Tag: media

BuzzFeed will lay off 15% of staff, shutter its news unit

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BuzzFeed will lay off 15% of staff and shut down its news unit, BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti wrote in an email to staff Thursday.

The layoffs will affect BuzzFeed’s business, content, administration and tech teams. The layoffs amount to about 180 people. The company’s staff totaled about 1,200 people as of its most recent securities filing.

BuzzFeed News, part of the digital media company’s content division, had about 100 employees and lost about $10 million a year, two people familiar with the matter told CNBC last year. It stood apart from the main, viral-content-generating BuzzFeed brand with straight news and investigative reporting. BuzzFeed News won a Pulitzer Prize in 2021 for its reporting on China’s mass detention of Muslims. Several large shareholders had urged Peretti to shut down its news operations.

Shares of the company have fallen about 90% since its IPO in late 2021. The stock fell nearly 20% Thursday, closing at 75 cents.

The news comes during a tough period for digital media companies as publishers are cutting staff as advertisers reduce spending. These cuts have impacted companies like Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones and Vox Media. In January, Vice Media restarted its sale process at a lower valuation, CNBC previously reported. The company, which was valued at $5.7 billion in 2017, was poised to fetch a price of below $1 billion.

“There’s no free lunch anymore in the [digital media] space in the sense that the advertising market this year is not particularly strong, and everything has to be earned,” said Jonathan Miller, the CEO of Integrated Media, which specializes in digital media investments.

Miller added that going public is probably not the best strategy for digital media companies like Buzzfeed. “There’s not that many public companies in digital media. And I think investment dollars in general will be tough to come by unless you can show a real differentiated plan.”

BuzzFeed wasn’t the only digital media company to announce layoffs Thursday. Insider, which is owned by German conglomerate Axel Springer, told staff Thursday morning it was reducing its total headcount by 10%, including union and non-union staffers, according to an internal memo viewed by CNBC. Affected employees will receive a minimum of 13 weeks of base pay and medical benefits will be covered through August, the memo says.

Insider executives said layoffs have stemmed from a significant recession in advertising spending in technology and finance, as well as disruptions to distribution and revenue share.

“As you know your industry has been under significant pressure for more than a year. The economic headwinds that have hurt many of our clients and partners are also affecting us,” Insider President Barbara Peng wrote in the memo. “Unfortunately, to keep our company healthy and competitive, we need to reduce the size of our team. We have tried hard to avoid taking this step, and we are sorry about the impact it will have on many of you.”

Peretti said HuffPost and BuzzFeed’s flagship site will open a number of roles for BuzzFeed News editors and reporters. The company will also reduce budgets, open roles and most other discretionary expenditures.

“We’ve faced more challenges than I can count in the past few years: a pandemic, a fading SPAC market that yielded less capital, a tech recession, a tough economy, a declining stock market, a decelerating digital advertising market and ongoing audience and platform shifts,” Peretti wrote.

Peretti admitted fault for not managing these changes better and being “slow to accept that the big platforms wouldn’t provide the distribution or financial support required to support premium, free journalism purpose-built for social media.”

Peretti also wrote that revenue chief Edgar Hernandez and operating chief Christian Baesler decided to exit the company.

BuzzFeed cut nearly 12% of its workforce, or around 180 staffers, back in December 2022. The company said the layoffs came in response to challenging economic conditions and its acquisition of Complex Networks. BuzzFeed reduced its footprint in New York last year and will reduce its real estate in Los Angeles from four buildings down to one.

The digital media company scaled back its news operation in an attempt to make BuzzFeed News profitable, resulting in the departure of several editors. The company went public via a special purpose acquisition vehicle last year, which sent shares down nearly 40% in its first week of trading.

One shareholder told CNBC last year that shutting down the newsroom could amount to $300 million of market capitalization to the stock.

Peretti also wrote that the company is proposing headcount reductions in some international markets.

–CNBC’s Lillian Rizzo contributed to this article.

Read the full note from Jonah Peretti below:

Hi all, 

I am writing to announce some difficult news. We are reducing our workforce by approximately 15% today across our Business, Content, Tech and Admin teams, and beginning the process of closing BuzzFeed News. Additionally, we are proposing headcount reductions in some international markets.

Impacted employees (other than those in BuzzFeed News) will receive an email from HR shortly. If you are receiving this note from me, you are not impacted by today’s changes. For BuzzFeed News, we have begun discussions with the News Guild about these actions.

As part of today’s changes, both our CRO Edgar Hernandez and COO Christian Baesler have made the decision to exit the company. I’m grateful to both of them for their passion and dedication to Complex and to BuzzFeed, Inc. Christian will be with us through the end of April, and Edgar through the end of May to help with the transition.

Marcela Martin, our President, will take on responsibility for all revenue functions effective immediately. In the US, Andrew Guendjoian is our new Head of Sales, and Ken Blom will continue in his role as Head of Revenue Operations. Globally, International Sales will move under Rich Reid, Head of International and Head of Studio, also reporting to Marcela. 

I have great confidence in this revenue leadership team, and the early plans I’ve seen from them to accelerate performance from our Business Org. We will share more on their plans in the Business All Hands next week (and we are extending an invite company-wide). 

The changes the Business Organization is making today are focused on reducing layers in their organization, increasing speed and effectiveness of pitches, streamlining our product mix, doubling down on creators, and beginning to bring AI enhancements to every aspect of our sales process.

While layoffs are occurring across nearly every division, we’ve determined that the company can no longer continue to fund BuzzFeed News as a standalone organization. As a result, we will engage with the News Guild about our cost reduction plans and what this will mean for the affected union members. 

HuffPost and BuzzFeed Dot Com have signaled that they will open a number of select roles for members of BuzzFeed News. These roles will be aligned with those divisions’ business goals and match the skills and strengths of many of BuzzFeed News’s editors and reporters. We raised this idea with the News Guild this morning and look forward to discussing it further. Moving forward, we will have a single news brand in HuffPost, which is profitable, with a loyal direct front page audience.

I want to explain a little more about why we’ve come to these deeply painful decisions. We’ve faced more challenges than I can count in the past few years: a pandemic, a fading SPAC market that yielded less capital, a tech recession, a tough economy, a declining stock market, a decelerating digital advertising market and ongoing audience and platform shifts. Dealing with all of these obstacles at once is part of why we’ve needed to make the difficult decisions to eliminate more jobs and reduce spending. 

But I also want to be clear: I could have managed these changes better as the CEO of this company and our leadership team could have performed better despite these circumstances. Our job is to adapt, change, improve, and perform despite the challenges in the world. We can and will do better. 

In particular, the integration process of BuzzFeed and Complex, and the unification of our two business organizations, should have been executed faster and better. The macro environment is tough, but we had the potential to generate much more revenue than we delivered over the past 12 months. 

Additionally, I made the decision to overinvest in BuzzFeed News because I love their work and mission so much. This made me slow to accept that the big platforms wouldn’t provide the distribution or financial support required to support premium, free journalism purpose-built for social media. 

