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Contents contributed and discussions participated by Ed Webb

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Ed Webb

'Lone wolf' or 'terrorist'? How bias can shape news coverage | Poynter - 0 views

www.poynter.org/...w-bias-can-shape-news-coverage

media history terrorism terror journalism US USA violence crime analysis ethics empire

shared by Ed Webb on 03 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • take a moment to remember U.S. history (or even a few seconds to do an internet search) and it’s easy to find many examples of far deadlier shootings. It’s a sad reality that most victims of the worst massacres that don’t rate a mention were people of color: Native Americans and African-Americans
  • there have been much worse atrocities and mass shootings committed against Native peoples going back to the beginnings of our country’s history
  • The unwelcome title of largest massacre might belong to Bear River, Utah, where at least 250 Native Americans were slaughtered in 1863; Native American historical accounts put the number at more than 450. In 1890, Native American men, women and children were massacred at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, with estimates of the death toll ranging from 150 to 300.
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  • Just 100 years ago this June, armed whites rampaged through East St. Louis, slaughtering more than 100 African-Americans. In Tulsa in 1921, white mobs attacked a wealthy black neighborhood, killing as many as 300 people and leaving 8,000 homeless in what was wrongly labeled a “race riot” and left out of history texts until recently.
  • after mass attacks perpetrated by brown Muslim assailants, such as the Orlando Pulse massacre or the San Bernardino, California, killings, the media, authorities and politicians were quick to label them “terrorism” even before we had full information
  • Just because someone’s angry or even mentally ill doesn’t mean their actions aren’t those of a domestic terrorist (see U.S. Code definition above). As Joshua Keating points out in Slate, being distraught and a terrorist are “not mutually exclusive.” A 2013 study of violence by far-right extremists in America in Criminology and Public Policy found 40 percent of “lone wolf” domestic terrorists had a history of mental illness
  • Fox News dubiously described the shooter’s father’s life as “colorful,” as if it were entertaining that the man’s father robbed a string of banks, was sentenced to 20 years in prison, and busted out of a federal penitentiary. Can you imagine a black, Muslim or Latino’s long criminal record being described in the same way?
  • Underlying this bias is the implication that Muslims or brown immigrants are more dangerous to Americans’ safety than white attackers. That is provably false, based on government statistics – yet it was the central narrative of President Trump’s campaign
  • according to an analysis by the Cato Institute’s Alex Nowrasteh of fatal terrorism on U.S. soil from 1975 through 2015 – including the staggeringly high toll of the 9/11 attacks – the chances of an American being killed in a terror attack on U.S. soil by a foreigner was a miniscule 1 in 3.6 million per year. The chances of being killed by an illegal immigrant in the same 41-year period was an infinitesimal 1 in 10.9 billion per year.
Ed Webb

