FROLITICKS

Satirical commentary on Canadian and American current political issues

Aug 14

American Media Under Attack By Local Law Enforcement, Now Physically

by bcurry

In June 2020, the arrest of a CNN news crew live on air in Minneapolis, where unarmed black man George Floyd died at the hands of police, first drew global attention to how law enforcement authorities in the city were treating reporters covering protests that had descended into riots.  At the same time, a reporter from Germany’s international news broadcaster Deutsche Welle was shot with projectiles by Minneapolis police while preparing to go live on air.  In September 2020, Los Angeles NPR station KPCC reporter Josie Huang was forced to the ground and arrested outside the hospital where two Sheriff deputies had been taken after having survived an ambush shooting.  Her press credentials were clearly visible in a recording of the incident.  At the time, the US Press Freedom Tracker, a non-profit project, said it was investigating in total more than 100 “press freedom violations” at similar protests. About 90 cases reportedly involved physical attacks. 

More recently, a small town in Kansas has become a battleground over the First Amendment, after the local police force and county sheriff’s deputies raided the office of the local newspaper, The Marion County Record.  A search warrant for the raid was issued by a judge roughly an hour before the search, which in itself was highly unusual.  As the New York Times reports, the advocacy director at Freedom of the Press Foundation, Seth Stern, noted that federal law allowed the police to search journalists when the authorities have probable cause to believe the journalists had committed a crime unrelated to their journalism.  That exception does not apply, however, in the above case where the alleged crime is simply gathering the news.  The Foundation is a nonprofit that advocates for the rights of journalists and whistle-blowers.  Mr. Stern also noted that, although news organizations are sometimes the targets of legal actions by government officials including subpoenas seeking interview notes and other records, the search and seizure of the tools to produce journalism are rare.  Normally, when journalists are suspected of committing crimes as part of news gathering, the government’s option is to serve a subpoena, which can be challenged in court before it is actually enforced.

For this reason, raids of news organizations are exceedingly rare in the U.S., with its long history of legal protections for journalists.  However, in recent years, particularly those under Donald Trump’s former administration, the mainstream media has come increasingly under attack for what Trump called “fake news”.  If he felt that the coverage was negative towards him, he immediately accused the reporting as being biased and inaccurate.  Often Trump refused to take questions from certain journalists known to report what he perceived to be negative news about his administration.  However, he never had any problem supporting right-wing media sources, such as Fox News, as presenting the truth, including his belief that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and illegitimate.  Conservative authorities appear to have been given the green light to increase their attacks on journalists and news outlets, especially in cases such as that in Marion County.

Whether at the local level or nationally, it is extremely dangerous that legitimate journalists can be attacked or threatened, physically or otherwise.  In addition, it’s becoming very difficult to keep newspapers in businesses and journalists employed.  According to a new report from Northwestern University’s journalism school in 2022, over 360 newspapers in the U.S. have gone out of business since just before the start of the pandemic.  The last thing that journalists need right now is to be threatened with legal action or physically while covering news stories.  What one particularly needs at this time is a strong mainstream media comprised of ethical and credible journalists willing to get the facts by following up and verifying their sources.  They should never be subject to intimidation for simply doing their jobs, which is the backbone of any democracy.

This most recent attack by local authorities on The Marion County Record is just the latest example of the inappropriate use of the judicial system to intimidate publishers and journalists.  It may only be a local incident, but it represents a much greater threat to the free press.  For this reason, it should be taken seriously as demonstrated by national support given to the publisher by more than 30 news organizations and press freedom advocates, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Dow Jones and the publisher of The Wall Street Journal.

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Mar 30

No Democracy Today Can Avoid Being Tested By Political Turmoil

by bcurry

President Joe Biden recently visited Canada for what became a real love-in with his opposite Justin Trudeau, the Canadian Prime Minister.  In his speech to Parliament, Biden frequently related to the close relationship to Canada, including our democratic values and institutions.  However, all is not well in both countries.  The U.S. had last year’s violent January 6th insurrection at the Capital and Canada had the truckers’ 3-week illegal occupation of streets within Ottawa’s parliamentary precinct.  Observers claim that a lot of these events are related to what is perceived by some Americans and Canadians as a lack of trust in police, the courts and government at all levels.  What’s worst, in the U.S. you had a former president who refused to accept the results of the last presidential election and today continues to espouse to his followers that the election was stolen.

