Polish parliament passes media reform bill despite U.S. opposition - Reuters

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Polish parliament passes media reform bill despite U.S. opposition – Reuters

Published

2 years ago

August 11, 2021

Harry Miller

A protester holds a placard with the logo of the TVN Group during a demonstration in defence of media freedom and against a proposed amendment to the country’s broadcast media law regarding the share of foreign capital in Polish media, in Bydgoszcz, Poland August 10, 2021. Roman Bosiacki/Agencja Gazeta/via REUTERS

WARSAW, Aug 11 (Reuters) – Polish lawmakers on Wednesday voted in favour of a bill that the opposition says aims to silence a U.S.-owned news channel critical of the government, setting up a clash with one of Warsaw’s most important allies.

Washington has warned that a failure to renew the licence of Discovery-owned news channel TVN24 could jeopardise future investments in Poland, while opposition politicians have condemned the bill as an attack on media freedoms.

“Today’s vote… is an attack on freedom, an attack on media that is independent from the government,” Grzegorz Schetyna, a lawmaker from the largest opposition party Civic Platform, wrote on Twitter.

The bill, which would strengthen a ban on firms from outside the European Economic Area controlling Polish broadcasters, passed with 228 votes in favour, 216 against and 10 abstentions.

“We are bringing in rules that are similar in other European Union countries, we have the right to regulate questions about capital in a way the Polish parliament deems appropriate,” said government spokesman Piotr Muller.

TVN24’s parent, TVN, is owned by the U.S.-based media group Discovery Inc (DISCA.O) via a firm registered in the Netherlands, to get around a ban on non-European firms owning more than 49% of Polish media companies. read more

The bill would forbid such an arrangement and comes shortly before the deadline for the renewal of TVN24’s licence, which expires on Sept. 26.

“The act as adopted is an attack on core democratic principles of freedom of speech, the independence of the media and is directly discriminatory against TVN and Discovery,” Discovery said in a statement.

Ahead of the vote, U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters the country was watching the media bill and a separate bill on Holocaust restitution “very closely”.

The media bill will now go to the upper house of parliament, the Senate.

PROPERTY RESTITUTION

The lower house of parliament also passed a separate bill which is expected to make it harder for Jews to recover property seized by Nazi German occupiers and kept by postwar communist rulers. This bill had already gone through the Senate, meaning it now goes to the president to be signed into law. read more

“I condemn the legislation that was passed in the Polish Parliament today, which damages both the memory of the Holocaust and the rights of its victims,” Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said in a statement.

Earlier in the evening, Polish opposition lawmakers said they had shown the governing United Right coalition could not command a majority when they succeeded in passing a motion to postpone the sitting.

However, joy turned to outrage when speaker Elzbieta Witek said the vote had to be repeated because she had forgotten to specify the date until which the sitting was to be postponed.

“What you are doing is absolutely illegal,” said Civil Platform lawmaker Borys Budka.

Jaroslaw Sachajko of the Kukiz 15 party, which is not part of the ruling coalition but supports some of its policies, said the party’s four lawmakers had originally voted for the opposition motion by mistake.

Uncertainty about the government’s ability to command a majority had mounted on Tuesday when Jaroslaw Gowin, head of junior coalition partner Accord, was removed from the post of deputy premier. read more

Reporting by Alan Charlish, Pawel Florkiewicz, Alicja Ptak, additional reporting by Rami Ayyub in Jerusalem, Simon Lewis, Doyinsola Oladipo, and Humeyra Pamuk in Washington; Editing by Hugh Lawson, Giles Elgood, Nick Macfie, Timothy Heritage, Sonya Hepinstall and Jonathan Oatis

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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The social media apps we use, from best to worst – Mashable

Published

44 mins ago

June 3, 2023

Harry Miller

For a bunch of people who supposedly hate social media, we sure do spend a lot of time on it.

Just 33 percent of U.S. adults have “some or a lot” of trust in social media, according to a late 2022 report from the Pew Research Center(opens in a new tab), and people who spend time on social media are more likely to experience mental health problems(opens in a new tab), including depression. According to BroadbandSearch, an independent research site that compares internet providers, the average American spends a little more than two hours a day on (opens in a new tab)the very same hurtful platforms they purport not to trust. And it seems like new social media platforms — any sort of online space in which people are publicly chatting with each other, including Facebook and Twitter and TikTok and, yes, LinkedIn — are popping up every day.

There aren’t loads of social media platforms that are brand new in 2023, but there are dozens that we spend our time on every day that have had some pretty radically nightmarish moments in 2023. Unfortunately, as it is the middle of the year, it’s time to rank these nightmares.

While evaluating these social media platforms, I’ve considered five questions:

How widely-used is the app?
How grumpy does the app make me because of the content?
How grumpy does the app make me because of the interface?
How likely is the app to disrupt democracy?
How annoying are the influencers on that app?

There are many apps that launched recently that didn’t make the list — Geneva, Diem, Melon, Pineapple, Somewhere Good — because they just aren’t widely-used enough to asses just how awful they are. I’m omitting far-right social media apps like Parler and Gab — they are all worse than the apps I’m writing about here, and their content is too vile for me to make fun of in a listicle.

