.org/en/country/israel --- edit: they appear to keep a list of mirrored news sites to circumvent censorship https://github.com/RSF-RWB/collateralfreedom (was hoping they had data available for their index, but have not found it yet) --- edit: the index has…

I find it difficult to tell how their reports translate to objective numbers. For example, the United States’ ranking fell from 45 to 55 in the last year. Here are the reports for those years:

https://web.archive.org/web/20230817030548/https://rsf.org/e...

https://web.archive.org/web/20240505202537/https://rsf.org/e...

As far as I can tell, the only negative differences between these two reports are that a reporter was killed while investigating a murder by the murder suspect (who is now in jail and on trial), and that Biden “has come under criticism for failing to press US partners like Israel and Saudi Arabia on press freedom.” Falling ten places is a significant change (and is called out in the preface to the whole report)—are these two things really enough to justify such a change, or is the ranking sourced from more data not present in the report?

Here’s another story about Reporters Without Borders, about the first time I dug into one of their publications. In 2018, I read a report they published listing the six most dangerous countries for journalists: India, Yemen, Mexico, Syria, Afghanistan, and the United States. It described how in Mexico journalists are executed by cartels and organized crime, how journalists in Yemen die in prison due to mistreatment, how in Syria journalists were killed in airstrikes and taken hostage by Islamic militants, how in India Hindu nationalist mobs would run down journalists with trucks… and how in the US, four journalists were murdered by a stalker angry at a 2011 story the newspaper had published (subsequently jailed, tried, and found guilty of mass murder); and two more were killed by a falling tree. Somehow these two cases were enough to warrant the United States being called out with the other five countries. And it made the headlines everywhere, of course, because it was the midst of Donald Trump’s presidency.

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#103

Post by kergonath »

verdverm wrote: post #33
nkurz wrote: post #18

How much precedent is there for this? Are there parallels for other countries? Does the US prohibit any news agencies from operating in our borders? Does Europe? Does Russia? Does China? I presume North Korea does, but I don't actually know. These aren't designed to be leading questions. I don't know the answers, and rather than searching, I figured someone else here might know offhand.

WW2 provides ample examples. Information is part of warfare Russia is certainly jailing journalists. As example, Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter, is currently imprisoned: https://www.wsj.com/news/evan-gershkovich . Nowadays, every country has an interest in preventing foreign influence operations across traditional and social media

> Russia is certainly jailing journalists

It is also famously killing them.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_journalists_killed_i...

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#104

Post by stoperaticless »

ttul wrote: post #38

Netanyahu's ongoing corruption trial looms large over all of this. If he were to lose power, he would be far more vulnerable to conviction and potential imprisonment. So from this vantage point, the Al Jazeera ban could be seen as an act of desperation - muzzling a high-profile critic as a concession to far-right parties, even at the expense of free press principles, all in service of his own political and personal s…

I share similar view. Israel response is guided by prime minister’s personal political ambitions, while war is ongoing, the leader has more power and less of a chance to be replaced.

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#105

Post by baumy »

TillE wrote: post #24
bottlepalm wrote: post #11

Is there anyone else who doesn't support either side of this conflict? They've been fighting each other for over 100 years. They both want the same piece of land. It's on them to figure it out. People around the world don't need to 'pick a side'. We can protest for both sides to sort their shit out, and not drag the rest of us into it.

I'd say quite a lot of people are not particularly invested in any "side" but are repulsed by obvious war crimes. What makes this situation uniquely toxic is how America and most of its allies vehemently insist on total impunity for the crimes of one side.

I think what really makes the situation uniquely toxic is that after reading your comment, I genuinely have no idea which side you're referring to that you think is getting total impunity.

Note: You don't need to reply and specify which. Apparently you've picked a side, as have I. No point debating that here I think. But each side would claim that the other is committing war crimes and inhuman acts and not being held to account.

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#106

Post by [deleted] »

NewJazz wrote: post #79
brabel wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU has banned many Russian and Belarussian news sources since the invasion of Ukraine. The USA seems to not have followed through (as far as I know - as Russian news sites seem to be available).

