Pandemic mass protests demanding change economic recession and geopolitical tensions not to mention the small matter of a looming election join me Steve Clemons in conversation with leading voices on the bottom line your weekly take on u. S. Politics and society on aljazeera. A chance for a country thats right im trying to get off and i want to thank you thats ok. Tax cut. All right but try to cite actually i should get a free pass on rush tests cost time because im just trying. To. Alarm richard just been there watching the listening post working from home here are some of the media stories were covering this week hungary another major News Organization is about to turn pro government Prime Minister or browns work is almost done more bonkers pseudoscientists on cope with 19 go viral oh she offical of it is called had been with a little help from their friends in the white house making the case for using face masks to stop the spread of mass so mass why wont people keep you on why is this stuff still being debated online and american News Organizations are changing their style guides will examine the reasons theyre now spelling black with a capital b. Its a project thats been a decade in the making but hungarys Prime Minister viktor orban is almost there he or his backers are now in control of every domestic media outlet that matters until about 10 days ago index h. U. Was the only major independent outlet left that changed on july 21st when the editor was fired and another 70 journalists showed their support for him by quitting on the spot ever since coming into office back in 2010 viktor orban has steadily chipped away at hungarys for the state numerous outlets have been shut down or seen a drastic change in their editorial lines usually after an order ban ally takes control index was the last one standing but with its editor gone and the majority of its staff looking for work it is now or bans for the take our starting point this week is the index office in budapest. It wasnt a matter of if just a question of when hungarys most popular news site index study chew would lose its independence and be turned into a progovernment platform. This past week that day grew significantly closer. I. Said its. Index is editor in chief shoebox deal was fired and at least 17 of his colleagues went out the door with resigning in protest over what they called political interference disguised as a corporate shot. At it and then i get a few years ago he announced to name ground rules as the basis of our independent journalism one of them was that we would write the stories and we run with no influence from extra. Party the other condition was that the structure of the news room would not be influenced external and that is what changed over the past few months. Our management wouldnt give us assurances of independence and then our editor in chief was dismissed thats when senior members of the newspaper decided to resign and then the entire news room stood up and what i mean by new on. Essentially these journalists to come a huge extension risk because it was certain that most of them would not find employment as journalists anymore job seekers in hungarys Media Industry are currently in a desperate position in terms of freedom of the press it is a huge loss that index fell like this because it was a very Important News portal and after what happened it is certain that in next wont independence in its operation anymore but that. Index is an extraordinarily successful news site attracting roughly 1500000. 00 original views per day in a country of just 10000000. 00 and it was different the only major Online Outlet in hungary that was routinely critical of the government. Since being elected in 2010 victor or bands feed us party has brought multiple Media Outlets to heat usually in directly when those outlets are bought out by businessmen tied to the government. Businessmen like me close vasily 4 months ago he acquired a stake in the media the company that controls the business side of index having already transformed another news site or to go from critical to unashamedly pro. Indexes users could see trouble coming and they didnt have to read between the lines the sites home page features a Freedom Barometer up until late june it read independent the editors way of saying that the oregon government was not interfering with its reporters. It was a means for them to be able to communicate directly with their readers level of independence which was prevailing at the site they needed a direct channel to the readers to be able to tell them whether the information that they were reading on the index was still credible was still and at the end of june staffs that that that run it are from independent to endanger so when this march mr rossi arrived in the index or in the media the Company Behind it was an obvious sign for everybody who understands politics and angry that the government is pretty much on the threshold of. Action will be taken so they came out with this proposal to restructure the whole company and that was the moment when the editor in chief decided to do so called their own meter to give a sign to the public that we are in danger and we need some help. Were going to be additional on that for the public speaking is going to have to. Ownership changes are just one of the ways the audubon government has reshaped the news narrative in hungary government advertising is one of the few deaths party has steered its ad spending to outlets it approves of cutting off or limiting the flow of public money to sites like index between the financial pressure and the ownership changes a host of independent outlets are now shadows of their former selves or have ceased to exist altogether. Names like here t. V. Magic numbers at about shock and. One man on to the question at audubon quite consciously started restructuring the media since 2010 using party legal and partly economic to assist i think in my symbolic moments where when outlets were abolished completely restructured one of them was already going 2014 year old a journalist resigned in 26. 