Political Quotes

“we are all too familiar with President Trump's ``fake news'' mantra, which he has repeatedly used to discredit unfavorable news reports and undermine the credibility of the media in our country. This mantra and the accompanying threats to freedoms of speech and of the press have now spread far beyond our borders. Autocrats and dictators around the world are enthusiastically using the concept of fake news and the legitimacy granted to it by the President of the United States to further undermine and restrict press freedom and fact- based reporting on corruption, human rights, and other abuses in their own countries. For example, in response to an Amnesty International report on thousands of military prison deaths in Syria, President Bashar al-Assad remarked, ``You can forge anything these days, we are living in a fake news era.'' Similarly, in response to news reports on persecution of the Rohingya ethnic minority group in Myanmar, an officer in Myanmar's Rakhine state security ministry stated, ``There is no such thing as Rohingya. It is fake news.'' The list goes on and includes comments from autocratic leaders in the Philippines, Venezuela, Russia, China, and Turkey, among others, who have used the fake news mantra to legitimize harassment, arrests, and prosecutions of journalists. Last week, the Committee to Protect Journalists, CPJ, released its annual census of imprisoned journalists worldwide, which has hit an historical high of 262.…”