Hot topics click link for more
Radio news host Jesús Ramos Rodríguez was shot dead (February 9) while having breakfast at a hotel in the town of Emiliano Zapata, Tabasco State, near the Gulf of Mexico. The assailant, according to Telemundo (February 9), got out of an automobile, walked into the hotel cafe, fired eight shots then left. Sr. Ramos, known as, had hosted a local news program on radio station Oye 99.9 FM for 20 years. The State Attorney General’s office is investigating the shooting as “a crime against freedom of expression.”
The killing is the second of a media worker in Mexico this year and the 143rd since 2000. Baja California Sur community radio station owner Rafael Murúa Manríquez was found alongside a road dead of a slit throat. He had previously reported threats from a local politician. Last May radio station Sin Reservas owner Juan Carlos Huerta was “executed” in his automobile, also in Tabasco State, noted Mexican news outlet Proceso (February 9), “a crime that remains unpunished.” (See more about press/media freedom here)
Violence against media workers in Mexico, said an International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) report in 2018, is exceeded only by that in Afghanistan. As the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas puts it: “Mexico continues to be the deadliest country for journalists that is not engaged in armed conflict.” Notes the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), in most murders of media workers in Mexico “there are indications of the participation of organized crime and government actors.”
The business of fact-checking just keeps on growing. It’s clear that with all the fake news and every other thing popping up in the digital realm there is a clear need. This is a new profit-center.
After Snopes and the Associated Press (AP) ended their relationship with Facebook’s vastness, actually only the sub-vastness of US fact-checking, Lead Stories popped up to fill the void. Snopes had business reasons to back out; there is more money in building and marketing fact-checking tools. AP, the big news agency, seems to have just become bored. (See more on Snopes, AP and Facebook fact-checking here)
Lead Stories began as website identifying online trends, then about 18 months ago entered the exciting world of fact-checking. Its Trendolizer analysis tool is available to one and all for-fee. It is an adherent to the International Fact-Checking Network code of principles. (See more about fake news here)
On a far larger scale big news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) has expanded its fact-checking for Facebook. The new arrangement, announced by AFP February 6th, adds Arabic language fact-checking concentrating on the Middle East and North Africa. “AFP selects the content to be fact-checked in full independence,” said the AFP announcement (see statement here).
AFP is firmly invested in the fact-checking business. The agency currently fact-checks English, French, Spanish and Portuguese language news outlets in 16 countries. It was a founder of the highly-regarded Africa Check web portal.
Online news outlet Mediapart was raided this week (February 4) and the French media sphere is howling mad. The story has all the makings of breaking news madness; big politicians, judicial irregularities, secret recordings, cover-ups, mobbed-up Russians. It is not about lost paperwork.
Mediapart, known for splashy investigations, had published extracts (February 1) from surreptitiously recorded conversations, which had been supplied anonymously, between two former security agents. The following Monday (February 4) two Paris prosecutors and three police officers appeared at the door asking to search everything for evidence of “invasion and privacy.” Surprising the Mediapart reporters and editors, they did not come with a court order. The intention, it seems, was to surprise. Oddly, two hours before the raid a judge investigating activities of the former security agents contacted Mediapart for more information. (See more about media in France here)
For its part, Mediapart founder Edwy Plenel believes Justice Minister Nicole Belloubet is “deliberately” confusing two points of law; a request by the court for the audio recordings and the raid conducted to “open a preliminary investigation” of invasion of privacy. The former involves an ongoing investigation of a couple of dodgy characters who may have destroyed evidence, given false statements to prosecutors and continued contact with other dodgy characters.
The later has the makings of a real scandal and it is quickly trickling through the French political sphere. The aforementioned dodgy characters - Alexandre Benalla and Vincent Crase, once bodyguards for several politicians - were implicated in several violent outbursts, including roughing up protestors. There were investigations at a number of levels. The two were indicted. Nothing much transpired until the audio recordings surfaced and the public prosecutor’s office wants to know where they came from. (See more about investigative reporting here)
“It is an unfortunate incident for the freedom of the press,” said Reporters sans Frontiéres (RSF) secretary general Christophe Deloire, quoted by nouvelobs.fr (February 5), “all the more so as judicial proceedings against investigative journalists are multiplying, including gag procedures.” French law, dating from 1881, supports the protection of a reporter’s sources. It also affords “special protection” for reporters and “the places where they practice.” Reporter and editors from nearly every French news outlet signed on to an open letter condemning the raid, specifically, and supporting protections for reporters sources.
|
