Aljazeera bring you the news and Current Affairs that matter to you. Aljazeera. Growing number of iconic brands are pulling there and the states are only to scale the memorising patagonian just sound the companies doing stuff for Profit Campaign thats incredibly strong advertisers to the point that facebook is for allowing people to raise system via they can verify it all its kind of read it into a long term boy. Hello im richard this person youre watching the listening post working from home here are the media stories were covering this week facebook gets hit by a big brand advertising boycott designed to get hate speech off the site will anything really change. China passes a new law in hong kong that has journalists there running scared well read talking heads and the bookshelves the just credibility plus with all those racist statues getting taken down who or what will take their place the 2 biggest news stories of 2020 the pandemic and the racial inequality protests have triggered what the United Nations calls a tsunami of hate speech a surge in a phobia online the social media platforms involved now find themselves the focus of an advertising boycott a campaign called stop hate for profit that is designed to get them to clean up their act by hitting them where it hurts the primary target has been facebook for years Mark Zuckerberg and company have resisted demands to take a more active approach a harder line on moderating hateful content 909 percent of facebooks revenues 70000000000 dollars last year reportedly comes from advertising however given facebooks size this boycott is unlikely to seriously damage its bottom line at least in the short term there is another element in this story the us elections just 4 months away now and the donald trump factor the problematic material this president posts on facebook our starting point this week is the biggest social Media Network on the planet. How big is facebook so big that an advertising boycott backed by major brands and a sudden 74000000000. 00 fall in the companys market value probably wont amount to very much. On a lives dreams. But it got Mark Zuckerberg attention on june 26th he went on Facebook Live to deliver a statement on hateful content much of which consisted of familiar sounding platitudes were able to identify 90 percent of the speech that we were. Already want to stir zuckerberg did promise however to do more to ban openly divisive and inflammatory rhetoric along with a new policy on flagging hate messages thats more in line with his rivals twitter were going to start labeling on times that we find newsworthy i dont want to buy i dont know if he has done these or changes facebook has long resist the companys hand was clearly forced by the ad boycott and the changing socio political realities of 2020. I were in the middle of a well. People have been locked in. And not only about but were also if he needed unprecedented civil unrest in the middle of a. Weve been seeing more violence against people of color in the faith for years now but weve never seen a president of the United States openly call for about 40 islands and weve never seen a social media platform actually we ive met that says something thats ok so i think people are finally fed up and not saying. Facebook has been getting complaints about its relatively lax approach to moderation for years not just in the us the Police Killing in minnesota that set off the Racial Injustice demonstrations and provoked threatening and racially charged posts from President Trump simply brought it to a boil the brands that announced theyre pulling ad money out of facebook include some of the worlds biggest. Cocacola and unilever but big brands dont dominate social media the way they do on t. V. Smaller brands medium sized boards and local businesses are where most of the money is the organizers of the boycott a u. S. Based group called stop pay to for profit maintain that ad revenues are just one way to measure the impact of their campaign. Our main goal is to stop hate in december mation on facebook and this is impacting we saw last week their stock prices drop 8 percent we saw 15000000000. 00 go out of Mark Zuckerberg. Mark zuckerberg was a billionaire before we started this campaign hes going to be a billionaire once this campaign is over the truth is that facebook is going to have to reckon with this problem bad. Isnt going to put a dent in anything that you. And you know. 70000000000. 00. Advertising last year. We dont know how much of that is coming from major brands like cocacola and we dont know how much of that is coming from. Business and the truth and facebook knows that these smaller businesses cant afford to leave a plot or especially in the midst of a Global Pandemic brand boycotts are always a bit of a performative gesture that certain and weve seen that throughout the years that said they tend to be gestures that firms take quite seriously for the Public Relations hit that they do represent resawing a significant lead out of facebooks market capitalization as the share price dropped and we saw investors selling off stock at a time when the u. S. Economy is likely set for a fairly significant recession on the whole so i do think that facebook and others are watching this closely and taking it seriously. Advertisers value facebook because it knows far more about its users than other platforms do about them it can target them more effectively even though some major brands have pulled their ads off the site they remain heavily invested in facebook their ads are still being placed through what the Company Calls the facebook audience