Media
Once Again We're Reminded Social Media Is Forever – Forbes
This past weekend on Twitter former professional football player Colin Kaepernick denounced the Fourth of July, but FoxNews.com and other outlets quickly noted that years earlier he took to social media and wished everyone a “Happy 4th.”
Now in fairness to Mr. Kaepernick, people’s opinions change and this can certainly include feelings about historic events and holidays. And this is far from the first time that someone’s old posts or comments have come up to haunt them. Old tweets cost comedian Kevin Hart a chance to host the Oscar ceremonies back in 2018 while last month Temple University announced that it would review several “offensive social-media posts” by current and incoming students.
“Social media lasts forever, and your old tweets will come back to haunt you if they haven’t already,” explained Shannon Tucker, vice president of media relations at SSPR.
Too Casual Of Conversation
One problem is that people tend to over share on social media, and because they are talking to friends – even people they might only know through a social media platform – is that they might post something that they’d think twice about saying.
“Social media often feels like an informal or private conversation but it’s just the opposite,” warned Greg Sterling, vice president of marketing insights at Uberall.
“Past cringe-worthy or offensive posts are a problem for all public figures, as well as for ordinary people who made controversial remarks online in the past,” Sterling noted. “These kinds of ‘the Internet never forgets’ issues have been around for a long time. But the level of public and employer sensitivity has recently ratcheted up.”
Forgiveness Isn’t Always An Option
One of the concerns is that society’s views are also changing. As statues of the Founding Fathers come down and there are increased cries to remove anything to do with individuals who had views that are in conflict with today’s acceptance for the new social norms, past words can haunt almost anyone.
“After George Floyd’s death, our society became less tolerant of these mistakes, and I’m here for it,” added Tucker.
“We must hold people accountable,” she explained. “There are exceptions, of course. Some social media mistakes are unforgivable – Roseanne Barr – but in the case of Colin Kaepernick, I personally don’t believe he should be called out. Is he not allowed to learn and grow and be better from year to year? This doesn’t fall into the category of ‘unforgiveable’ by any means.”
While Kaepaernick’s posts may be forgivable, it does seem that we’ve reached a point where what someone may have posted on social media could outweigh their actions.
Lasting Impact
It isn’t just celebrities that can face serious consequences years after posting something they probably wish they hadn’t shared. In the past month there have been calls to investigate and even fire police officers for comments made on social media dating back years.
Unlike actual crimes, it could be argued that social media has no statute of limitations and as noted, social media can be forever. Then there is the question of whether comments made by a minor should impact someone’s life when they are an adult.
Such is the case of 24-year old police officer Bryce La Luzerne of Grand Chute, Wisconsin – for tweets that date back as far as 2012. His police department is now investigating whether he made racist, homophobic and/or violent social media posts going back eight years. At the time he was between the ages of 16 and 18, and wasn’t hired by the department until he was 22.
While it is very likely La Luzerne could lose his job, and have his life impacted for years, it should serve as a warning call to anyone to be extremely careful about what they post. Society is unlikely to forgive past comments, posts, tweets or other things shared on various platforms.
Perhaps this is why some are increasingly being far less social and almost anti-social when it comes to Facebook, Twitter and other platforms.
The question is what can or even should be done if one now regrets the things that were shared on social media.
“I’m not sure much can be done, other than deleting potentially damaging content, making feeds private – if possible – and being careful about what you say in the future,” said Sterling.
And for those who are called out, the best course of action might be to own and hope for forgiveness.
“A general rule when making a mistake on social media is to acknowledge it, authentically apologize, and show how you plan to take action and change,” suggested Tucker.
Media
Georgia’s parliament votes to approve so-called ‘Russian law’ targeting media in first reading – CityNews Kitchener
TBILISI, Georgia (AP) — Georgia’s parliament has voted in the first reading to approve a proposed law that would require media and non-commercial organizations to register as being under foreign influence if they receive more than 20% of their funding from abroad.
Opponents say the proposal would obstruct Georgia’s long-sought prospects of joining the European Union. They denounce it as “the Russian law” because Moscow uses similar legislation to stigmatize independent news media and organizations seen as being at odds with the Kremlin.