Is Qatar a belligerent in the war? Belarus has allowed Russia to use their territory as a point from which to launch both ground assaults and missiles into Ukraine. Hard to say the same about Qatar and Hamas. If Al Jazeera were an Iranian publication the comparison might be more similar. Israeli news reports and analysts say Qatar has sent more than $1 billion to Gaza over the past decade. Qatar sent that aid through…

[deleted]

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#107

Post by arp242 »

taf2 wrote: post #64
brabel wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU has banned many Russian and Belarussian news sources since the invasion of Ukraine. The USA seems to not have followed through (as far as I know - as Russian news sites seem to be available).

We definitely did block or at least make them less available, as I recall prior to the invasion RT was commonly on when walking into a hotel room or in Youtube recommendation lists. Post invasion in US I never see it in any hotels or recommended on Youtube... was it censored or maybe just wildly boycotted, not sure... but seems appropriate as a response to me

RT was outright banned by the EU after they invaded Ukraine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RT_(TV_network)#Responses – it's also been dropped/banned by most mainstream platforms.

I don't think you can compare Al Jazeera and RT, because one has been a firehose of bullshit that has literally advocates invasion of Ukraine, and the other does not. As far as I know, Al Jazeera is banned purely because they've been critical of current Israeli policy. There are some reasonable criticisms of Al Jazeera and things they could have done better, but that applies to every media outlet on the planet.

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#108

Post by darkclouds »

afavour wrote: post #15

I’m not sure about “dark day for the media” but it does feel like a dark day for Israel. Once you’ve established that the government can unilaterally ban a voice for reasons of “national security” you’ve essentially given them a free pass. As Americans living post-9/11 will know, “national security” is a deliberately elastic term that can cover anything required in the moment.

Lets not forget that the British Govt banned Russia Today from broadcasting in the UK a few years back. Such is their planning and manipulation of events on the global stage!

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/mar/18/will-ofcoms-de...

Notice a pattern with the British Govt? They get their "independent" depts and businesses to do their dirty work for deniability!

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#109

Post by nkurz »

dang wrote: post #45
siva7 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been part of this but these are different than the typical political heated discussions on HN like in the trump era. These here tend to swift quickly into antisemitism.

Comments do that are usually swiftly and correctly flagged by users (or mods). In egregious cases, or repeated cases, we warn and/or ban the account. If you see cases where this is not true, the most likely reason is that we haven't seen them yet. (We don't see everything that gets posted to HN, or even everything that gets posted to a large thread.) The thing to do then is flag the comment ( https://news.ycombinator…

Alternatively, since different people have different thresholds for considering something to be antisemitic, there may often be things that are not flagged that others think should be, and vice versa. It's difficult to determine what the right threshold should be, but it often won't match the preference of the most sensitive users. If productive conversation is to happen, it may require some degree of discomfort.

Re: Israel shuts down local Al Jazeera offices

#110

Post by joecool1029 »

nkurz wrote: post #18

How much precedent is there for this? Are there parallels for other countries? Does the US prohibit any news agencies from operating in our borders? Does Europe? Does Russia? Does China? I presume North Korea does, but I don't actually know. These aren't designed to be leading questions. I don't know the answers, and rather than searching, I figured someone else here might know offhand.

I'll try to tackle this as objectively as possible.

Not many countries enshrine press freedom as a constitutional right. US can't directly shut down news agencies by law but there are other less direct ways to restrict their ability to operate (like not granting visas). The US has all sorts of fringe news outlets, including some run by cults like Falun Gong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Tang_Dynasty_Television )

Europe likes to claim they support press freedom but they banned RT in many countries. Looking at the press freedom index my kneejerk is to rank a lot of their countries lower, but then I remembered there's a habit of suing or disappearing journalists in the US that probe into larger corps.

As for Russia/DPRK/China, laws heavily restrict reporting. These are all way worse than Israel's current restrictions. DPRK has fully centralized mass media, so any other reporting inside is illegal by default without explicit approval of the state. China and Russia I think allows some reporting, basically anything appearing critical of nations of China or Russia can get you jailed/killed.

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