Worldcrunch
Russian media outlets have received government orders to remove archived material about Alexei Navalny and his investigations into corruption by Vladimir Putin and his associates. While the jailed activist’s past work can be found elsewhere, YouTube and other foreign internet platforms may be the Kremlin’s next target.
Experts in geopolitics and the workings of world leaders have accelerated a two-decade long quest to understand the motivations of the enigmatic man in the Kremlin.
Twenty years later the Islamist group is back in power in Afghanistan, but trying this time to win international support. Now that several months have passed, experts on the ground can offer a clear assessment if the group has genuinely transformed on such issues as women’s rights and free speech.
Whether out of cynicism, greed or basic lack of knowledge, the West has willingly embraced the fabricated vision of the Islamic Republic of Iran as a slightly unruly, but essentially legitimate government with which it can do business.
The fall of the Afghan national government may be a calamity for the Afghans but not for the world’s big-money interests, which prefer to deal with ruthless, incompetent regimes that will sell out their countries.
Staying updated with the news has become a way to pass time, but there are real effects on the health of the polity.
The new documentary “Framing Britney Spears’ explores how both tabloid and mainstream media outlets first framed the American megastar as a hypersexualized Lolita, then a bad role model and finally an unstable mother. The film, produced by The New York Times, explores how the news coverage may have led to Spears being placed under a […]
When I was a kid — 12,13 — my dad’s shrink friend was a frequent guest in our house. His usual business on these visits was to review for us the degenerating state of the world, and list the ways it all made his profession difficult. “Wanna catch a glimpse of the future?” he asked […]
In addition to coronavirus-related deaths, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) recorded 42 murders of journalists and media workers since the beginning of 2020 in targeted attacks, bombings and shootings.
The questions continue to pile up around the U.S. social media giant’s role in undermining public discourse and the proper functioning of society.
-Essay- PARIS — I do my best not to get pulled into the rabbit hole of U.S. election coverage. It’s hard to imagine, at this point, how any poll or tweet or scandal could possibly affect the outcome. Can our global news site really find a new angle to help explain Donald Trump? Can anyone? […]
He’s the mastermind behind has most famous deepfakes of the web. Donald Trump, Bruce Lee or even Elon Musk have been integrated into his videos, which are as fascinating and problematic as they are funny.
Young people especially are turning their backs on France’s broadcast networks in favor of American streaming services.
Amateur fashion aficionados are using new technology to celebrate the pre-internet past, and forcing labels to reconsider their archives.
Google and Facebook’s power endanger democratic discourse. It is time to design an infrastructure for European social media platforms.
Just as they were during the information wars of the 18th century, education and critical thinking are key antidotes to disinformation.
People in Colombia seem to have forgotten that in the not-too-distant past, they were the ones seeking refuge abroad, and that Venezuela offered a tolerant and helping hand.
NEW DELHI — A year after the Harvey Weinstein story first broke, India’s own #MeToo movement is finally taking off. Working women are coming forward on social media with stories and details of various forms of sexual harassment and misconduct. These stories, painful as they are to process, are necessary to read so as to engage with some important questions that they raise: What is it that keeps the perpetrators of sexual harassment and misconduct continually in positions of power? What keeps victims silent? And above all else, what steps need to be taken to remedy this? One often overlooked […]
BUENOS AIRES — Facebook irritates me, entertains, consoles, bores and infuriates me, moves and depresses me — but above all, it exhausts me. Rewind to 2008, and I am in Pittsburgh working in a migrant help center. My Belgian friend Marie enters the office with her laptop and shows me a new platform where you […]
MOSCOW — On April 13, a Russian court decreed an immediate blocking of the app Telegram across the country. The decision came after the refusal of Telegram to provide Russian security services with access to users’ private messages. The authorities said it was a necessity in the fight against terrorist threats. However, Pavel Durov, founder […]
CAIRO — There are “forces of evil” that control Egypt’s media outlets, according to a statement issued last week by Public Prosecutor Nabil Sadek. To protect “national security” and prevent “spreading fear throughout society,” Sadek instructed public prosecutors and regulators to monitor media outlets and arrest anyone who disseminates or broadcasts false news. However, it […]
-Analysis- It’s now more than a year since Donald Trump“s inauguration as the 45th President of the United States, and the media’s animosity towards him continues unabated. After his surprise victory against the wishes of the establishment, Trump remains the target of a never-ending campaign against his legitimacy, his very presence at the White House […]
-Essay- “Germans are coconuts, Americans peaches…” In the German Studies department at the University of Michigan, this saying bounced around as a shorthand way for us to describe the supposed social differences between the two nationalities: Germans come with tough shells, but inside lies the sweetness of coconut milk. Americans, instead, are soft on the […]
By 2022, disinformation could completely replace real facts online. So what are we supposed to do about it? Sharp ideas from France to Denmark to the U.S. and beyond.
