TV News LIES

Sven Lilienström, founder of the Faces of Democracy initiative, spoke via Zoom with Ukrainian human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Oleksandra Matviichuk (42) about the humanitarian crisis in eastern Ukraine, the red lines in peace negotiations, and whether a world led predominantly by women would be a better one.

Ms. Matviichuk, democracy is facing a crisis of credibility and trust. How would you personally speak up for democracy? And what do democracy and democratic values mean to you?

Let me explain this with something concrete, because when we speak about values, it is very difficult to talk about abstract things.

Twelve years ago, millions of people in Ukraine raised their voices against the corrupt and authoritarian Russian-backed government. They demonstrated peacefully for the chance to build a country with a European future. In response, the authoritarian government launched large-scale and systematic persecutions.

It was tough. At that time, I was the coordinator of the civil initiative Euromaidan SOS. Every day we provided support to hundreds of people throughout the country who had been beaten, arrested, tortured, or charged with fabricated criminal cases.

When journalists or sociologists asked these people why and for what they were fighting, they used the language of values to explain it. Ordinary people have no detailed knowledge of how the European Union functions, what the mandate of the European Parliament is, or what the role of the Council of Ministers is. But they used the language of values to say: we are peacefully fighting for a chance to build a country where everyone’s rights are protected, where the government is accountable, the judiciary is independent, and the police do not beat students who are peacefully demonstrating.

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On Thursday evening, as rumors about the Brown University gunman swirled, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins posted on social media, noting the confusion and directing people to her network’s 9pm newscast.

CNN is certainly not a flawless news source, but her words rang true to me. The network is one of the outlets where you can find reality-based and largely dependable reporting – especially in breaking news situations like the one that was developing near a New Hampshire storage facility.

But CNN, now 45 years old, is in a precarious situation as two huge media conglomerates vie for ownership of its parent company, Warner Bros Discovery.

Whatever the outcome, the fate of CNN has become part of a high-stakes game of corporate ownership, not as a question of what benefits the information-seeking public.

America’s media system isn’t set up for that lofty goal. It’s set up for corporate profitability, for shareholder gain, for ever-increasing size and ever-decreasing competition.

“This is yet another example of the deep structural problems with roots in decades of policy decisions,” said Victor Pickard, author of Democracy Without Journalism? and a University of Pennsylvania media policy professor.

The speculation about who will own Warner Bros Discovery – will it be Netflix or Paramount Skydance? – misses a larger point.

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Dollar General, the retail giant that promises “convenience, quality brands and low prices”, has agreed to pay at least $15m to settle claims that it overcharged customers at many of its 20,000 US stores.

The settlement resolves lawsuits in multiple states alleging that shoppers at the dollar-store chain often see one price on the shelf but pay a higher price at the register. Customers anywhere in the US may be eligible for repayments.

It is the second settlement Dollar General has signed this month. The company also agreed to pay the state of Pennsylvania $1.55m to resolve similar allegations.

The claims in the consumer lawsuits and the state investigation mirrored the findings of a 3 December Guardian investigation, which revealed that Dollar General stores have failed more than 4,300 government price-accuracy inspections in 23 states since January 2022. Many of the stores are located in rural towns and low-income urban neighborhoods with limited retail.

The five lawsuits that sparked the national settlement targeted the company’s operations in New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma and South Carolina. They include two cases in New Jersey, one in state court and one in federal court. The suit involving the company’s practices in South Carolina was filed in Tennessee, where Dollar General is headquartered.

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Representatives for victims of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein condemned the US Department of Justice on Friday for only partially releasing investigative documents while at least one survivor said she felt “redeemed” by the documents.

The documents were released under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which mandated the disclosures by 19 December. The law allows for records to be withheld if they threaten current investigations, disrupt national security or identify Epstein’s victims.

The initial disclosure, however, did not appear to be in keeping with this law. Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, said the justice department would not release all its files on Friday, despite the deadline and the files published on Friday afternoon did not appear to be comprehensive. “I expect that we’re going to release more documents over the next couple of weeks,” Blanche said in an Fox News interview.

Top lawmakers responded by threatening legal action “in the face of this violation of federal law”.

Spencer Kuvin, an attorney representing Epstein survivors, said in a statement after the release that it was “no great surprise” the justice department was failing to meet the deadline.

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The United States interdicted a tanker off the coast of Venezuela, two sources familiar with the raid told USA TODAY on Dec. 20, just days after President Donald Trump announced a "blockade" of all sanctioned oil tankers entering and leaving Venezuela.

The sources identified the vessel as the Centuries, which maritime records show is a Panama-flagged oil tanker. The ship is not under U.S. sanctions, the sources said. Marine traffic trackers showed the Centuries was off the coast of Venezuela in the waters of Curaçao, a Dutch Caribbean island.

The Centuries is a 333-meter-long oil tanker that last docked in Singapore in October, according to vessel tracker Maritime Optima. Its reported seizure would mark the second time in recent weeks that the United States has seized a tanker near Venezuela and comes amid a large U.S. military build-up in the region. The seizure was first reported by Reuters.

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Dr. Kade Goepferd watched the Trump administration's moves on Thursday to ban gender-affirming care for transgender youth with "a mix of sadness and frustration."

Goepferd, who is the founder of Children's Minnesota Gender Health Program, says that for the medical community, nothing has changed about the evidence supporting gender-affirming care that could justify the government's actions.

"There's a massive propaganda and disinformation campaign that is selectively targeting this small population of already vulnerable kids and their families," Goepferd says.

Federal health officials said many times at Thursday's announcement that their actions were driven by science and evidence, not politics or ideology. They frequently praised a report published by the Department of Health and Human Services in November. It concluded that clinicians who provide medical care to help youth transition have failed their patients and emphasized the benefits of psychotherapy as an alternative.

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When 10-year-old Bayan Al-Ankah was fatally shot in the head by the Israeli military while in a displaced persons camp in Gaza last week, according to her family, she became one of several hundred Palestinians killed during a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel. Mediators Qatar and Egypt worry that the truce is threatened by near-daily Israeli attacks in Gaza.

The continued viability of the U.S.-backed ceasefire in Gaza hinges on two crucial next steps: the deployment of an international force in Gaza and the disarmament of Hamas.

But countries involved in this key phase of the ceasefire are still debating fundamental details about how to proceed — and the U.S. goal of having international forces in Gaza by early 2026 faces challenges.

A U.S. State Department document this month obtained by NPR lays out the Trump administration's vision for the international troops: to be "supporting the demilitarization of Gaza, dismantling terrorist infrastructure" and "decommissioning weapons used by terrorists."

But many countries say they will refuse to send troops to confront Hamas over its weapons.

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