It turns out that it is not just journalists like David Miranda and Laura Poitras who are detained and questioned at length when they arrive at airports in the US and the UK. Now comes a report that even reporters from establishment media like the New York Times have suffered the same fate. [Read more…]

So Time magazine has chosen Pope Francis as its Person of the Year. I can’t say that I am surprised. It is just the kind of choice they like, that will generate interest and perhaps hits and sells magazines, but not arouse any great controversy. [Read more…]

Bloomberg news has been having a conflict with the Chinese government after it ran a series of stories about the wealth of senior Chinese government officials. In seeming retaliation for this, a British reporter for Bloomberg was not allowed to attend a press conference with British prime minister David Cameron and his Chinese counterpart in Beijing yesterday. [Read more…]

Back in 2008, I wrote a 12-part series titled The Propaganda Machine in which I laid out how the right-wing propaganda machine works in the US. Much of that machine became created because of what is now known as the Powell Memo. [Read more…]

Bob Woodward, courtier journalist par excellence and faithful servant of the ruling political class, laments the fact that Edward Snowden didn’t come to him with his revelations, saying “I wish he had come to me instead of others, particularly The Guardian… I would have said to him ‘let’s not reveal who you are. Let’s make you a protected source and give me time with this data and let’s sort it out and present it in a coherent way.'” [Read more…]

David Miranda is Glenn Greenwald’s partner and became much better known when he was detained and interrogated at Heathrow airport for nearly nine hours and had his computer and other electronic equipment confiscated because the British authorities suspected that he was carrying Edward Snowden-related materials from Germany to Brazil. [Read more…]