Here are the social media platforms that have stolen our brains so far in 2023, from least bad to worst. This list is just my opinion, but it is also correct.

Mastodon

A very nice escape from Twitter for the 20 minutes it was relevant.

BeReal

Fine, but no one uses it anymore so it is now therefore boring. Boring, to be clear, is not necessarily an insult when it comes to social media (see: Facebook further down the list, which I wish was more boring).

Artifact

Boring but alright.

BlueSky

This app seems fine but I don’t have access to it. Send me an invite and I will do my best to accurately review it.

Lemon8

A new app that is annoying to me, but others find it lovely.

There are LinkedInfluencers(opens in a new tab), which is annoying but not actively harmful.

Substack

Stay with me, but the newsletter platform is kind of killing it this year. It launched chats and a Notes feature to rival Twitter and some of the more popular Substack writers make a pretty good living from their newsletters. It’s this far down, though, because Substack isn’t without its problems: The platform allows some pretty hateful speech, like the transphobic newsletter from Graham Linehan.

Snapchat

This would be higher if it didn’t force Snapchat AI onto every single user.

TikTok

Can be vile, but can also feed you a pretty consistent number of frog videos. It’s lower down because entire nations are banning it for — you guessed it — potential threats to democracy.

Instagram

I swear to God if I get fed one more video about dieting I’m going to scream.

Facebook

Unfortunately for Facebook, most of us simply refuse to forget 2016(opens in a new tab) and the Facebook Papers. There’s an old saying in Tennessee(opens in a new tab) — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, ruin democracy once, shame on — shame on you. Ruin democracy twice — you can’t get democracy ruined again.

Twitter

Elon Musk 🥴

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OPEC denies media access to Reuters, Bloomberg, WSJ for weekend policy meets

Published

10 hours ago

June 2, 2023

Harry Miller

VIENNA, June 2 (Reuters) – OPEC has denied media access to reporters from Reuters, Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal to report on oil policy meetings in Vienna this weekend, reporters, Bloomberg and people familiar with the matter said on Friday.

The three media organizations are among the world’s leading suppliers of financial news and information. They report on the outcome of policy meetings between OPEC and its allies, where ministers make decisions that impact the price of the world’s most traded commodity.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies is a group known as OPEC+ and includes top oil producers Saudi Arabia and Russia. Ministers from the group, which pumps more than 40% of the world’s oil supply, are scheduled to gather on Saturday and Sunday for regular biannual meetings.

OPEC staff declined on Friday to give media accreditation to Reuters journalists to cover the event. The staff handling media accreditation at one of Vienna’s luxury hotels said they could not issue accreditation without an invite. They did not comment when asked why Reuters reporters received no invites.

OPEC has not responded to requests for comment from Reuters this week on why it has not invited or accredited Reuters reporters for the meet.

“We believe that transparency and a free press serve both readers and markets, and we object to this restriction on coverage,” a spokesperson for Reuters, the news and media division of Thomson Reuters Corp (TRI.TO), said on Friday.

“Reuters will continue to cover OPEC in an independent, impartial and reliable way in keeping with the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.”

A reporter from Bloomberg was also denied accreditation on Friday, a person familiar with the matter said.

A Bloomberg spokesperson confirmed on Friday the company has not been given accreditation to cover the OPEC meeting.

The Wall Street Journal did not respond to a request for comment.

Reporters from the three outlets, many of whom have been covering OPEC meetings for years, did not receive invitations from OPEC ahead of the meeting.

Without accreditation, journalists cannot enter the OPEC Secretariat where the ministers meet, or attend press conferences during the event.

Reporters at other media outlets including trade publications Argus and Platts received accreditation on Friday. Argus confirmed its reporters have been accredited and will attend. Platts did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

Reporting by Alex Lawler, Dmitry Zhdannikov, Ahmad Ghaddar, Julia Payne, Maha El Dahan; writing by Simon Webb; Editing by Marguerita Choy

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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OPEC denies media access to Reuters, Bloomberg, WSJ for weekend policy meets – Yahoo Canada Finance

Published

11 hours ago

June 2, 2023

Harry Miller

VIENNA (Reuters) – OPEC has denied media access to reporters from Reuters, Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal to report on oil policy meetings in Vienna this weekend, reporters, Bloomberg and people familiar with the matter said on Friday.

OPEC has not responded to requests for comment from Reuters this week on why it has not invited or accredited Reuters reporters for the meet.

“Reuters will continue to cover OPEC in an independent, impartial and reliable way in keeping with the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.”

A reporter from Bloomberg was also denied accreditation on Friday, a person familiar with the matter said.

A Bloomberg spokesperson confirmed on Friday the company has not been given accreditation to cover the OPEC meeting.

The Wall Street Journal did not respond to a request for comment.

Reporters from the three outlets, many of whom have been covering OPEC meetings for years, did not receive invitations from OPEC ahead of the meeting.

Without accreditation, journalists cannot enter the OPEC Secretariat where the ministers meet, or attend press conferences during the event.

(Reporting by Alex Lawler, Dmitry Zhdannikov, Ahmad Ghaddar, Julia Payne, Maha El Dahan; writing by Simon Webb; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

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