It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Wednesday, January 08, 2025
'Outrageous': NYT rejects Quaker ad that calls Israel attack on Gaza 'genocide' Photo by Jakayla Toney on Unsplash
The American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization, announced Wednesday that it has cancelled planned advertising with The New York Times after the outlet rejected one of the group's proposed ads that read: "Tell Congress to stop arming Israel's genocide in Gaza now! As a Quaker organization, we work for peace. Join us. Tell the President and Congress to stop the killing and starvation in Gaza."
AFSC alleges that after receiving the text of ad, the Times suggested they swap the word "genocide" for the word "war." The word war has "an entirely different meaning both colloquially and under international law," the Quaker group wrote.
AFSC said they rejected this proposed approach and then received an email from outlet's "Ad Acceptability Team" which read, in part, according to AFSC: "Various international bodies, human rights organizations, and governments have differing views on the situation. In line with our commitment to factual accuracy and adherence to legal standards, we must ensure that all advertising content complies with these widely applied definitions."
The Times did not respond to an email prior to publication asking them to confirm they rejected the ad and on these grounds, or to a request that they respond to AFSC's statement.
"The New York Times advertises a wide variety of products and advocacy messages on which there are differing views. Why is it not acceptable to publicize the meticulously documented atrocities committed by Israel and paid for by the United States?" said Layne Mullett, director of media relations for AFSC, in a statement.
Joyce Ajlouny, general secretary of AFSC, said that "the refusal of The New York Times to run paid digital ads that call for an end to Israel's genocide in Gaza is an outrageous attempt to sidestep the truth. Palestinians and allies have been silenced and marginalized in the media for decades as these institutions choose silence over accountability."
The AFSC has been a loud voice calling for a cease-fire and ending U.S. military support for Israel. For example, in April, the group announced a Tax Day campaign, a day of action where people held events and met with their members of Congress to demand they stop voting to spend U.S. tax dollars on military assistance to Israel.
AFSC staff in Gaza have also provided 1.5 million meals, hygiene kits, and other units of humanitarian aid to internally displaced people since October 2023, according to the Wednesday statement.
'This is not normal': Mehdi Hasan recalls 'even Bush didn’t have a transition like' Trump’s
Former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan shared his thoughts on Donald Trump's Tuesday declaration that he's not opposed to using military force to take control of Greenland and the Panama Canal.
Speaking with Hasan on the latest episode of MSNBC's The ReidOut, host Joy Reid said, "At the moment, Trump is either talking tough to make it look like he's the real boss by saying he's going to invade Panama and Greenland and Canada, and be an expansionist like [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, or he's just speaking Putin and [billionaire] Elon [Musk's] desires."
She added, "I can never tell which, I just know Trump is not in charge."
Hasan replied, "Before we go any further, Joy, let's just take a step back to your viewers and just remind ourselves, to keep ourselves sane. None of this is normal. Rght? The beginning of 2025, we should not be on live American television discussing a president-elect press conference, where he said he may invade two of our allies."
"I'm the guy who was worried about Trump attacking Iran, [or] Trump starting a war with China," Hasan continued. "I did not have it on my bingo card for war with Denmark and Panama in 2025 — from the guy, as you said, who was supposed to be the 'no more wars' president. I have leftist friends of mine — Muslim friends of mine — saying, 'Well, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have been so hawkish. At least Donald Trump will be antiwar.' He's not even president yet and he saying I can't rule out military action against a fellow NATO member: Denmark."
The former MSNBC host emphasized, "The whole thing is so absurd that we have to keep reminding ourselves and pinching ourselves, that this is not normal. No other president-elect, including George W. Bush — even he didn't have a transition like this. So we have to keep reminding ourselves that we are in upside down world."
The President of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, wasted no time trolling President-elect Donald Trump, posting a vintage map showing that a large portion of what is now the United States of America used to be called “Mexican America.” President Sheinbaum delivered her remarks in response to Trump’s claim that he will rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.”
President Sheinbaum “used her Wednesday morning news conference to show a world map dating from 1607. The map labeled North America as Mexican America and already identified the Gulf of Mexico as such, 169 years before the United States was founded,” The New York Times reports.
“Why don’t we call it Mexican America? It sounds pretty, no?” Dr. Sheinbaum said in Spanish (video below).
“In response to Mr. Trump’s comment that Mexico was ‘essentially run by the cartels,’ Ms. Sheinbaum told reporters on Wednesday that, ‘with all due respect,’ the president-elect was ill-informed,” The Times also noted.
Dr. Sheinbaum, a former Mayor of Mexico City, has a PhD in energy engineering. She is a Nobel Peace Prize-winning physicist who appeared on the BBC‘s “list of 100 inspiring and influential women from around the world for 2018.”
During her Wednesday press conference, President Sheinbaum also told reporters, “In Mexico, the people rule.”
“And we are going to collaborate and understand each other with the government of President Trump, I am sure of it, defending our sovereignty as a free, independent and sovereign country.”
According to The Times, she stated that her country is “very interested in stopping the entry of U.S. firearms into Mexico,” and complained about the large number of guns illegally smuggled from the U.S.
The Washington Post’s global affairs columnist Ishaan Tharoor, pointing to the Mexican President’s comments, noted, “We’re seeing some responses to Trump’s absurdity.”
After Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor in 1933, he promptly packed the government full of loyalists and used Weimar Germany's constitution to turn himself into an absolute dictator.
In a Wednesday essay for the Atlantic, historian Timothy W. Ryback, who is the director of the Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation in The Hague, described the process in which Hitler rapidly disintegrated Germany's constitutional republic in just 53 days. Ryback noted that after the failed Beer Hall Putsch — in which the Nazi leader attempted to violently overthrow the government — Hitler abandoned his goal of violent revolution in favor of "destroying the country's democratic system" through legal means.
"Having spent a decade in opposition politics, Hitler knew firsthand how easily an ambitious political agenda could be scuttled," Ryback wrote. "He had been co-opting or crushing right-wing competitors and paralyzing legislative processes for years, and for the previous eight months, he had played obstructionist politics, helping to bring down three chancellors and twice forcing the president to dissolve the Reichstag and call for new elections.
After his election in 1933, Hitler bragged that the German electorate welcomed him with "jubilation," and rolled out a plan to force out longtime career civil servants with political stooges committed to his vision. He then executed a plan to get two-thirds of the Reichstag (the German parliamentary body) to pass an "empowering law" that would allow him to centralize his authority and govern by decree.
Hitler was convinced that he needed the empowering law to follow through on his campaign promises, which, according to Ryback, included calls to "revive the economy, reduce unemployment, increase military spending, withdraw from international treaty obligations, purge the country of foreigners he claimed were “poisoning” the blood of the nation and exact revenge on political opponents." He also notably ran on draining den parlamentarischen Sumpf, or "the parliamentarian swamp," and his economic agenda including sweeping new tariffs on grain imports.