More broadly, I regret that I didn’t hold the company to higher standards for profitability, to give us the buffer needed to manage through economic and industry downturns and avoid painful days like today. Our mission, our impact on culture, and our audience is what matters most, but we need a stronger business to protect and sustain this important work. 

Please know that we exhausted many other cost saving measures to preserve as many jobs as possible. We are reducing budgets, open roles, travel and entertainment, and most other discretionary, non-revenue generating expenditures. Just as we reduced our footprint in NYC last year, we will be reducing our real estate in Los Angeles — from four buildings down to one, which saves millions in costs as well as mirrors our current hybrid state of work.

I’ve learned from these mistakes, and the team moving forward has learned from them as well. We know that the changes and improvements we are making today are necessary steps to building a better future. 

Over the next couple of months, we will work together to run a more agile and focused business organization with the capacity to bring in more revenue. We will concentrate our news efforts in HuffPost, a brand that is profitable with a highly engaged, loyal audience that is less dependent on social platforms. We will empower our editorial teams at all of our brands to do the very best creative work and build an interface where that work can be packaged and brought to advertisers more effectively. And we will bring more innovation to clients in the form of creators, AI, and cultural moments that can only happen across BuzzFeed, Complex, HuffPost, Tasty and First We Feast. 

It might not feel this way today, but I am confident the future of digital media is ours for the taking. Our industry is hurting and ready to be reborn. We are taking great pains today, and will begin to fight our way to a bright future. 

On Monday we’ll begin to have conversations with each division about the way forward. And in the meantime, I hope you can take time for yourselves this weekend.

Thank you for supporting one another on a difficult day.

Jonah

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Big bank earnings in spotlight following historic failures: ‘Every income statement line item is in flux’.

Post By Stock , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

JPMorgan Chase & Co.
JPM,
-0.11%,
Citigroup Inc.
C,
+0.20%
and Wells Fargo & Co.
WFC,
+2.74%
— along with PNC Financial Services Group Inc.
PNC,
+0.37%
and BlackRock Inc.
BLK,
+0.05%
— report earnings Friday as Wall Street’s fixation on a recession continues to run deep. And following the implosion of Silicon Valley Bank
SIVBQ,
-12.21%,
Signature Bank
SBNY,
+3.97%
and Silvergate Bank
SI,
-2.72%,
along with efforts to seal up cracks in First Republic Bank
FRC,
+4.39%
and Credit Suisse Group AG
CS,
+1.27%,
Wall Street is likely to review quarterly numbers from the industry with a magnifying glass.

“Every income statement line item is in flux and the degree of confidence in our forecast is lower as the probability of a sharper slowdown increases,” Morgan Stanley analyst Betsy Graseck said in a note on Wednesday.

For more: Banks on the line for deposit flows and margin pressure as they reel from banking crisis

She said that the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank last month would trigger an “accelerated bid” for customers’ money, potentially weighing on net interest margins, a profitability gauge measuring what banks make on interest from loans and what they pay out to depositors. Tighter lending standards, she said, would drive up net charge-offs — a measure of debt unlikely to be repaid — as borrowers run into more trouble obtaining or refinancing loans.

Phil Orlando, chief investment strategist at Federated Hermes, said in an interview that tighter lending standards could constrain lending volume. He also said that banks were likely to set aside more money to cover loans that go bad, as managers grow more conservative and try to gauge what exposure they have to different types of borrowers.

“To a significant degree, they have to say, what percentage of our companies are tech companies? What percentage are financial companies? Do we think that this starts to dribble into the auto industry?” he said. “Every bank is going to be different in terms of what their portfolio of business looks like.”

He also said that last month’s bank failures could spur more customers to open up multiple accounts at different banks, following bigger concerns about what would happen to the money in a bank account that exceeded the $250,000 limit covered by the FDIC. But as the recent banking disturbances trigger Lehman flashbacks, he said that the recent banking failures were the result of poor management and insufficient risk controls specific to those financial firms.

“COVID was something that affected everyone, universally, not just the banking companies but the entire economy, the entire stock market,” he said. “You go back to the global financial crisis in the ’07-’09 period, that’s something that really affected all of the financial service companies. I don’t think that’s what we’re dealing with here.”

Also read: Banking sector’s growing political might could blunt reform in wake of SVB failure, experts warn

JPMorgan
JPM,
-0.11%
Chief Executive Jamie Dimon has said that Trump-era banking deregulation didn’t cause those bank failures. But in his annual letter to shareholders last week, he also said that the current turmoil in the bank system is not over. However, he also said that the collapse or near-collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and its peers “are nothing like what occurred during the 2008 global financial crisis.”

“Regarding the current disruption in the U.S. banking system, most of the risks were hiding in plain sight,” Dimon said. “Interest rate exposure, the fair value of held-to-maturity (HTM) portfolios and the amount of SVB’s uninsured deposits were always known — both to regulators and the marketplace.”

“The unknown risk was that SVB’s over 35,000 corporate clients – and activity within them – were controlled by a small number of venture capital companies and moved their deposits in lockstep,” Dimon continued. “It is unlikely that any recent change in regulatory requirements would have made a difference in what followed.”

The Federal Reserve’s decision to raise interest rates, along with a broader pullback in digital demand following the first two years of the pandemic, stanched the flow of tech-industry funding into Silicon Valley bank and caused the value of its bond investments to fall.

Don’t miss: An earnings recession seems inevitable, but it might not last long

But the impact of those higher interest rates — an effort to slow the economy and, by extension, bring inflation down — will be felt elsewhere. First-quarter earnings are expected to decline 6.8% for S&P 500 index components overall, according to FactSet. That would be the first decline since the second quarter of 2020, when the pandemic had just begun to send the economy into a tailspin.

“In a word, earnings for the first quarter are going to be poor,” Orlando said.

This week in earnings

For the week ahead, 11 S&P 500
SPX,
+0.36%
components, and two from the Dow Jones Industrial Average
DJIA,
+0.01%,
will report first-quarter results. Outside of the banks, health-insurance giant UnitedHealth Group
UNH,
+0.70%
reports during the week. Online fashion marketplace Rent the Runway Inc.
RENT,
+3.75%
will also report.

The call to put on your calendar

Delta Air Lines Inc.: Delta
DAL,
+0.69%
reports first-quarter results on Thursday, amid bigger questions about when, if ever, higher prices — including for airfares — might turn off travelers. The carrier last month stuck with its outlook for big first-quarter sales gains when compared with prepandemic levels. “If anyone’s looking for weakness, don’t look at Delta”, Chief Executive Ed Bastian said at a conference last month.

But rival United Airlines Holdings Inc.
UAL,
+1.50%
has told investors to prepare for a surprise loss, even though it also reported a 15% jump in international bookings in March. And after Southwest Airlines Co.’s
LUV,
+0.03%
flight-cancellation mayhem last year brought more attention to technology issues and airline understaffing, concerns have grown over whether the industry has enough air-traffic controllers, prompting a reduction in some flights.

