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Media outlets demonstrate capacity to review, reflect on, and repair the record: In the wake of Bill Cosby’s conviction on sexual assault charges, media outlets consider how the long-running accusations were ignored; Montgomery Advertiser lists the names of more than 300 lynching victims on its front page as it acknowledges its “shameful place” in the history of those murders; and New York Times revisits its belated coverage of the AIDS epidemic in 1980s. An editor at The Daily Camera in Colorado is fired after publishing a critical editorial about the newspaper’s hedge fund owners without the publisher’s permission. President Trump’s half-hour call-in to Fox News includes boasting about promoting public distrust of the media. Two pro-Trump social media figures known as “Diamond & Silk” are given platform by Republican majority at House Judiciary Committee hearing to spread disproven claim that Facebook censored their conservative voices. -Dru Menaker, Chief Operating Officer

The most pressing threats and notable goings-on in free expression today

U.S.

Bill Cosby Is Guilty. The Women Were Heard.
Over the last seven months, the nation has engaged in a long, nuanced and difficult conversation about sexual assault, harassment and the abuse of power. Dozens of powerful men have lost their jobs over allegations of assault and harassment. And now two, Larry Nassar and Bill Cosby, have been found guilty in courts of law.
HUFFINGTON POST

‘Our shame’: This newspaper undermined black lynching victims. Now it is confronting its sins.
Inspired by the museum’s spirit of reckoning, the newspaper used its front page for an editorial that looked within, writing critically and unflinchingly about its own role in promulgating a system of violent white supremacy through the reporting it published more than 100 years ago.
WASHINGTON POST

Six Times Journalists on the Paper’s History of Covering AIDS and Gay Issues
Newspapers aspire to be the “paper of record,” and yet when it came to this paper’s coverage of gay people and AIDS in the early ’80s—when the disease was morphing into a national crisis, and when rights that had been won a decade earlier were once again being jeopardized—The Times’s own record was checkered at best.
NEW YORK TIMES

Boulder newspaper opinion editor fired after writing about his paper’s hedge fund owner
The move comes a week after Krieger published an editorial on a blog that he says his publisher blocked from appearing in the pages of the newspaper. The Camera is owned by Digital First Media, which is controlled by the New York hedge fund Alden Global Capital, the same owners of The Denver Post.
COLORADO INDEPENDENT

Trump’s Stormy Morning on “Fox & Friends”
“The top people in the F.B.I., headed by Comey, were crooked!” Donald Trump, apparently yelling into a phone at the White House, said in a call-in interview with “Fox & Friends,” on Thursday morning. Trump also allowed that he had educated the public about the evils of CNN. (“I taught them it’s fake news!”)
NEW YORKER

The Diamond and Silk show goes to Washington
Earlier this month, Facebook erroneously told the social media personalities that their content had been deemed “unsafe for the community.” Facebook quickly said the message had been sent in error. But since the incident, the two sisters from North Carolina have used it to accuse the company of censorship.
CNN

 
Global

NGOs Urge Myanmar to Free Reuters Reporters, Investigate Their Case *PEN Case List
In an open letter to President Win Myint, the 163 NGOs said authorities had no right to arrest reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, who were taken into custody while investigating the murders of Rohingya Muslims by Myanmar’s military during a crackdown in Rakhine state.
RADIO FREE ASIA

Indian journalists say they are intimidated, ostracised if they criticise Modi and the BJP
India has constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and by some measures the biggest and most diverse media industry in the world. But journalists here say they are increasingly facing intimidation aimed at stopping them from running stories critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his administration.
REUTERS

China law criminalizes attacks on revolutionary heroes
The new law bans criticism or questioning of the folklore surrounding the 1949 formation of the People’s Republic by Communist revolutionaries, and also prohibits acts that glorify historical episodes considered unpatriotic. Dissident intellectuals say the measures further constrict the space for open discussion about China’s history.
ASSOCIATED PRESS

Malaysian news company seeks to have anti-fake news law revoked
A Malaysian media company on Friday filed a suit seeking to declare unconstitutional a new law against fake news, which critics say is aimed at curbing dissent and free speech ahead of a May 9 general election. Mkini Dotcom is seeking a judicial review of the law on the grounds it violates civil liberty and freedom of speech.
REUTERS

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