Ryback — who has authored multiple books about the rise of Hitler and the Nazi regime – explained that Hitler becoming an absolute dictator was a significant comeback story. After the Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler was jailed and his movement was discredited. And when the Nazi Party lost the 1932 election and 34 Reichstag seats, he was apparently "contemplating suicide" and had effectively "given up all hope."
However, after President Paul Von Hindenburg agreed after a negotiating session to make him chancellor and gave him two cabinet posts to fill, Hitler picked two staunch loyalists (Wilhelm Frick and Hermann Göring) and "put his two ministers to work targeting the Weimar Republic’s key democratic pillars: free speech, due process, public referendum, and states’ rights."
As part of his duties as minister of the interior, Frick had oversight over Germany's 18 federated states and the press. Ryback wrote that he focused on "suppressing the opposition press and centralizing power in Berlin," which included banning the daily newspapers run by the Communist Party and the Social Democrats.
Meanwhile, Göring used his position as minister without portfolio — which included oversight of the state of Prussia, which encompassed two-thirds of Germany — to purge state security forces. Hitler then put a Schiesserlass, or "shooting decree," in place, allowing police to shoot on sight without fear of accountability. And following the Reichstag fire, which was rumored to have been a false flag operation by the Nazis to scapegoat the Communist Party (the Nazi's biggest enemy), Hitler used the arson attack to successfully push for new powers allowing him to imprison his political opponents.
"The Communist Party was banned (as Hitler had wanted since his first cabinet meeting), and members of the opposition press were arrested, their newspapers shut down," Ryback wrote. "Göring had already been doing this for the past month, but the courts had invariably ordered the release of detained people. With the decree in effect, the courts could not intervene. Thousands of Communists and Social Democrats were rounded up."
Elections were held shortly after the Reichstag fire that saw the Nazis dramatically increase their representation in parliament. A few weeks later, Ryback wrote that Hitler issued a decree indemnifying any Nazi who committed crimes "in the battle for national renewal," including murder. He noted that "men convicted of treason were now national heroes," and that the first batch of detainees soon arrived at the Dachau concentration camp.
Click here to read Ryback's essay in its entirety (subscription required).
Former Cambodian opposition MP shot dead in Bangkok: Thai media
Agence France-Presse January 7, 2025 Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) members stand near the spot where former Cambodian MP was reportedly shot in Bangkok (AFP)
A former Cambodian opposition MP and French citizen was shot dead by a gunman on a motorcycle in Bangkok on Tuesday, Thai media reported.
"Lim Kimya... died at the scene. Officers with the Metropolitan Police Bureau have launched a manhunt for the assassin," the Bangkok Post reported, adding that the deceased was a dual Cambodian-French national.
Thai police confirmed the death of a Cambodian man without identifying him as Lim Kimya, telling AFP "we are currently investigating the motives and will provide more information at a later time".
Multiple Thai media outlets reported that a gunman on a motorcycle opened fire on Lim Kimya as he arrived in the Thai capital from the Cambodian city of Siem Reap by bus, accompanied by his French wife and a Cambodian uncle.
An AFP photojournalist saw blood at the scene near the popular Khao San Road area of Bangkok.
Lim Kimya was elected as an opposition member of Cambodia's parliament following a general poll in 2013 in which the ruling party under former leader Hun Sen almost lost to its then-rival, the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP). The CNRP, which was founded in 2012 by opposition leaders Sam Rainsy and Kem Sokha and once considered the sole viable opponent to the ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP), was dissolved by court order in 2017.
Scores of opposition politicians and MPs, including Lim Kimya, were banned from political activities following the party's dissolution.
Rights groups have accused Hun Sen -- who ruled Cambodia for nearly four decades before stepping down in 2023 and handing power to his eldest son, Hun Manet -- of using the legal system to crush any opposition to his rule.
Scores of opposition politicians and activists were convicted and jailed during his time in power, with challengers forced to flee and freedom of expression stifled.
Kem Sokha was arrested and was sentenced in 2023 to 27 years in prison for treason -- a charge he has repeatedly denied -- and was immediately placed under house arrest.
Sam Rainsy lives in exile in France.
Despite holding French citizenship, Lim Kimya did not join the dozens of lawmakers who fled abroad after Kem Sokha was detained.
Lim Kimya told AFP at the time in Phnom Penh: "I will never give up politics".
His fatal shooting comes the same day that the still influential Hun Sen called for a new law to label anyone who attempts to topple his son Hun Manet's government as "terrorists".
Nobel winner Ressa tells AFP 'dangerous times' ahead after Meta ends U.S. fact-checking
Agence France-Presse January 8, 2025 Philippine Nobel laureate Maria Ressa warns of 'dangerous times ahead' after social media giant Meta ended its US fact-checking program on Facebook and Instagram (JAM STA ROSA/AFP)
Philippine Nobel laureate Maria Ressa warned Wednesday of "extremely dangerous times ahead" in an interview with AFP after social media giant Meta ended its US fact-checking program on Facebook and Instagram.
Ressa and the Rappler news site she co-founded have spent years fighting online disinformation while battling court cases filed under former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte after critical reporting of his deadly drug war.
The veteran journalist and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021 said Meta's decision meant "extremely dangerous times ahead" for journalism, democracy and social media users.
"Mark Zuckerberg says it's a free speech issue -- that's completely wrong," Ressa told AFP at Rappler's newsroom in Manila.
"Only if you're profit driven can you claim that; only if you want power and money can you claim that. This is about safety."
Meta's announcement on Tuesday was seen by analysts as an attempt by Zuckerberg to appease US President-elect Donald Trump before his inauguration this month.
Trump has been a harsh critic of Meta and Zuckerberg for years, accusing the company of bias against him and threatening to retaliate against the tech billionaire once back in office.
Fact-checking and disinformation research have long been a hot-button issue in a hyperpolarized political climate in the United States, with conservative US advocates saying they were a tool to curtail free speech and censor right-wing content.
Ressa, who is also a US citizen, rejected Zuckerberg's assertion that fact-checkers had become "too politically biased" and "destroyed more trust than they've created".
"Journalists have a set of standards and ethics," Ressa told AFP.
"What Facebook is going to do is get rid of that and then allow lies, anger, fear and hate to infect every single person on the platform."
Meta's actions would lead to a "world without facts" and "that's a world that's right for a dictator", Ressa warned.
"Mark Zuckerberg has ultimate power," she said, "and he chooses wrongly to prioritize profit, Facebook's annual profits, over safety of the people on the platforms." - 'Just the beginning' -
Rappler is one of the partners working with Facebook's fact-checking program.
AFP also currently works in 26 languages with Facebook's fact-checking program, in which Facebook pays to use fact-checks from around 80 organizations globally on its platform, WhatsApp and on Instagram.