For more: Air-traffic controller shortages could result in fewer flights this summer

But limitations within those airlines’ flight networks to handle consumer demand can push fares higher. And Morgan Stanley said that strong balance sheets, passengers’ willingness to still pay up — albeit in a concentrated industry with a handful of options — and “muscle memory” from being gutted by the pandemic, could make airlines “defensive safe-havens,” to some degree, for investors.

“It is hard to argue against the airlines soaring above the macro storm underneath them (at least in the short term),” the analysts wrote in a research note last week.

The numbers to watch

Grocery-store margins: Albertsons Cos.
ACI,
+0.53%.
— the grocery chain whose merger deal with Kroger Inc.
KR,
+0.96%
has raised concerns about food prices and accessibility — reports results on Tuesday. Higher food prices have helped fatten grocery stores’ profits, even as consumers struggle to keep up. But Costco Wholesale Corp.
COST,
-2.24%,
in reporting March same-store sales results, noted that “year-over-year inflation for food and sundries and fresh foods were both down from February.” The results from Albertsons could offer clues on whether shoppers might be getting a break from steep price increases.

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Want to watch MLB games? Making sense of the confusing TV and streaming landscape

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Seattle Mariners shortstop J.P. Crawford (3) slides into third to advance on a sacrifice fly against the Oakland Athletics during the third inning at T-Mobile Park, Sept. 28, 2021..

Joe Nicholson | USA TODAY Sports | Reuters

Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack – and a bunch of streaming and TV subscriptions, too.

Major League Baseball‘s season opens Thursday, and fans have to navigate various outlets to find their home team’s games this season. This might create some confusion, while causing some viewers to beef up their baseball budgets.

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MLB teams play 162 games during the regular season, giving the league a lot of runway to sign media rights deals with various outlets in a bid to broaden its reach and audience. In recent years, the focus has been on placing more games on streaming services, while traditional cable TV is needed for a bulk of game viewing.

Here’s a breakdown of how the landscape looks, for now.

Home base plan

For the baseball fan looking to watch as many games as possible, a traditional pay TV service is still the go-to place.

Regional sports networks air the majority of local games during the season. In addition, national networks like Disney unit ESPN and Warner Bros. Discovery’s TBS, as well as Fox Corp.‘s broadcast and pay TV networks, take up a decent chunk of the schedule.

There are a few internet-TV bundle competitors that are an option, too. DirecTV’s DirecTV Stream and FuboTV carry most, if not all, regional sports networks. Other providers like Google‘s YouTube TV and Disney’s Hulu Live TV+ carry few, if any, of these networks.

The reason for that? The high fees networks charge pay TV operators. A “regional sports network” fee is broken out on pay TV bills. It varies by the market.

The fate of the regional sports networks has been brought into question. Recently, Diamond Sports, which operates a portfolio of regional sports networks, filed for bankruptcy protection, toppled by a debt load and the loss of pay TV subscribers.

The networks and the streaming services haven’t gone dark and are still expected to show games this season.

Similarly, Warner Bros. Discovery has been looking to exit the regional sports networks it inherited from the acquisition of Warner from AT&T last year, The Wall Street Journal recently reported. While Warner Bros. sent a notice to the teams looking to transition the network rights over to them, the league and Warner Bros. have been in negotiations to keep the networks running normally for the foreseeable future, people familiar with the matter said.

Streaming options

As the traditional TV audience shrinks, the league and the networks have been looking to streaming services to grow MLB’s audience there. However, as more options are introduced, regional sports networks are getting fewer games and fans have to pay more to watch all games.

“From baseball’s perspective there is not only a need to find new audiences but different demographics,” said Will Mao, senior vice president of media rights consulting at Octagon. “It’s been a longtime narrative the baseball audience is getting older. To find the next generation of fans you need to go where more content is consumed, which is digital streaming platforms.”

With a higher rate of consumers dropping pay TV bundles and opting for streaming services, many networks have created direct-to-consumer streaming app options. Few offset the pay TV losses, but at least provide an option for fans wanting to stream.

New England Sports Network, home of Boston Red Sox games, has a streaming option for fans in its region. Diamond Sports’ Bally Sports+ launched last year, but only offers Detroit Tigers, Kansas City Royals, Miami Marlins, Milwaukee Brewers and Tampa Bay Rays games as the company negotiates with the league for streaming rights on a team-by-team basis.

New York Yankees right fielder Aaron Judge (99) rounds the bases after hitting home run number sixty-two to break the American League home run record in the first inning against the Texas Rangers at Globe Life Field.

Tim Heitman | USA TODAY Sports | Reuters

The New York Yankees’ YES Network launched its own option the day before Opening Day, priced at $25 a month. Still, for Yankees fans, it can be particularly confusing. Since last year, 20 of its local games have been on Amazon‘s Prime Video rather than YES or a local broadcast network, stemming from Amazon taking a piece of ownership in the network.

This will mark the second season that Apple‘s Apple TV+ will air two games every Friday night. However this year “Friday Night Baseball” will come at an extra cost – a $6.99 subscription to Apple TV+ – as opposed to when it was free last year.

A set of 19 games will once again air on Sundays on Comcast‘s Peacock beginning April 23 of this year, a bit earlier than its May 8 start last year. Peacock, which costs $4.99 a month, will soon have more information about its announcers for the Sunday broadcasts, many of which air at 11:35 a.m. ET or 12:05 p.m. ET, a bit earlier than the typical MLB start time of 1:05 p.m.

Since 2021, ESPN has begun simultaneously airing games on its streaming service ESPN+, which costs $9.99 a month, and also streams a local RSN game most days throughout the season.

“I do empathize now with the rose-colored glasses many have for the traditional cable bundle. There’s value to bundling we’ve learned not just across media but other industries,” said Mao.

These additional streaming bills come as the cost of pay TV subscriptions from satellite and cable providers varies across the U.S. A recent U.S. News report found that an average cable bill costs more than $200 a month, but that could include bundled services, likely broadband service. The Federal Communications Commission’s most recent report from 2018 shows the average of basic cable at $25.40 a month, with the expanded package averaging $71.31. The former is unlikely to include national sports networks.

Disclosure: Comcast owns NBCUniversal, the parent company of Peacock and CNBC.

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How fake media accounts in Afghanistan are used to push Taliban propaganda

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Since the Taliban took over control of Afghanistan in August 2021, numerous accounts mimicking or trying to present themselves as media outlets have popped up online. These fake accounts share content that appears to be authentic, often using the same graphic signature and style as the real media outlet. But on closer inspection, researchers from the NGO Afghan Witness found that their posts have no basis in reality and serve to undermine opposition groups in Afghanistan and clamp down on independent media.

