Far right Freedom Party could also enter a coalition government. Youre up to date with all of the top stories the listening posts now looks at the stories that go behind the weeks headlines ill see you later on. Its the top story tonight because. I mean if im right. Im. Going to. Die at any. Of. These. Guys. Hello im Richard Gephardt and youre at the listening post here are some of the media stories were tracking this week running scared more and more indian news outlets are shying away from stories the Prime Minister would disapprove of on the us media and the Harvey Weinsteins story what took you so long the n. F. L. Loves a man in a uniform we look at the leagues relationship with the pentagon and lets call the american n. R. A. What it really is nonsensical rifle addiction people who suffer from an outbreak of a big impact on the environment sometimes the reaction to a news story can tell you more about the state of politics in a given country and the state of the media there than the actual story itself thats what happened in india this past week a news website the wire reported on the finances of j m e h shah the son of Prime MinisterNarendra Modis right hand man a meat shock the story tracked a sudden and exponential jump in the revenues of j i meet shaws businesses after modi came to power in two thousand and fourteen modi loyalists have called the article a hit job others called it strong adversarial journalism more telling though has been the silence of much of the indian Mainstream Media apart from a few newspapers and two news channels most of the countrys major news outlets. Stayed away from the story and that was before j. I made shark took the wire to court his fifteen Million Dollar lawsuit has served as a warning to other Media Outlets that they can expect the same treatment if they go their threats of legal action or much worse are something that indian reporters are having to contend with more and more often a state of journalistic affairs that the Prime Minister seems to tolerate at least tacitly our starting point this week is new delhi. On the coverage of the j m e shah story the opposition Spokes Person said he knew what was coming and what wasnt. On. Have never seen a politician begging a media group thats assembled there to cover the press conference or actually show it. Here but. The fact is there is a very very large section of the. Print medium as well as Electronic Media which is beholden to those who are in positions of power and authority what was interesting is when the government and the Political Party put its minister to defend and. Everybody come out and really hear it. And. The news article the minister was refuting touches on the render modis inner circle j m h shot is the son of the Prime Ministers closest adviser the story smacks of crony capitalism an issue modi has used against his political opponents the investigative report documents the astonishing rise in shahs business fortunes in the year following modis election and the sudden mysterious close in one year later of the company in question it was published by the wire one of indias relatively new online news sites that offer an alternative to the corporate Mainstream Media and authored by rohini singh this has been taken entirely its based entirely from government records filings done by mr and his company with the registrar of company i find it a little strange when people say its baseless because if this piece is baseless then thats like saying government records are baseless. Roughly ten hours after singhs piece went online that evenings newscasts were beamed out india has dozens of National News channels for. Only two of them and the t. V. And. Lead with the story that. The others either ignored it or buried it deep in their Programmes India today met with a debate on the hindu festival and if some women made choice of part of their husband. Other channels like xenus began with footage handed to them by the Indian Ministry of defense or in the windows name and action and treatment minimal i see that im on. A budget because they would agree when we asked xenu says editor in chief to assess the merits of the wire story on shot he seemed more interested in who broke the story than what it said i really dont know i havent checked the facts i havent checked the documents i also dont know about the exact motive behind the story because all these struggling with what they want is they want readership they want instant fame they want instant i was now how do they get eyeballs for that you have somebody big. Even if its a half baked journalism its a big investigation. Some indian newspapers where political scandals are usually a stock in trade were also strangely indifferent to the story even the hindu a liberal paper put it on page ten and all of that came before jay i mean the wire with a multiMillion Dollar lawsuit for defamation and explicitly warned other Media Outlets of the story that the medias not reacting to speaks volumes about. Why it has already been lately i left. And the media. Doesnt defamation if this is not a threat to the media than nothing else is theres a legal term to describe. Attempts. By. Individual to intimidate to. Write anything critical about them these are often described as slaps strategic litigation against Public Participation the whole