00 states they shut down. The nets have but check newspaper overnight and its all Editorial Board was childless and of course in 2020 the index case. After all these developments will be very difficult to talk about independent media and hungary the media. In there its obviously one of the last steps to get full control of what hunger. For. The brand was so strong that hundreds of thousands of people would read you and thats like thats sad in such a small market as here and thats you saying. The call absolutely next is really is a disaster for hunger and media it is i mean i cant overemphasize. The thousands who have taken to the streets in protest over the mass resignations at index are familiar with the pattern the corporate takeover the subsequent personnel changes the inevitable progovernment turn the question they typically ask at such demonstrations has always been which media outlet will be next a more contemporary version of that question would be who else is left. With the takeover of the index the Gold Standard in the media in hungary has basically been laid to rest but there still are a number of lets with very brave and very talented and courageous journalists. One happens to be an outlet which i contribute to which is called court order in which you theres another 24. 00. Theres a weekly print magazine and their website which is. You and a number of others whether some of these independent outlets which remain that i mentioned will themselves be subject to interventions from government to businessmen or or any other avenue also remains to be seen index out of the big. Sure the crown jewel has really been caught and i think there might not even be a need to go after the rigor it has i believe. Im very sad not just because i lost the job i loved in a place i worked for almost 20 years but because as a garion citizen im disturbed that there are fewer and fewer independent news outlets that provide factual information i cant predict the future but i hope that my ex colleagues and i can Stay Together and carry on with the professional work we started 20 years ago at index. We have created a Facebook Page called the leavers from index and were using that page to stay in touch with those readers who would like to know what the future holds for us as the next cat. Conspicuous by its mere absence in this story is the European Union which professes to demand of its Member States freedom of the press Prime Minister or to ban who openly says he wants his country to be an illiberal democracy has made a mockery of that requirement the European Parliament has long threatened to suspend hungarys e. U. Voting rights but still hasnt lifted a finger the lack of political will in brussels is ever so the water ban government continues to cleanse the countrys media of its critics and since hungary gets far more in funding from the e. U. Then it puts in some of the money the government is using to do that is coming from brussels itself. For that theyre concerned that theyre closely following the media environment hungary but what we havent heard very much is how they feel about the fact that european money is being used to create a class oligarchs and capitalists within hungary who are then using that capital to create the median if they stay it would be worth asking these tough questions to the European Union until when are they going to be comfortable financing the construction of a class of overgaard. Which directly contributes to the disintegration of Media Freedom and. Were looking at another media story thats on our radar now with one of our producers tarek nasr targets in the u. S. A video full of debunked theories on call that 19 goes viral in a big way with the help of President Trump eventually it gets taken down 1st of all who produced the video in question. A group that calls itself americas front line doctor they put together a press conference that was live streamed by the right wing Media Outlets bright spot and they stood on the steps of the Supreme Court and essentially told americans theyre being lighter there are many thousands of physicians who have been silenced print telling the American People the good news about the situation that we can manage the virus some mind boggling conspiracy theories and misinformation have exploded during this pandemic and this video brought up 20000000. 00 views in just a few hours before being taken down by Facebook Twitter where donald trump and his son also posted this video they removed it too but its all over the place now and once again hydroxide chloroquine was made out to be some kind of cure for the coronavirus thats right richard the bits of this video that got the most attention including from President Trump is the testimony of a doctor from texas called Stella Emanuel today and he had to say to that america there is a cure for called beat all these foolishness its not does not need to happen there is a cure for quote dairies oh she also called it its called had been emanuel has a history of making some outlandish claims she said gonna call logical issues faced by women whether result of them having sex with demons in their dreams she says alien d. N. A. Is being used in medical treatment but she could have fun in President Trump who advocated the use of hundreds of turquand multiple times. There was a woman who was spectacular