In a statement shared with AFP, Rappler said it intends to continue working with Facebook "to protect fellow Filipinos from manipulation and the dangers of disinformation".
"What has happened in the US is just the beginning," Rappler said.
"It is an ominous sign of more perilous times in the fight to preserve and protect our individual agency and shared reality."
Ressa has long maintained that the charges against her and Rappler were politically motivated after their critical reporting of the Duterte government's policies, including its anti-drugs crackdown that killed thousands of people.
Trump, who vowed in his first post-election news conference to "straighten out" the "corrupt" US press, appeared to have taken a page from Duterte's playbook, Ressa said.
The incoming US president has launched unprecedented lawsuits against newspapers and pollsters that observers worry are the signs of escalating intimidation and censorship tactics.
Ressa vowed to do everything she could to "ensure information integrity".
"The Nobel Prize said that you cannot have democracy if you don't have journalism," Ressa said.
"This is a pivotal year for journalism's survival. We'll do all we can to make sure that happens."
Tech giant Meta’s shock announcement to end its US fact-checking program triggered scathing criticism Tuesday from disinformation researchers who warned it risked opening the floodgates for proliferating false narratives.
Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg announced the company was going to “get rid” of its third-party fact-checkers in the United States, in a sweeping policy shift that analysts saw as an attempt to appease US President-elect Donald Trump.
“This is a major step back for content moderation at a time when disinformation and harmful content are evolving faster than ever,” said Ross Burley, co-founder of the nonprofit Centre for Information Resilience.
Fact-checking and disinformation research have long been a hot-button issue in a hyperpolarized political climate in the United States, with conservative US advocates saying they were a tool to curtail free speech and censor right-wing content.
Trump’s Republican Party and his billionaire ally Elon Musk — the owner of social media giant X, formerly Twitter — have long echoed similar complaints.
“While efforts to protect free expression are vital, removing fact-checking without a credible alternative risks opening the floodgates to more harmful narratives,” Burley said.
“This move seems more about political appeasement than smart policy.”
As an alternative, Zuckerberg said Meta’s platforms, Facebook and Instagram, would use “Community Notes similar to X” in the United States.
Community Notes is a crowd-sourced moderation tool that X has promoted as the way for users to add context to posts, but researchers have repeatedly questioned its effectiveness in combating falsehoods.
“You wouldn’t rely on just anyone to stop your toilet from leaking, but Meta now seeks to rely on just anyone to stop misinformation from spreading on their platforms,” Michael Wagner, from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told AFP.
“Asking people, pro bono, to police the false claims that get posted on Meta’s multi-billion dollar social media platforms is an abdication of social responsibility.”
– ‘Politics, not policy’ –
Meta’s new approach ignores research that shows “Community Notes users are very much motivated by partisan motives and tend to over-target their political opponents,” said Alexios Mantzarlis, director of the Security, Trust, and Safety Initiative at Cornell Tech.
Meta’s announcement represents a financial setback for its US-based third-party fact-checkers.
Meta’s program and external grants have been “predominant revenue streams” for global fact-checkers, according to a 2023 survey by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) of 137 organizations across dozens of countries.
The decision will also “hurt social media users who are looking for accurate, reliable information to make decisions about their everyday lives and interactions,” said IFCN director Angie Holan.
“It’s unfortunate that this decision comes in the wake of external political pressure from a new administration and its supporters,” Holan added.
Aaron Sharockman, executive director of US fact-checking organization PolitiFact, disagreed with the contention that fact-checking was a tool to suppress free speech.
The role of US fact-checkers, he said, was to provide “additional speech and context to posts that journalists found to contain misinformation” and it was up to Meta to decide what penalties users faced.
“The great thing about free speech is that people are able to disagree about any piece of journalism we post,” Sharockman said.
“If Meta is upset it created a tool to censor, it should look in the mirror.”
PolitiFact is one of the early partners who worked with Facebook to launch the fact-checking program in the United States in 2016.
AFP also currently works in 26 languages with Facebook’s fact-checking program, in which Facebook pays to use fact-checks from around 80 organizations globally on its platform, WhatsApp and on Instagram.
In that program, content rated “false” is downgraded in news feeds so fewer people will see it and if someone tries to share that post, they are presented with an article explaining why it is misleading.
“The program was by no means perfect, and fact-checkers have no doubt erred in some percentage of their labels,” Mantzarlis said.
“But we should be clear that Zuckerberg’s promise of getting rid of fact-checkers was a choice of politics, not policy.”
Meta announces ending fact-checking program in the US
Social media giant Meta announced Tuesday a significant rollback of its content moderation policies, including the termination of its third-party fact-checking program in the United States.
“We’re going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with community notes similar to X (formerly Twitter), starting in the US,” Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post on social media.
Zuckerberg said that “fact checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the US.”
Meta’s announcement repeated many of the complaints made by Republicans and X-owner Elon Musk about fact-checking programs that many conservatives see as censorship.
The 40-year-old tycoon said that “recent elections feel like a cultural tipping point towards, once again, prioritizing speech.”
The shift came as Zuckerberg has been making efforts to reconcile with US President-elect Donald Trump, including donating one million dollars to his inauguration fund.
Zuckerberg also said Meta sites, including Facebook and Instagram, would “simplify” their content policies “and get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse.”
Trump has been a harsh critic of Meta and Zuckerberg in recent years, accusing the company of supporting liberal policies and being biased against conservatives.
The Republican was kicked off Facebook following the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, though the company restored his account in early 2023.
Zuckerberg also dined with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in November, as he looks to repair the company’s relationship with the incoming US leader following the presidential election.
In another recent gesture towards the Trump team, Meta last week named Republican stalwart Joel Kaplan to head up public affairs at the company, taking over from Nick Clegg, a former British deputy prime minister.
“Too much harmless content gets censored, too many people find themselves wrongly locked up in ‘Facebook jail,'” Kaplan said in a statement, insisting that its current approach to content moderation has “gone too far.”
Zuckerberg also named Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) head Dana White, a close ally of Trump, to the Meta board.
As part of the overhaul, Meta said it will relocate its trust and safety teams from California, where liberal views are commonplace, to more conservative Texas.
“That will help us build trust to do this work in places where there is less concern about the bias of our teams,” Zuckerberg said.
Additionally, Meta announced it would reverse its 2021 policy of reducing political content across its platforms.
Instead, the company will adopt a more personalized approach, allowing users greater control over the amount of political content they see on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.
AFP currently works in 26 languages with Facebook’s fact-checking program, in which Facebook pays to use fact-checks from around 80 organizations globally on its platform, WhatsApp and on Instagram. X’s ‘Community Notes’: a model for Meta?
X, formerly Twitter, has relied on 'community notes' to alert to false or misleading posts since 2021 - Copyright AFP/File Jim WATSON
Tom BARFIELD and Daxia Rojas
Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg said Tuesday that the group’s platforms including Facebook and Instagram would in future imitate rival X’s “Community Notes” feature rather than using professional fact-checkers.