Since December 2022, researchers at Afghan Witness – a human rights project dedicated to documenting and verifying events in Afghanistan – have identified several of these fake accounts and the messages they are trying to share. Their analysis centred on one fake Twitter account, @AF_Inter5, which presents itself as the news media Afghanistan International.

‘It will erode trust in the opposition movement’

Tom Stubbs, Senior Analyst for Information Operations at Afghan Witness, told the FRANCE 24 Observers more. 

The content revolves around denigrating both Afghan International and opposition within Afghanistan. And a lot of the stories they were sharing weren’t backed up in any other media. Normally, when you have a news story from Afghanistan International or other news agencies, we can actually follow that up and we can understand the nature of what they’re saying is true. But what this fake account was doing was just made up. 

The @AF_Inter5 account’s posts often extol the Taliban’s impact on Afghanistan, after the group reclaimed control of the country in August 2021. 

One post, published on March 1 and viewed more than 57,000 times, claims that the former top-ranking army commander of the Republic of Afghanistan and former Deputy Interior Minister for Security, Khoshal Sadat, said that the arrival of the Taliban ended the Republic, as well as “espionage, nationalism and insurgency”. 

However, there is no other record of this statement in English, Persian or Pashto-language media. And the image shared in this post dates back to 2020, before the Taliban took control of the country. 

Posts also undermine the rival National Resistance Front (NRF), which constitutes the main organised resistance to Taliban control.

Another tweet, published on March 11 and viewed more than 20,000 times, claims that the leader of the NRF, Ahmad Massoud, told the New York Times that his organisation has close relations with the Islamic State of Khorasan Province (ISKP), a part of the Islamic State organisation active in Afghanistan. 

A tweet published on March 11 claims that the leader of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan said that his group had close relations with the Islamic State organisation in the country. © Observers

However, Massoud has never been interviewed by the New York Times nor said that the NRF has a good relationship with ISKP. This claim serves to link Afghanistan’s self-proclaimed only legitimate resistance movement fighting for democracy with ISKP, a UN-designated terrorist organisation.

Another tweet claimed that an NRF commander had visited Israel to discuss bilateral goals, despite no other evidence in the media that this visit occurred.

Stubbs explained how this content reflects common Taliban talking points.

It will erode trust in the opposition movement because if people are believing what this fake account is saying about the opposition movement, they’ll believe that [the NRF] is dealing with Afghanistan’s enemies and people who want to destroy Afghanistan, that they’re dealing with the Islamic State. It really degrades people’s opinion of the NRF. 

The narratives shared in this content also vary drastically from that which is shared by the real Afghanistan International, a media outlet which claims to “provide balanced, and impartial news, about all for all Afghans, including all voices from across the political, social and business sectors inside Afghanistan and around the world”, according to its website.

Afghanistan International is a UK-based broadcaster and media outlet that emerged from the parent company of Iran International when the Taliban took over Afghanistan. Iran International has been criticised for alleged ties to the Saudi state through its parent company funding, though the media outlet denies this.

Although the fake account had only 6,500 followers at the time of writing, its posts sometimes receive over 50,000 views and numerous comments and shares. 

A poorly copied fake account

After noticing the traction that @AF_Inter5 had online, the Afghan Witness team began analysing its content and posting behaviours. It was immediately evident that the account was fake, thanks to several clear indicators on its page. 

First, the account is not verified on Twitter, unlike the official Afghan International account, which is verified through Twitter Blue. The fake account has a different bio and email address – notably a Gmail address, and not a “@Afintl.com” address. And the account was created in November 2021, several months after the Taliban took over the country.

The fake account also has posted far fewer times than the real Afghanistan International account: 236 tweets versus 34,230 tweets on the real account.

Finally, the fake account’s cover photo shows a CNN newsroom, while the real account has an Afghanistan International graphic with text. 

A comparison of the fake Afghanistan International account (left) and the real one (right). Afghan Witness
A comparison of the fake Afghanistan International account (left) and the real one (right). Afghan Witness © Afghan Witness

That being said, the account’s tweets look very convincing. They follow the same graphic formatting as the legitimate Afghanistan International’s breaking news tweets, with a logo and edited text on a photo.

An image posted by @AFIntlBrk, the real Afghanistan International Twitter account (on the left) and an image posted by @AF_Inter5 (on the right).
An image posted by @AFIntlBrk, the real Afghanistan International Twitter account (on the left) and an image posted by @AF_Inter5 (on the right). © Afghan Witness

>> Read more on The Observers: How to investigate a Twitter account or suspicious tweets

According to the Account Analysis tool, which allows you to see statistics about a Twitter account’s posting patterns, @AF_Inter5 tends to post between 6:30am and 8:30pm Afghanistan time – certainly not a 24/7 outlet as it claims.

A comparison of the posting behaviours for the fake Afghan International account (above) and the real account (below), which posts 24/7. All times indicated are in GMT+1.
A comparison of the posting behaviours for the fake Afghan International account (above) and the real account (below), which posts 24/7. All times indicated are in GMT+1. © Observers

All of @AF_Inter5’s posts were posted on Twitter for Android, which could point to it being run by an individual or group of individuals who are supportive of the Taliban. In contrast, the real Afghan International account posts from Twitter’s web client, Tweetdeck, and several social media clients – more typical of a newsroom social media outlet managed by several staff members. 

Contacted by the FRANCE 24 Observers team, the media outlet Afghanistan International confirmed that they are not at all affiliated with the @AF_Inter5 account and “have been trying to take it down for some time without much luck”.

‘The Taliban are trying to change the media environment in Afghanistan into a Taliban promotion machine’

Stubbs says the Afghan Witness has no indication that those posting on @AF_Inter5 are part of the Taliban. Nonetheless, the account typifies several important aspects of the Taliban’s online propaganda campaign.

We’re seeing that the Taliban are labelling Afghanistan International as fake news when they publish stories that criticise the Taliban. And they are incredibly quick to jump on news stories that they feel are unfair. And so having these fake accounts really chimes into the wider information operation that the Taliban is trying to create – they’re trying to erode trust away from independent news sources.

The information environment within the country is being eroded at such a massive rate. The official news sources that people can trust are diminishing. So it just means that there’s going to be one less source that people can look for. The Taliban are trying to change the media environment in Afghanistan into a Taliban promotion machine rather than a free and independent media, as was prior to August 2021. What we’re seeing is effectively a revolutionary movement trying to rapidly erode a free media environment in a way that’s never really done in the world before. Quite often restrictions on the press are gradual, but what the Taliban are doing is incredibly rapid.

Online propaganda operations are nothing new for the Taliban, and many believe they were key to helping the group regain control of the Afghan territory. 



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Kellyanne Conway Defends Trump Grift Because ONLY JARED Got Saudi Billions, Everyone Else Got Just Millions

Post By Politics , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Kellyanne Conway, communications professional, has an odd habit of saying the quiet part out loud. Here she is yesterday deftly deflecting criticism from Juan Williams about Republicans’ lack of interest in the Trump family’s wholesale looting of the presidency even as they pick through the pissant deals that Hunter Biden made to keep his family fed while fighting a crippling drug addiction.

