DAMASCUS: The mother of US journalist Austin Tice, who went missing in Syria in 2012, said on Monday in Damascus that the war-torn country's new leadership was committed to finding him.
Tice was working as a freelance journalist for Agence France-Presse, McClatchy News, The Washington Post, CBS and other media outlets when he was detained at a checkpoint in August 2012.
“I have been privileged to meet with the new leadership of Syria,” Debra Tice told journalists in Damascus, after holding talks with Syria’s new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“It was so wonderful to learn that they are dedicated and determined to bring home my son, and your son,” she added.
She expressed hope the incoming administration of Donald Trump, who takes office as US president later on Monday, will work to bring her son home.
“Today... Trump will be sworn into office and a page will be turned,” she said.
“I have great hope that the Trump administration will be very engaged in diligent work to bring Austin home.
“I look forward to working closely with the team, including National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and Special Presidential Envoy Adam Logan.”
Debra Tice said she was “looking forward” to engaging with the Trump administration.
“His people have already reached out to me,” she said.
“I haven’t experienced that for the last four years, and so I’m very much looking forward to their help and involvement, and I think they’re going to be quick at it.”
Last month, US officials said Syria’s new leadership had assisted in the hunt for Tice, including searches at sites of interest.
“We feel it’s our duty as the US government to press on until we know with certainty what happened to him, where he is and to bring him home,” said Roger Carstens, the US point man on hostages.
He made the remarks during the first visit to Damascus by US officials since Islamist-led forces toppled autocratic Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.
Missing US journalist’s mother says new Syria leaders ‘determined’ to find son
https://arab.news/v3vzg
Missing US journalist’s mother says new Syria leaders ‘determined’ to find son
Trump freezes US-funded media outlets including Voice of America
- VOA director Michael Abramowitz said he was among 1,300 staffers placed on leave Saturday
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s administration on Saturday put journalists at Voice of America and other US-funded broadcasters on leave, abruptly freezing decades-old outlets long seen as critical to countering Russian and Chinese information offensives.
Hundreds of staffers at VOA, Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe and other outlets received a weekend email saying they will be barred from their offices and should surrender press passes and office-issued equipment.
Trump, who has already eviscerated the US global aid agency and the Education Department, on Friday issued an executive order listing the US Agency for Global Media as among “elements of the federal bureaucracy that the president has determined are unnecessary.”
Kari Lake, a firebrand Trump supporter put in charge of the media agency after she lost a US Senate bid, said in an email to the outlets that federal grant money “no longer effectuates agency priorities.”
The White House said the cuts would ensure “taxpayers are no longer on the hook for radical propaganda,” marking a dramatic tone shift toward the networks established to extend US influence overseas.
White House press official Harrison Fields wrote “goodbye” on X in 20 languages, a jab at the outlets’ multilingual coverage.
VOA director Michael Abramowitz said he was among 1,300 staffers placed on leave Saturday.
“VOA needs thoughtful reform, and we have made progress in that regard. But today’s action will leave Voice of America unable to carry out its vital mission,” he said on Facebook, noting that its coverage — in 48 languages — reaches 360 million people each week.
The head of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which started broadcasting into the Soviet bloc during the Cold War, called the cancelation of funding “a massive gift to America’s enemies.”
“The Iranian ayatollahs, Chinese communist leaders, and autocrats in Moscow and Minsk would celebrate the demise of RFE/RL after 75 years,” its president, Stephen Capus, said in a statement.
US-funded media have reoriented themselves since the end of the Cold War, dropping much of the programming geared toward newly democratic Central and Eastern European countries and focusing on Russia and China.
Chinese state-funded media have expanded their reach sharply over the past decade, including by offering free services to outlets in the developing world that would otherwise pay for Western news agencies.
Radio Free Asia, established in 1996, sees its mission as providing uncensored reporting into countries without free media including China, Myanmar, North Korea and Vietnam.
The outlets have an editorial firewall, with a stated guarantee of independence despite government funding.
The policy has angered some around Trump, who has long railed against media and suggested that government-funded outlets should promote his policies.
The move to end US-funded media is likely to meet challenges, much like Trump’s other sweeping cuts. Congress, not the president, has the constitutional power of the purse and Radio Free Asia in particular has enjoyed bipartisan support in the past.
Advocacy group Reporters Without Borders condemned the decision, saying it “threatens press freedom worldwide and negates 80 years of American history in supporting the free flow of information.”
Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and senior Democratic congresswoman Lois Frankel said in a joint statement that Trump’s move would “cause lasting damage to US efforts to counter propaganda around the world.”