The feature “empower(s) their community to decide when posts are potentially misleading” thanks to “people across a diverse range of perspectives,” Zuckerberg wrote in a blog post.
Facebook’s fact-checking programme currently operates in 26 languages, partnering with more than 80 media organisations worldwide including AFP.
– What are Community Notes? –
When an X post has had a note appended, it is displayed to users with a small box titled “Readers added context”.
Usually short and factual, expanding on or contradicting the original post, most published notes also include a link to relevant source material.
Introduced in January 2021 under the name Birdwatch, Community Notes were boosted by Elon Musk after he took over Twitter in late 2022 and renamed it X, and they now appear to users in 44 countries.
The social network “needs to become by far the most accurate source of information about the world”, Musk posted at the time.
– Who writes Community Notes? –
Any willing X user can sign up to Community Notes.
Before writing notes of their own, they must first spend time rating other people’s suggested notes, contributing to the process that decides whether they are published.
Even once allowed to write notes, users can lose the right if others consistently rate them unhelpful.
X underscores that voting on notes is not by simple majority.
Instead, the company looks for agreement between raters who have disagreed in the past — a system it says “helps reduce one-sided ratings and helps to prevent manipulation”.
This has not stopped charges from politicians that highly motivated groups carpet-bomb posts they dislike with notes, hoping at least one will get through.
– What impact have Community Notes had? –
There is little conclusive scientific analysis available of Community Notes’ effectiveness.
One April 2024 paper published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that a sample of notes on misinformation about Covid-19 vaccines “were accurate, cited moderate and high-credibility sources, and were attached to posts viewed hundreds of millions of times”.
But the authors did not study the notes’ impact on users.
Meanwhile in a survey of notes posted on November 5 — US election day — Cornell University digital harm researcher Alexios Mantzarlis found that just 29 percent of “fact-checkable” tweets for which notes were suggested in fact displayed a note rated as helpful.
“If Community Notes had an impact on election information quality on X, it was marginal at best,” Mantzarlis wrote in an article for the Poynter Institute.
– What could come next? –
Some experts AFP spoke to were confident that Community Notes could improve information quality on Meta platforms.
“Community notes as such is a very, very effective tool in content moderation if applied in an equitable way, we can see that on Wikimedia or Wikipedia,” said Katja Munoz of the Berlin-based think-tank DGAP.
Nevertheless, “the crowd may say something correct, but there can also be ill-intentioned people who are there to spread disinformation,” said Christine Balaguer, a professor at France’s Institut Mines-Telecom who studies the phenomenon.
Eliminating fact-checking could set Meta up for a clash with the European Union if it expands the model outside the United States.
The bloc’s Digital Services Act encourages platforms to fight misinformation with tools including professional fact-checkers.
Zuckerberg’s move “is a major shock” that “announces the clashes that the tech platforms are going to be having with EU regulation in general”, Munoz said.
In his statement, Zuckerberg said fact-checking had been “a program intended to inform (that) too often became a tool to censor”.
“Fact-checkers weren’t censors,” said Bill Adair, a professor of journalism and public policy at Duke University and co-founder of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN).
Those working with Meta “were signatories of a code of principles that requires they be transparent and nonpartisan”, he noted.
IFCN chief Angie Drobnic Holan also defended fact-checkers’ work, writing on X that Zuckerberg had faced “extreme political pressure from a new administration and its supporters”.
Trump said Tuesday that Meta’s move had “probably” been in response to his threats against the company and Zuckerberg.
Meta Names UFC boss Dana White, a Trump ally, to board
CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship Dana White (C) is a close ally of US President-elect Donald Trump, even speaking at his election night victory rally - Copyright AFP Jim WATSON
Social media giant Meta announced Monday the appointment of three new directors to its board, including Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) head Dana White, a close ally to US President-elect Donald Trump.
The new board members were announced as Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been making approaches to the incoming Trump administration, including donating one million dollars to Trump’s inauguration fund.
Zuckerberg also dined with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in November, as the 40-year-old tycoon looks to repair the company’s relationship with the incoming US leader following the presidential election.
In another recent gesture towards the Trump team, Meta last week named Republican stalwart Joel Kaplan to head up public affairs at the company, taking over from Nick Clegg, a former British deputy prime minister.
Trump has been a harsh critic of Meta and Zuckerberg in recent years, accusing the company of supporting liberal policies and being biased against conservatives.
Trump was kicked off Facebook following the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, though the company restored his account in early 2023.
White has maintained a close friendship with Trump for two decades, dating back to when Trump offered his venues for UFC events.
“I’ve never been interested in joining a board of directors until I got the offer to join Meta’s board. I am a huge believer that social media and AI are the future,” White said.
Along with White, Meta is adding Exor CEO John Elkann, and former Microsoft executive Charlie Songhurst to the board, bringing the company’s board of directors to 13 members.
Elkann, scion to the Agnelli industrialist family in Italy, is the executive chairman of auto giant Stellantis and Ferrari.
The appointments came as Meta, parent company of Facebook and Instagram, intensifies its focus on artificial intelligence and wearable technology development.
“Dana, John and Charlie will add a depth of expertise and perspective that will help us tackle the massive opportunities ahead with AI, wearables and the future of human connection,” Meta CEO Zuckerberg said in a statement.
Zuckerberg failed to 'get in on the ground floor' in his suck-up to Trump: analyst
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has introduced a huge list of changes and hires that appear directly calculated to ingratiate himself to President-elect Donald Trump — but it's unlikely to give him the mileage and goodwill he's hoping for, political strategist Chai Komanduri told MSNBC's Ari Melber on Tuesday's edition of "The Beat."
"What do you see in the politics here?" asked Melber. "Zuckerberg previously had different policies, he said he had frankly different views, so had Trump lost, had the vote swung a point and a half the other way, presumably, we would be moving past some of this."
"I think what happened was Mark Zuckerberg saw what happened with Elon Musk," said Komanduri. "Musk tied himself to Trump and became even richer and far more powerful."
That being said, Komanduri added, while Zuckerberg could be in an "ideal position" to provide "a whole lot of support" to Trump and his eventual ideological heirs, he probably won't reap the same benefits Musk did. "The problem, I think, for Mark Zuckerberg is he's not getting in on the ground floor, he's getting in on the top floor, and the elevator has only one way to go, which is down."
"What do you think, Chai, about the change in the normal corporate machinations?" said Melber. In the past, he noted, corporations relied on "lobbyists, intermediaries, a lot of executives like to have the distance, but Trump has demanded something different and he seems to be getting it," with Zuckerberg's video announcement of new policies, effectively begging the MAGA movement to support his company.