Tunisia's Dying Jazz | Foreign Policy - 0 views

foreignpolicy.com/...ng-jazz-stambeli-chedli-bidali

Tunisia politics transition religion music art censorship Salafism

shared by Ed Webb on 28 Sep 17 - No Cached
  • Bidali is one of the last living practitioners of stambeli, a uniquely Tunisian hybrid of musical genre, healing practice, and religious ceremony. It’s deeply rooted in the history of a specific community: the descendants of slaves brought to the region from sub-Saharan Africa during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It also has close links to Sufism, an ancient form of Islamic mysticism that uses music, dance, and rhythm to induce trance-like states that are supposed to bring listeners closer to the essence of the divine
  • President Habib Bourguiba, Tunisia’s first postcolonial leader, gave state support to many forms of art, but stambeli wasn’t among them; it didn’t fit the modern image of the country he was trying to shape
  • while subsequent police crackdowns have landed Salafists of all stripes in jail, some of the trends they promoted, such as moral self-policing and austere interpretations of Islamic cultural heritage, have taken root in society. With its unorthodox religious associations, stambeli has found itself in the firing line
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  • because of the rising influence of orthodox interpretations of the faith, stambeli artists are careful to stress the monotheistic, Islamic essence of their practice
  • The origins of stambeli music resemble those of American jazz (even though the two genres don’t sound alike). In both cases, the musical traditions of former slaves combined with the diverse cultural influences of their new environments to create something radically new. Whereas slaves arriving in Louisiana mixed their music and practices with European, Caribbean, and American ingredients, slaves arriving in Tunis during the same period fused their animist practices with North African versions of mystical Sufism and orthodox Islam. Mounir Argui, a theater director and music producer who works with Bidali, says that the metal castanets that play such a prominent role in stambeli performances evoke “the sounds of chains and shackles” that the slaves once wore, while the chanting recalls the “moaning.”
  • the Tunisian state never prioritized the preservation of stambeli, focusing instead on the art and culture it considered highbrow
  • Many Tunisians see stambeli as an alien phenomenon associated with blacks, who are already widely viewed as not quite Tunisian. In post-revolutionary Tunisia, where asserting the Islamic character of the country has become an important political symbol for some, the pagan origins of stambeli also cause suspicion
  • As long as some Tunisians continue to see freedom of religion and freedom of art as mutually exclusive, the rare traditions like stambeli that manage to straddle both will find little space
Ed Webb

Women's Testimonies of the Tunisian Uprising (2011-2015) - 0 views

muftah.org/he-tunisian-uprising-2011-2015

Tunisia uprising politics women gender history Bourguiba UGTT bloggers activists books

shared by Ed Webb on 22 Sep 17 - Cached
  • Testimonial narratives are an essential feature of intellectual life in post-totalitarian societies. Post-Soviet Eastern Europe, post-dictatorial Latin America, and post-Apartheid South Africa all witnessed a proliferation of autobiographical accounts by victims of the ancien régime, seeking to reclaim their public voice. Currently, post-Ben Ali Tunisia is witnessing the same phenomenon. More and more activists and intellectuals have begun reflecting on the past, in order to forge the country’s future. What is remarkable about this wave is the increasing number of women, including both activists and intellectuals, who have written autobiographical accounts of the uprising and its aftermath
  • For Tunisian activists and intellectuals, the urgency of remembering the past, in order to make sense of it, has been driven by the realization that authoritarianism can easily return in a different form
