The right-wing media baron Rupert Murdoch turns 90 today. His news empire has been instrumental in reshaping the world in the image cast by conservative elites. The need to build a robust and democratic alternative media has never been more urgent.

Documents from axed Competition Bureau probe appear to contradict Postmedia CEO.

The standoff between Facebook and the Australian government has ended with Facebook agreeing to pay off news companies. But the deal won’t help journalists whose wages and conditions have been under constant attack, unless they start organizing to defend their rights.

On Thursday, Australians woke to find Facebook had banned all news on the platform. Liberal PM Scott Morrison has refused to back down over the laws that triggered the move. Beneath the rhetoric, Morrison’s stand is about serving the interests of News Corp, not saving democracy.

Rush Limbaugh was a right-wing demagogue who also happened to have considerable talents as a broadcaster — and he used them to make the world a worse place for the ordinary people he claimed to speak for.

The hilarious irony at the core of Limbaugh’s life was that his career and wealth were a handout from the U.S. government.

A handful of Big Tech corporations now wield more power than most national governments. It’s time to subject them to democratic control – before their power erodes democracy.

Vijay Prashad | In Ecuador, the oligarchy used the techniques of the guerra jurídica (‘legal war’) to delegitimise the entire left, especially former president Rafael Correa (2007-2017). Correa was accused of bribery – with the bizarre notion of ‘psychic influence’ (influjo psíquico) at the root of the case. He was handed down an eight-year sentence which prevented him from running for office in Ecuador.

Facebook has said it will no longer algorithmically recommend political groups to users, but experts warn that isn’t enough | The Guardian

There has been a purge of left-wing accounts from social media, with socialist organizations being targeted on Facebook and multiple Antifa-associated accounts suspended from Twitter.

It is important for American journalists to combat these misperceptions, so that the US can learn from China’s response on how to better deal with the current crisis—saving lives in this as well as future pandemics, as well as reducing tensions between the nuclear powers US and China.

Judge says it would be ‘oppressive’ to extradite WikiLeaks founder to US, citing concerns for his mental health

Antitrust lawsuits against companies like Facebook stand little chance of effectively breaking them up. Bringing Big Tech into public ownership is the only way to fight monopolization under surveillance capitalism.

Twitter is now seen as an important medium of progressive activism. But while hashtags may be the quickest way for anyone to tap into the turbulent and frenetic world of online social justice discourse, their record for building the sort of institutions that can boost popular power is an unbroken pattern of defeat.

The new regime at Labour Party Central chose its most reliable conduit — the Guardian newspaper — to give advance notice that the party Establishment is keen to pay off the so-called “whistleblowers” among headquarters staff who participated in last year’s Panorama programme on alleged anti-semitism in the party.