A truck bomb exploded in a busy area of the somalian capital it is the deadliest attack in the countrys history the head of the World Health Organization says hes rethinking his appointment of Zimbabwes President Robert Mugabe as a goodwill ambassador after being heavily criticized for his decision. All right europe today with headlines here on aljazeera complex that is the listening post looking at just how hollywood and the media could both fail to expose the one stop. The protests are part of why. It was all right behind us but when i think of the york times. With. One section i think its talking like. A lower mr ginsburg and youre at the listening post here is what were looking at this week exposure what the Harvey Weinstein story the one that u. S. Media failed to report until now says about the relationship between the Film Industry and the News Business some people do stand up to hollywood they work at the cia and the pentagon iranians say goodbye to one of their oldest online institutions clude is shutting down and a car bomb kills a journalist in malta her son calls the country a mafia state in hollywood it was one of those open secrets something widely known that no one was prepared to say out loud Harvey Weinstein one of the most successful producers in the movie business a serial sexual abuser using his amends power and influence to force women including staff in turns and mostly actresses to succumb to his will the fame of those involved made this story Headline News raising the question of why something that took place over a period of decades was not reported until now it wasnt for a lack of sources at least two major Media Outlets have been accused by journalists who chased the weinstein story. Of baring it theres a conflict of interest at play here the news industry baits in the bright lights and reflected glamour of the Film Industry and relies on its revenues the ad dollars that the studios spent the dozens of women Harvey Weinstein wronged were not the only parties in this story who feared his influence his power to make or break for readers our starting point this week is the headquarters of the Weinstein Company in new york city. Typically stories about the abuse of power conflict of interest and the suppression of journalism have at their center some kind of political figure not this the case of Harvey Weinstein and other men in power who have been accused of sexual abuse theyve been able to hide their misconduct publicly for several decades because of the power structures that exists in society they know that theyre at the top theyre the boss they have the money and the power and the influence to make sure that if theyre accused of any of these crimes that they can hush it up this is all about power. How open was that secret Harvey Weinsteins treatment of women gawker and online news site with a taste for scandal reported on it in two thousand and fifteen in fighting victims to share their experiences but the story went nowhere if the u. S. Mainstream media were interested they lacked the appetite to follow up so its not that it never was referred to but there was never this big Investigative Journalism that really brought it out into the open until the New York Times did it this month what is the reason for that well has been a very powerful guy hes had many friends in the media in entertainment in politics and it was the kind of thing that people sort of looked away from. Where. In managing publicity getting up Advertising Campaigns to when people ask cares if youre like vanity fair magazine and you wanted interviews with those people he could or deny and so he had a real network in place and were not italian actress that did come through with a legal claim against weinstein suddenly page six of the New York Post was running like all these articles against her about her you know her past and that was coming out of weinstein himself and using page six as a tool or commission so i like to see people like actually not just investigate weinstein but investigate the people who are like actively complicit in that pulls the machine. There are many reasons why a News Organization would comply with the wishes of a hollywood mogul some films have advertising budgets in the tens of millions of dollars news outlets need those ad revenues and whether journalists cover politics or entertainment access matters alienate a major player in hollywood and you might lose your spot on the red carpet at the oscars or that exclusive interview with a movie star the New York Times broke the weinstein story but a journalist who used to work there Sharon Waxman says she took the story to the times in two thousand and four that the paper was pressured to drop it and the times disputes that ronan farrow is an Investigative Reporter for n. B. C. Who said he had the weinstein story backed by multiple sources and audiotape months before the times finally published it but that n. B. C. Refused to put it on the air farrow eventually took the story to a magazine the new yorker which published its version shortly after the times why did you end up reporting the story for the new yorker and after n. B. C. s i walked into the door at the new yorker with a an explosive lee reportable piece that should have been public earlier and immediately obviously a new yorker recognized that and it is not accurate to say that it was not reportable in fact there were multiple to terminations that was reportable it was a fair. Hes a much more recent story and its been published in the new yorker which is family known for not publishing anything that they cant back up so the fact of the it was able to go through the new yorker Fact Checking system kind of indicates that n. B. C. Dropped the ball around and farrah had enough to go forward although the News Organizations want to minute i think that they just felt intimidated and they didnt want to deal with the consequences n. B. C. Owns bravo and Harvey Weinstein was the producer of project runway which is owned by n. B. C. So you know you pat my