  • As violence was increasing on the religious right, politicians on the secular left were encumbered by internal disagreements and unable to muster an appropriate response. As a result, the “old left’s” weakness and concomitant rise of the Islamist right have figured prominently in the testimonies of Tunisian women activists and intellectuals. Indeed, the testimonies published so far have mostly been triggered by a fear of an Islamist takeover of Tunisia’s newly-liberated public sphere
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  • Published in the first few months after the 2011 uprising, Ben Mhenni’s book is the most euphoric of the four testimonies. Much of the narrative is a celebration of the power of cyber dissidence, which Ben Mhenni defines as a combination of citizen journalism (blogging and filming events) and on-the-ground activism
  • While acknowledging how her parents’ history of resistance as members of the UGTT prepared her for a life of activism, Ben Mhenni attributes much of her political development to the “real-world” friendships she established with cyber dissidents in the Tunisian blogosphere.
  • This testimony is more chronological and personal than Ben Mhenni’s. It constructs the author’s life teleologically as a journey from bourgeois indifference in suburbia to grassroots activism in the country’s downtrodden interior. It also documents Ben Mbarek’s co-founding of the civil rights network, Dostourna, which marked her renewed faith in “the power of citizens.”
  • Like Ben Mhenni, Ben Mbarek celebrates the politicizing power of social media, crediting Facebook for encouraging the rise of citizen journalism, which sparked her political (re)awakening. As she argues, it was thanks to citizen journalists from besieged cities that she finally felt connected to the leftist cause long championed by her father.
  • As a professor of philosophy, Belhaj Yahia champions the values of the Enlightenment and believes in the vital importance of dialogue. Accordingly, her text probes the origins of the discord between Islamists and secularists, in order to understand the tensions marking the post-Ben Ali period
  • Convinced that the stultifying bureaucracy of political parties made them incapable of meeting the demands of the leaderless Arab Spring revolt, Ben Mbarek sought to create autonomous regional cells of civil rights activists throughout the country. Their job would be to address each region’s specific political needs
  • she analyzes the “schizophrenic” discourses of her diasporic family members and the “narcissistic wounds” of old dissidents, who are now mimicking Ben Ali’s authoritarianism. She also critiques the regional and class disparities perpetrated by the old regime
  • Belhaj Yahia believes she is the product of a moderate and worldly national education, which is currently under threat in Tunisia. She locates this threat in the state’s gradual abandonment of public education and the resurgence of conservative ideologies
  • Her book ends with a call for other Tunisians to publish their own self-reflections, in the belief that writing and reading autobiographical accounts can pave the way for more understanding between the different factions comprising Tunisian society.
  • Fakhfakh’s book is a fictionalized diary written between January 14, 2011, the day of Ben Ali’s ouster, and May 18, 2015
  • Each diary entry is comprised of two parts. The first part is a summary of national and regional events with a brief commentary from the author; the second part is a biography of a pioneering Tunisian woman
  • As the author notes throughout the book, state attempts to propagate an institutional-form of feminism have devalued women’s history
  • The author worries that women’s achievements are constantly erased, in order to accommodate the ego of male leaders, like Bourguiba. She is also concerned that the rise of political Islam may eventually obscure Tunisian women’s “legacy of freedom” even further
  • Fakhfakh embraces the narrative of “Tunisian exceptionalism,” in which Tunisian women are presented as the most progressive in the Arab and Islamic world. This nationalist mythology about Tunisian women is common, even among Tunisian intellectuals, and is used as a means of differentiating and elevating Tunisian women above Arab and Muslim women more broadly. The inherent divisiveness of this narrative is problematic, and is left unexamined in Fakhfakh’s book
Ed Webb