net which runs ads using what facebook already knows about its users on a host of external or 3rd party x. Everything from news sites to to talk to. When the advertisers square money into a stock they can pour money into facebook directly or they can pour money into facebook and then ads play on whats new of an audience. So advertisers can use a and kind of rest easy knowing that their ads are going to be targeted using the same facebook tech that theyve come to know and love and it also keeps the general public from knowing about it ad is technically running through facebook spikes. Facebooks advertising model is based on getting the attention of its users and keeping inflammatory content works because it attracts all kinds of supporters to back at home its to fight in the limited content moderation facebook does carry out the standards are vague the rules are applied inconsistently and in force appears to be selective yet there are critics of facebook who say the ad boycott as a cure is much worse than the deceaseds. This is absolutely it all is specially on a given. The Communications Even if certain speakers are completely removed they simply find other social media platforms where they can continue to disseminate their hateful messages in ways that make them even more dangerous because it then becomes harder to know about them to respond to them to make sure that the hateful ideas do not manifest in hateful or violent or discriminatory actions facebook is selling us and our eyeballs to advertisers. And the truth is that shape all things get high engagement both from folks who are propagating hate but also from folks who are trying to stand up against hate and so claiming that she. Is not a part of the business not all he they can say that all they want but its simply not true. Is calling for a total and complete shutdown of muslims and during the United States hanging over this story is the prospect of the us president ial election in november from his 1st run for office in 2015 when donald trump used twitter to call for a ban on muslim immigrants to the racial unrest story this year when he called pro. Testers thugs and threatening to send in the army trump has relied heavily on social media casting and stretching the rules getting far more leeway than other political leaders how does he get away with it it helps to have Home Field AdvantageSilicon Valley usa has more to fear from President Trump and the lawmakers and regulators who work under him than any leader anywhere. It has come to light in the past few weeks that Mark Zuckerberg and President Trump do have some sort of personal relationship we know there have been visits to the white house by soccer and we know that there have been phone calls between the 2 trumps public rhetoric toward social media platforms is one to suggest that social media platforms are somehow unfair to conservative viewpoints and in particular unfair to him this seems to be counter to the facts. Trump supposed to sustain and even when they are flagrantly violating those rules we know that we have this important president ial election coming up in the United States will facebook and platforms across the social media landscape solve their problems with regard to trump them with regard to heinous racist invective from here to november that strikes me as highly unlikely and therefore its very worrisome going into the election. Were discussing other media stories that are on our radar now with one of our producers johannah whos joe this past week china imposed a sweeping new National Security law on hong kong what effect will this new law have on journalists there. Well this new law truly is historic richard as it marks a decisive break from the socalled one country 2 systems principle under which hong kong has been governed by china it grants beijing broad powers to crackdown on anyone that criticizes the Chinese Communist party including the media now the law criminalizes subversion terrorism and socalled collusion with Foreign Forces but its language is extremely vague and that is deliberate because it gives beijing a lot of leeway to suppress free speech and silence dissenting voices including journalists now this past week richard for example the 1st person who was reportedly arrested under this new law was taken into custody just for carrying a flag that said hong kong independence and whats this about hong kong or is going online finding some of their old social media posts and deleting them for fear of it being deemed illegal under this new law yes so a lot of hong kong areas including some very prominent activists have either started taking their social media accounts down completely or have started deleting posts that either tie them to the protest movement or criticise china now there are 2 other issues that really worry Home Congress when it comes to this new law firstly where they will face trial because some of them may well end up in a courtroom in the chinese mainland which may be a lot harsher in its judgment secondly how long they could end up in jail for as a maximum sentence for violating this law is life imprisonment. Ok moving on to iran now were journalists this past week was sentenced to death what can you tell us about the case of a real hola zam so exam had a telegram account called news which he ran from paris and he covered politics sometimes even posted embarrassing information on iranian officials now what we know is that tehran accuses him of fueling antigovernment protest in 2017 but what we dont know is how he actually ended up in iranian custody according to the ngo Reporters Without