"This is beyond even simple greed," said Komanduri. "The innovation that Facebook had was the Like button. And if you watch the great movie 'The Social Network,' ... he was a guy who wanted people to like him. He was a guy who was basically pushed into lockers who looked a lot like Dana White, and rather than be a rebel and stay an outsider, or go full science nerd, which is what Bill Gates did, he said no, I want the guy who's pushing me in the locker to really like me. And he wants Trump and MAGA, the people who once bullied him and looked down on him, to like him. And that's what you see, a tremendous need and personal desire by Mark Zuckerberg to have the people who looked down on him once, to like him."
RAW STORY Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg tries on Orion AR glasses at the Meta Connect annual event at the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, California, U.S., September 25, 2024. REUTERS/Manuel Orbegozo/File Photo
Meta tech tycoon Mark Zuckerberg was raked over the coals as a "surrender monkey" by The Bulwark's Jonathan Last on Tuesday over his new spate of changes at his company that appear directly calculated to ingratiate himself to President-elect Donald Trump.
This comes after Zuckerberg paid a visit to Trump's estate at Mar-a-Lago, and as a number of tech billionaires are under fire — even from some Trump supporters — as their companies give millions to fund Trump's inauguration festivities.
"Yesterday Zuckerberg appointed Dana White to Meta’s board of directors. What are White’s relative qualifications for such a role? He, uh, manages Ultimate Fighting Championship? LOL no, obviously White’s qualification is that he is one of Donald Trump’s closest friends and top endorsers. He was literally all over the campaign stumping for Trump," wrote Last. Then, Zuckerberg's newly-appointed public policy strategist, former George W. Bush administration official Joel Kaplan, "went onto Donald Trump’s favorite morning show, Fox & Friends, and announced that Facebook is killing its fact-checking program and making its content moderation strategy more like Elon Musk’s Twitter/X regime. Because that has been such a success I’m Ron Burgundy?"
Zuckerberg is even announcing that the content moderation team will be moved to Texas to combat the impression that the operation is influenced by a liberal jurisdiction, Last noted.
What truly makes this so crazy, Last concluded, is the double standard of how tech CEOs treat administrations.
"In 2021 the Biden administration snubbed Elon Musk by not inviting him to a photo op. Musk was so outraged that he spent $44 billion to purchase a social media platform, and then used that platform to wage unrelenting war against Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and the entire Democratic party," he wrote.
By contrast, he said, Zuckerberg "preemptively gave portions of his company over as hostages in the hopes that Trump would let his business live in peace. Before the guy had even been sworn in. Tell me: What’s the point of being worth $209 billion if you can’t play offense against politicians who might target you and your business? Why is Zuckerberg acting like a surrender monkey instead of a titan of industry who has an infinite bankroll and ownership of key platforms?"
Four years ago, Donald Trump was kicked off Facebook -- this time around, Meta's policies are more likely to please conservatives - Copyright AFP Drew ANGERER Aurélia END
Tech leaders continue to fall in line around Donald Trump, with Facebook’s announcement that it would end its US fact-checking program the latest victory for the president-elect and his billionaire advisor Elon Musk.
Facebook parent Meta’s move into fact-checking came in the wake of Trump’s shock election in 2016, which critics said was enabled by rampant disinformation on Facebook and interference by foreign actors, including Russia, on the platform.
It was long-criticized by conservatives who found themselves ensnared in its anti-disinformation work.
Its paring down comes days before Trump’s inauguration, and after several US tech barons have pushed for a comfortable relationship with the incoming president.
Since the November election, a stream of senior moguls have traveled to meet with Trump at his Florida estate, including Zuckerberg as well as Apple CEO Tim Cook and Amazon founder and space tech executive Jeff Bezos.
Amazon and Meta have both announced $1 million donations to Trump’s inauguration fund, as reportedly has Apple’s Cook, in a personal capacity.
Musk, meanwhile, owner of influential social media platform X and the world’s richest person, is one of the president-elect’s closest advisors.
It’s all a far cry from when the Republican saw himself kicked off of Facebook and Twitter for the risk of inciting violence, following the storming of the US Capitol by supporters hoping to reverse the 2020 election results.
Four years later, tech companies are coming off a Joe Biden administration that shook up much of the sector with antitrust investigations — with the free speech, deregulatory outlook pushed by those in Trump’s orbit holding fresh appeal.
The fact-checking shake-up is “a decision that advances Zuckerberg’s business goals: fact-checking is difficult, expensive and controversial,” Ethan Zuckerman, a public policy professor who recently sued Meta over its algorithm policies, told AFP.
But for those in the right-wing tech sphere, the decision is a course correction.
“For those of us who have been fighting the free speech wars for years, this feels like a major victory and turning point,” investor David Sacks, set to take an artificial intelligence portfolio in Trump’s government, said.
He went on to thank the incoming president “for creating this political and cultural realignment.”
– ‘Probably’ a result of threats –
Trump has been a harsh critic of Meta and Zuckerberg for years, accusing the company of bias against him and threatening to retaliate once back in office.
When asked by reporters if he believed the fact-check move was a response to his threats against Zuckerberg, Trump responded: “Probably, yeah.”
A rapprochement between Zuckerberg and Trump has been a long time coming: Meta also recently put Trump ally Dana White on its board.
That decision, and the move to slash the fact-checking operations, came after Trump’s Federal Communications Commission pick, Brendan Carr, accused Facebook, Google and Apple of “playing central roles” in a “censorship cartel.”
Sam Altman, CEO at OpenAI, has meanwhile sent his own signals to the incoming administration, telling conservative broadcaster Fox News in December he was confident Trump would keep the United States a leading player in the artificial intelligence sector.
His response to Musk’s influence in the incoming administration — which has sparked warnings of conflicts of interest — was also warm.
“It would be profoundly un-American to use political power to hurt your competitors and advantage your own businesses,” Altman said, adding “I believe pretty strongly that Elon will do the right thing.”
– Musk signals approval –
Brown University political science professor Wendy Schiller is not surprised that social media companies like Meta are walking away from fact-checking because political parties and social media companies thrive when there is division.
He adds, however, that “the saving grace may be that there are still a number of competitive social media outlets so that no single person or company controls all the flow of information, and that includes government.”
Facebook will be replacing its fact-checking program with a “community notes” style feature, similar to the one used on Musk’s X platform.
Musk quickly signaled his approval, calling the change “cool.”
AFP currently works in 26 languages with Facebook’s fact-checking program, in which Facebook pays to use fact-checks from around 80 organizations globally on its platform, WhatsApp and Instagram.
Divisive study finds link between fluoride and childhood IQ loss
Agence France-Presse January 6, 2025 Introduced in the United States in 1945, community water fluoridation quickly reduced cavities in children and tooth loss in adults, earning recognition as one of the greatest public health achievements of the 20th century (JUSTIN SULLIVAN/AFP)
A controversial new study out Monday in a U.S. medical journal could reignite debate over fluoride's safety in water, linking higher exposure levels to lower IQ in children.