Fox is currently pulling the laboring oar for the GOP’s bumbling effort to get to President Joe Biden through his only surviving son. Their theory of the case appears to be that Hunter Biden, in the throes of a cocaine addiction which had him leaving incriminating information at random computer repair shops, was simultaneously running a massive influence peddling operation. The problem is that they’ve been trying to make FETCH happen for years, and they’ve come up with exactly nothing that connects Hunter Biden’s sad scrabbling to his father.

Take for instance this memo released yesterday by that hayseed dipshit who heads the House Oversight Committee, Rep. James Comer. He subpoenaed bank records from Hunter Biden’s business partner John Robinson Walker, whom Comer refers to ominously as “a Biden family associate.”

“Robinson Walker, LLC received a $3 million wire from a Chinese company in March 2017 — less than two months after Vice President Joe Biden left public office — and that Mr. Walker then transferred over a million dollars to various bank accounts associated with the Bidens in the following months,” he continues breathlessly.

How does this connect to Joe Biden? Well, it doesn’t but … look, they’re trying, okay?

The Committee is concerned about the information revealed in these bank records, including: (1) why the Chinese energy company waited less than two months after Vice President Biden left public office to send the $3 million wire; (2) why the Robinson Walker, LLC account received the China company’s payment instead of the Biden family members’ companies; (3) why the payments to the Biden family members were structured in incremental payments to different bank accounts; (4) what services the Biden family members provided to the China company and when those purported services were provided; (5) why Hallie Biden—publicly reported to work as a school counselor—received money from Robinson Walker, LLC; 2 and (6) who the account holder is for the bank account entitled “Biden.” We hope that our Democrat colleagues will join us in addressing these important issues.

“The Committee is concerned about the national security implications of a President’s or Vice President’s immediate family members receiving millions of dollars from foreign nationals or companies without any oversight,” he goes on, which is just precious considering (1) he just conceded that Biden was not in office when those transactions took place; and (2) Comer just nixed all oversight of the gazillions of dollars the Trump family took in during and after his time in the White House.

The younger Biden put out a response noting that he was perfectly entitled to earn a living and spend his money as he pleased:

Hunter Biden, a private citizen with every right to pursue his own business endeavors, joined several business partners in seeking a joint venture with a privately owned, legitimate energy company in China. As part of that joint venture, Hunter received his portion of good faith seed funds which he shared with his uncle, James Biden, and Hallie Biden, with whom he was involved with at the time and sharing expenses. The accounts so dramatically listed by Representative Comer belonged to Hunter, his uncle and Hallie — nobody else.

Which brings us back to Fox yesterday.

“There were massive investigations, millions of dollars spent, and always the question, you know, what are they getting in return?” Martha MacCallum intoned accusingly, eliding the fact that those millions of dollars went to enforce the Oversight Committee’s subpoenas as Trump spent years in court fighting to keep his business records under wraps. “So, do you have the same question for the Biden family when you look at this money transaction? What was China getting in return? Is that something Americans must know?”

But Juan Williams wasn’t having it.

“What we have is a check to a widow from someone who was paid by the Chinese with no context. We don’t know what this money was for. In fact, the same person had sent checks to her before there was any payment from the Chinese,” he demanded of Conway, noting that the Comer memo proves exactly nothing and omits actual context.

“Why don’t you look into things like Jared Kushner getting $2 billion directly from the Saudis after former President Trump bragged about protecting the Saudi prince?”

This was, of course, a reference to the $2 billion the Saudi sovereign wealth fund transferred to Kushner’s fledgling hedge fund, under extremely favorable terms, at the behest of Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who overruled his own advisors to force the transaction through — a deal Republicans have shown zero interest in, because they are laser focused on Hunter Biden, who never worked in the White House, and his efforts to monetize his name for a few million dollars.

Williams went on: “We don’t know, but I think this is a thin veil for the fact that, after all this investigation and talk about Hunter Biden, the committee’s come up with zero. With nothing! And they got the laptop, they got this, that … nothing!”

“Well, Jared, of course, is the only person I think who has benefitted in the billions – with a ‘B’ – from the Trump presidency. That’s for sure,” she conceded. Because even Kellyanne Conway, the queen of alternative facts, cannot wish away the millions of dollars earned from foreign sources by every member of the Trump family, including the then-sitting president. Not Ivanka’s Chinese patents, not the ghost bookings of blocks of hotel rooms at Trump properties by Saudi royalty, not Don Jr.’s access peddling in India, not Jared’s sister promising visas for Chinese buyers of the family’s condos, just … come the fuck on. And that’s not even including the hundreds of millions of dollars Trump raked in at the Trump Hotel in DC from domestic companies and candidates trying to slip a little something into his G-string in hopes of receiving favorable treatment.

“But look, I think whataboutism isn’t gonna work here,” Conway blurted, in hopes of clawing her way back. But of course the damage was already done. Mostly to America, of course, but also to the Republicans, who will continue to peddle this horseshit until the earth falls into the sun.

[Mediaite / NYT]

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Why Elly Schlein is freaking out Italy’s ‘soft’ socialists

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Voiced by artificial intelligence.

Right-wing hardliners could not dream of an easier target than Elly Schlein, the new leader of Italy’s center-left Democratic Party (PD).

A global citizen with a female partner and an upper-middle-class upbringing, the youngest and first female leader of Italy’s most-established progressive party has sparked the ire of the country’s conservatives.

“CommunistElly,” the right-wing newspaper Il Tempo dubbed her after the leadership contest was decided on Sunday. Schlein defeated the favorite Stefano Bonaccini with 53.8 percent to 46.2 percent of the vote.

Far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s allies have been relishing the polarization around Schlein — the two political leaders, though both female, stand for very different values.

“She promised to prioritize the poor, public education and workers,” right-wing commentator Italo Bocchino said in attacking Schlein. “But unlike Meloni, she has never known the poor in her life,” he continued, pointing out how she attended a private school “for rich people” in Switzerland. Nor can Schlein know workers “as she’s never worked in her life,” he ranted.

Schlein’s surprise win has not only fired up her opponents, but also unsettled many in her own party. Fellow social democrats are spooked that Schlein could transform the PD from the broad progressive church it’s historically been into a much more radical sect.

There’s also concern about whether she’ll stand by the party’s support for sending lethal weapons to Ukraine given her self-described pacifist views.

Most skeptics are clinging on — for now — although a few have already jumped ship.

“The PD is over,” declared David Allegranti, a journalist for the Florence daily La Nazione. The expert on the Italian center-left argues that Schlein and many of her allies hail from leftist splinter groups and were not members of the PD until barely a few months ago — discrediting them in their critics’ eyes.