back all pat yours you know we dont want to rock the boat these media conglomerates are so big and so theres so many divisions the news divisions get compromise because the entertainment divisions cant put the kybosh on a story that may threaten that part of the enterprise and thats very frightening. In journalism sometimes the best question to ask isnt why its why now and theories on why the weinstein story is more newsworthy now than in years past ranged from the shifting fortunes of his company to signs that when it comes to certain men in positions of power in america the times are changing the reason why harvey was taken down now it is my firm belief is because he wasnt that powerful anymore he wasnt making money for other people so ten years ago hes raking in the oscars hes raking in the cash nobody is going to give him up theres no way that all these women could have come out and felt comfortable enough to say what they said eventually to the New York Times there are factors that have been able to Media Outlets to finally report on the Harvey Weinstein case they have finally been able to do that because of the other cases that have come forward and have been successfully covered in the news such as donald trump because we deliberately roger. They felt empowered because of the News Coverage that has been going on we turn next year to stunning new developments after the flood of accusations of Sexual Misconduct against Harvey Weinstein as satisfying as it must be for Harvey Weinsteins many victims to finally see him get the coverage he deserves it must go all of them to watch the same mainstream Media Outlets that shied away from the story now feasting on it moralizing over it calling it something they should have called it long ago breaking news on the social media side the me too movement has resonated with women all over the world with their own stories of harassment or Sexual Assault in the workplace but sharing a hash tag highlighting a serious social problem is one thing correcting it particularly in a place like hollywood is quite another a lot of this is going on for a long long time the phrase casting couch was first used in one nine hundred thirty one the well worn hollywood fission reactors is kind of have to sleep with producers or directors to get positions we have many stories from the socalled golden age of hollywood people like judy garland are really being abused so this is kind of like almost like an accepted part of hollywood theres a lot of hypocrisy going around theres a lot of finger pointing and theres not a lot of people finger pointing by looking at america and saying how did you help this and how did you propagate this. And the problem is that if you dont understand what you did wrong and how you were a part of this is that really going to. Change anything the news media needs to really take a look at itself and i think with social media on our backs now we have an obligation to be even more accountable. Or were going to end up at being embarrassed. Other media stories that are on our radar this week on the mediterranean island nation of malta a journalist who used last years Panama Papers data dump to expose widespread corruption has been killed by a car bomb Investigative Reporter death knock out a wanna go around a blog called running commentary that sometimes attracted more online readers than all of the islands newspapers combined the consortium behind the Panama Papers won the Pulitzer Prize for its journalism want to lead the teams investigations in malta and effectively forced Prime Minister Joseph Smith Scott to call early elections there was scott has the ny that he and his wife used offshore Bank Accounts to hide payments from the ruling family of azerbaijan to scott called the murder an attack on press freedom he said everyone knows ms kind of want to see it was a harsh critic of mine both politically and personally but nobody can justify this barbaric act. Kind of want to see a son matthew said his mother was assassinated because she stood between the rule of law and those who sought to violate it this is where we are a mafia state where you will be blown to pieces for exercising your basic freedoms iranians witnessed the end of a social media era this past week when one of the countrys oldest Online Platforms clued announced it was shutting down both facebook and twitter are banned in iran and clue which launched twelve years ago filled part of that gap the site frequently clashed with the authorities for failing to take down politically sensitive material or pictures showing women without head scarves which is illegal in the Islamic Republic according to the companys director clued had been taken offline three times the most recent block lasted twenty eight days he said that his team no longer had the energy and enthusiasm to keep fighting instagram and the messaging Service Telegram are both available in iran and are booming president hassan. Pawnee who was reelected earlier this year said he would ease social media restrictions but he has yet to live up to that promise you can add mauritania to the list of governments that have suddenly accused critical Media Outlets of failing to pay their taxes and shutting them down on october seventeenth the countrys Broadcasting Authority ordered five privately owned t. V. Channels to close for failing to fulfill their financial agreements somehow t. V. Chin go it out of what the nia and more rabid tune were all ordered to close leaving just one channel the state owned t. V. Am on the air. All of this happens in the aftermath of a contentious referendum held two months ago which president muhammad would abdelaziz called to expand the powers of the presidency. Several journalists including aljazeera correspondent bob but would have been harassed or arrested while reporting on political unrest. The weinstein story was suppressed by hollywood using its legal and financial muscle to keep a lid on it but there are also Power Centers in the u. S. Government that can dictate to hollywood