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‘Please, don’t cancel New York Times subscription,’ says former editor sacked after her ‘chills’ for Biden infuriated some readers
24 Jan 2021 11:26
FILE PHOTO. The New York Times office in the Manhattan. ©REUTERS / Carlo Allegri
The Gray Lady has sacked its editor, who was criticized for expressing excitement with the landing of Joe Biden’s plane before inauguration. The journalist asked supporters not to cancel their subscriptions.
Lauren Wolfe stirred online anger on Tuesday by sharing her feelings about Joe Biden’s arrival at the Joint Base Andrews in Maryland for his upcoming inauguration ceremony. She called the Trump administration “petty” and “childish” over a widely reported (and later revealed to be false) claim that it denied Biden a military plane to arrive in DC. Wolfe said she had “chills” seeing Biden’s private jet land.
The awkwardly-worded tweet apparently not only caused Wolfe humiliation due to online mockery, but also cost her her job as an editor at the New York Times. The Gray Lady has canceled her contract, she confirmed on Twitter. HuffPost contributor Yashar Ali was the first to report the news.
Wolfe is hardly the only journalist in the US, whose public statements about Biden taking over from Trump would be more suitable for a celebrity fan club. But her sacking seemed a gross and unfair overreaction by the Times even for some of her critics, especially since her remark was made on a private account.
People angry with the decision recalled how many times people in the profession got to keep their jobs after far worse transgressions. This was the case, for example, with the infamous podcast ‘Caliphate’ (3rd story on link), which won the newspaper praise and awards, but turned out to be based on the words of a fabulist posing as a source.
Some of Wolfe’s supporters said they will be canceling their Times subscription in retaliation. She asked them not to do that, saying her former place of employment was an “incredible paper filled with talented journalists.”
Wolfe apparently blames conservatives mad about her tweet for her termination. But one doesn’t have to go far back in time to see that the Times is not exactly known for standing up to left-wing outrage to protect its people either.
Just last June James Bennet had to resign from the newspaper over the publication of an opinion piece penned by Senator Tom Cotton, in which he advocated deployment of military troops to rein in mass protests in Washington, DC. Bennet was in charge of the opinion section at the time. One can only wonder how Cotton’s line of argument would fly today, in the aftermath of the January 6 Capitol riot and unprecedented deployment to Washington, DC of over 25,000 National Guardsmen for Biden’s inauguration.
Russia to fine TikTok & other social networks for failing to remove posts allegedly promoting unauthorized protests to kids
28 Jan 2021 13:03
© AFP / LOIC VENANCE
The Russian state regulator, Roskomnadzor, has announced that seven social networks will be fined for failing to comply with demands to delete calls to protest, after supporters of Alexey Navalny advertised demonstrations online.
American tech giants Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, along with Chinese video-sharing app TikTok and Russian sites VKontakte and Odnoklassniki, will each be forced to pay between 800,000 and four million rubles ($10,500 and $52,000).
Last week, prior to Saturday’s demonstrations in support of the jailed opposition figure, Roskomnadzor revealed its concern that social media was being used to encourage minors to participate in unsanctioned protests. In particular, the regulator pointed the finger at the video-sharing app TikTok. In a press release, Roskomnadzor announced that a total of 170 illegal calls for protest were not removed from the internet “in a timely manner.”
“Social networks Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, and video-host YouTube will be fined for failure to comply with the requirements to prevent the spread of calls to minors to participate in unsanctioned rallies on January 23,” the statement said.
Earlier this week, it was revealed that around 300 children were arrested at protests throughout the country, the youngest being just nine years old.
“In Moscow, about 70 [were arrested and], in St. Petersburg, about 30,” Children’s Ombudsman Anna Kuznetsova wrote on Facebook on Saturday evening. “The children were detained until their parents arrived. The police tried to get the little ones out of the crowd as quickly as possible to save them from tragedy, which fortunately did not happen.”
On Tuesday, the Speaker of Russia’s parliament, Vyacheslav Volodin, told Radio Komsomolskaya Pravda that “children cannot be used [by politicians] in a civilized society.”
“Why attract children to such events by agitating them on social media, showing them videos?” he asked. “[We] are against that. Leave the children alone. Let children have their childhood.”
On January 23, more than 100 cities in Russia saw supporters of jailed opposition figure Navalny take to the streets, with thousands protesting against his detainment. Navalny was remanded in custody on January 18 after arriving back in Russia from Germany. He is accused of violating the terms of a three-and-a-half-year suspended sentence he received in 2014, when he was found guilty of embezzling 30 million rubles ($400,000) from two companies, including the French cosmetics brand Yves Rocher.
Washington joins crusade against free speech, backs Ukrainian crackdown on opposition media as EU & Zelensky’s dad voice concerns
3 Feb, 2021 17:46
US Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden holds a megaphone during an event on Election Day in Scranton, Pennsylvania, US November 3, 2020. © REUTERS / Kevin Lamarque; (inset) Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky © REUTERS / Kevin Lamarque
The US has waded into a row over media censorship in Ukraine, backing a ban on opposition TV channels as both the EU and President Volodymyr Zelensky’s own father expressed grave concerns over the impact on free speech.