idea is to embroil journalists or anybody who is critical in legal cases its expensive to hire lawsuits can drag on for years to send a message to the others that dont mess around with me so long arm of the law really long it has a chilling effect. As chilling or worse is the abuse indian journalists get on social media its an extraordinarily hostile world where reporters are not just criticized but routinely threaten those threats can prove very gory lang trash was getting she edited a weekly paper near bangalore and was critical of the kind of hindu nationalism espoused by Prime Minister modi and his party the b j p she was shot and killed last month some of the. Selfproclaimed nationalists who subsequently celebrated her murder did so on twitter accounts the Prime Minister followed and still doubts london is one of the first things that happen. Many times you get Death Threats i have got Death Threats gang rape threats and all kinds of action by the internet so this is a. Backlash that happens every time you do a critical story when a minister in the government calls you best it doesnt help if you look at the kind of language that is used in social media especially against women journalists women journalists. Brunt of the bad the worst of the kind of slander campaigns that are carried out and there seems to be no signal from anyone in this government that they wouldnt tolerate that kind of just so when the b j p says that oh you know that has nothing to do with us i really doubt it. It is difficult to say how or why news outlets choose the stories they cover harder still to know why they choose not to cover something. About this story on the very first day i was more. About the investigation and why the story is happening at this particular point of whether they fear the party in power litigators for hire or the trolls who support the powers that be sometimes ignoring a news story can seem like the easy way out however in journalism the path of least resistance often leads to big trouble down the road. Who are doing the line of the government do not realize that what is happening to them could happen to them tomorrow just because it has happened to one bedside and one and it does not mean it will not happen to them tomorrow by dell will be a day when they will realize their folly. Other media stories that are on our radar this week first facebook admitted it had a problem and now google is reportedly acknowledging that its platforms were also exploited by russian operatives out to affect last years u. S. President ial elections through the placement of political ads the Washington Post quotes sources at google saying the company has uncovered ads bought for tens of thousands of dollars on platforms it own including you tube g. Mail and others any attempted interference is a serious issue facebook recently turned over around three thousand ads to congress after being pressured to do so by u. S. Lawmakers the social media giant says some of the ads also appeared on its photo sharing platform instagram just last month google was saying weve seen no evidence this type of ad campaign was run on our platforms now according to the post its saying that those ads did not come from the same kremlin affiliated troll farm that used facebook meaning the scale of the problem may be much bigger than previously thought when the New York Times broke that story last week exposing multiple allegations of Sexual Harassment against hollywood Film ProducerHarvey Weinstein it led to headline coverage in multiple news outlets weve since learned the story could and perhaps should have come out much earlier a few days after the times expose the new yorker magazine ran a piece by ronan farrow that included more allegations against weinstein but federal does not work full time at the new yorker his primary employer is n. B. C. News and as huff post has reported farrow took the story to n. B. C. Two months ago but the network chose not to run it over what huff post called unspecified concerns over the story sourcing one person quoted in the huff post report called pharaohs story nowhere near as complete as what the times had farrow disagrees and told m s n b c S Rachel Maddow there were other factors at play why did you end up reporting this story for the new yorker and not for n. B. C. Yes you would have to ask them d. C. And n. B. C. Executives about the details of that story im not going to comment on any News Organization story that they did or didnt run i will say that over many years and many News Organizations have circled this story and faced a great deal of pressure in doing so weinstein is or was a powerful figure with plenty of advertising dollars to spend and reportedly used the threat of lawsuits to keep the story out of print hes also been kneedeep in u. S. Politics a big backer of the democratic party. Two thousand and seventeen is shaping up to be the deadliest year yet for journalists in mexico which given the countrys reputation as a Burial Ground for reporters is saying something freelance photographer editor danielle s. K. De castro became the eleventh journalist killed this year after being abducted last week from his home in San Luis Potosi in central mexico his wife says the men who took him identified themselves as government agents escape a castro was found dead