Tucker Carlson Could Face Sanctions Over Putin Interview

"In authoritarian China/Russia/Cuba/DPRK/[insert bad country here], being caught talking to enemies of the regime can result in persecution by the state"

32

It's always projection. 100%. All the time. It never ends.

3

If Assange and Snowden can't come back, why cucker?

29

I do not know how you can look at the treatment of Assange and Snowden and say "the problem is that we aren't doing more of that".

23
- I'm not. But if we only did it to tucker I wouldn't even look twice.
  
  1
I always love how quickly the liberal mask falls off. The west is all about freedom, democracy, and free speech, until it's something the lib mainstream doesn't like to hear. It's quite telling you're not asking why Assange and Snowden are being prosecuted for revealing what they revealed, but you're upset that this isn't happening more.

Turns out that those who label Communists as tankies and authoritarians are well-aware of the necessity to suppress divergent viewpoints. Freedom of expression is limited to ideas that align with the liberal narrative; when faced with opinions they deem detrimental, liberals demand cancellation, imprisonment, or even death for the proponents.

The real disagreement liberals have with the Communists is over what set of ideas has merit. When liberals screech about authoritarianism what they're really saying is that it's their ideology that's being suppressed.

-12

Why does the page have a “fairness” feedback meter, and how is enlightened centrism “factual and fair”?

27

All of these media bias meters seem to have the same approach: only centrism is factual. What if reality is not the way the "centre" understands it?

4
- Check out these dumb-ass media bias graphs. I swear most Americans have potato media literacy.
  
  Folks, please go read Manufacturing Consent, or better still Inventing Reality. A five-minute primer: Noam Chomsky - The 5 Filters of the Mass Media Machine
  
  2

Freedom of the press and protection of journalists in the West. If he went to talk to Netanyahu no one would have minded.

25

Too true. Our Media publishes all of Israels lies on the front page with a tiny quote that attributes it to the IDF.

They repeat those lies over multiple articles. And they keep quoting those lies. Over and over.

But one interview with Putin is a line too far...

19
- Main difference is that one is an evil war criminal while the other is a "good" war criminal
  
  2

It's wild to me how many allegedly left-leaning or "liberal" people who say they believe in open societies, free expression, etc will gladly throw all that out the window if it means they get to punish somebody they disagree with. This trend has really picked up the last 10 years or so. Fuck tucker carlson but he has a right to speak freely and it's terrifying that the government can sanction a journalist, even a shitty one, for the crime of interviewing somebody.

Jailing or sanctioning journalists and critics is some shit Putin and other despots do, let's not emulate him. I would stand with anybody who is sanctioned by the government for their speech regardless of how much I disagree with it.

Societies which stifle dissent, especially using the power of the state, grow weaker because they aren't able to effectively adapt to change. Remember it is not too long ago that advocating for gay marriage would have been seen as morally deviant and repugnant. But strong speech protections allow us as a society to have that discussion and come to the correct conclusion which is that it's fine to be gay, that love is love, and that gay people deserve equal protection under the law.

19

Tucker isn't a journalist, he's an entertainer, or at least, a propagandist.

15
- Agreed, but going around interviewing politicians and posting that online is clearly a journalistic activity. Should Barbara Walters have been thrown in jail or sanctioned for interviewing Castro? A marketplace of ideas in a free society requires the ability to hear the arguments of all sides so we can form rebuttals to them and arrive at some kind of consensus, as a society, about what our values are and how our institutions ought to reflect those values. We don't have to give a platform to those ideas, we can be wise about how and where those ideas are discussed and shared, but we don't hand over the power to make those decisions to the government because in the past governments have been pretty terrible custodians of that power.
  
  And a free, unrestrained press is our first line of defense against governments trending towards tyranny and authoritarianism. Governments trying to repress speech is the "canary in the coalmine" that they are getting more authoritarian and corrupt. If we don't draw a line in the sand there, the next few steps they take will be even harder to fight back against as we will have lost our ability as a society to be aware of and share information about it. Look at Putin, look at Trump, look at Hitler, look at Orban. The first thing they do when they get elected is de-legitimize the press and try to restrict their ability to publish.
  
  Whether he's a journalist or not, he's a US citizen, he has a right to free speech guaranteed under the constitution and the UN declaration of human rights. The EU has a similar document.
  
  9
I have to agree with your overall sentiment. However, there's at least a valid argument to be made that providing a media mouthpiece for Putin, who many consider a war criminal, has the potential to increase global unrest and lead to additional deaths in a way that few examples of protected speech do.

2
- providing a media mouthpiece for Putin, who many consider a war criminal, has the potential to increase global unrest and lead to additional deaths
  
  Now apply this standard to Western politicians, like Bush, or Biden, or most of them, honestly.
  
  10
- Where, exactly, should the line be draw then between "reporting" and "being a mouthpiece". Because if you can't codify a set of very clear standards that can exist in law, the government will use every last bit of ambiguity to repress dissent, especially when the government is not being headed by somebody on your "side". In the US, there are some very clear, very specific carve-outs for the 1st amendment.
  
  George Bush is considered by many to be a war criminal, he invaded two countries with no legal pretext. Should his writings or paintings be banned speech? Should the government be able to censor him? How about Pinochet? or Stalin? How can we learn about history if we cannot see and understand why one side acted the way they did? What their motivations were? We don't censor those things, and we shouldn't. The USSR however did widely censor the writings of western authors, using much the same arguments you make here.
  