Ex-Cabinet minister Giuseppe Fioroni, among the founding members of the PD, told POLITICO: “Her project has nothing to do with my history and my political culture.” Having foreseen the outcome, Fioroni left the party one day before Schlein’s victory was announced. “My PD is no longer there, this is another party — it no longer belongs to the center left, but to the hard left,” he said.

As a youth leader in 2013, Schlein became the figurehead of Occupy PD, a protest movement set up by disaffected progressives angered over 101 center-left parliamentarians who voted against their own social democrat grandee Romano Prodi’s bid to become the president of Italy.

“With Elly Schlein, the PD has occupied itself,” quipped Allegranti.

Ex-Cabinet minister and PD founding member Giuseppe Fioroni left the party one day before Schlein’s victory, saying that the party “no longer belongs to the center left, but to the hard left” | Claudio Peri/EPA

The young radical

The daughter of a Swiss-based political scientist couple (one Italian and one American), Schlein was raised in Lugano, the Italian-speaking region of Switzerland, and spent her teens writing film reviews — her dream at the time was to become a film director — as well as playing the board game “Trivial Pursuit” and the cult 90s video game “The Secret of Monkey Island.”

Her first stint in politics came in 2008, when she cut her teeth working as a volunteer for Barack Obama’s two U.S. presidential election campaigns — heading to Chicago to do so.

“Here, I understood that you don’t need to ask for votes, but mobilize people with ideas,” she recalled to La Repubblica. A decade on, the lesson proved useful for her own leadership campaign.

In a first for the PD’s leadership contests, Schlein won the open ballot after losing by a wide margin in the caucus with party members the week before, demonstrating her capacity to win over voters.

The newly elected leader gained the upper hand over Bonaccini in big cities such as Milan, Turin and Naples, as well as performing well almost everywhere north of Rome — but lost in most southern regions, according to pollster YouTrend.

“There was a wave of support that brought along different kinds of voters, who were united by a strong desire for change,” said Lorenzo Pregliasco, the founder of YouTrend.

However, Pregliasco played down reports of a “youthquake,” and described the leadership campaign as “boring, dull and largely ignored by public opinion.”

End of the party, or a new beginning?

While there are no exact figures on voter turnout available, Italian media reports that around 1.2 million people cast their ballots — which would mark the lowest figures since PD party primaries were first held in 2007.

After becoming a member of the European Parliament with the Socialists & Democrats group in 2014 at the age of 28, Schlein took the unexpected decision to abandon the PD a year later, accusing then-prime minister and PD party leader Matteo Renzi of lurching to the right.

The decision turned out to be prophetic, as Renzi suffered a number of electoral defeats that snowballed into his resignation as prime minister in 2016, and as party leader in 2018.

Pippo Civati, a former parliamentarian and longtime ally of Schlein who is now out of politics, recalled of Schlein in 2015: “We left at the same time because he [Renzi] was making one mess after another.”

Speaking to POLITICO, Civati warned that the newly elected leader could end up having her hands tied by party bigwigs who backed the popular politician without necessarily having any genuine commitment to her radical ideas.

Pundits point out that the conflict in Ukraine could be the trickiest issue for Schlein, whose distant ancestors hail from a village close to modern-day Lviv. There are question marks over whether she will carry forward her predecessor Enrico Letta’s all-out support for the delivery of lethal weapons to Ukraine.

A U-turn by Schlein on support for Ukraine would leave Meloni as the only national party leader in favor of sending arms to the besieged country, fueling concerns among Western allies who see Italy as a weak link.

“A change of line over Ukraine could be the trigger for many centrists to leave the PD,” Allegranti said.

But Civati played down rumors of an about-face, arguing that Schlein is unlikely to oppose the sending of arms to Ukraine.

“We support Ukraine’s right to defend itself, through every form of assistance,” said Schlein in a recent interview with broadcaster La7. “But as a pacifist, I don’t think that weapons alone will end the war.”



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Schumer, Jeffries pressure Murdoch, Fox News over Trump’s false election fraud claims

Post By Business , , , , , , ,

Two top Democrats in Congress are calling on Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch and the leadership of Fox News “to stop spreading false election narratives and admit on the air that they were wrong to engage in such negligent behavior.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, both Democrats from New York, sent a letter this week to Murdoch and Fox News leadership. The letter comes days after further revelations in Dominion Voting Systems‘ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox Corp. and its TV networks.

“As noted in your deposition released yesterday Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and other Fox News personalities knowingly, repeatedly, and dangerously endorsed and promoted the Big Lie that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter, which was released Wednesday.

Trump has repeatedly spread false claims that the election was stolen from him. His attempts to pressure a top official in Georgia to “find” votes for him are the subject of a criminal probe in that state, which Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

Earlier this week, Dominion filed court papers that revealed parts of the testimony from Murdoch and other top Fox Corp. leadership. In his deposition, Murdoch acknowledged that some of Fox’s top TV hosts endorsed false election fraud claims.

When Murdoch was asked if he was “now aware that Fox endorsed at times this false notion of a stolen election,” Murdoch responded, “Not Fox, no. Not Fox. But maybe Lou Dobbs, maybe Maria [Bartiromo] as commentators,” according to court papers.

“Some of our commentators were endorsing it,” Murdoch said in his responses regarding election fraud during the deposition. “They endorsed.” Murdoch and other top Fox executives also remained close to Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott during the election coverage, according to the court papers.

A representative for Fox didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

On Monday, when the court papers were filed, a Fox News representative said in a statement that Dominion mischaracterized the facts by cherry-picking soundbites, “When Dominion is not mischaracterizing the law, it is mischaracterizing the facts.”

Dominion sued the right-wing cable networks, Fox News and Fox Business, and their parent company, arguing the networks and their top anchors made false claims that Dominion’s voting machines rigged the results of the 2020 election. Fox News has consistently denied that it knowingly made false claims about the election.

In court papers filed in February, the parent company said that the past year of discovery has shown Fox Corp. played “no role in the creation and publication of the challenged statements – all of which aired on either Fox Business Network or Fox News Channel.”

Murdoch and his son Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch, in addition to Fox’s chief legal and policy officer, Viet Dinh, and Paul Ryan, the former Republican speaker of the House and a Fox board member, have all been questioned in recent months.

The revelations that have come out in court papers in recent weeks stem from months of discovery and depositions. Top Fox TV personalities, including Carlson and Hannity, also faced questioning.

The faces of Fox News and Fox Business also expressed disbelief in Sidney Powell, a pro-Trump attorney who aggressively promoted claims of election fraud at the time, according to court papers. Ryan said that “these conspiracy theories were baseless,” and that the network “should labor to dispel conspiracy theories if and when they pop up.”

The lawsuit has been closely watched by First Amendment watchdogs and experts. Libel lawsuits typically focus on one falsehood, but in this case Dominion cites a lengthy list of examples of Fox TV hosts making false claims even after they were proven to be untrue. Media companies are often broadly protected by the First Amendment. Fox News has said in earlier statements, “the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech.”

