Getting to the bottom of the bullshit at the Global Conference on Media Freedom

Paul Waldie has another report on the Global Conference on Media Freedom in the Globe and Mail today. Once again, we need not invoke the name “Assange” in covering a conference on “press freedom” in London, because after all, Assange is not a journalist.

Instead, we meet Maria Ressa, whose plucky anti-Duterte website “The Rappler” is fast becoming a darling of the mainstream “press freedom” warriors. Oddly enough, up until Duterte’s election in 2016, nobody in the capitals of the West ever gave a shit about democracy or the lack thereof in the Philippines, let alone how free the press might be there.

So what changed with the election of Duterte? He’s threatened to follow an independent foreign policy and forge better relations with Russia and China. That’s why “democracy” and a “free press” in the Philippines are suddenly top of mind.

Waldie informs us that a Pierre Omidyar “charity” has taken Ressa under it’s wing. Omidyar is the  billionaire founder of eBay, and, like so many of his billionaire buddies, has taken to investing his spare time and spare hundreds of millions dabbling in politics and journalism.

A quick scan of his Wikipedia page reveals that Omidyar has lots of fun collaborations with like-minded super-rich. He’s on the advisory board of Berggruen Institute, a vanity project of billionaire Nicolas Berggruen, son of billionaire art dealer Heinz Berggruen and fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, the grand-daddy of America-uber-alles think tanks.

He also funds, along with George Soros and others, the Poynter Institute, a non-profit “journalism” school which recently provided the public with a list of over five hundred “fake news” outlets. Alas, their list was quickly exposed as being fake news, and was taken down in a matter of days, in a replay of the Washington Post’s (another billionaire plaything) ProporNot scandal.

Waldie quotes Ressa as claiming that Google and Facebook are “the real threats to media freedom because they’ve provided an accelerant for populism to take hold across Europe and Asia.” Nevertheless, a few paragraphs later we learn that Ressa is now “working with Facebook in the Philippines.”

So apparently that plucky website The Rappler has Facebook AND a bunch of billionaires in its corner. That should give Ressa the immunity card she needs to take on Duterte.

As for Facebook, let’s not forget they were also a partner in the Integrity Initiative, a UK government attempt to shape what “news” your eyes get to light on. Ironically, the Integrity Initiative was exposed by RT and Sputnik – the two media outlets banned from the Global Conference on Media Freedom in London, because they “spread disinformation.”

So, did I get to the bottom of the bullshit? Hell no!

But I think I can make a preliminary conclusion about the Global Conference on Media Freedom. When the likes of Jeremy Hunt, Chrystia Freeland, and Facebook are looking out for media freedom, at a conference where uttering the name of Assange is verboten, it’s probably already too late.