Borders he was actually cant that whilst on a trip to iraq almost 9 months ago since then he has appeared on iranian t. V. Several times expressing regret for his alleged crimes now the charges are very vague to say the least he was found guilty of corruption on earth which is a language that is often used in cases of espionage or attempts to overthrow the government this past week he was sentenced to death but there is no word yet on whether or not hell fall on appeal ok thanks joe with the pandemic forcing so many of us to work from home all kinds of talking heads news anchors interviewees pundits and politicians have had to redefine their natural environments so youve been seeing a lot of bookshelves theyre the perfect solution they provide a little visual texture they dont distract and they create the impression whether true or not that the talking head has actually read the books maybe even written something. Creating a backdrop is an exercise in self branding it sends a message and speaks to your alleged credibility before you say a word this book flaunting has led to a new genre of media critique bookshelf analysis it was an avid of all the listening posts for philips now on judging a person by their bookish backdrop. Its an irony for the ages how this pandemic this time of on precedented isolation has forced us virtually to invite strangers into our home. I have 0 meeting with my students i broadcast my b. B. C. Radio programme here and interviews and presentations and think all from here making us consider things about our domestic spaces weve never thought of before and no accent that china. Doesnt regret hany the girlfriend seemed like my box of cereal for interview is and interview means whether or not participants and writers suddenly its all about the bookshelf. To be sure you will get chills. So you think a lot of people actually work in studies and have home studies and particular kinds of experts and called upon in Television Interviews to talk about areas of concern you know when theyre situated in environments that are actually off the books but if the same time you can also see when the background has been really could try. The bookshelf is multifunction it is somehow neutral and professional get off. It conveys messages about who we are and who we want people to think. Over 50 years ago Erving Goffman a sociologist thought about how do we shift. I think about the world as being like authentic or fake and instead how is it more about being sincere or cynical so he said well lets think about everything as a performance everythings like a stage play. I actually sit at that grey. Tract. For the purposes of any kind of videoing i like to have a nice colorful backdrop so i use this which i change according to who are talking to by the way and so whats really important whether people are believing in that stage play or not in fact the term impression management comes from governments work where we look at how people are selectively revealing things about themselves theyre all under one signal like you know their authority by displaying very big kind of Historical Books one of the most popular ones ive seen on a lot of. Capsule classics as well certain people who have like all of. The original classics and like russian or french and stuff like. Historically and paintings and portraiture carefully chosen and placed visual props have long been used to hint at someones interests that in a way. Dogs can be symbols of fidelity or wealth. Fruit may represent bounty or desire specific books spell out a persons profession or fashion. It wasnt until the 19th century that books for books say large numbers of took on the 7 his. Own genre developed in the 1900 century or literate secular male figures and the book lent kind of grab a task and expertise for example it got the french impressionist did a wonderful portrait critic and writer. And he seems to be completely enveloped by bookshelves when manning represented him you know love the french 1903 naturalist writer and critic as well he stood alongside a table which is an island with books they mean is this mans or. The credibility that books offer has given rise to a cosmetic industry platforms like zoom and allow you to customize your background virtually so you can adopt any bookshelf you like. If you want the real thing but i want to bother about actually reading them there are companies that sell books by the meter that even cure rate your collection usually they cater to you to tell businesses in the Film Industry that the pandemic has led to a spike in sales to individual households. To leave those crazy quick shelves and shopping. They treat its almost as a kind of interior design and much as a lot of look i actually think its much more they get read you know doing they should be modified to the point where their appearance is more important than the constant. T. V. Producers quickly learn that many of their interviewees working from home often dont have that many framing options so we try to make suggestions and we always ask if they have a bookshelf because we know it was i become reliant on the bookshelf as backdrop for interviews for lives and pieces to camera i generally go for this one for practical reasons its the right height and the lighting works even if some of the titles might give off the impression im trying a little bit too hard. We thought about using this collection of magazine covers about british pop culture from the ninetys isnt exactly the listening post by not to mention what it says about me. The shell say a lot about the other part of my life the colors and the covers