In a statement issued on Twitter Wednesday, the American embassy in Kiev wrote that it “supports efforts yesterday to counter Russia’s malign influence.” It described the shuttering of broadcasters as “in line with [Ukrainian law], in defense of its sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
“We must all work together to prevent disinformation from being deployed as a weapon in an info war against sovereign states,” the missive concluded.
Earlier that day, Zelensky signed into law a decree that took a total of eight news outlets off the airwaves in a move backed by the country’s National Security and Defense Council. However, the claim of nefarious Russian influence was met with skepticism, given that the outlets are based in Ukraine, where they are operated by and watched by Ukrainians.
In addition, the group is owned by one of the country’s elected MPs, Taras Kozak. Authorities also say they have ties to political leader Viktor Medvedchuk, who heads up the country’s largest opposition party, which is called “Opposition Platform – for Life.”
In a furious statement published on Wednesday morning, Medvedchuk wrote that the move to suppress opposition-leaning media was “absolutely illegal” and amounted to the use of “violence, bullying and coercion against dissent.” He noted that the decision came amid tumbling approval ratings for Zelensky and fierce criticism from the opposition over a lack of access to Covid-19 vaccines.
Later on Wednesday, one of the bloc’s MPs announced it would begin the process of trying to impeach the President following the crackdown.
Mikhail Podolyak, an adviser to Zelensky, explained the move, saying that “it’s clear that sanctions on Mr. Medvedchuk’s TV channels are not about the media and not about freedom of speech… it’s just about effectively counterfeiting fakes and foreign propaganda.” Without action, he argued, the opposition media would “kill our values.”
However, the EU broke ranks with Washington on Wednesday, sounding the alarm over the potential consequences for basic human rights in the country. Foreign Diplomatic Service spokesman Peter Stano told Interfax-Ukraine that attempts to regulate against disinformation “should not happen at the expense of freedom of the media and should be carried out with full respect for fundamental rights and freedoms and in accordance with international standards.”
More commentary around the decision came from an unexpected quarter. Aleksandr Zelensky, the president’s father, told the Strana news outlet that he had tuned into the channels that his son had just banned, adding that he was “worried” about his son. Asked whether he was concerned about constraints on free speech though, he said that “there are limits to everything.”
One Twitter user sought to contextualize the row for an international audience, saying that “for US folks, this would be more or less the equivalent of Biden sanctioning Fox News, OAN, and Newsmax.”
There had been hopes among Washington’s traditional allies that Biden would play a more active role in the promotion of human rights overseas than his predecessor, Donald Trump.
In November, American media reported that an official in Biden’s transition team, Richard Stengel, backed new restrictions on free speech. “All speech is not equal. And where truth cannot drive out lies, we must add new guardrails,” he wrote in a cryptic Washington Post op-ed, giving Russia as an example. As team leader of the US Agency for Global Media, Stengel was responsible for developing policy for Washington’s state-run media machine overseas, including outlets like Voice of America and RFE/RL.
TikTok agrees to Italy’s request to block underage users,
after 10yo girl dies in social media challenge
3 Feb, 2021 16:43
FILE PHOTO: A person holds a smartphone with Tik Tok logo displayed in this picture illustration taken November 7, 2019. Picture taken November 7, 2019. © REUTERS / Dado Ruvic
TikTok has reached an agreement with Italian data protection regulators to block underage users there from using its app, after a 10-year-old girl died in Palermo in a failed attempt at a dangerous social media challenge.
In January, the Italian authorities launched an investigation into children using social media platforms, after a young girl who had attempted the so-called ‘choking’ challenge died. The trend, which had been circulating on TikTok, saw participants restrict their oxygen in an attempt to secure a high.
The people who promote this madness should be tracked down and charged with murder!
The state filed a legal notice against TikTok back in December, prior to the young girl’s death, accusing the company of a “lack of attention to the protection of minors.” Similar criticism has been leveled by Italy’s data watchdog at Facebook and Instagram.
As part of its response to the tragic event, Italy temporarily blocked access to the app for users who couldn’t categorically prove they were above 13, as required by TikTok’s terms and conditions. The data protection watchdog then ordered the social media company to take the same step.
“Starting from February 9 ... Tik Tok will block all Italian users and will ask to indicate the date of birth again before continuing to use the app,” Italy’s data protection regulator said in a statement on Wednesday. “Once a user under 13 is identified, their account will be removed.”
The agency said the tech firm had also “undertaken to further evaluate the use of artificial intelligence systems” in order to “identify users under 13 with reasonable certainty”.
TikTok’s head of child safety in Europe, Alexandra Evans, also announced a slew of updates that the app would be making in an effort to expand its safety measures. As well as requiring users to prove their date of birth, a button will be added to the app to allow other users to report underage accounts.
Under the EU’s rules, as TikTok is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland is responsible for enforcing existing data protection and privacy laws with the company. However, Italy bypassed this step and took direct action by using a 2018 data protection rule to allow it to seek a swifter change in TikTok’s approach to underage users there.
