12 Sep 12 | Asia and Pacific, China
Sometime before the end of the year, China Communist party will hold its 18th Congress, when the old batch of leaders will step aside for a new crop. Rumours are flying about what will happen then, from the almost certainty that Xi Jinping will become China’s next president to suggestions that the Politburo Standing Committee will be cut from nine members to seven, demoting the power of the Political and Legal Affairs Committee.
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04 Jul 12 | Europe and Central Asia, Index Index, minipost
The European Parliament today voted to throw out the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). The legislation, which was introduced to combat piracy, came under fire from activists who warned that its vague language threatened digital freedom. In December, the treaty was signed by all 27 government heads included in the European Union, but was not ratified. The treaty had support from countries outside of the EU, including the US, Singapore, and Canada.
24 Nov 11 | Africa, News and features
The controversial Protection of State Information Bill reveals a an authoritarian streak that has always been present in the ANC, says Salil Tripathi
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18 Jul 11 | Uncategorized
The Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal has published a bitter editorial methodically swiping at News Corps’ critics (in this order: “our competitors,” “British politicians now bemoaning media influence over politics”, the BBC, the Guardian, British and American publications that don’t defend defamation claims in Singapore, the news non-profit ProPublica, the Bancroft family that formerly owned Dow Jones, US Attorney General Eric Holder, US officials prosecuting Haitian and Polish foreign bribery cases, “the liberal press” and, more specifically, the New York Times). And then there is this:
“We also trust that readers can see through the commercial and ideological motives of our competitor-critics. The Schadenfreude is so thick you can’t cut it with a chainsaw. Especially redolent are lectures about journalistic standards from publications that give Julian Assange and WikiLeaks their moral imprimatur. They want their readers to believe, based on no evidence, that the tabloid excesses of one publication somehow tarnish thousands of other News Corp journalists across the world.”
In casually trying to draw a moral equivalency (or, rather, an immoral equivalency) between illegally hacking a murdered girl’s phone for newspaper scoops — and allegedly bribing public officials to keep the tactic under wraps — and working with WikiLeaks to vet leaked government documents for context relevant to the public’s understanding of the execution of two wars and US foreign diplomacy, the Journal stretches credulity one non sequitur too far.
Never mind that the Journal editorial page has for months been calling for the prosecution of Julian Assange even as its news pages have been covering the stories WikiLeaks helped make possible. Or that this implication suggests the Journal has never knowingly published journalism originating from leaked classified government information. The Journal’s plea to the sensibilities of its readers must also leave them to assume this: If the paper is willing to lash out at News Corp critics in ways that even Rupert Murdoch himself has not, perhaps the Wall Street Journal is not so far removed from the culture of its imploding parent company as the editorial’s subhed — “A tabloid’s excesses don’t tarnish thousands of other journalists” — suggests.