a right but im not sure they scream journalism and im not the only one reading into whats on the shelf authors have always had their critics now bookshelves. Bookcase credibility attracts hundreds of thousands of. Reviews and a great backdrop. Of trends and of course draws all kinds of conclusions about the people parked in front of. Him sits in front of rows of his own but everything is alchemy and out really is everything these were simply the surplus that i didnt have room for malarkey i didnt really want to be showing them up so they would just put up here out of the way as an immediate relatable. And its also a concept is. Based on you know how messy or how clean they are. Color schemes the ways in which. Blacks alike are separated at once again and what they say about. My own build them under yeah some white space distilling credibility to it purest alibi. I got quite a lot but for having a piece of. The comments ive had to just say greedy people but seem to be incandescent rage to use it is like a wave. Of my knowledge i think almost book is credibility so funny is the way that theyve struck late so much from so listen and the nation one of the really brilliant piece of our own jones where he has a couple of bookshelves behind him and theyre described as being like 2 henchmen you know sort of overseeing the station and releasing its an age where they goes the world is owns way and i think theyve got this wonderful way of sort of taking an element of truth and just spinning out into this almost a kind of a fantaisie about what the facts are. Gideon haigh gives us a decent chance of getting his favorite sport with this majestic display simply because on face this one that you see my cricket books and in the background. I think my head sort of haloed by cricket is beginning with the lead of b. And c. Its not because im particularly interested in those ones it just happens to be there and around a bit here. Are presenting richard got the case credibility treatment a couple of weeks ago perhaps their way of declining our interview request. Which it is but seeks to put a city as if hes invited us back to his hotel room to see his credibility if things go well he might give us an. Army and they they read a lot into the Acoustic Guitar which i never play all i do is play my like your guitar my telecaster but our camera man would let me use that because he likes the wood grain in the shot so you know we make compromises. Whenever we make television doesnt matter whether were in a studio or were at home people draw these widespread conclusions and theres very very little flow that you or i can do about it so richard do you agree with the credibilities assessment of you do you think you want to contest it i would say their assessment would be harsh a little snide but ultimately. And finally its been a bad few weeks for statues monuments that have stood for centuries have come crashing down as the black lives Matter Movement forces countries around the world to confront their racist past but theres a Business Opportunity here think of all those city squares formerly graced by White Supremacists they need statues and australian comedy group called the chaser has come up with a few ideas on how to fill up some of those empty spaces that all those slave owners who have fallen out of fashion left behind well see you next time here at the listening post. Hi my name is john and im mike rice the statutes. My great granddad made rice the statues his dad made rice with actors on and continuing a proud Family Tradition so what do you make racist stuff. Well look theres not a lot of way in fact you might think you know as soon as you put up a statue you cant really put up any more statues outside heriot you know get the crowd congested it just isnt me really so al Business Model weve been making right this actually started the idea is that some of you dont want to tear it down to the right this and then when we get to this is my home especially for the good you know weve done all the big ones we did captain cool pretty proud of that one with the wall and look in the quarry hes the guy who im all these Aboriginal People of trees. We did the drug deal with the tories she just she just kept killing Chinese People until they bought her i. B. M. Must stop millions of irish people these are all the things we will fulfil my trying to make right this country. Have you encountered any difficulties weve. Got and they die you put it right that you suddenly like calls from all around the city to come around to protect it. Making it really really obvious. Frank assessments tourism but income stream is dead in the water whats been the result missing poaching gone quite significantly and indepth analysis of the days global headlines inside story on aljazeera. Joining our Global Community called the crisis is just slapped in the face of the blessing upon latin upon human equals Global Health keeping you up to date his wife or situation where we have a human rights crisis that persists beyond the Health Crisis answering your questions is a dialogue just nothing we are now approaching a crossroads this is an opportunity that we must not miss the stream on aljazeera. Iran says a fire caused significant damage to the towns Nuclear Plant but its starting to rebuild. Their lives all right but they want you all to serve one headquarters here in doha also coming up on a definite closure for the border between australias 2 most populous states after a sudden spike in coronavirus cases. We see me here shaking. And its getting worse. Also the campaign by members of the u. S. President s own