A status conference is slated for next week, while the trial is set to begin in mid-April.

Read the letter below:

Dear Mr. Rupert Murdoch et al:

As noted in your deposition released yesterday Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and other Fox News personalities knowingly, repeatedly, and dangerously endorsed and promoted the Big Lie that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election. Though you have acknowledged your regret in allowing this grave propaganda to take place, your network hosts continue to promote, spew, and perpetuate election conspiracy theories to this day.

The leadership of your company was aware of the dangers of broadcasting these outlandish claims. By your own account, Donald Trump’s election lies were “damaging” and “really crazy stuff.” Despite that shocking admission, Fox News hosts have continued to peddle election denialism to the American people.

This sets a dangerous precedent that ignores basic journalistic fact-checking principles and public accountability. This is even more alarming after Speaker McCarthy is reportedly allowing Tucker Carlson to review highly sensitive security camera footage of the events surrounding the violent January 6 insurrection.

We demand that you direct Tucker Carlson and other hosts on your network to stop spreading false election narratives and admit on the air that they were wrong to engage in such negligent behavior.

As evidenced by the January 6 insurrection, spreading this false propaganda could not only embolden supporters of the Big Lie to engage in further acts of political violence, but also deeply and broadly weakens faith in our democracy and hurts our country in countless other ways.

Fox News executives and all other hosts on your network have a clear choice. You can continue a pattern of lying to your viewers and risking democracy or move beyond this damaging chapter in your company’s history by siding with the truth and reporting the facts. We ask that you make sure Fox News ceases disseminating the Big Lie and other election conspiracy theories on your network.

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Matt Taibbi uses the latest #TwitterFiles to call out and EMBARRASS the mainstream media and OUCH

Post By Politics , , , , , , ,

At this point in the whole #TwitterFiles world, we’d be more surprised if Matt Taibbi or the other journalists involved WEREN’T exposing another Democrat who tried to use their office and authority to pressure Twitter into silencing/censoring the Right. It’s becoming a trend really.

And sure, the Left is shrieking about the Trump admin asking Twitter to remove a mean tweet Chrissy Teigen wrote (which was silly but whatever), and claiming this proves it’s not just Democrats doing this, but give us a break. Wanting Twitter to remove a tweet because it hurts your feelings or pride is VERY different from an elected official trying to silence an entire group of people based on a narrative they believe could hurt them politically.

Taibbi used this thread to mock, humiliate, and embarrass the media … and it’s a beautiful thing:

Don’t recognize this guy? Don’t feel bad, we didn’t at first either.

Keep going.

Which is really the big story BUUUUUT gosh, golly, and gee, the mainstream media just doesn’t want to cover THAT part.

Shocker.

A MEAN TWEET! TRUMP! REEEEE

Forget that Adam Schiff literally got a journalist kicked off Twitter in essence violating his First Amendment rights … TRUMP didn’t like a tweet from Chrissy Teigen and that’s the real news y’all.

We’re not holding our breath.

Angus King.

Alrighty.

Why would King care about someone being excited over a Rand Paul visit?

Don’t answer that.

Oh, and he wanted people his rival followed removed.

Wow.

Crickets this morning, FYI.

See, media. They’re even exposing a few Republicans who did stupid crap too.

Watch, this will be the one angle they cover other than Trump.

heh

You’d think?

Adam Schiff is by far the worse. The very worse.

So media are staying far, far away from that story.

This.

ALL of this.

Dangit, we’re not on the list so no t-shirt for us.

***

Related:

Pfizer thinks John Legend smiling at the camera pushing boosters is SMART (holy COW were they wrong!)

Rachel Levine emails reveal push to PROFIT on ‘gender clinics’ at Children’s Hospitals (damning thread)

WaPo LAHOO-ZAHER Philip Bump brings knife to a gunfight STILL pushing Russia collusion and HOO boy

***

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Receipt-filled thread shows how YOUR tax dollars were used to blacklist (defund) conservative media

Post By Politics , , ,

Gosh, it sure sounds like the government doesn’t want you reading conservative news. Wonder why? As Twitchy readers know, the Washington Examiner broke a HUGE story late last week about a Microsoft-supported ad group working to deplatform and defund conservative sites; they were blacklisting us as a means to all but destroy our advertising revenue. They accused us of spreading disinformation and used descriptors like misogynists and hate, etc. They actually called Townhall Media ‘offensive and reprehensible’.

Meanwhile, they promoted sites like Buzzfeed and HuffPo.

Because of course, they did.

Now, it sounds like there are more dots to connect here … to the State Department. No, seriously.

Take a look at this thread from Walter Olson:

They targeted Reason Magazine, you guys.

Probably the most centrist, unbiased site around …

From Liberty Unyielding:

Conservative and libertarian-leaning media are now being starved of advertising dollars because of a taxpayer-funded progressive group — the Global Disinformation Index. It classifies truthful media coverage as “disinformation” that advertisers should avoid, when it is offensive to progressives. Most of the publications targeted by the Global Disinformation Index are conservative, but even non-conservative publications have been classified as misinformation after criticizing civil-liberties violations by progressive officials. That includes Reason Magazine, a libertarian publication that has won journalism awards for its reporting on civil-liberties violations and government abuses of power.

So basically any outlet not pushing government-approved Leftist garbage.

K.

London-based group.

This just gets dumber and more horrible by the minute.

From the Washington Examiner:

According to financial statements, the NED received over $300 million from the State Department in 2021. Critics have argued that the endowment, which Congress authorized in 1983, is essentially a government grantmaking body despite its legal status as a private entity.

In 2020, the NED granted $230,000 to the AN Foundation, GDI’s group that also goes by the Disinformation Index Foundation, documents show.

So … those of us in conservative media have been paying for these a-holes to try and defund/deplatform us.

No words.

… dynamic exclusion list.

How very Orwellian.

Basically, hate speech is anything the Left disagrees with.

Just. Wow.

In other words, Microsoft backpedaled and is trying to cover its backside.

PROPUBLICA. HA HA HA HA HA

But you know, we’re false and misleading.

You’ve gotta be kidding us.

This. ^

ALSO THIS^.

The government has no business whatsoever in funding any sort of action to silence the opinions of the media. We’re certainly not experts but this sounds a lot like a First Amendment thing.

See, you can tell he writes for Reason. His take is fair.

Meanwhile, this editor is ready to break out a chainsaw or two …

Right?

Since the government was involved?

Ain’t that the truth?

***

Related:

NPR DRAGGED (then dragged some more) for asking if we should continue masking FOREVER in some places

YIKES! We thought the NYT piece promoting mass suicide was bad but THIS Dick guy’s thread is even WORSE

AOC leads pack of frothy-mouthed Dems LOSING IT over Jesus Super Bowl ad (here are the dumbest)

***

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West must move faster to prevent a catastrophe in northern Syria

Post By Politics , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.