with Bullet Wounds a day later the photojournalist covered crime stories for local news websites metro police san luis and vox populi as well as his own outlet informatic potosi know his wife and colleagues say he had been repeatedly threatened by Police Detectives over his work according to the mexico based press Freedom Group article nineteen he is the eleventh journalist killed this year matching the previous record set last year and it still october. Fans of one of the Biggest Industries on American Television n. F. L. Football have another thing to keep score of this year in addition to who won and who lost the networks are telling them how many players are standing for the National Anthem how many are taking a knee in protest and what President Trump thinks of it all the anthem protests began last year over Police Brutality against africanamericans and racial inequality in the u. S. Donald trump wants the protesting players fired he calls them unpatriotic a tactic that seemed to backfire when the protests instantly grew in size but n. F. L. Players most of whom are black were not trumps target audience football fans mostly white and watching on t. V. Work and the league they follow the n. F. L. Makes a habit of displays of patriotism the pregame National Anthem usually has a military component to it some of which over the years the pentagon has paid for the listening posts johannah whos now on the protests the anthem and the league. U. S. Military has an investment in. The n. F. L. Has always demanded city from its players anyone who deviates from the plan its considered a distraction when things dont fit the script especially in football everybody gets a little uncomfortable i think fans dont know quite how to react i dont know if media necessarily knows how to react and i know teams dont know how to react. Which is why when calling captain a quarterback of the San Francisco forty nine ers started his protest last year sports fans and americans in general did not quite know what to make of it we have a lot of people that arent treated equally arent given equal opportunities no Police Brutality is a huge thing that needs to be addressed. Kaepernick spro test room other players were taking a need to draw attention to the fact that black americans are three times more likely to get shot by police than whites are considerably more likely to be shelled law on armed in most cases those pulling the trigger are never convicted of a crime but that message has been hijacked or do least overshadowed by President Donald Trump would you love to see one of these n. F. L. When Somebody Just respects our flag to say get that son of a job right out fire. Fire trump repeated and amplified the argument that capra nick and other protestors were showing a lack of respect for the anthem the flag and the soldiers who often carry the flag into the stadium the trump effect was immediate the following weekend when americans turned on their t. V. s to protest as mushroom donald trump obviously. Is not interested in having a conversation about racial inequities and what he. Is interested in clearly explicitly is playing to the cultural resentments of a certain portion of his white base but if trungpa not made these comments and ignited this National Firestorm i dont think that this interview were having right now would be happening when donald trump made the statements he spoke with a lot of deception a lot of manipulation in the message to nonverbal universal understanding that someone who takes a knee. It is a moment our position of humility is a position of respect in the reference but here it is our president of the United States has injected conversation with the vision with on troops saying that someone taking a knee is being disrespectful the president was. Trying to change the narrative and in fact he along with some other people in the media succeeded. Nothing to do with race so that you would hear less about black lives matter and Police Brutality and he converted it into boy if youre patriotic and you love your country then why wouldnt you stand up for the National Anthem were proud of our country we respect our flag we have a hard time in our country ever having a conversation about race every time something happens where racism is a factor the public the media some parts of it talk about when we this time have a conversation on race we never really have a conversation on race. The playing of the National Anthem before big games is ingrained in north American Sports culture that its foreign to sports fans from elsewhere no anthems are played before sports matches here in europe or south america unless one National Team plays another but it wasnt always like this in the United States either like most rituals this one has a story behind it. The origins of why we have National Anthems at sporting events dates back to world war one when you had fans going to baseball games and you had p. R. Offices of Major League Baseball worried that these fans are going to look at these young men on the field and wonder why arent they fighting overseas weve got a war going on are they not patriotic and the National Anthem was instituted to demonstrate. These guys love america and it wasnt until two thousand and eight that the n. F. L. Players stand on the sidelines for the National Anthem