As the battle for Mosul in Iraq winds down, the fight against Islamic State (IS) in its Syrian stronghold of Raqqa is heating up.

• Activists say there is evidence of growing number of civilian casualties
• Coalition forces confirm investigations being conducted into strikes that may have hit civilians
• Estimates up to 200,000 civilians trapped in Raqqa

But three weeks into this new operation, there are serious concerns about what the UN has described as a "staggering loss of civilian life" due to coalition airstrikes on the city.

"It's certainly fair to say that we are seeing numbers of civilians reported killed and numbers of incidents comparable to the worst periods of the Aleppo siege last year when east Aleppo was under bombardment by both Russian and Syrian forces," said Chris Woods, the director of NGO Airwars that monitors airstrikes in Iraq and Syria.

Mr Woods said the US-led coalition had shown no indication they had changed how they operated, despite high civilian death tolls during the battle for Mosul.

"We are concerned that despite clear evidence from Mosul, that the heavy bombardment of that city led to very heavy civilian casualties, we have not seen in any real change in operational behaviour at Raqqa," he told the ABC.

"We are very concerned at how much heavy weaponry is being used on the city."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-28/monitoring-groups-sound-alarm-over...

Some of the TIME covers are blandly intellectually sycophantic, in the sense that they are middle of the right-wing road, with far less impact than a merde-och press image on the New York Post...:

Now, it didn’t take this campaign to show that much of the media is broken, or that we need more watchdogs, rather than lap dogs, to challenge powerful interests across the political spectrum. There have been other times when the suspension of skepticism and scrutiny put the nation at risk, such as when reporters became cheerleaders for the invasion of Iraq.

But even with historical perspective, this media moment is particularly dangerous and fraught. The coverage of this campaign is not a random event. It is the result of corrosive structural changes — the collapse of local daily newspapers, excessive conglomeration, the obliteration of lines between news and entertainment, the rise of right-wing “news” — that are making it harder for media to keep the public informed on the issues that demand our attention. And yet, despite these growing challenges, the media retain extraordinary power to set agendas, shape perceptions and decide what is and is not part of the national conversation. As long as we have a corporatized system that values clicks and ratings more than serious policy debates or the people and communities affected, the problems will only worsen.

When the nation wakes up Wednesday, the postmortems will begin. As part of that process, we should think hard about the reasons for the media malpractice throughout this campaign. We need structural reforms to revive an accountability-centered media that doesn’t value profits over the public interest. And we should act decisively to ensure that in future elections, the American people can rely on a free and open press to fulfill their indispensable role in our democracy.

read more:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/media-malpractice-2016/2016/11/0...

Tell the woman she's dreaming: " ... the American people can rely on a free and open press to fulfill their indispensable role in our democracy"... This is a lot of baloney. The media is shackled to interests of cash and honey. The media loves wars. The media will never investigate the hands that feeds it.  The media thrives on voyeurism and scandals and bias. The media malpractice is ingrained in the media structure:

These are just a few examples of the media malpractice that continues to corrode our political discourse. Others include the fawning coverage of Trump’s unauthorized missile strikes in Syria, the virtual blackout on television of Republican steps to unravel Wall Street reforms, and the “cancer of false equivalence,” as media columnist Eric Alterman of the Nation recently called it, that still infects the reporting of our most prestigious and influential news organizations. Indeed, it is the same blind worship at the altar of “balance” that leads to troubling and dubious decisions, such as CNN employing dishonest Trump mouthpiece Jeffrey Lord or NBC allowing Megyn Kelly to put conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on its airwaves.

read more:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/on-trump-the-medias-malpractice-...

The media relies on opinions -- and the politicians know this. The truth disappeared a long time ago with the first porkie of Adam and Eve... Since then, it has been down the greasy wooden pole of interpretations, getting splinters up our butts. Cleaning this up? Dream on, girlie...

An American journalist has defended telling a White House spokeswoman she was "inflaming" tensions with the media during a press briefing, saying "I don't like bullies".

Brian Karem, White House correspondent for Playboy magazine, appeared on CNN and MSNBC on Wednesday morning to say: "I've been tired of being bullied. I've been tired of being blamed.

"I've been called an enemy of the people. We've been told that we're all fake media."

He went on to say "I've been browbeaten for six months and told I'm the enemy.

"And to be honest, it's not accurate, and I think it's driving a wedge between us and the public.

"I think it's undermining the fourth estate. I think it's very detrimental to the constitution and the foundation of the republic."

He said the reporters in the White House press briefing room are "merely trying … to do their job".

"And to be browbeaten every day and bullied isn't right, and it's got to stop."

He also told CNN a reporter would soon be assaulted as a result of the Trump administration's treatment of the media.

"There will come a time, it won't be too far off, I surmise. We will see a reporter is going to face physical harm because of this."

On Tuesday, Karem had interrupted deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders as she was criticising CNN and the media in general.

"I think we have gone to a place where if the media can't be trusted to report the news, then that's a dangerous place for America," Ms Sanders said.

"And I think if that's the place where certain outlets are going, particularly for the purpose of spiking ratings, and if that's coming directly from the top, then I think that's even more scary, and certainly more disgraceful."

She was referring to a recent incident where CNN published and then retracted a story alleging the Senate was investigating a meeting between a top Trump campaign staffer and an official from a Russian investment fund.

Three CNN employees involved with the story, including Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Eric Lichtblau, stepped down over the mistake.

read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-29/reporter-defends-criticising-white...

see also:

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/11276