This past week, President Biden delivered remarks at the second White House-led Summit for Democracy, but at a time when several democracies are under duress of some kind.  One can refer to political conditions in so-called significant democratic countries such as Israel, Mexico, India and Brazil.  Democratic setbacks have also occurred in West Africa, where there have been coups in Mali and Burkina Faso in recent years.  For example, in Nigeria, a country of 220 million people, experts say that the presidential election last February appeared suspect.  At the above noted summit, two notable members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Hungary and Turkey, were excluded in light of fact that their autocratic political systems have grown no less repressive during Mr. Biden’s tenure.

Underlying all this issue is the fact that dictatorships such as Russia and China have been trying to increase their economic and political influence in countries, particularly in Africa and South America.  Both the governments of Russia and China have been accused of having meddled in recent American and Canadian electoral processes.  Dealing effectively with these countries needs to be done in order to avoid any foreign influence in democratic processes.

In the U.S., even the fundamental right of Americans to vote is being challenged in some states where various forms of new voting restrictions or requirements have being implemented or considered, notably by Republican states.  In some cases, such restrictions will especially affect voting by minority groups, college students and marginalized persons. 

Unfortunately, much of political turmoil has been the result of extreme divisions within our societies and large amounts of misinformation and disinformation being spread through on-line social media.  Mainstream media sources, fundamentally important to supporting democratic processes, are continuously under attack.  Journalists themselves have been verbally and physically attacked by extreme politicized groups, both right and left.

Human and civil rights are in danger of being weakened in democratic countries.  Many of the important gains achieved by LGBTQ groups in the last couple of decades are increasingly coming under attack, especially by religious right-wing segments of our societies.  Organized local protests have even occurred against school boards in both countries, and appear to be gaining strength.  Elected school board representatives have increasingly come under attack when it comes to school policies protecting the rights of LGBTQ youth and education regarding sexual orientation.

Generally, trust and confidence in our democratic institutions has to be restored in order to maintain our taken-for-granted freedoms.  Civility has to return to how we conduct our affairs and the rule of law has to be strengthened.  Otherwise, we will only see more and more serious threats to democracies, either here in Canada, the U.S. or abroad.  Words and platitudes are all fine, but actions are now needed.

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May 9

The Internet Was a Blessing Until It Became a Curse

by bcurry

A judge just threw out Donald Trump’s lawsuit against Twitter that challenged his ban from the social media platform.  U.S. District Judge James Donato rejected Trump’s claim that Twitter violated his right to freedom of speech guaranteed under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.  He simply declared that Twitter is a private company, and ‘the First Amendment applies only to governmental abridgements of speech, and not to alleged abridgements by private companies.’  When Trump’s account (with over 88 million followers) was suspended by Twitter, he went on to set up his own platform Truth Social which apparently has not done very well.  Now, the question arises over whether Twitter’s takeover by Tesla CEO Elon Musk will offer Trump a possible return to the social media platform.

Marshall McLuhan, a well-known Canadian philosopher whose work was among the cornerstones of the study of media theory in the late sixties, coined the expression “the medium is the message” and the term “global village”.  He is credited with predicting the World Wide Web (WWW) almost 30 years before it was invented.  Little did he know, having passed away in late 1980, of the incredible eventual impact on our daily lives of the Internet.  The Internet is this generation’s equivalent to the telegraph, the telephone and the fax machines that allowed us to communication instantaneously and broadly across the globe.  However, as a marvellous communication tool, the Internet has also proven to be more susceptible to the spreading of misinformation and disinformation than any other means in modern times.

When one talks of ‘misinformation’, one is normally referring to suspect, invalid and often poorly researched information passed on by persons to other persons via social media for example.  Often such information is transmitted without real malice, but simply and inadvertently by persons accepting the information as being valid or such that supports preconceived views, referred to a ‘confirmation bias’.  ‘Disinformation’ on the other hand is where someone is deliberately providing false information in support of their causes, goals or conspiracy theories, similar to what we would view as propaganda.  Unfortunately, we are seeing a lot more disinformation being conveyed via the Internet then ever before.  States or organizations that want to control the flow of information for their own purposes are notorious for facilitating the spread of disinformation, especially as a form of mind control within their borders.  One needs to go no further for examples than Russia, North Korea and Iran.