the pentagon and the cia weve examined the u. S. Military symbiotic relationship with hollywood before how the department of defense offers filmmakers access to tell a genuine military hardware and personality minimal cost in return for the right to alter story lines and veto scenes the pentagon does not like thanks to a neutral of documents a clearer picture is emerging of the cias attempts to control its on screen image the intelligence agencies track record of political assassinations coup plotting overseas and occasional support for terror groups offer countless possibilities for potential screenwriters however the agency works with filmmakers to portray version of its activities removing scenes and changing plot lines the cia sees as unflattering the listening posts may not show ravi now in americas military intelligence entertainment complex. Much any big budget war movie by taking a spy thriller and you could walk away not knowing just how much your movie experience was shaped by the pentagon or cia however the truth of official documents obtained under u. S. Freedom of information laws and published this year detailed the dealings between filmmakers and intelligence officials at lang. Jr the cia headquarters probably the best now in our zero dark thirty and argo but it also says to the Television Show homeland how do we deal with homegrown violent jihad theyve also assisted aliens the work are very i mean youre actually fighting twenty four. C. B. S. Series can be agency. Assisted a film called the sum of all fears steinbeck black captain jack wright cia Charlie Wilsons war is a really good example where they maintain the idea that old you know were really doing the right thing by arming the mujahideen the forerunners of the Al Qaeda Terrorist Organization in afghanistan in the one thousand nine hundred. They kind of question that in a kind of jokey way like the last caption in the in the film telling go sins or Something Like oh we came we saw but then we mucked up the end game or some joke you know its like no thats not what you did actually and you know it because the original script and they were you base this on doesnt say that you terrorists in a really horrific conflict its the whole Organization Behind that a systematic level. And that time Charlie Wilsons war into this you know saccharin been knowing movie throughout the one nine hundred ninety. Two with hollywood very specifically on movies that portray the cia sort of our roic force protecting america most of the movies were based on tom clancy books actually the hunt for red october and that entire franchise. You know the lead character jack ryan is like super heroic figure and hes like constantly you know taking down bag guys. And saving america saving the world from various threats whether its islamic terrorism or the iraqis are ultimately white supremacists. Between them and the cia and the u. S. Department of defense have had varying levels of input from simply cant find points for authenticity to actually writing parts of script on more than one thousand eight hundred movies and t. V. Shows. When it comes to influencing filmmaker shaping the story the pentagon is usually in a stronger negotiating position than the cia because of the hardware at its disposal it can shut down before the scene is ever shot. The department of defense is actually a much more powerful player in the Entertainment Industry for basically financial reasons the department of defense had. Expensive toys they have some marines they have aircraft carriers they have tanks and they have the personnel. To operate things so the filmmaker wants to make a war movie they often will approach the department of defense and basically asked to borrow that equipment and the department of defense will say maybe but can i see your script and they will either say this is great we love the way that the military is portrayed in the us we will go ahead in collaborate with you or they may say we hate the way they were portrayed and refused to participate. When the pentagon does agree to support a film that can. The some scripting Strings Attached and the vietnam war is clearly a sore point in the hulk a reference to a u. S. Operation that poison vietnamese farmland was removed and in the bond film tomorrow never dies a suggestion that the us did not win the war was cut out in iron man a reference to soldiers suicides was removed again at the pentagons insistence. The cias presence in hollywood is harder to detect. And goes back to the early days of the cold war and was designed to counter a propaganda effort coming out of the soviet union. The cia placed undercover agents in major studios where they monitored leftwing screen writers and directors this was at the height of cold war paranoia and hollywood was under the scrutiny of the us congress is investigating alleged communist influence and infiltration in the moving picture industry the agency started influencing scripts one Senior Executive at Paramount Pictures working covertly for the cia described how to counter what the soviets were saying about the persecution of African Americans quote well dressed negroes unquote would be planted in certain fields. What happens in the one nine hundred ninety s. Is that the cold war ends and all of a sudden the cia is left without a visible viable enemy to justify its existence theyre going to continue they had to do something to improve their public image and one of the responses to that crisis was to begin to work with hollywood to convince the American Public that and congress that they were still worth. Being an institution. In one thousand nine hundred six the cias Entertainment Liaison office in hollywood began offering free support to movies that featured the agency James Brandon an intelligence agent and cousin of actor Tommy Lee Jones was the cias first Liaison Officer hes credited as a Technical Advisor on a host of hollywood blockbusters such as the recruit starting out as a veteran cia officer off air years are. Our successes. But. In reality