Published in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Pediatrics, it has sparked pushback from some scientists who criticize the study's methods, defend the mineral's proven dental benefits, and warn the findings may not directly apply to typical US water fluoridation levels.
Its release comes as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office. His health secretary nominee, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is a vocal critic of fluoridated water, which currently serves over 200 million Americans, or nearly two-thirds of the population.
Researchers from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) reviewed 74 studies on fluoride exposure and children's IQ conducted in 10 countries including Canada, China, and India.
The same scientists helped formulate an official government recommendation in August that there is "moderate confidence" that higher levels of fluoride are linked to lower IQ scores.
Now, the team led by Kyla Taylor told AFP the new analysis found a "statistically significant association" between fluoride exposure and reduced IQ scores.
Specifically, the study estimates that for every 1 milligram per liter increase in urinary fluoride -- a marker of overall exposure -- children's IQ drops by 1.63 points. - Study limitations-
Fluoride's neurotoxicity at high doses is well known, but the controversy lies in the study's suggestion that exposure below 1.5 milligrams per liter -- currently the World Health Organization's safety limit -- may also affect children's IQ.
Crucially, the paper does not clarify how much lower than 1.5 mg/L could be dangerous, leaving questions about whether the US guideline of 0.7 mg/L needs adjustment.
The authors acknowledged that "there were not enough data to determine if 0.7 mg/L of fluoride exposure in drinking water affected children's IQ."
Steven Levy, a member of the national fluoride committee for the American Dental Association, raised significant concerns about the study's methodology.
He pointed out that 52 of the 74 studies reviewed were rated "low quality" by the authors themselves but were still included in the analysis.
"Almost all of the studies have been done in other settings where there are other contaminants, other things we call confounding factors," he told AFP, citing coal pollution in China as an example.
Levy also questioned the study's use of single-point urine samples instead of 24-hour collections, which provide greater accuracy, as well as the challenges in reliably assessing young children's IQ.
With so many uncertainties, Levy argued in an editorial accompanying the study that current policies "should not be affected by the study findings."
The journal also published an editorial commending the study for its methodological rigor. - Balancing gains against risks -
On the other side of the debate, the benefits of water fluoridation are well documented.
Introduced in the United States in 1945, it quickly reduced cavities in children and tooth loss in adults, earning recognition from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as one of the greatest public health achievements of the 20th century.
Fluoride, which also occurs naturally in varying levels, helps restore minerals lost to acid breakdown in teeth, reduces acid production by cavity-causing bacteria, and makes it harder for these bacteria to stick to the teeth.
However, with fluoride toothpastes widely available since the 1960s, some research suggests diminishing returns.
Proponents argue fluoridation reduces socioeconomic disparities in dental care, while critics warn it may pose greater risks of neurological harm to vulnerable communities.
"Evidence on the effects of adjusting levels of fluoride or interrupting community water fluoridation programs is critically needed, especially within the context of the US," Fernando Hugo, Chair of the NYU College of Dentistry, told AFP.
Planning for spring’s garden? Bees like variety and don’t care about your neighbors’ yards
The Conversation January 7, 2025 Bee on a Flower (Photo: Keith McDuffee/flickr/cc)
In order to reproduce, most flowering plants rely on animals to move their pollen. In turn, pollinators rely on flowers for food, including both nectar and pollen. If you’re a gardener, you might want to support this partnership by planting flowers. But if you live in an area without a lot of green space, you might wonder whether it’s worth the effort.
I study bees and other pollinators. My new research shows that bees, in particular, don’t really care about the landscape surrounding flower gardens. They seem to zero in on the particular types of flowers they like, no matter what else is around.
To design a garden that supports the greatest number and diversity of pollinators, don’t worry about what your neighbors are doing or not doing. Just focus on planting different kinds of flowers – and lots of them.
Comparing different landscapes
To test whether bees are more plentiful in natural areas, myteam and I planted identical gardens – roughly 10 feet by 6½ feet (3 x 2 meters) – in five different landscapes around eastern Tennessee that ranged from cattle pastures and organic farms to a botanical garden and an arboretum. All five gardens were planted in March of 2019 and contained 18 species of native perennials from the mint, sunflower and pea families.
Sampling bugs in one of the test gardens. Laura Russo, CC BY-SA
Over the course of the flowering season, we surveyed pollinators by collecting the insects that landed on the flowers, so we could count and identify them. The sampling took place in a carefully standardized way. Each week we sampled every flowering plant in every garden, in every landscape, for five minutes each. We used a modified, hand-held vacuum we called the “Bug Vac” and repeated this sampling every week that flowers were in bloom for three years.
We wanted to test whether the area immediately surrounding the gardens – the floral neighborhood – made a difference in pollinator abundance, diversity and identity. So we also surveyed the area around the gardens, in a radius of about 160 feet (roughly 50 meters).
To our surprise, we found the surrounding terrain had very little influence on the abundance, diversity and composition of the pollinators coming to our test gardens. Instead, they were mostly determined by the number and type of flowers. Otherwise, pollinators were remarkably similar at all sites. A sunflower in a cattle pasture had, by and large, the same number and types of visitors as a sunflower in a botanical garden. Menu planning for pollinators
We used native perennial plants in our study because there’s evidence they provide the best nutrition for flower-visiting insects. We chose from three plant families because each offers different nourishment.
Plants in the mint family (Lamiaceae), for example, provide a lot of sugary nectar and have easily accessible flowers that attract a wide variety of insects. I’d recommend including plants from the mint family if you want to provide a large and diverse group of insects energy for flight. If you live in Tennessee, some examples are mountain mint, wood mint and Cumberland rosemary. You can easily search for perennial plants native to your area.
A long-horned bee and an ironweed plant helping each other out. Ryan Sepsy
While some pollinators enjoy nectar, others get all their fat and protein from eating just the pollen itself. Flowers from the sunflower family (Asteraceae), including asters and coreopsis, offer large quantities of both pollen and nectar and also have very accessible flowers. Plants from this family are good for a range of pollinators, including many specialist bees, such as the blue-eyed, long-horned bee (Melissodes denticulatus), which feasts primarily on ironweed (Vernonia fasciculata), also a member of the sunflower family.
If you want to offer flowers that have the highest protein content to nourish the next generation of strong pollinators, consider plants from the pea family (Fabaceae), such as dwarf indigo, false indigo and bush clover. Some of the plants in this family do not even offer nectar as a reward. Instead, they provide high protein pollen that’s accessible only to the most effective pollinators. If you include plants from the pea family in your garden, you may observe fewer visitors, but they will be receiving pollen with high protein levels.
Selecting a few native perennials from each of these three families, all widely available in garden centers, is a good place to start. Just as a diversity of food is important for human health, a mixture of flower types offers pollinators a varied and healthy diet. Interestingly, the diversity of human diets is directly linked to pollinators, because most of the color and variety in human diets comes from plants pollinated by insects.