Unfortunately, during the Covid-19 pandemic, certain groups within the U.S. and Canada began disinformation campaigns against the public health measures introduced by many governments to deal with the tragic consequences of Covid on our lives.  The information was used to justify anti-vax, anti-mask, anti-lockdown and other public health mandates, regardless of their evident effectiveness in controlling the spread of Covid and reducing the number of associated deaths and hospitalizations.  These campaigns of course led to numerous protests in both countries easily and quickly arranged via social media, often tying up scarce government resources.  In addition, groups have used the Internet to spread ridiculous conspiracy theories, the most notable being that which promoted the belief that the results of the 2020 Presidential election were affected by corrupt voter fraud.  This culminated in a mob of Trump supporters attacking the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, after Trump repeatedly said that he would never concede the legitimate election.

We must do a better job of educating future generations about the potential pitfalls of relying on one or two sources for information, particularly those who rely on non-verifiable and suspect origins.  We need to be much more suspect when assessing the accuracy and validity of our Internet sources, be they found in social media or on websites.  I might suggest strongly that we include mainstream news media and websites provided by objective professional organizations as an integral and regular part of one’s information sources.  Perhaps this is easier said than done.  After all, access to information via social media in particular is quick and dirty.  Regrettably, this is what the purveyors of disinformation and misinformation are counting on.

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Feb 24

Unfair Condemnation by American Mainstream Media of Canada’s Invocation of the Federal Emergencies Act

by bcurry

For the first time since its creation, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act, giving the government far reaching powers, allowing the government to freeze financial accounts, press tow truck operators into service and end blockades.  As required, limited to an initial thirty day period, the invocation of the Act was subsequently debated in Parliament.  However, on February 23rd, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau withdrew the law, stating that it was no longer necessary because illegal protests that included blockades at some border crossings and the occupation in downtown Ottawa were no longer considered an emergency.  He said the federal government is confident existing laws and bylaws are now sufficient to keep people safe.  No one’s peaceful “right to protest” was ever affected, as long as no laws were being broken.

Interestingly but not surprising, mainstream media in the U.S. came down hard for the most part on the use of the Emergencies Act to deal with the border blockades and Ottawa occupation by the so-called “Freedom Convoy.”  Mainstream media is a term and abbreviation used to refer collectively to the various large mass news media that influence many people, and both reflect and shape prevailing currents of thought.  Major outlets such as the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times and Fox News threw in their lot with the truckers — or at least, the truckers’ right to protest.  However, while the Canadian protests where not as violent against COVID-related mandates as occurred in Europe, the protesters did block the Coutts (Alberta) and Windsor-Detroit border crossings for over a week and occupied downtown of the National Capital of Ottawa for over three weeks.  The courts declared that these blockades and occupations were illegal and ordered protesters to reframe from such activities.  In order to carry out the resulting injunctions, the province of Ontario called upon the federal government to provide whatever assistance that it could.  Hence, the invocation of the Emergencies Act on February 14th.   Over two-thirds of Canadians polled approved of the Act’s invocation.

What the Act achieved was to allow all national, provincial and local police services across Canada to collaborate in the removal of illegal blockades and occupations.  Up to then, protesters, often with leadership involving fringe groups, had thumbed their noses at municipal police services.  The Act also went after the funding sources for the protesters’ illegal activities, often provided for by right-wing American sources (U.S.-based crowdfunding websites) initially through GoFundMe and later through GiveSendGo — resulting in millions of dollars worth of support.  More than half of the funding came from American sources, clearly representing foreign involvement in the domestic affairs of Canada.  None of the American mainstream media really caught on to this new phenomenon until GoFundMe froze the funding and the GiveSendGo funding website was hacked into, disclosing several large contributions originating in the U.S.  While the federal government asked Canadian financial institutions to freeze the accounts of the convoy protesters to encourage them to reframe from continuing illegal activities, it was designed to primarily target the accounts of many of the known leaders.  With discontinuation of the powers provided for under the Emergencies Act, the accounts should no longer be frozen for persons reframing from illegal activities.

Indeed, as in any democratic society, the Act was created in 1988 to ensure compliance with Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms and was to used as a last resort in the event of national emergencies.  There is little doubt that its use will be challenged by various groups and certain Conservative provincial governments in the courts.  While there appears to be no similar piece of legislation in the U.S., any suggestion that the Act’s invocation removed the democratic rights of Canadians has be overblown and misunderstood by American mainstream media.  While one can appreciate such a reaction by the so-called “alternate media”, I find the editorials in most U.S. media to be an overreach.  At no time during the Act’s implementation was the “due process” under existing laws not carried out.  Those being charged by the authorities under Canada’s Criminal Code will have their day in court, and many were released with or without bail until their appearance in court.  All the normal judicial processes were carried out under very difficult circumstances.  I would hope that most Americans would support this?

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