“If it is adopted, it will bring Georgia in line with Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus and those countries where human rights are trampled. It will destroy Georgia’s European path,” said Giorgi Rukhadze, founder of the Georgian Strategic Analysis Center.
Although Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili would veto the law if it is passed by parliament in the third reading, the ruling party can override the veto by collecting 76 votes. Then the parliament speaker can sign it into law.
The bill is nearly identical to a proposal that the governing party was pressured to withdraw last year after large street protests. Police in the capital, Tbilisi, used tear gas Tuesday to break up a large demonstration outside the parliament.
The only change in wording from the previous draft law says non-commercial organizations and news media that receive 20% or more of their funding from overseas would have to register as “pursuing the interests of a foreign power.” The previous draft law said “agents of foreign influence.”
Zaza Bibilashvili with the civil society group Chavchavadze Center called the vote on the law an “existential choice.”
He suggested it would create an Iron Curtain between Georgia and the EU, calling it a way to keep Georgia “in the Russian sphere of influence and away from Europe.”
The Associated Press
Media
Henry Winter’s surprise exit a sign of the fracturing evolution of the football media – The Guardian
For more than three decades, English football media was a Winter wonderland. An eternal Winter. Winter extending an icy grip over the landscape. But even Winter, it seems, can end up being frozen out. Given the cold shoulder. It’s time to wrap up for Winter, now this particular Winter’s tale has reached its final chapter.
That, with apologies, was the opening paragraph to a column about Henry Winter’s dismissal by the Times, written in the style of Henry Winter for the Times. On the other hand, it’s entirely possible you haven’t the faintest idea what, or who, I’m talking about. Which to an oblique and probably self-defeating extent is actually the point.
Winter is the chief football writer of the Times, at least until he was suddenly made redundant last week. It was the dismissal heard around the world, if by “the world” you mean “the WhatsApp groups of newspaper sports journalists”. And in a low-key, navel-gazing sort of way, a move that actually tells us quite a lot about how, and through whom, we consume football these days.
Because over his 35 years at the Independent, the Telegraph and the Times, Winter probably became the closest thing football journalism has ever had to a celebrity. Players know him. Managers know him. He was ubiquitous, respected, pretty much untouchable. When the Times hired him they announced the signing with a lavish television advertising campaign. And though he rarely set out to ruffle feathers, when he pursued a cause – the Hillsborough survivors’ fight for justice, or his distaste at the cross on the recent England kit – his voice invariably lent that cause extra weight.
Winter and I were colleagues at the Telegraph for seven years, but our interactions were brief. Invariably he was out on the road: notching up hundreds of games a season, thousands of miles, match reports by the kilo, interviews by the ream, pre-season tours, under-21 tournaments, Friday night Championship games: every waking second of every waking day funnelled into this existence, a career that became a life, and vice versa.
On the writing side you might even describe him as a kind of personal inspiration: a reminder of the timeless virtues of simple, elegant prose. Extremely short sentences. Like these. No unnecessary adjectives, no undue nuance, no pun too excruciating. Barcelona v Chelsea is “the Catalans among the London pigeons”. Birmingham 0-7 Liverpool is “seven-up for Liverpool, grapes of wrath for Steve Bruce”. Mario Götze’s winning goal in the 2014 World Cup final becomes “Mario de Janeiro.” The fans are invariably “wonderful” or “magnificent”.
And what was this existence? Perhaps from a non-industry perspective, the most macabrely fascinating aspect of Winter’s career is the way it represents one of the media’s last concerted attempts to embody what you might term “the authentic voice of football”: authoritative, omniscient, unaffiliated, gospel. Ultra on the streets, Shakespeare on the sheets. And by extension the idea that this sport is a common space, a singular space. That when we watch football we are all essentially watching the same thing, together.
This is, in case you hadn’t noticed, an idea that has been in recession for quite some time, a process that largely mirrors the evolution of the football media as a whole. But for decades it was the way we all received the game: through the giants of television and radio, the doyens of Fleet Street, camel-coated men who offered not so much opinion but judgement. When Alan Hansen said something on Match of the Day, or Brian Woolnough opined in the Sun, it became truth by the very dint of being uttered, by the sheer absence of alternative or dissenting voices.
