Facebook and Ethiopia

Facebook has rightly been charged with allowing its platform to be used to spread hate and even fomenting violent ethnic conflicts in Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and other countries, most recently in Ethiopia. It has moderators who make decisions based on internal guidelines about whether offending posts should be removed and their posters penalized but the process has been criticized for being opaque and the results erratic. In response to criticisms that this was inadequate, the company has created an additional structure that would adjudicate more controversial cases involving hate speech or speech that foments violence.The company created a body that has been called a ‘Facebook Supreme Court’ (FSC) consisting of a wide array of people from around the world that would review difficult cases to see if the decisions of the company were justified.
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Even blogging is too much work for Trump

After he was shut out of his favorite platforms of Twitter and Facebook for his serial lying and inflaming his supporters to stage an insurrection, Trump promised to start his own system to reach his fans. It turned out to be underwhelming, consisting of basically a blog that did not have the kinds of features that the major social media platforms provide that enable wider participation and it was the target of much derision by late night TV comedians. Today it was announced that he was shutting it down for good after less than a month, which will no doubt prompt more jokes.
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A difficult question on safety

In a post a few months ago, I linked to a Samantha Bee clip on sexual assault where she asked why the onus of safety was placed on women, with them being advised to take precautions, such as avoiding being alone in isolated places at night, when it is the behavior of men that is the problem and should change. Women should have the right to be anywhere at any time without fear of being attacked.

This question has come up with how the media should report violent attacks on women. Chris Quinn is the editor of Cleveland.com, the online affiliate of the Plain Dealer newspaper. He sends out a newsletter and recently he described the challenge that this places on news reporting because they cannot duck this issue and have to decide what facts are pertinent when reporting a story. I reproduce most of it here because he describes the problem well and he links to a discussion he had with two female colleagues about this issue who had different views from him.
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Why are professional athletes forced to speak after matches?

It is common after sporting events to have the press interview various players after each match. I had assumed that participating was voluntary but that professional athletes would welcome the chance to increase their profile by doing so. But apparently, at least in professional tennis, they are forced to subject themselves to post-game interviews and this odd aspect has come into sharp focus in the case of tennis player Naomi Osaka.
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More on the Bob Garfield firing

I wrote a few days ago about long-time co-host of the public radio show On The Media for ‘bullying’. He issued a statement on Twitter saying that he had been fired not for “bullying, per se but for yelling in 5 meeting over 20 years” and that “the provocations were just shocking. In time the story will emerge and it is tragic.”

So I listened on Friday to the first show after the firing. Co-host Brooke Gladstone spent a couple of minutes at the beginning about the case.


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Bob Garfield fired from On The Media

I am a regular listener and supporter of the public radio show On The Media whose co-hosts over its 20-year history have been Brooke Gladstone and Bob Garfield. I have frequently linked to clips from the show, most recently just yesterday. Hence I was shocked to learn later that same day that Garfield has been fired from the show.

Bob Garfield, host of the public radio show and podcast On The Media, has been fired. According to a statement from New York Public Radio, an outside investigation found that Garfield violated the company’s anti-bullying policy. Garfield was the subject of a similar investigation in 2020 that resulted in, “disciplinary action and a warning about consequences if the behavior continued.”

On Twitter, the veteran journalist and critic denied that he was fired for, “bullying, per se but for yelling in 5 meetings over 20 years.” Garfield continued, “the provocations were just shocking. In time the story will emerge and it is tragic.”

I found Garfield to be a good interviewer with a droll sense of humor and and sharp sense of irony. His laid back manner on air did not prepare me for the charge that he had a bullying attitude, which just shows that one never knows how closely the public and private personas of people mesh.

The pro-Israel propaganda machine is beginning to sputter

Nowhere is the propaganda system in the US on full display than when it covers the way that Israel treats the Palestinians. There is a full-throated attempt to minimize the war crimes of Israel and maximize the threats posed by Hamas.

As an example, on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday, their analyst Domenico Montenaro said that the US has been viewed as a ‘neutral third party’ in the conflict until Tump moved more in in favor of Israel. The idea that the US has been a neutral party is laughable on its face, a delusion that exists only in the minds of establishment journalists who are afraid of running afoul of the Israel lobby in the US that is swift to attack those who step outside the bounds of allowed discourse. The reality is that the US has for decades been joined at the hip to Israel, providing support and cover for its apartheid and ethnic-cleansing policies.
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The New Yorker article on UFOs

The New Yorker has a reputation for being a serious magazine. It is famed for its rigorous fact-checking of its pieces. So when I came across an article in the May 10, 2021 issue titled How the Pentagon Started Taking U.F.O.s Seriously, I took the article seriously. My attitude towards UFOs is, I suspect, similar to that of many, deep skepticism about the claims that extra-terrestrials have visited us but that the issue is not worth the effort to look into and debunk each and every claim closely.
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Newsmax apologizes for election fraud allegations

The right-wing media organization that is owned and run Christopher Ruddy, a close friend of Trump, has withdrawn its claim that Dominion Voting System’s head of product strategy and security Eric Coomer colluded with Antifa to rig the elections results so that Trump would lose. Coomer has been subjected to death threats as a result and had for a while gone into hiding. He had sued Newsmax for defamation.

Coomer sued Newsmax in December in state court in Colorado over false claims that he took part in an “Antifa conference call” to rig the 2020 presidential election against Donald Trump. He revised his lawsuit in February to bolster his claims against Newsmax, as Insider previously reported.
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Coomer first became the subject of conspiracy theories after Joe Oltmann, a right-wing political operative, claimed without evidence that he was a member of “Antifa” — a loosely linked group of left-wing activists who oppose fascist movements — and worked to rig the 2020 election.

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