On the “treacherous night” of the deadly earthquake that shook northern Syria, Idris Nassan, a Kurdish official living in Raqqa, was startled awake as his apartment swayed.

“My body was trembling, noise filled the place; the building turned into a swing, leaning left and right,” he said.

With his wife and mother in tow, Nassan scrambled down three flights of stairs, joining neighbors who, “like birds fleeing snakes of prey,” made their chaotic exit. The stairwell echoed with the cries and screams of terrified children.

The scenes outside were “beyond endurance,” Nassan said — telling, coming from a man who witnessed the siege of Kobani and the vicious battles between Kurds and the Islamic State militants there. But, he added, the “pain of the earthquake has been “deepened by the failure of others to help.”

Of all the places to be tested by the grinding of tectonic plates, this is one that just didn’t need to suffer more pain and grief.

The Syrians of Idlib and northern Aleppo, many displaced from elsewhere in the war-ravaged country, have endured barbaric conflict, a gruesome descent into hell, for over a decade. They’ve suffered barrel bombs; their hospitals and markets have been targeted; they’ve been starved; and they’ve been preyed upon by the jihadists of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. Idlib was turned into a large “kill zone” by the Syrian regime of Bashar Assad and his Russian and Iranian backers, as rebels and their families were funneled into the area, corralled like cattle awaiting slaughter.

Adding insult to injury, since 2018, Turkish authorities have been deterring Syrian asylum seekers from crossing the border and declining to register them. Turkey has also mounted unlawful deportations and coerced some to return to northern Syria, while the European Union — fearful of another migration surge — has raised few objections to this breach of the Geneva Convention.

Along the arc of northern Syria, the widespread complaint by Arabs and Kurds alike is that since the defeat of the Islamic State, they’ve been abandoned by the international community. That sense of desertion is now being compounded as they dig mass graves and grapple with the effects of a devastating earthquake.

Since the deadly 7.8-magnitude earthquake flattened towns, destroyed homes and crushed thousands of lives on February 6, the world’s focus has mainly been on Turkey — that’s where Western media and international rescue crews, aid and equipment have been heading.

But across the border, there’s been scant assistance.

Sent into rebel-held Idlib, a member of Mercy Corps, a global humanitarian organization, said, “What sticks in my mind is that some people were standing above the rubble and hearing the voices of their families and relatives a few meters away, but they could not do anything to rescue them due to the lack of equipment and the absence of an international response to help.”

Predictably, Moscow and Beijing haven’t been lagging in their efforts to try to spin the events in Syria. “The sanctions imposed by the US and its allies are hampering relief and rescue work . . . such a humanitarian disaster is not enough to melt the cold-blooded heart of the US,” goaded the Global Times, the English-language mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party.

Meanwhile, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova accused the “collective West” of ignoring what’s taking place in northern Syria, blaming the economic sanctions against the Assad government for prolonging suffering.

Of course, these are crocodile tears coming from a Chinese Communist government that’s incarcerated over a million Uyghurs since 2015. It’s also strikingly indecent of Russia to claim sympathy for the north of Syria, where it shunned the laws of war and rehearsed the bombing campaigns and egregious tactics it’s now using in Ukraine.

Nonetheless, one doesn’t have to be a Russian or Chinese propagandist to question the West’s sluggishness in anticipating the scale of the humanitarian crisis unfolding in northern Syria, or in developing an action plan to ease the suffering in Idlib and northern Aleppo.

Last week, EU officials slammed the complaints of neglect coming from northern Syria. “I categorically reject the accusations that EU sanctions may have any impact on humanitarian aid. These sanctions were imposed since 2011 in response to the violent repression of the Syrian regime against its own civilian population, including the use of chemical weapons,” European Commissioner for Crisis Management Janez Lenarčič told reporters. “There is nothing there that would hamper the delivery of humanitarian aid and emergency assistance, especially not in the situation in which Syrian people find themselves after this terrible earthquake,” he added.

The EU says it’ll provide additional emergency support to both Turkey and Syria, and emergency humanitarian assistance worth €6.5 million. But officials say the bloc will also require safeguards to ensure aid effectively reaches those in need and isn’t misused by the Assad government — something that’s plagued humanitarian assistance in the past.

Indeed, funneling aid into northern Syria is fraught with logistical and political nightmares. Idlib is controlled by a variety of feuding rebel groups, with a large part held by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an Islamist militant group that’s been designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and, much like the Assad government, has been accused of manipulating international aid.

Additionally, of the five border crossings from Turkey into northern Syria, only one has been authorized by Turkish authorities to handle humanitarian aid — although Ankara has now said it’s considering reopening more crossings to allow aid into both opposition-held and Assad-controlled areas.

But time is of the essence, and the scale of the crisis unfolding requires a momentous step change.

Mercy Corps reports that there aren’t enough structural engineers in northern Syria to inspect buildings, and even small aftershocks risk further collapse. There’s also very little coordination on the ground, with extremely limited information available on shelter options for survivors.

Fuel for heating and cooking is becoming a major challenge as well. “There is limited availability, and what is available is of poor quality and very expensive. People are burning trash to stay warm, and aid deliveries will be dependent on consistent access to fuel for trucks,” said Mercy Corps. Meanwhile, food is hard to procure, prices are skyrocketing, and access to clean drinking water is becoming a critical problem, with assessment teams worried about pollutants leaking into water sources.

On Friday, the United Nations warned that over 5 million Syrians may be left homeless after the earthquake. “That is a huge number and comes to a population already suffering mass displacement,” said Sivanka Dhanapala, the Syria representative of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

Thankfully, in the past few days, 20 U.N. aid trucks have crossed into rebel-held areas, but most were carrying pre-planned provisions that had been delayed due to the earthquake. And on Friday, the U.N. announced it was releasing an additional $25 million in emergency funding for Syria, bringing the total to $50 million so far.

However, NGO assessment workers say this is far short of what’s needed — and they argue that Western powers will have to rethink the sanctions regime.

While humanitarian aid isn’t barred by Western sanctions, there are plenty of other things desperately needed in northern Syria that are, including fuel and construction equipment critical to rescue efforts, to prop up battered buildings and to rebuild, so the displaced aren’t left to shelter in tents.

The United States has moved faster than the EU in recognizing that sanctions risk impeding quake assistance, issuing a six-month waiver for all transactions related to providing disaster relief to Syria.

 Navigating the political dilemmas all this will bring — getting in front of Assad exploiting the earthquake to force a normalization of relations, getting Turkey to coordinate with the Kurds of northern Syria, and dealing with HTS and the other feuding rebel groups — is undoubtedly going to be a tall order.

Aside from the imperatives of compassion, a slow and inadequate Western response will also feed into African and Middle Eastern countries’ perception — kindled by Moscow and Beijing — that Western powers only pay attention to them when they want or need something.

And if these challenges aren’t confronted, the immediate humanitarian crisis risks turning into a catastrophe.



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