The Wall Street Journal's Trump problem | Media | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...-street-journals-trump-problem

journalism newspaper US USA politics Murdoch Trump

shared by Ed Webb on 11 Sep 17 - No Cached
  • “The Journal has done a lot of good work in covering the Trump administration, but not nearly as much as it should have,” another recent departee said. “I lay almost all of that at Gerry’s doorstep. Political editors and reporters find themselves either directly stymied by Gerry’s interference or shave the edges off their stories in advance to try to please him (and, by extension, Murdoch).”
  • “This is the most access he has had to a sitting president ever – that is something he’s tried to do and has done in other countries particularly with British prime ministers,” Ellison said. “He’s choosing his own personal access over having any journalistic clout.” Murdoch bought the newspaper in 2007, but initially it was thought to be one of the few outlets in his portfolio impervious to his political influence. In the Trump era, some staff fear that seems to be changing fast.
  • Throughout the campaign, Ivanka was a trustee of the $300m fortune allocated to Murdoch’s daughters with Deng, stepping down only after the financial connection became public.
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  • Baker, a British columnist who was promoted from the paper’s deputy role in 2012, came onto Trump’s radar early in the 2016 presidential campaign, when he moderated a Fox Business Network GOP primary debate in November 2015. Trump liked Baker’s handling of the debate, especially compared to that of Fox News’ Megyn Kelly, who had grilled Trump on his treatment of women at an earlier debate in August. During Baker’s debate, the future president largely evaded tough questioning and enjoyed more airtime than anyone else on stage. “He was unbelievably charming afterwards,” Baker said of Trump at the time. “He came up to me and said, ‘That was an extraordinarily elegant debate. You handled it incredibly well.’”
  • The leaks of Baker’s emails were seen as evidence of rebellion from Journal staffers who felt unduly pressured to go soft on Trump.
  • a concern many Journal staffers have about the conservative exceptionalism of Baker, who still sometimes writes opinion columns – as he did after Brexit and the US election – in addition to his duties as the paper’s top editor. In particular, staffers past and present worry about editorial coverage seeping into the news side – what one ex-staffer described as “mixing church and state.”
  • The Journal is the rare publication of record that has managed to largely (though not entirely) escape that “fake news” slur, while – unlike, say, Trump-friendly outlets like Fox News, Breitbart and Sinclair Media Group – maintaining a strong commitment to journalistic standards and facts.
  • By adhering to the conservative worldview – newly supercharged by Trump – that all media skews liberal, Baker just may have helped the Journal straddle the divide between readers who want their information from a trustworthy outlet and those typically skeptical of journalism as an institution.
  • many staffers aren’t satisfied to be the best media voice in the Trump echo chamber, given the Journal’s history as one of the top papers in the country, with 16 newsroom Pulitzer prizes under pre-Murdoch editor Paul Steiger between 1991 and 2007 (only one more has been added in the Murdoch era).
  • In November, Poynter reported that 48 Journal employees had accepted buyouts – a trend seen across the media industry. In the months that followed, more staffers opted for the door. The departures include two top White House reporters, well-respected political and policy reporters, veteran foreign correspondents, and virtually the entire national security team, some of whom were poached by the Washington Post. Recently, the Journal has made some effort to regroup after the loss of these stars, hiring a number of reporters in its Washington bureau, but not at a rate high enough to replace the talent they have lost and mainly involving more junior reporters.
  • Some reporters the Guardian spoke with made clear they never felt their stories were compromised and dismissed concerns about Murdoch’s reach and Baker’s meddling, noting that any newsroom includes a healthy back-and-forth between editors and writers. Others said reporters, in the DC bureau especially, have had to fight to get their harder-hitting Trump stories published, if they get published at all. “Almost everyone in the newsroom has a story about their story or a story of a colleague’s getting killed,” said a reporter. “That happens in all newspapers, but the killings run in one direction.”
  • “There are growing indications that Mr Murdoch, a lifelong conservative, doesn’t just want to cover politics, he wants to play them as well,” David Carr, the late media critic, wrote in 2009, two years after Murdoch bought the paper. Carr noted that Baker, as early as 2010, when he was deputy managing editor, was already seen as pushing the WSJ into “adopting a more conservative tone, and editing and headlining articles to reflect a chronic skepticism of the [Obama] administration”. Murdoch has been known to use his publications to influence politics and business alike.
  • last year an ahead-of-the-curve piece on white supremacist Richard Spencer and the rise of the alt-right ran online – and was buzzworthy enough to be cited by Hillary Clinton. But it was spiked from the paper because Baker felt it unfair to make a connection between Trump and white nationalists, according to multiple sources in the newsroom at the time.
  • Recently, a reporter in the Washington bureau was chided by an editor for a tweet regarding Trump’s effects on the stock market, which was deemed to be too sharp on Trump, according to a colleague.
  • “Gerry’s saying ‘just report the facts’, but there’s a difference between journalism and stenography.”
Ed Webb

Saudi filmmakers build audiences without cinemas - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...7-8482-8dc9a7af29f9_story.html

KSA Saudi film media reform censorship

shared by Ed Webb on 07 Sep 17 - No Cached
  • By using the internet to show films, Telfaz11 and other Saudi production houses have managed to circumvent traditional distribution channels and make do without cinemas. Even so, Saudi filmmakers have to contend with how to tell their stories within the bounds of the kingdom’s ultraconservative mores and its limits on free speech.
  • The emergence of a Saudi film scene is happening as the kingdom begins to loosen the reins on fun and entertainment after nearly two decades without cinemas or concerts.
  • The government has also backed a Saudi film festival that’s taken place for the past few years in the eastern city of Dhahran. This year, some 60 Saudi films were screened.
Ed Webb

