European Values (II)

BERLIN/WARSAW (Own report) – Whereas Berlin is attacking the Polish government because of its media law; massive criticism is being raised against the German public broadcasting. While German politicians are calling for sanctions to be imposed on Poland, because it is placing its public media under government supervision, a right-wing conservative former CDU minister has become Chair of an influential panel of Germany’s ARD public television channel. Observers note that, even after the Federal Constitutional Court’s intervention, state officials or individuals with close government ties exercise significant influence on the public broadcasting steering committees. Due to their structural relationship to the state, on the one hand, and the programs’ political orientation toward government policy, on the other, one could speak of “embedded journalism” in Germany, a former correspondent of the ZDF public television concluded a few years ago. The journalist went to work for the Swiss Television, because it does not have “a NATO state’s obligatory alignment.” The German public television’s foreign news reporting is even increasingly being accused of using falsifications.

Chinese Navy Threatens Plane in International Airspace

A screen capture from the BBC “Flying close to Beijing’s new South China Sea islands.”

 

A BBC reporter is among the crew of a plane warned to leave open waters.

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Journalist Rupert Wingfield-Hayes recently took flight in a civilian-piloted plane to gauge what sort of reaction his presence might invite upon flying over the Spratly Islands—a field of reefs, atolls and small land masses located off the coast of the Philippines in the South China Sea of the Pacific Ocean, through what is widely recognized as international airspace.

China broadcasting endless loop of Foley execution on huge screen in Beijing

That’s Beijing Magazine has published video of a giant screen in downtown Beijing that is broadcasting an endless loop of bad news that has recently unsettled Americans, including the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, and an ISIS militant preparing to execute journalist James Foley. To say the least, it’s in questionable taste, as That’s Beijing explains:

Russia can turn US to ‘radioactive ash’: Kremlin-backed journalist

Moscow: A Kremlin-backed journalist issued a stark warning to the United States about Moscow’s nuclear capabilities on Sunday, as the White House threatened sanctions over Crimea’s referendum on union with Russia.

”Russia is the only country in the world that is realistically capable of turning the United States into radioactive ash,” television presenter Dmitry Kiselyov said on his weekly current affairs show.

Behind him was a backdrop of a mushroom cloud following a nuclear blast.