One VOA employee, who requested anonymity, described Saturday’s message as another “perfect example of the chaos and unprepared nature of the process,” with VOA staffers presuming that scheduled programming is off but not told so directly.
A Radio Free Asia employee said: “It’s not just about losing your income. We have staff and contractors who fear for their safety. We have reporters who work under the radar in authoritarian countries in Asia. We have staff in the US who fear deportation if their work visa is no longer valid.”
“Wiping us out with the strike of a pen is just terrible.”
Miami Beach mayor threatens cinema closure over screening of Oscar-winning film ‘No Other Land’
- Documentary is propaganda, attack on Jews, says Steven Meiner
- Cinema’s CEO Vivian Marthell stands by decision to screen film
LONDON: The mayor of Miami Beach, Florida, has threatened to shutter a cinema that screened “No Other Land,” the Oscar-winning film that tells the story of Palestinian displacement in the West Bank.
Steven Meiner has proposed terminating O Cinema’s lease and withdrawing $40,000 in promised grant funding, following a series of requests to cancel the documentary screening.
Meiner’s proposal to terminate the cinema’s lease is scheduled for a city commission vote next Wednesday.
Critics of the film claim it unfairly criticizes Israeli and German officials and contains antisemitic content.
“The City of Miami Beach has one of the highest concentrations of Jewish residents in the United States,” Meiner said in a newsletter sent to residents on Tuesday.
He described the documentary as “a false one-sided propaganda attack on the Jewish people that is not consistent with the values of our City and residents.”
Meiner also claimed that O Cinema’s CEO, Vivian Marthell, initially agreed to cancel the screening but later reversed her decision and added additional dates after the film sold out.
Marthell said she stood by her decision.
“We understand the power of cinema to tell stories that matter, and we recognize that some stories — especially those rooted in real-world conflicts — can evoke strong feelings and passionate reactions. As they should.
“Our decision to screen ‘No Other Land’ is not a declaration of political alignment. It is, however, a bold reaffirmation of our fundamental belief that every voice deserves to be heard.”
When this mayor uses the word antisemitism to silence us, Palestinians and Israelis who proudly oppose occupation and apartheid together, fighting for justice and equality for all, he is dangerously emptying it out of meaning. Once you witness Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Masafer… pic.twitter.com/B50Mb6ymeO
— Yuval Abraham יובל אברהם (@yuval_abraham) March 13, 2025
The production, which won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature this month, was filmed between 2019 and 2023 by Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers.
It follows the destruction of Palestinian villages in the occupied West Bank by Israeli military forces and chronicles the unlikely friendship between Palestinian activist Basel Adra and Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham, who co-directed the film.
Abraham said in a statement: “When the mayor uses the word antisemitism to silence Palestinians and Israelis who proudly oppose occupation and apartheid together, fighting for justice and equality, he is emptying it out of meaning.
“I find that to be very dangerous.”
While the film has received critical acclaim, it has also sparked controversy, highlighting ongoing tensions over free speech and Palestinian activism both in the US and internationally.
“Freedom of expression is an important value, but defamation of Israel into a tool for international promotion is not art,” Israel’s Culture Minister Miki Zohar said in a social media post after the Oscars.
Despite its success, “No Other Land” has struggled to secure US distribution, with the filmmakers self-releasing the film through mTuckman Media.
The directors — particularly Abraham and Adra — have blamed political backlash fears as the reason for US distributors’ reluctance to acquire the rights.
The Oscar win for the film "No Other Land" is a sad moment for the world of cinema. Instead of presenting the complexity of Israeli reality, the filmmakers chose to amplify narratives that distort Israel’s image vis-à-vis international audiences. Freedom of expression is an…
— Miki Zohar מיקי זוהר (@zoharm7) March 3, 2025
The controversy comes amid heightened tensions over Palestinian activism in the US.
Earlier this week, Mahmoud Khalil, a former Columbia student activist and green-card holder who led the Palestinian solidarity movement during campus protests last year, was detained by immigration authorities.
President Donald Trump has alleged, without evidence, that Khalil has links to “pro-terrorist, antisemitic, anti-American activity.”
The incident has sparked an international outcry, with rights groups and media condemning Khalil’s detention as “a dangerous moment” and “a flagrant assault on free speech” that violates the First Amendment.