Egyptian intelligence services extend control over media | RSF - 0 views

rsf.org/...ices-extend-control-over-media

Egypt media TV newspapers censorship ownership Sisi

shared by Ed Webb on 06 Sep 17 - No Cached
  • Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is worried about the way Egyptian media outlets are being taken over by businessmen linked to the government and intelligence services. The regime’s domination of the media continues to grow and is even affecting pro-government media.
  • Al Hayat was quietly taken over at the end of August. The new owner’s identity has not yet been officially announced but several Egyptian media outlets have reported that it was acquired by Falcon, a successful Egyptian security company whose CEO is a former senior military intelligence officer and a former head of the radio and TV regulatory agency.
  • the financial pressure came shortly after Al Wafd’s representatives in parliament expressed their opposition to the government’s controversial plan to hand over two strategic islands, Tiran and Sanafir, to Saudi Arabia
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  • A former military intelligence officer, who was also an armed forces spokesman, took charge of Al Asema TV in January.
  • ONTV, a popular TV channel that supported the government while occasionally broadcasting critical comments, was taken over in May 2016 by Ahmed Abu Hashima, a powerful multi-millionaire steel magnate said to be close to military intelligence and to President Abdel- Fattah al-Sisi. A month after the acquisition, the authorities expelled Liliane Daoud, a well-known ONTV programme presenter with a reputation for journalistic integrity. She was deportable because she has British and Lebanese dual nationality.
  • Hashima bought two other TV channels, Al Nahar and CBC, and four newspapers, Sout Al Omma, Ain, Dot Masr and Al Youm al Sabea, in 2016.
  • the editor had told that that “President Sisi is the newspaper’s new owner” and that it could therefore not continue to employ critical journalists
  • the government’s influence over the broadcast media landscape was also significantly enhanced in 2016 by the creation of a DMC, a major new TV network with a range of news, sports and entertainment channels. Dubbed “the mouthpiece of the intelligence services” by some journalists and launched with a patriotic anthem and Koranic chants, DMC gets permission to film where other privately-owned TV channels are denied access. It is also known to broadcast interviews that are presented as exclusives but just reiterate the regime’s pro-security, anti-Muslim Brotherhood dogma
Ed Webb

Prison for dabbing: Saudi entertainer locked up for 'inciting drug abuse' | Middle East... - 0 views

www.middleeasteye.net/...inciting-drug-abuse-1319887990

Saudi KSA popularculture popculture narcotics drugs media music idiocy

shared by Ed Webb on 10 Aug 17 - No Cached
  • The move is officially banned by the Saudi Interior Ministry’s National Drug Control Commission, which consider the move to be a reference to cannabis consumption.
  • “the move is a well-known move…known to represent smoking hashish which leads to addiction.”He added that there was “no doubt” that anyone taking part in the move would be subject to questioning and punishment.The move could warrant a prison sentence, a fine or both.
Ed Webb

"Left Behind": Young Photographers Capture Marginalization in Tunisia | International C... - 0 views

www.ictj.org/...aphers-marginalization-tunisia

Tunisia Photography youth economy politics images

shared by Ed Webb on 17 Jun 17 - No Cached
  • Marginalization affects Tunisians across generations, but has particularly pronounced impacts on young people. This has led to deepening social and generational gaps and a growing mistrust in the state among the country’s youth. This in turn complicates the task of confronting the past in Tunisia: young people led the movements that sparked the revolution, but transitional justice mechanisms have not significantly incorporated young people’s voices.
  • photo essays of the four participants, which comprise the exhibition titled “Marginalization in Tunisia: Images of an Invisible Repression.”
Ed Webb