Plant it and they will come
Maybe you’ve heard that insects worldwide are declining in number and variety. This issue is of particular concern for humans, who rely on insects and other animals to pollinate food crops. Pollinators are indeed facing many threats, from habitat loss to pesticide exposure.
Thankfully, gardeners can provide an incredible service to these valuable animals just by planting more flowers. As our research shows, small patches of garden can help boost pollinators – even when the surrounding landscape has few resources for them. The one constant in all our research is that insects love flowers. The more flowers and the more types of flowers, the more pollinators Earth will have.
Despite all the attention on technologies that reduce the hands-on role of humans at work – such as self-driving vehicles, robot workers, artificial intelligence and so on – researchers in the field of neuroergonomics are using technology to improve how humans perform in their roles at work.
Neuroergonomics is the study of human behavior while carrying out real-world activities, including in the workplace. It involves recording a person’s brain activity in different situations or while completing certain tasks to optimize cognitive performance. For example, neuroergonomics could monitor employees as they learn new material to determine when they have mastered it. It could also help monitor fatigue in employees in roles that require optimum vigilance and determine when they need to be relieved.
Until now, research in neuroergonomics could only be conducted in highly controlled clinical laboratory environments using invasive procedures. But engineering advances now make this work possible in real-world settings with noninvasive, wearable devices. The market for this neurotechnology – defined as any technology that interfaces with the nervous system – is predicted to grow to US$21 billion by 2026 and is poised to shape the daily life of workers for many industries in the years ahead.
But this advance doesn’t come without risk.
In my work as a biomedical engineer and occupational medicine physician, I study how to improve the health, well-being and productivity of workers. Neurotechnology often focuses on how workers could use wearable brain monitoring technologies to improve brain function and performance during tasks. But neuroergonomics could also be used to better understand the human experience at work and adapt tasks and procedures to the person, not the other way around. Capturing brain activity
The two most commonly used neuroergonomic wearable devices capture brain activity in different ways. Electroencephalography, or EEG, measures changes in electrical activity using electrodes attached to the scalp. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy, or fNIRS, measures changes in metabolic activity. It does this by passing infrared light through the skull to monitor blood flow.
Both methods can monitor brain activity in real time as it responds to different situations, such as a high-pressure work assignment or difficult task. For example, a study using fNIRS to monitor the brain activity of people engaged in a 30-minute sustained attention task saw significant differences in reaction time between the beginning and the end of the task. This can be critical in security- and safety-related roles that require sustained attention, such as air traffic controllers and police officers.
Neuroergonomics also studies how brain stimulation could be used to improve brain activity. These include neuromodulation technologies like transcranial electrical stimulation, or tES; transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS; or focused ultrasound stimulation, or FUS. For example, studies have shown that applying tES while learning a cognitive training task can lead to immediate improvements in performance that persist even on the following day. Another study found that tES may also help improve performance on tasks that involve motor skills, with potential applications in surgical skills training, military tasks and athletic performance. High-stakes ethical questions
The use of neurotechnology in the workplace has global implications and high stakes. Advocates say neurotechnology can encourage economic growth and the betterment of society. Those against neurotechnology caution that it could fuel inequity and undermine democracy, among other possible unknown consequences.
Ushering in a new era of individualized brain monitoring and enhancement poses many ethical questions. Answering those questions requires all stakeholders – workers, occupational health professionals, lawyers, government officials, scientists, ethicists and others – to address them.
For example, how should an individual’s brain activity data be protected? There is reason to suspect that brain activity data wouldn’t be covered by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, because it isn’t considered medical or health data. Additional privacy regulations may be needed.
Additionally, do employers have the right to require workers to comply with the use of neuroergonomic devices? The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 prevents discrimination against workers based on their genetic data. Similar legislation could help protect workers who refuse to allow the collection of their brain information from being fired or denied insurance.
Protecting workers
The data neurotechnology collects could be used in ways that help or hurt the worker, and the potential for abuse is significant.
Employers may be able to use neurotechnology to diagnose brain-related diseases that could lead to medical treatment but also discrimination. They may also monitor how individual workers respond to different situations, gathering insights on their behavior that could adversely affect their employment or insurance status.
Just as computers and the internet have transformed life, neurotechnologies in the workplace could bring even more profound changes in the coming decades. These technologies may enable more seamless integration between workers’ brains and their work environments, both enhancing productivity while also raising many neuroethical issues.
Bringing all stakeholders into the conversation can help ensure everyone is protected and create safer work environments aimed at solving tomorrow’s challenges. Paul Brandt-Rauf, Professor and Dean of Biomedical Engineering, Drexel University
Op-Ed: The future of work — A shower cap full of electrodes on your head?
By Paul Wallis DIGITAL JOURNAL PublishedJanuary 7, 2025
Image by Andrea De Santis on unsplash
It’s called neuroergonomics, coming to an idiotic management team near you, eventually.
It’s about “studying brain performance at work and in everyday settings”. It’s sort of like surveillance, but much, much, dumber.
This tech is pretty basic. Its advocates use all the familiar sales pitches. There’s no indication of peer evaluation. It uses EEGs and metabolic monitoring, just a step up from last century. It also uses “transcranial magnetic stimulation”, which is used to provide “improvements during training”.
If you think about the expression “at work”, a few things may have already come to mind, excuse the expression:
Most current jobs won’t exist anyway.
Strangely enough, cognitive training requires applied cognitive skills. How much cognition do you see in the world, let alone the workplace? Sounds more like a raffle.
Do you need neuro-anything when AI will do most of the work?
Neural science is in its somewhat brattish infancy at best.
This proto-level tech will be superseded pretty much immediately.
It’s likely to be extremely expensive. All that enthusiasm costs money, y’know.
You’ll be monitoring broke illiterates with the comprehension and literacy of an American.
There’s no information on whether management will be monitored.
The ethical issues are pretty well documented and very unimpressive. You can’t assume ethics will have any bearing on the actual use of the tech.
Imagine a performance review using this technology. It’s about the only thing that could be more farcical than the current performance reviews.
Highly stressed people in confined social spaces won’t do well with this tech. Lunatics, maybe. (It takes you six months to find out whether or not someone can do a job? Come off it, and you obviously can’t do your own job as a manager.)
Now’s my chance to endear myself to an entire sector –
Firstly – So what?
Who needs this tech?
The world seems to have survived without it.
Real-time monitoring of brainwaves seems like watching the dandruff pile up. Lacks depth. Imagine nitpicking about individual brainwaves.
It’s Management Science at its most mediocre.
(Have you guys ever managed anything at all, yourselves? Thought not.)
No thought seems to have gone into the environment in which this tech will be used. Add brain surveillance to the average hostile, insecure, partially insane workplace and what do you get? Nothing good, and nothing useful.