in her statements about it that shes had tremendous success with it and they took a big push towards it took her up but they took it up a bit and once you take down a video offering all these conspiracy theories then youre an avid oblique feed into some of those theories do you not exactly an ally of the likes of fox news to say that emanuel is a truth teller who is being counseled that shes being disappeared from the internet because her message of hope benefit donald trump and of course this is an American Election in which these platforms have to grapple with this kind of material and theyre facing a lot of heat right now ok thanks to our. Major news stories such as the Police Killing of george floyd a black man in minnesota back in may do more than dominate news agenda they have a way of changing things the wave of anti racism demonstrations and campaigns that followed floyds killing have affected all kinds of american institutions media organizations have not been immune nor should they be from the lack of diversity in their newsrooms to the problems with how black people are reported on American Media have a vast range of issues to address some significant News Organizations the Associated Press the Los Angeles Times fox news have all made a change that may have caught your eye it involves a single letter the be in black which they are now putting in uppercase it doesnt sound like much its nowhere near enough and it took a long time to happen the listening posts i mean actually ravi now on the campaign for and the significance of the uppercase black. Is many things over time my interest being in a marriage and this thing and age as an important unifying cry for us. Series this. Question that. Black people 1st dont want werent allowed to. Rest or honest even our own names which rest on us so i think at the end of the day black people should be allowed to define themselves and call themselves what they want to name me in europe and some i think has to be understood as a matter of peace and there is never been a moment in the history of the United States in which racial terms have not been some. There has been a discussion among the in florida where a very long time black people have been seen. By the congress. So. They are trying to. Rectify wrong. In the cab landing being what was very loving in the the media. And im happy that they did. Notice so many American News outlets a p l a times n. B. C. Have over the past few months and months that they will be capitalizing black making it an uppercase b. This isnt a recent debate though is it 6 years ago you wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times making the case for exactly this can you explain what the debate is here sure i mean i dont really think of it as a debate in terms of what these words actually mean lowercase black is a color capital b. Were 1st to a group of people whose ancestors come from the african continent she needs a very simple difference one is a color one is a group of so theres no significance to the capital b. Beyond that its not really the distinction between a color and the people. This is why does this this debate this question is both so simple and yet so meaningful this question of whether or not youre going to capitalize black when you refer to black people is this is a sign of respect its saying i recognize you as a Distinct Group of people and youre beyond a color range that you have a culture i see because i respect because i respect you as a human be worthy of the senior level of respect as any other culture i want to pick up on that notion of culture black culture how do you arrive at a unified culture for people who are so diverse is there a consensus on what constitutes blackness well i think its going to be impossible to come with unify consensus right because there are many different ways of experiencing blackness there is interesting within our community but that doesnt stop us from talking about a set a shared history and a set of shared experience so that even if i think of myself as having a unique black experience im still exposed to the same external system that has treated africanamericans in a way that that marginalized us and that that heaps us from accessing the fullness of our rights as citizens in our for humanity with the black lives Matter Movement that appears to be event as arms of the term black whereas before africanamerican was more widely used so whats changed matthew whats brought black back into such widespread use. So racial terms are incredibly slippery lets call that is they never have one precise definition or application and when we think about the racial category of quote unquote black there are many synonyms that have been used the meanings of these terms vary quite a bit and depends how and where were using what is a term thats been around in American Society since you know anything of this country but its a term that historically signified a kind of dehumanization of this group of enslaved africans who were brought to the United States we see a radical shift happening with that sharon in 1950 s. So we see the black Power Movement arguing for reclaiming of that term trying to answer a rallying cry for people to think about selfdetermination to think about how we can reclaim in ourselves and have power over a label thats used for us this word black refers to Aviation Group but race itself is a really hotly contested concept isnt it a layperson i think understanding of race and ethnicity would be believing that there are biological easily identifiable characteristics so one can see that sociologists anthropologists biologists geneticists and gentleness are now on on the same page that race actually doesnt have