Day: September 28, 2021

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Media Groups Voice Concern about Turkey’s Planned Social Media Law

ISTANBUL —

Social media regulations are expected to be on the agenda for Turkey’s national assembly when it reconvenes in October.

Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development (AKP) party is preparing a draft law covering false news and disinformation online.

Details of the proposal have not been shared publicly, but unnamed officials cited by local media have said the draft proposes making “disinformation” and “misinformation” an offense and includes prison sentences of up to five years for spreading false news on social media.

The draft also proposes establishing a body similar to the media regulator Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK).

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has spoken against the danger of false news and misinformation online. His party’s deputy chair Mahir Unal said in mid-July that the party was looking at legal measures, adding, “Combating disinformation is as important as fighting terrorism.”

Journalists and media groups have voiced concern about the proposal, calling for authorities to make the plans public and warning that broadly worded regulations could be used to persecute critical reporting. Others cited the large number of lawsuits already filed against social media users.

“The government has a strange habit,” said Turgay Olcayto, adding that everyone who criticizes it is viewed as “an enemy.”

The president of the Turkish Journalists’ Association was speaking at a press conference Monday alongside four other media unions and rights groups to voice opposition to the proposed law.

Online regulation

The proposed law comes a year after Turkey implemented regulations on social media platforms including requirements that sites have a Turkish representative to handle queries, and deadlines for responding to takedown requests.

In the first month after it was enacted, platforms including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were fined $1.18 million for noncompliance, Reuters reported.

Turkey already has a poor press freedom record, ranking “not free” on the Freedom on the Net report, with a score of 34 out of 100. The annual report by Freedom House assesses countries on a series of factors related to digital rights.

Its most recent analysis, released in September, cited the blocking of hundreds of websites and the new regulations for platforms as reasons for the low score.

“I don’t need to say anything about the state of our journalism,” Olcayto said. “(The ruling party says) ‘We will prevent fake news from being manipulated.’ How will you prevent it? It is the government that manipulates and hides news the most.”

Olcayto said he does not believe Parliament will pass the bill, but if it was made law, “We will continue to fight.”

Authorities want greater control over social media, said Ugur Güç, the Istanbul representative for the Progressive Journalists Association.

“The media has been under pressure for a long time, and 90% of it has been under the control of the government,” Güç told VOA Turkish after the press conference.

Social media provided more freedom, but thousands of lawsuits have been filed against social media users as more people moved online, Güç added.

“In the last year, at least 30,000 people were investigated and 5,000 were sentenced. We are talking about huge numbers,” Güç said, adding that he believes the aim is to silence the opposition.

Güç has also faced legal threats over his work. He was accused of insulting state institutions in 2019 and acquitted the following year.

Erdogan has dismissed criticism of Turkey’s media freedom record, saying “Turkey is incomparably free,” in an interview with U.S. broadcaster CBS on Sunday.

When asked about data showing Turkey as a leading jailer of journalists, and comments from lawyers who say thousands are facing lawsuits for insult, the president said, “I know those credible international organizations that have no credit for me.”

Media regulator

Journalists are wary of plans to create a social media regulator like RTÜK. The nonprofit Human Rights Watch warned in 2020 that Turkey’s regulator is “imposing punitive and disproportionate sanctions” on stations that report critically on the government.

The regulator issued more than 40 sanctions against seven independent stations, and ordered seven programs to be suspended in 2020, Human Rights Watch reported.

Güç said he believes the government will try to create a regulator like RTÜK that can issue punishments or intimidate users with the threat of penalties.

“They want to put more pressure on people and silence people,” he said.

The chair of the Turkish Writers’ Union, Adnan Özyalçiner, also believes the draft law is an attempt to target the critical press.

“Measures are being taken against the critical press through arbitrary and administrative means, not by legal means. (This is) an attempt to counter the critical press,” Özyalçiner told VOA Turkish after the press conference.