“A lawsuit with every headset” is far more likely than actual cost benefits.
The somewhat unsanitary stench of “B movie mind control cliches and plot lines” is hardly encouraging.
This tech could discriminate against individuals based on test outcomes. You can’t expect the science to help with that.
Remember this is the same science that will call anyone “neurodivergent” and pay itself lots to manage neurodivergence. The same science which has no comments to make on actual insanity and delusions at high levels.
How useful can this tech actually be to anyone?
There seem to be some performance metrics, mainly for people with medical conditions. Not in the workplace.
Why not?
Where are the usual “Aspiring halfwit Bozo Junior did a pirouette and back somersault on the differential equation and almost nobody got killed much”?
Imagine, O wary and wild-eyed reader:
You and your recently polished degree have had a stellar day at work. The strange owl-like neuro-person-thing even smiled at you as though you were worth smiling at. You take off your shower cap with electrodes and saunter effervescently back to your palatial cardboard box in Gangland.
Meh.
There’s too much to prove and nothing like enough proof.
Disclaimer The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.
OPINION
How the groveling Washington Post got it so terribly wrong
Rough of Ann Telnaes' cartoon killed by the Washington Post
On Thursday, October 25, 2024, I pronounced The Washington Post to be dead.
That was the day their wormy, billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, crashed through the wall separating news from business — fact from fiction — and had his henchman in the newsroom pull an editorial that was set to run that weekend endorsing the person who didn’t lead an attempted coup, Kamala Harris, for president of the United States of America.
As I said in my piece:
Their failure to make this endorsement goes beyond a catastrophic lack of judgment, because we know they know that what they are doing is nothing but a gutless attempt to appease a would-be dictator, Trump.
On Friday, WaPo was at it again, and this time it cost them the services of Ann Telnaes, the newspaper’s Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist, who said she was leaving the newspaper because it killed her cartoon (above) depicting Bezos of doing what he does best these days: falling at the fat, little feet of the despicable Trump.
Here’s how Telnaes put it on her Substack piece Friday night:
I’ve worked for the Washington Post since 2008 as an editorial cartoonist. I have had editorial feedback and productive conversations—and some differences—about cartoons I have submitted for publication, but in all that time I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at. Until now. The cartoon that was killed criticizes the billionaire tech and media chief executives who have been doing their best to curry favor with incoming President-elect Trump. There have been multiple articles recently about these men with lucrative government contracts and an interest in eliminating regulations making their way to Mar-a-lago. The group in the cartoon included Mark Zuckerberg/Facebook & Meta founder and CEO, Sam Altman/AI CEO, Patrick Soon-Shiong/LA Times publisher, the Walt Disney Company/ABC News, and Jeff Bezos/Washington Post owner. While it isn’t uncommon for editorial page editors to object to visual metaphors within a cartoon if it strikes that editor as unclear or isn’t correctly conveying the message intended by the cartoonist, such editorial criticism was not the case regarding this cartoon. To be clear, there have been instances where sketches have been rejected or revisions requested, but never because of the point of view inherent in the cartoon’s commentary. That’s a game changer…and dangerous for a free press.
I congratulate Telnaes for taking this difficult but important stand.
I have long been one of those grumpy newspaper veterans leery of providing cover to the alleged journalists in these newsrooms who go along just to get along so they can keep collecting a dirty paycheck.
Rather than stand up to censorship, they excuse it. These are dangerous times, and if we can’t count on our press to call power to account, we really are finished.
Journalism is about one thing: Getting at the truth and reporting it with alacrity. If you know you are working at a place that’s dealing in confusing shades of gray rather than the black-and-white truth of things, then you are not a journalist, you are an enabler.
As I read Telnaes’ piece last night, and reread it again this morning, it brought to mind a sporty incident I was involved in with an editorial cartoon as the Managing Editor of Stars & Stripes 22 years ago during the run-up to the ill-fated War in Iraq.
Back then, early-March, 2003, the saber-rattling was at full pitch, and the George W. Bush administration was pushing hard behind the scenes to make sure that in the event of an invasion, our military had access to a “northern front” into Iraq to squeeze its forces and hopefully bring about a relatively quick end to any hostilities.
This northern front would only be possible if Turkey allowed the flow of some 60,000 U.S. troops through its country and across its border to the south into Iraq.
Through the years, the Turks had been prickly, on-again, off-again allies of the U.S., and were once again predictably driving a hard bargain to give us the access we alleged we so desperately needed in the event of war.
While the behind-the-scenes negotiating between the two countries was heating up, Stars & Stripes went out with an editorial cartoon in our Op-Ed pages that depicted Lucy as Turkey, Charlie Brown as the United States, and the football Lucy was holding as the northern front.
(I tried to find this darn cartoon but was unable to. And a note: Stars & Stripes is prohibited from producing its own editorials or editorial cartoons, and instead uses editorials and/or cartoons from a suite of wire services that are relevant to the troops on its Op-Ed pages.)
By publishing this cartoon, Turkish leadership took it as an inference from the United States that they, Turkey, were ready to pull out of any deal just as the U.S. (Charlie Brown) was about to finally secure the coveted front they alleged was paramount to its success in a war.
Well, this absolutely infuriated the Turks, who took their significant ire to the Pentagon. “HOW,” they screamed, “Can the United States military’s very own newspaper, Stars & Stripes, ridicule Turkey’s honor like this in the middle of these sensitive negotiations???”
Then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld blew a fuse when he learned about the cartoon, and sent his high-ranking intermediaries in Department of Defense public affairs to come after Stars & Stripes hard for publishing this cartoon, and to let us know in no uncertain terms that we had played a part in costing the United States the coveted northern front.
Despite all their public bluster, Rumsfeld and his Pentagon knew full well there wasn’t a damn thing they could do about any of it, because Stars & Stripes was mandated by their bosses in the U.S. Congress to function as an editorially independent newspaper, with the mission of providing the same kind of news the troops and their families overseas would get if they were at home.
Most of all, it was a shining example of the difference between our two countries, in which one — the United States — had no control over a free and independent press, and the other — Turkey — believed these things could be suppressed.
This didn't stop Rumsfeld and his gang from emptying their clip at us editorial types at Stars & Stripes. They spent the first 15 minutes of the meeting lashing out at us and weren’t shy about ordering us to “stay in our lane.”
Finally, our publisher at the time decided very politely that he’d heard about enough out of them, and closed the meeting this way: “I find it sobering, and interesting, that the opinion contained in but one political cartoon can affect the fate of the most powerful military in the world’s plans to invade Iraq. Good to know who really has the power at this table ...”
Which takes me back to Telnaes’ piece where she types:
“As an editorial cartoonist, my job is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable.”
Amen.
Which should underline again just how catastrophic it is that the editorial department at The Washington Post has now gotten into the regular habit of censoring itself to appease the powerful.