Trump adviser seeks to cut AFP, other news agency contracts
- “We should not be paying outside news companies to tell us what the news is,” Kari Lake said on X
WASHINGTON: A senior adviser to President Donald Trump said Thursday she was moving to cancel long-established contracts between three international news agencies and the federal body that oversees US government-funded news organizations.
In a post on X announcing the move to cut the contracts with Agence France-Presse (AFP), Reuters and The Associated Press, former journalist-turned-politician and staunch Trump loyalist Kari Lake said: “We should not be paying outside news companies to tell us what the news is.”
I moved today to cancel expensive and unnecessary newswire contracts for US Agency for Global Media, including tens-of-millions of dollars in contracts with The Associated Press, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse.
— Kari Lake (@KariLake) March 13, 2025
USAGM is an American taxpayer funded News Organization with an…
Lake joined the US Agency for Global Media as a special adviser last month. The agency oversees a handful of media entities dedicated to reporting news and combatting censorship abroad, such as the Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia.
“I moved today to cancel expensive and unnecessary newswire contracts for US Agency for Global Media, including tens of millions of dollars in contracts with The Associated Press, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse,” Lake said
“We should be producing news ourselves. And if that’s not possible, the American taxpayer should know why,” she added.
AFP has a number of long-running contracts to provide text, photo and video services to USAGM outlets.
Trump has made the federal-funded agencies overseen by the USAGM a particular target of his media reforms, and close adviser Elon Musk has called for VOA and Radio Free Europe to be shut down entirely for “torching” taxpayer money.
He tapped Lake in December to become the head of VOA, but she has yet to be confirmed.
LIV Golf signs multi-year broadcast deal with DAZN
- Deal with streaming site DAZN will bring its golf events to more than 200 countries
- LIV has also already agreed a deal with Fox Sports to show its 2025 season in the US
LONDON: LIV Golf announced on Friday it had secured a multi-year exclusive broadcast deal with streaming site DAZN to show its events outside the United States.
The Saudi-backed breakaway circuit had initially struggled for TV deals during its inaugural season in 2022, briefly showing tournaments for free on YouTube.
But LIV had also already agreed a deal with Fox Sports to show its 2025 season in the US.
DAZN will broadcast the LIV tour live in “more than 200 markets,” including Canada, Germany, France, Italy and Japan.
“DAZN’s cutting-edge technology and unparalleled scale give LIV Golf a significant platform to engage a truly global audience,” said LIV Golf CEO Scott O’Neil.
British streaming service DAZN was also recently awarded the exclusive global rights for FIFA’s expanded Club World Cup to be held in the US in June and July.
LIV Golf has been in talks with the PGA Tour over a possible deal to reunite the game since 2023.
PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan said earlier this week that US President Donald Trump’s intervention in negotiations had “significantly bolstered” hopes of an agreement, but admitted some hurdles remain.
Turkiye’s independent news websites face closure risk after Google changes
- Google implemented algorithm changes that led to reduction in reader traffic, outlets say
- Spokesperson for the tech giant argues that the changes do not target individual websites and that they are designed to improve its search facility overall
ISTANBUL: Several independent media outlets in Turkiye face a potential risk of closure after algorithm changes made by Google led to a significant reduction in reader traffic, a joint statement from the outlets said on Thursday.
They said Google’s algorithm changes since the end of January had wiped out the vast majority of reader traffic to their websites, previously directed through Google’s “Discover” and “News” tools, and had harmed their finances.
Independent news websites including T24, Medyascope, Diken, and Birgun said that Google’s changes also blocked the public’s access to news, adding that they would take legal action.
“As independent media organizations operating in Turkiye, we announce that we will stand up for our corporate rights, our employees’ work and the support of our readers, which have been stolen by Google’s actions, on every platform,” they said.
They said they would apply to local and international legal bodies, notably Turkiye’s Competition Authority.
A Google spokesperson, requesting anonymity, said its changes do not target individual websites and that they are designed to improve its search facility overall.
“We don’t and would never manipulate search results, modify our products, or enforce our policies to promote or disadvantage any particular viewpoint,” the spokesperson said.
In 2024, Turkiye ranked 158th out of 180 countries in the press freedom index of the free speech advocacy group Reporters Without Borders. Its report said that with some 90 percent of Turkiye’s media under government influence, Turks recently turned to critical or independent media outlets for domestic news.
Independent media outlets in Turkiye are highly dependent on Google revenues as private companies are reluctant to advertise on independent websites.
On Wednesday, independent news outlet Gazete Duvar announced its closure, citing revenue losses triggered by Google’s algorithm changes alongside inflationary economic conditions.