The union chair raised concerns over who would decide what content is false, and questioned what criteria would be used, saying, “I think all news against the government will be declared ‘fake news’.”

The journalist organizations have released a joint proposal recommending that the draft law be shared with the public, that journalism should not be criminalized and that freedom of communication and information not be limited.

Source: Voice of America

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Uncertainty Grips Washington in Face of Another Possible Shutdown

WASHINGTON —

If Congress fails to act, the U.S. government’s authority to continue spending money will expire at midnight on Thursday, forcing more than 1 million federal workers and an untold number of contractors to stop working. Thousands more will be expected to continue working without clarity about precisely when they will be paid.

“The stakes are whether the United States government is able to answer the many challenges that we face as a country,” said Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service, an advocacy group for improved federal government.

And once the government shuts down, Stier said, restarting it isn’t like flipping a switch.

“This is a multitrillion-dollar, very complex entity,” he told VOA. “And so, turning it off and turning it back on actually takes a ton of energy and a bunch of time. So, it is highly costly — billions of dollars costly — when you have a shutdown, even if it’s not for a very long period of time.”

History of shutdowns

Since 1980, the federal government has shut down because of a lack of funding 21 different times.

This would be the first government shutdown of President Joe Biden’s term in office. Going back to Jimmy Carter’s term in office from 1977 to 1981, every U.S. president except for George W. Bush has experienced at least one such funding crisis, though the majority have lasted only a few days and several have been for a few hours.

The last time the government shut down was in 2018, when a dispute between then-President Donald Trump and congressional Democrats over his proposal to build a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico resulted in a record-setting 35-day partial closure that stretched into January 2019.

Not a full shutdown

The term “government shutdown” is something of a misnomer. Under existing rules, when the government runs out of funding, federal agencies are required to furlough all “nonessential” employees. Doctors and nurses at hospitals run by the Department of Veterans Affairs will still be allowed to go to work. So will Transportation Security Agency officers, active duty members of the military and most federal law enforcement officers.

But employees deemed essential will still not be paid until the shutdown is resolved.

In a sign of the degree to which government shutdowns have been normalized as just part of how Washington does business, Trump in 2019 signed the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act, which guarantees that federal workers, essential and nonessential, receive the back pay they missed during the duration of any future government shutdowns.

However, Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said that a promise of getting paid eventually is cold comfort to a federal worker unable to pay their rent.

“So many of our members live paycheck to paycheck,” Kelley told VOA. “Unless a creditor or landlord agrees to work with them, they’re going to be in a terrible situation.”

If financial distress winds up affecting a furloughed employee’s credit rating, Kelley said, the damage can extend to their careers. “A lot of security clearances depend on your credit rating,” Kelley said, meaning that workers whose credit suffers could lose their jobs.

What to expect

In past shutdowns, the most publicly visible effects were the closure of national parks and the museums near the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Those would also likely happen this time around. But it’s beneath the surface where shutdowns cause real turmoil.

About 60% of government employees would be barred from working during a shutdown, which means that any number of seemingly mundane procedures would stop happening. New passport applications wouldn’t be processed; small business loans wouldn’t be approved; requests for federal retirement benefits would stop moving through the system.

Most Americans would not be immediately affected by stalled government activity. But those who are — a person waiting for a passport, a small-business owner waiting for funding, a retiree needing income — could face anything from inconvenience to significant economic injury.

Employees of government contractors are particularly vulnerable. For example, Congress has contracts with private firms to supply the workers who provide food service on Capitol Hill and clean congressional offices. During a shutdown, those workers cannot work, and because they are paid an hourly wage rather than a salary, they rarely recover those lost wages.

Economic damage is limited and localized

The 35-day shutdown during the Trump administration was only partial, because before it began, Congress had passed funding measures for some agencies, most notably the Department of Defense.