Exhibitions in the U.S. are held specifically to allow visitors to take pictures of themselves. European museum curators cringe, but competition for the attention of the social-media generation is real.
Think of Facebook as akin to a delivery truck, noting that such trucks often carry guns, junk food and bad books.
-Analysis- When the song came across my favorite German radio station this morning, my eyes rolled with the familiar lyrics: “Your candle burned out long before your legend ever will.” Still, with today’s 20-year anniversary of the death of Lady Di, Elton John’s prediction is holding up strong. Princess Diana’s “death by media” was a […]
CAIRO — The Egyptian government has blocked access to a total of 21 news and information websites since last Wednesday, including the original publisher of this article, Cairo-based Mada Masr. A security source cited by MENA, the country’s official state news agency, said that the blocked websites were disseminating “content that supports terrorism and extremism […]
French-Russian relations are at a new low following the election of France’s young, pro-European President Emmanuel Macron.
France’s incoming First Lady is 24 years older than Emmanuel Macron, her husband and former drama student. How this unusual presidential couple is rewriting the rules of French politics.
ISTANBUL — The smartphone’s video camera zigzags through the crowd. Amid a joyful brouhaha punctuated by applause, the young videomaker captures the first smiles and the excited faces, still stunned by the good news. “Asli Erdogan, Necmiye Alpay and Zana Kaya are free!,” the journalist comments as she films the scene. The date was Dec. […]
When I told the guy at my neighborhood grocery store in the Turkish city of Istanbul that I was traveling abroad, he said, “Don’t come back. Not if you can.” I told him I have a life here. “They will arrest us all, one day,” he responded. I’d never previously discussed politics with my grocer. […]
-OpEd- ISTANBUL — Turkey’s government and the media that support it have an odd attitude when it comes to violent acts carried out by ISIS: It’s as if the “cultural/ideological dialects” of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government somehow malfunction. For starters, the government has a hard time condemning the vicious massacres carried […]
BEIJING — China’s Ministry of Public Security has weighed into a national debate about citizens filming police actions with an attention-grabbing video of its own. The video, released last month, confirms the public’s right to film or photograph police with the caveat that citizens must “not affect the execution of normal law enforcement.” It also […]
MUNICH — Shortly after the 1985 hijacking of a TWA plane by a splinter group of the Shiite Hezbollah militia, Britain’s then prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, blasted the media for its handling of the affair and called for a new code of conduct. If the press would simply stop covering terrorist attacks, she argued before […]
Just days after Cumhuriyet editor-in-chief Can Dündar accepted the 2015 Press Freedom Prize in France, he was arrested along with a colleague. He wrote this letter from the Istanbul jail where he faces life in prison for publishing articles about
Only three ministers in Egypt’s 33-member Cabinet are women. But the media is apparently too dazzled by their looks to notice there’s a problem in the first place.
Medievalist, novelist, and renown public intellectual, Umberto Eco’s most recent novel Numero Zero will be published in English this November. A regular contributor to Italy’s L’Espresso magazine and La Repubblica newspaper, his new work of fiction delves into the truth and lies of the mass media. He spoke with Le Monde. LE MONDE: Do you […]
Coverage of social issues in Egypt is rarely even-handed. Instead, media outlets preach and bray, moralizing instead of taking a detached, just-the-facts approach.
For many in these very different extremist camps, it all begins with a “lying media.”