any biological exists and it is when we look for racial types you cannot find when we look for them by blood type we can find race is a biological fiction with a social function and it plays a role and helps us identify and sort people so ok to state the obvious then already if were going to capitalize the b. Of black then why dont we capitalize the w. Of white. I understand the question i understand the conversation but i do not think that the answer is whats good for the blacks is good for the whites not in this scenario white people have never wanted to be treated the same way as black people ever white people have never said what youre doing to the blacks do it just to never the other thing is that White Supremacists are very actively used the capital w. To identify bare white supremacist culture so that adds a bit of a question mark also whether or not you want to adopt this capital w when he does meet it means White Supremacists i want to understand how this campaign for the captain worked with the News Organizations and for example i do your paper in the l. A. Times during the and it isnt protests there was a lot more being discussed than just a catholic and b m i write one the protests around george lloyd. Took off. There or was concerned with how media was covering it. And how they were covering black people in general so i thought the coverage was tied to there not being any black people in the room to say that voter selection is terrible the caption selection is terrible the whole premise of the story is race we all thought it was important to have this discussion in the open not converse station thats whats. The larger conversation that were having now. But its treatment of black staffers and the way in which it covers wacky people from that management decided to be a lock to rectify a big wrong and a small. So it must be a big relief to managers of american Media Outlets that the deep systemic changes that are needed you know diversity in news rooms the representation of black people in coverage all of that can wait a bit because after all theyve got to capitalize the big yeah i have and i laughed when i saw this question because its absolutely experience of many black americans that are asking for incredibly deep systemic change and it seems like were getting surface level responses now thats not the trivialize the importance of lies in that that the does important symbolic work but we also want to see the rest of the work being done for us media to really address race and racism in a critical truthful impurity german way would be to study for example the diffusion of anti black ideology in the United States and how they come to function in our institution how they structure and guide our interaction from who you marry to where we live to how long if media could interrogate those you know honest way to admit that White Supremacy is still quite normal in the n. T. Blackness is a still quite normal way of making sense of the world then we would have completely different story telling about our local community and our state in the nation. And finally theres an absolutely moronic cultural war underway overcovered 19 in the use of face masks more and more countries have made face masks compulsory in enclosed public spaces which has turned social media spaces into battlegrounds between anti mascaras and people who happen to believe that saving lives comes before someones idea of what constitutes personal freedom thats a societal fault line that divides america these days one that the online comedy troupe funny or die examines in this next video its untitled an ode to masks well see you next time here at the listening. Oh mask so masks cute little face flaps no bigger than a pigeon you protect me from diseases and allow me to cover my unattractive face and for that i want to thank you oh must film asks a guy i went to high school with thinks you are a hoax he has a facebook in so now he thinks he knows better than doctors but once drink an entire bottle of mayonnaise just to get a laugh my ass so mask why wont people keep you on the other day a woman standing in front of me in line in the supermarket remove turns just to come and then put it back on my phone my pin strips of life you can get designs printed on them i had one custom made it says i hate humanity on and people compliment me on the street. Soon my face diapers that cover up my bad breath clothes for my you dont attack me a new way to advertise my Favorite Brands across my mouth cheap and easy street fighter costume indicators of selfishness and for that i want to thank you. Rewind returns with a new series. And plain updates on the vast amount using these documentaries one documentary. Rewind continues with holy land grant i will complete the onion having the onion the sweetest party. To the entity youre Holding Number for your nose to the 2 state solution today it is still barely possible on aljazeera the whole d n a about there are still even use of people who are subject to the fisheries play by the pound with complete nowhere to put all these people theyre willing to change to children that would like the Big Box Stores this place has become a template for you to hear all of them and to treat them with something that in respects the a. Unique. Name is. Widening the net in the crackdown on hong kong activists china orders the arrest of 6 prodemocracy protesters in exile. Clo this is al jazeera live from doha for the back to bore also ahead. A look at pixar we are very very sorry President Trump puts pressure on the chinese Company Behind a Popular Video app in the u. S. Japans capital faces a state of emergency after reporting a record rise in corona virus cases for the 3rd day