To donate by check, phone, or other method, see our More Ways to Give page.

×
      LATEST NEWSOPINIONCLIMATEECONOMY POLITICS RIGHTS & JUSTICEWAR & PEACE
      LATEST NEWS
      OPINION

      press freedoms

      FTC Chair Lina Khan is pictured during a House hearing

      Free Press Advocates Say FTC Has No Business Probing Journalist Interactions With Twitter

      "Anyone who cares about the free press should be concerned by the FTC's demand that Twitter identify journalists who have received information that might embarrass the administration," said one critic.

      Kenny Stancil
      Mar 08, 2023

      Press freedom defenders on Wednesday expressed outrage after it was revealed that the Federal Trade Commission, as part of its investigation into Twitter's data privacy practices, demanded that the social media giant "identify all journalists" given access to company records, including in relation to owner Elon Musk's dissemination of the so-called "Twitter Files" purporting to expose censorship on the platform.

      "Anyone who cares about the free press should be concerned by the FTC's demand that Twitter identify journalists who have received information that might embarrass the [Biden] administration, regardless of what they think of Elon Musk or Twitter," Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) advocacy director Seth Stern said in a statement.

      Keep ReadingShow Less
      News
      press freedoms
      An activist puts up a banner reading "Free Assange" in front of the US embassy in Germany

      Belmarsh Tribunal Makes the Case for Julian Assange's Immediate Release

      The Assange prosecution poses a fundamental threat to the freedom of speech and a free press.

      Amy Goodman
      Denis Moynihan
      Jan 28, 2023

      “The first casualty when war comes is truth,” U.S. Senator Hiram W. Johnson of California said in 1929, debating ratification of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, a noble but ultimately failed attempt to ban war. Reflecting on World War I, which ended a decade earlier, he continued, “it begins what we were so familiar with only a brief period ago, this mode of propaganda whereby…people become war hungry in their patriotism and are lied into a desire to fight. We have seen it in the past; it will happen again in the future.”

      Time and again, Hiram Johnson has been proven right. Our government’s impulse to control information and manipulate public opinion to support war is deeply ingrained. The past twenty years, dominated by the so-called War on Terror, are no exception. Sophisticated PR campaigns, a compliant mass media and the Pentagon’s pervasive propaganda machine all work together, as public intellectual Noam Chomsky and the late Prof. Ed Herman defined it in the title of their groundbreaking book, “Manufacturing Consent,” borrowing a phrase from Walter Lippman, considered the father of public relations.

      Keep ReadingShow Less
      Opinion
      Julian Assange
      SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER
      Quality journalism. Progressive values. Direct to your inbox.
      Follow Us
      Most Popular

      Progressives Condemn Biden-GOP Debt Ceiling Deal as 'Cruel and Shortsighted'

      'Enormous Policy Failure': States Throw Hundreds of Thousands—Including Many Children—Off Medicaid

      The War in Ukraine Was Provoked—and Why That Matters to Achieve Peace

      Texas GOP Passes Bills Allowing Abbott Appointee to Take Over Democratic County's Elections

      Let's Have Work Requirements for the Super Rich and Their Massive Tax Breaks

      Why We Need to Abandon Industrial Farming

      DeSantis Hit With FEC Complaint Over 'Brazen' Violation of Campaign Finance Law

      'Give Me a Goddamn Break': House Democrat Slams Food Aid Cuts as Pentagon Budget Soars

      Noam Chomsky on Why This Is the Most Dangerous Point in Human History

      Washington's $849 Million Capital Gains Windfall Shows 'Taxing the Rich Is a Really Good Idea'

      SUPPORT COMMON DREAMS TODAY
      SUPPORT INDEPENDENT
      JOURNALISM TODAY
      We Can't Do It
      Without You!