brandon was far more than a mere advisor on the recruit he helped pitch the film to disney that eventually produced and distributed the movie and was involved in the scriptwriting to create. As another cia as an officer protect hollywood is the only way the public learns about the agency which begs the question should the public be learning about the cia from the cia without even being aware of the agencys role in the production process. These issues became public with the release of one of the biggest cia hollywood collaborations to date zero dark thirty a film about the search for Osama Bin Laden you really believe the story. Sounded a lot in the zero dark thirty was a really unusual case i think for the cia in terms of how it works with hollywood the cia. Director and screenwriter a lot of access to the agency they bounced a lot of ideas back and forth and they wanted to really kind of tightly control the narrative that this was putting out it backfired because very quickly after the movie came out it was criticized for suggesting that torture somehow played a role in the information gathering that led to the capture assassination of. Torture and the cias use of it especially after nine eleven were already under investigation but zero dark thirty was released the Senate Intelligence committee wrote a letter to the production studio Sony Pictures they said we believe the film is grossly inaccurate and misleading in its suggestion that torture resulted in information that led to the location of Osama Bin Laden zero dark thirty as director Kathryn Bigelow eventually had to respond to the allegation that her film was making the cias case for torture in an editorial for the Los Angeles Times she wrote that critics were quote confusing depiction with indorsement torture was as we all know employed in the early years of the hunt that doesnt mean it was the key to finding bin laden it means its a part of the story we couldnt ignore. Thats more of a problem with the Film Industry and the Creative Industry total disinterest in the responsibility of the ideological products they create and this is why you can have a very liberal town full of very liberal or even sometimes left wing celebrities and directors but actually they create films that are very much in keeping with the american empire project rarely. He has any kind of public credit that suggests that they had any hand in shaping the narrative that that lack of transparency i find incredibly problematic because it doesnt allow the viewer to be a smart critical theory. How about this one they just have at the beginning of each film made with the support of the Central Intelligence agency the cia and on the practice lost then because it wasnt because people look at it and say oh no its one of the propaganda films. Finally back to the Harvey Weinstein story the fact that his atrocious behavior went unreported for so long has led to allegations as yet unconfirmed of soul searching in the Entertainment Industry and in the news media but the signs of what kind of man weinstein was were out there for all to see its just that no one did anything about it we have collected a few clips the odd joke or throwaway line from figures in the film world that prove that weinsteins reputation as a sexual predator was known years before that explosive report in the New York Times was published bringing him down well see an x. Time here at the listening post. The two thousand and twelve nominees for best performance by an actress in a supporting role congratulations you five ladies no longer have to pretend to be attracted to Harvey Weinstein. Are you here of your own free will. As someone coerced you into being here or do you count Harvey Weinstein as a course im not afraid of anyone in show business i turned down intercourse with Harvey Weinstein on no less than three occasions out of five i know Harvey Weinstein is a i dont know whether hes in some kind of organized crime now. But he used to be like some kind of junior mob kind of got writers it was like in the mob thats are they telling yeah and now you know like a big powerful film guy right yes i do all my movies for Harvey Weinstein thats miramax and im lucky to do them there but he will coerce you to do with it so as to harvey said it would go on and pro talk about your movies and what herbie said and in return what will her view do for you. Not being real whats wrong with that equation. I was the kid see you do the math. I did my three younger you know you. Are ok youre going to face your predatory years were seeing. A journey both dark because if you know theres a very for everything and theres a lot of corruption and beautiful like the beautiful lady you have to be very patient and audis also the same as ascended you can see how i was introduced to it when my father and my most aware of king for king for how the personal story to discover the source of one of the most expensive commodities sent from heaven this time on aljazeera sometimes pictures of the only way to truly tell a story and aljazeera so goes the extra mile to use some of the latest new camera gear and technology to make sure these images are innovative to be a little edgy is not just of the best its about giving the viewer. With the theme whenever needed. As a child of political refugees ive always been aware of different kinds of stories and of all kinds of timothy aljazeera as a space for that. Across the globe breathtaking efforts to clean up the planet sat around the way in Milan Companies are turning to a radical solution biodynamics a man toxic pollution so this really is a living building thats constantly interacting with its environment earthrise trees its the from two years of the battle for the environment trying to steer in ice and a pioneering a new technique to reduce emissions earthrise look for new ways of preventing air pollution at this time. And for you. I dont recall going to out of the top stories here on aljazeera in the last our council
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