More latterly that role was assumed by Twitter, a website where – as a friend once memorably described it – journalists could pretend they were celebrities and celebrities could pretend they were journalists. Naturally Winter, with his million-plus followers, was at the vanguard of the migration, holding court in the digital town square, still road-testing those puns, still toasting those magnificent fans.
But, under the surface, the terrain has been fracturing for years: attention and influence draining away not just from traditional newspapers, but from everybody. Even television has lost its power to unite us: its live action now mostly paywalled, its pundits now invariably partisan, its content disposable. What once constituted our shared football space has splintered into a million galaxies: forums and fan media, podcasts and YouTube channels, blogs and specialist websites, Reddit and TikTok, the curated feeds that allow us to view a game through whatever filter we choose: tribal, social, banter, fantasy team.
The old world – a drowned world of traditional gatekeepers and newspaper dukes and lukewarm Gareth Southgate quotes embargoed until 10.30pm Friday – is gone. And perhaps the last people yet to notice are the dwindling few still inside it.
What might an “authentic voice of football” sound like in 2024? What kind of journalist could meaningfully speak to all the sport’s various silos? They would need to be an expert in men’s and women’s football, the game’s social and historical context, geopolitics and finance, transfers and tactics, analytics and sports science, banter and rage, all the major European leagues and quite a few others besides. And, of course, they would be conversant in all the dizzying new languages of visual media, across all conceivable formats and platforms. That person, in case you’re wondering, doesn’t actually exist. It’s all football. But increasingly, it’s too big for any one entity to conceive, let alone cover.
And for the avoidance of doubt, none of this is necessarily a bad thing. For all its inequities and inefficiencies, the landscape of football media is broader and richer place than it has ever been. You have Fabrizio Romano for transfers, Grace Robertson for tactics, Versus for football culture, Stadio podcast for the global game, Mark Goldbridge for performative rants about Erik ten Hag, the Guardian for chin-strokey think-pieces written by the guys picked last at PE. In a way, there has never been a better time to consume football. The garden is blooming. But for spring to begin – and yes, you know it’s coming – first winter has to end.
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Media
Pakistan says it blocked social media platform X over ‘national security’ – Al Jazeera English
The platform remained inaccessible to users, but government officials refused to acknowledge any restrictions, until now.
Pakistan blocked access to social media platform X around the time of elections in February, the interior ministry said, citing national security concerns.
Users had reported problems using the platform, formerly known as Twitter, since mid-February, when jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s party called for protests against a government official’s admission of vote manipulation.
At the time, both the government and the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), the state regulatory body, refused to comment on the outages that were also widely reported by internet watchdog groups.
On Wednesday, the Ministry of Interior mentioned the shutdown in a written court submission.
“It is very pertinent to mention here that the failure of Twitter/X to adhere to the lawful directives of the government of Pakistan and address concerns regarding the misuse of its platform necessitated the imposition of a ban,” said the report, seen by the Reuters news agency, which confirmed the long-suspected shutdown.
“The decision to impose a ban on Twitter/X in Pakistan was made in the interest of upholding national security, maintaining public order, and preserving the integrity of our nation,” the ministry said, according to the report submitted to the Islamabad High Court in a challenge to the shutdown.
It additionally said the platform had been reluctant to resolve the issue.
Activists challenging the ban said it was designed to quash dissent after the February 8 general elections that were marred by widespread opposition claims of vote rigging and protests.
The authorities had shut down mobile services on the day of the elections, citing security concerns. NetBlocks, an internet monitor, also reported that users could not access X on February 10 while the country was awaiting the results.
The decision to temporarily block X was taken after considering confidential reports from Pakistan’s intelligence and security agencies, the report said.
It claimed that “hostile elements operating on Twitter/X have nefarious intentions to create an environment of chaos and instability, with the ultimate goal of destabilising the country and plunging it into some form of anarchy”.
The Sindh High Court on Wednesday ordered the government to restore the platform within one week, the AFP news agency reported, citing lawyer Moiz Jaaferi, who launched a separate challenge against the ban.
Access to X has been sporadic, occasionally available for short cycles based on the internet service provider, forcing users to use virtual private networks, said Alp Toker of NetBlocks.
Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) party is the most prolific user of social media platforms, particularly after the country’s traditional media began censoring news about the former cricket star and his party in the run-up to the polls. Khan has 20.6 million followers on X.
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