Nevertheless, the Congressional Budget Office later estimated that the shutdown had “delayed approximately $18 billion in federal discretionary spending for compensation and purchases of goods and services, and suspended some federal services.”

The overall impact on GDP was minor, the CBO found. During the shutdown and immediately following it, economic activity slumped noticeably, but much of that “lost” productivity was recouped later in the year. On balance, the CBO said that the 35-day shutdown cut 2019 GDP in the U.S. by just 0.02%

However, the CBO noted, the damage from the shutdown was not equally distributed.

“Underlying those effects on the overall economy are much more significant effects on individual businesses and workers,” the agency found. “Among those who experienced the largest and most direct negative effects are federal workers who faced delayed compensation and private-sector entities that lost business. Some of those private-sector entities will never recoup that lost income.”

‘Completely irresponsible’

Kelley, of the American Federation of Government Employees, pointed out that it is unprecedented for the government to be shut down in the midst of a pandemic, calling it “completely irresponsible” to hobble agencies battling COVID-19 with staff shortages.

“Shutting down the government at this critical juncture, in this fight against the dangerous delta variant (of the COVID-19 virus) is simply unthinkable,” he said.

Stier, whose organization prepared detailed guidance for government agencies navigating shutdowns, said all that guidance had to be rewritten to reflect employees working remotely, and that new measures remain untested.

Source: Voice of America

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Australia Divided Over Future of Mighty Coal Industry

Australia is under growing international pressure to commit to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, but the policy is fiercely dividing its center-right government.

Australia is one of the world’s major exporters of coal and gas. Coal is mined in every state. Most exports go to countries in Asia, including China, Japan and South Korea.

In 2020, exports were worth about $39 billion. Trade has almost doubled in the past decade. But China’s informal import restrictions on Australian coal saw the value of exports fall sharply, although prices have started to recover. Coal also generates about 70% of Australia’s electricity. Coal-fired power makes it the most carbon polluting nation per capita in the world.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison is planning to eventually shift his country’s reliance on coal and gas in favor of clean energy technologies, a shift from his time as a treasurer in 2017. In support of the mining industry, then-treasurer Morrison brought a piece of coal to Parliament to argue the need to continue producing coal in a famous scene.

“This is coal,” he said. “Don’t be afraid. Don’t be scared. It’s coal that has delivered prosperity to Australian businesses and has ensured that Australian industry has been able to remain competitive on a global market.”

Clean energy is still an issue that deeply divides his center-right governing coalition.

Some members of the National Party — the junior alliance partner — are adamant that Australia’s coal industry is too valuable to lose and insist it will thrive for decades. Many regional communities depend on it. There is also disagreement about committing to a target of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. The prime minister said he wants to achieve net zero emissions “as soon as possible” but has not outlined any measures to do so.

But government lawmaker Trent Zimmerman said Australia must join the global push to reduce emissions.

“We need both the target and the plan that matches it,” Zimmerman said. “It is very hard to divorce the two and obviously much of the international community has moved in that direction. In fact, eighty percent of global emissions or thereabouts are covered by pledges that relate to reaching net-zero. So, it is important for Australia that we are part of that because it is the right thing to do.”

Morrison has said he is yet to decide whether he will attend the Glasgow Climate Change Conference, also known as COP26, in November. He told a newspaper that he wanted to oversee Australia’s eventual emergence from COVID-19 lockdowns. His critics insist he is “too embarrassed” by his government’s climate change policies to attend the summit in the Scottish capital.

Opinion polls by the Australia Institute, an independent public policy think tank based in Canberra, have shown that most Australians want stronger measures to curb emissions. A United Nations climate change report recently warned that global warming will inflict more severe and frequent droughts, storms, heatwaves and bushfires in Australia.

However, those surveys reported by the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper also revealed support for the coal industry. Less than half of Australians believe that coal power should be phased out within a decade. Australia’s addiction to fossil fuels might be hard to give up, according to the survey.

Source: Voice of America