  The easier solution is to not grant the government that kind of censorship power, acknowledge that words are just words and we being free people can discern fact from fiction and come to our own conclusions, and push for platforms to not give airtime to hacks like Tucker. If you do not believe people can hear two arguments and discern which is better, you may as well give up on democracy entirely. The whole concept of democracy is premised on believing that people can do that. If they can't, we may as well hand over all our liberties to the nearest wannabe dictator and be done with the inefficiencies of voting.
  
  8
- Notably, Putin doesn't really need a mouthpiece. He's not some unheard of hermit with no power to spread how ideology, he's a dictator of an extremely large country. This is seen as in poor taste because it's implying the former, while being an expression of the latter.
  
  1

*should

14

[I got a bot to automatically delete all my comments over 1 month old so you can’t see this comment anymore]

14

That should tell you what America's goals ultimately are.

7

I doubt anything will come of this, it's just an interview, probably just some big talk from people in EU parliament, I guess Russia did the exact same thing when they sanctioned Sean Penn and Ben Stiller, but I would be surprised if the EU stoops to that level, it's frankly petty to target private citizens doing media stuff regardless of what it is or how much you disagree with it.

https://thehill.com/policy/international/3629942-russia-sanctions-25-more-americans-including-us-officials-and-actors/

12

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Carlson's work in Russia could see the former Fox News host in hot water with the EU, Guy Verhofstadt, a former Belgian Prime Minister and current member of the European Parliament, told Newsweek.

Explaining his motive for the interview, Carlson said in a video statement on Tuesday: "Most Americans have no idea why Putin invaded Ukraine or what his goals are now."

If deemed sufficient, the EAS can then present the case to the European Council—the body made up of EU national leaders—which takes the final decision on whether to impose sanctions.

One European diplomatic official, who did not wish to be named as they were not authorized to speak publicly, told Newsweek that any future travel restrictions would likely require proof that he is linked to Moscow's aggression, something that "is absent or hard to prove."

The content of Carlson's interview with Putin is not yet clear but, given the pundit's long-time defense of aspects of Russian policy, critics expect it to be sympathetic to Moscow.

"First of all, it should be remembered that Putin is not just a president of an aggressor country, but he is wanted by the International Criminal Court and accused of genocide and war crimes," MEP Urmas Paet, who previously served as Estonia's foreign minister, told Newsweek.

The original article contains 765 words, the summary contains 213 words. Saved 72%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

6

How long before he announces a Trump interview as well. Mule transporting information between Russians.

5

BlueAnon

9

My favorite thing about the interview is when he literally told Putin to "shut the fuck up and get back to the script" when he started talking about the Nazis being bad. Like shit man, if you didn't have the soft power you had I don't think you'd be leaving Russia after that one.

It was wild in general seeing Putin as not being the most wicked man in the room, which isn't hard when the other person is probably one of the most notorious neo-nazi propagandists in America who literally quit their golden job because they asked him to hide the racism a bit better.

4

Permanently Deleted

4

I have followed 'news' from Russian outlets such as RT and Sputnik, being recast as Right wing talking points within hours. This is not just recent, it has been going on for years. Hamilton68 documents examples. The parallels of this propaganda being sown to the lies dispensed to Ukraine to sow dissention is obvious. It is a cheap warfare, and it works. Tucker was and is in the trade of packaging Russian propaganda as news. He should be labeled as such. Carlson was discredited and fired by Fox. Spreading lies, admitting to doing so on archived tapes, and iirc, sexual harassment was in his part of the discovery on Fox's $780M settlement. In short, Tucker Carlson is on record for knowingly spreading lies, for personal monetary benefit. This is more of the same. I hope every person watches Carlson, knowing that Carlson reports what enriches him, not truth. Carlson has a transparent agenda. The unanswered question is who pays Carlson. That will be obvious by who's boots that Carlson's reports shine.

2

Matt Taibbi: Move Over, Jayson Blair: Meet Hamilton 68, the New King of Media Fraud The Twitter Files reveal that one of the most common news sources of the Trump era was a scam, making ordinary American political conversations look like Russian spywork

MSNBC Repeats Hamilton 68 Lies 279 Times in 11 Minutes

Chris Hedges: Why Russiagate Won’t Go Away

7
- Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
  
  MSNBC Repeats Hamilton 68 Lies 279 Times in 11 Minutes
  
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  
  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
  
  1

It’s amazing what lengths Carlson goes to in order to stay relevant. Sad, really.

1

Shame. He could have taken out 2 fashists with 1 press of a button...

-1

the sheer hysteria over this is equal parts hilarious and revealing

-5

#BlueAnon report:

Reporter: [REDACTED]
Reason: smells like russian troll

10
- 🤣
  
  5
Find me a single American journalist that interviewed Hitler after he invaded Poland. I'll wait.

-1
- Karl H. von Wiegand, an American journalist, met Hitler first in 1921. Poland was invaded on 1 September, 1939 by the Third Reich. A month after Germany invaded France in World War II, on June 11, 1940, he secured another interview with Hitler. He's the only American who had the chance to interview Hitler.
  
  32
- How about you find me a single American journalist who stopped interviewing members of the Bush administration after they invaded Iraq.
  
  14
- Not just interviewing Hitler, but only asking the questions Hitler wanted, and then urging the world to listen because everybody needs to hear his side
  
  11
- Just so we're clear here, what you're suggesting that engaging in wars of aggression automatically equates the country with the nazi Germany?
  
  9
- Comparing Putin with Hitler is a form of Nazi apologia
  
  9
- !askhistorians@lemmy.world
  
  !askhistorians@lemmygrad.ml
  
  might be a better place to ask your question. This is a thread about something else. Wiegand would be the obvious one tho.
  
  4