Corporate Media Finally Opposes a War

The 25th Anniversary Edition of the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival runs for three weeks, from March 21–April 10. This year’s festival theme is ENTANGLEMENTS.

Cinemapolis will host 25 films on its virtual cinema platform and three in-person special event screenings and talkbacks at the theater with filmmakers and community groups. 

Feature-length documentary and narrative films from 16 countries including Argentina, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, China, France, Hong Kong, Israel, Kosovo, Morocco, Niger, Rwanda, Tunisia, United Kingdom, and United States will each have a one-week run on the Eventive platform. 

Read more and purchase tickets here.

Having worked in mainstream U.S. media at the start of the “War on Terror” and during the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Jeff Cohen finds the differences in today’s war coverage dizzying.

While reporting on Russia’s horrific aggression in Ukraine, there is a real focus — as there always should be — on civilian victims of war. But there was virtually no focus on civilian death and agony when it was the U.S. military launching the invasions.

U.S. media have also correctly, repeatedly, and without equivocation, invoked international law and declared Russia’s invasion illegal. In contrast, establishment media has almost never called on international law amid recent decades of the U.S.’s attacks or invasions in country after country.

Read Cohen’s full commentary on The Edge.

For many around the world, the Russian invasion of Ukraine amounts to an unprovoked violation of international law and a humanitarian catastrophe. “For the fossil fuel industry, it’s an opportunity to exploit for profit,” writes Popular Information.

On February 24, the day Russian forces crossed the Ukrainian border, the American Petroleum Institute issued a statement calling for fossil fuel extraction, saying it was now “critical” for the U.S. to allow more pipelines, drilling, and fracking.

Fossil fuel talking points have quickly been funneled through Senators funded by the industry and columns in major news organizations like the Wall Street Journal. Big oil is profiting from partnerships in Russia, which relies on its superlative natural gas resources as a political weapon. European countries now have the chance to move away from fossil fuels to reduce their dependence on Russia.

An ABC news report showed amid speculation of Russian invasion that “the specter of a military confrontation” was “pumping fresh life into the debate over whether president Joe Biden’s climate agenda is brushing up against difficult geopolitical realities.”

Columbia Journalism Review points out that this story was one of the first to examine the climate angle of the Ukraine conflict — and that it shouldn’t be the last. Energy, particularly the supply and price of methane, is at the heart of the international tensions at the Ukrainian border.

Russia has long supplied much of the gas that heats homes and powers factories in Europe, especially in Germany. There has been plenty of coverage on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which could double Russia’s gas exports to Europe, but such coverage hasn’t should continue to investigate the climate issue at hand.

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin came to New York City with a defamation lawsuit against the New York Times. FAIR explains, “She lost in court, but her offensive against the paper is a symptom of a growing political campaign against a crucial legal centerpiece of U.S. press freedom.”

The defamation charge had weak footing, but it has turned legal protections for the press into the “bad guy,” with Palin’s team claiming that if “[The Times’] argument is credited, media outfits can publish almost anything and then run corrections while claiming they meant no harm.”

Protections have been considered sacrosanct by press and free speech advocates. “When then-President Donald Trump vowed to make it easier for him to sue journalists, the press scoffed. But the Palin case is a reminder that this threat was not the random musing of a thin-skinned demagogue, but an idea gaining steam on the broader right.”

1. Ukraine-Russia news – live: Putin’s forces attack Mariupol and Kherson as civilian death toll ‘hits 2,000’ (The Independent)

2. What Biden’s State of the Union Speech Was For (The Atlantic)

3. COVID Cases, Deaths Continue To Fall Globally, WHO Reports (HuffPost)

4. Oil price rises again as buyers shun Russian crude (BBC)

5. ‘Constant shelling’ as Russian forces lay siege to key Ukrainian cities (The Guardian)