Qatar's Gulf Allies Have Had Enough of Doha's Broken Promises - 0 views

www.newsweek.com/inks-its-gulf-neighbors-620948

GCC Qatar KSA Saudi UAE Bahrain diplomacy media analysis

shared by Ed Webb on 05 Jun 17 - No Cached
  • Citizens of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states woke up on Monday morning to what is the most severe crisis in the regional block’s 38 year history to date. In a closely coordinated series of statements, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE, along with Egypt, announced the severing of ties with the peninsular state of Qatar.
  • In what may be the most debilitating move, Qatar’s border with Saudi Arabia—which is its only land border —has been shut and all flights over Saudi and UAE airspace has been closed off to Qatar bound flights and Qatar Airways. Qatari citizens have been given two weeks to leave Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE and all travel by these countries citizens to Qatar is now prohibited.
  • It is likely that this time the Gulf States will demand the complete shuttering of the Al Jazeera TV Network before any mediation can take place. Additionally, the plug will have to be pulled on networks funded by Qatar such as Al Araby Al Jadeed (The New Arab), originally set up to compete with Al Jazeera and headed by former Arab Israeli politician Azmi Bishara.
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  • Other Qatar backed networks that were accused of incitement on official Gulf TV channels include Al Quds Al Arabi (Arab Jerusalem) newspaper which was founded in London in 1989, online Arabic news portal Arabi 21, the London based website Middle East Eye, the Arabic version of Huffington Post which is headed by former Al Jazeera boss Waddah Khanfar and Al Khaleej Al Jadeed (the New Gulf).
  • will also demand the expulsion of all Muslim Brotherhood leaders and their Hamas affiliate figures from Qatar, along with Azmi Bishara and Islamist writer Yasser Al-Za'atra. Other demands will include the sacking of Al Arab newspaper editor Abdullah Al Athba
  • It seems though the initial pressure has already somewhat worked on Qatar. Last week Doha deported Saudi activist Mohammed Al-Otaibi who arrived in Qatar in March, while a number of Hamas officials have left Qatar at the country’s request.
  • Qatar imports over 90 percent of its food, and by one estimate about 40 percent of that comes from the its only land border, which is now closed. Within hours photos started circulating on social media of Qatari supermarket aisles that have been emptied by panicked shoppers. Furthermore Gulf media has hinted at an escalation of the dispute with Qatari commercial and trade ties being severed next.
Ed Webb

Omani authorities block access to online magazine "Mowatin" - IFEX - 0 views

www.ifex.org/...block-access-magazine

Oman GCC censorship media authoritarianism

shared by Ed Webb on 10 May 17 - Cached
  • Launched in June 2013, Mowatin is an independent Omani magazine that covers a variety of topics in Oman and the Arabian Gulf including politics, human rights and the economy. In January 2016, the magazine announced a suspension of its activities due to "circumstances beyond its control", in particular its desire to "guarantee the safety" of its journalists and writers. The magazine's journalists were subjected to pressures and harassment from Omani authorities, in particular the Internal Security Services (ISS), the country's national security intelligence agency. In a video published on 25 April, the magazine announced that it would resume publishing from London, on 3 May on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day. However, hours after resuming publication, the magazine and human rights groups reported that the website was blocked inside Oman.
Ed Webb

How to survive gaslighting: when manipulation erases your reality | Science | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...eality-coping-mechanisms-trump

authoritarianism media psychology abuse Trump politics

shared by Ed Webb on 19 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • What’s happening on a national level is activating and retraumatizing a lot of people who have been gaslighted in the past. The crazy-making, mind-bending, massive confusion-inducing effects of our current administration’s recklessness with the truth and disregard for verifiable facts is creating an emotional and psychological whiplash. It’s affecting people who have been subjected to abusive relationships; people who feel emotionally vulnerable and it seems to stoke a nearly unprecedented rage in those of us who can see it and feel powerless to do anything to combat it. When people in the mainstream media are being discredited, how exactly are you supposed to call this out?
  • Being defiant does not make you difficult. It makes you resilient.
  • the person gaslighting will never be able to respond to logic and reason – and so you have to be the one to recognize that logic and reason can’t be applied.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • things will never make sense
  • Detaching from the gaslighting does not mean total detachment. It means distinguishing between the world of the gaslighter and the real world.
  • often people are willing to give up their reality in favor of hanging on to a relationship rather than rupturing it
  • write down what actually happened
  • having to verify reality is in itself destabilizing
Ed Webb

Popular Saudi preacher fined, banned from Twitter | Arab News - 0 views

www.arabnews.com/...saudi-arabia

KSA Saudi twitter religion Islam censorship

shared by Ed Webb on 18 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • A Saudi preacher with more than 2 million Twitter followers has been banned from tweeting by a court that convicted him of jeopardizing public order.The cleric, previously accused of links to the banned Muslim Brotherhood, was also fined SR100,000 ($27,000)
  • convicted the preacher of spreading content on Twitter that “could jeopardize public order and provoke public opinion.”
  • Al-Qarni has often been criticized in the local press and on social media for his radical views about scholars who disagree with his interpretation of religion.
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