at all traditionally fans would stand for the National Anthem but both teams would still be in the locker rooms getting ready it was a conscious decision in two thousand and eight that at least according to some reporting from e. S. P. N. That the n. F. L. Thought that it would be a good marketing decision to make their players look more patriotic that that would be good for the only. Good for the league and within a few years profitable too from two thousand and eleven to two thousand and fifteen the u. S. Military spent millions on the n. F. L. Selling its brand in stadiums specked with thousands and to Television Audiences in the tens of millions fans had no idea that the displays of patriotism they were watching the flyovers the tributes to veterans the soldiers saluting the flag were paid for with their tax dollars. Other American Sports tend to glorify men and women in uniform too but not to the same extent its like this game this league and the u. S. Military were made for each other i dont think the n. F. L. Pentagon or Natural Partners but i do think the n. F. L. In the military Kindred Spirits i did a story in us a couple years ago about the lingo the bomb theres a sort of controlling your own ground protecting your turf the battlefield the quarterback is always the field general and theres all these sort of phrases that are militaristic that go into football and i spoke to several top generals and they all kind of spoke to the values that football kind of gives that is almost a Training Ground for soldiers there is a lot of potential for brands energy between the n. F. L. And the pentagon. Really. This team offers a stage on which to you know performing it gives the pentagon this opportunity for real spectacle you know that of real life living a celebration of what the Defense Department stands for it works both as a tool for recruitment and also as a propaganda tool to solidify the American People support for the military and for American Foreign policy an expansive American Foreign policy more broadly in the National Football league its audiences are here the military recognize this is a captive audience theyre patriotic and yes we could use that to market some of the young men and women who may someday want to serve in the United States military. The pentagons Public Relations budget is the envy of other Government Departments the department of the fence spends more on p. R. Than the rest of the u. S. Government combined to defeat. The american way. That budget pays for all the recruitment and american see german Football Games and other sports broadcasts so why the need for even more military content during the pregame ceremonies because the two types of messages one subtle one overt work well together when i came up. On Television Play off. What you have just seen when you watch in the game there are patriotic n. F. L. Players there the people in the stands everybody is paying tribute and all of the symbolism puts you in the frame of mind so that when you see. You are ready to embrace whats in the head the ceremonies are and i plan. To sell military services being something that one should do. Or consider its one of the best ways to sell a product. Thats what critics of the taking the need fail to point out when they say there is no room for politics during the anthem playing the anthem and inviting soldiers onto the field where political decisions in the first place. Adding players to the mix just added to the patriotic message there has always been room for politics at n. F. L. Games just not the uncomfortable racial kind. But as long as the images be out of stadiums show players standing at attention hands on hearts honoring the flag and the soldier carrying it nobody will tell them to keep their politics in the locker room. Finally we left you last week with a video about the and are a the american progun lobby group well a dutch news satire program called sunday with lou bob is suggesting that the real n. R. A. That us citizens need help overcoming is something called nonsensical rifle addiction its a mock Charity Appeal an amusing derisive take on a serious topic and it shows just how ridiculous americas gun problem looks to Media Outlets in the rest of the world will see you next time youre at the listening post dear fellow you are. A devastating humanitarian crisis a small country on the coast of north america the United States of america hundred. Four thousand and eleven thousand dead this year alone every day forty us citizens die because of a terrible epidemic nonsensical rifle addiction and all right is a constitutional disorder caused by a dysfunction of the prefrontal Second Amendment to the norms. Causing patients to. It starts with the innocent cult but soon patients will show signs of shotguns sniper rifles and m. Sixteen g. From all from patients use silencers to hide their condition people who suffer from an operation have a big impact on their environment family classmates and random strangers struggle with. Anxiety the feeling of getting. No raise highly contagious parents often pass it on to their children this happens automatically oh. Im sensical right for addiction is hard to read a character people with the most severe form of n. R. A. Are often hard to reach places like rural areas or congress. Back inside this country