This morning, I am afraid. I am very afraid.

I fear that by the time I go to bed democracy in the United States will be imperilled by a man, the nature of which the Founding Fathers could never envisage when creating the protective elements of the constitution.

The risks will not be to Americans alone. The world will become a different place with Donald J Trump once again becoming president.

My trepidation is tempered only by the fact that no-one can be sure he has the numbers to gain sufficient votes in the electoral college that those same founding fathers devised as a power-sharing devise between federal and state governments. They could not have foreseen how it could become the means by which a fraction of voters could determine their country’s future.

Or perhaps that is contributing to my disquiet. No-one has been able to give me the comfort of predicting a win by Kamala Harris.

In fact, none of the smart money has been ready to call it one way or the other.

The New Zealand Herald’s business editor at large, Liam Dann, predicted a Trump win the other day but his reasoning was more visceral than analytical:

Trump provides an altogether more satisfying prescription for change. He allows them to vent their anger. He taps into the rage bubbling beneath America’s polite and friendly exterior. He provides an outlet for frustration, which is much simpler than opponents to his left can offer.

That’s why he might well win. Momentum seems to be going his way.

He is a master salesman and he is selling into a market that is disillusioned with the vague promises they’ve been hearing from mainstream politicians for generations.

Heightened anxiety
Few others — including his brother Corin, who is in the US covering the election for Radio New Zealand — have been willing to make the call and today dawned no clearer.

That may be one reason for my heightened anxiety . . . the lack of certainty one way or the other.

All of our major media outlets have had staff in the States for the election (most with some support from the US government) and each has tried to tap into the “mood of the people”, particularly in the swing states. Each has done a professional job, but it has been no easy task and, to be honest, I have no idea what the real thinking of the electorate might be.

One of my waking nightmares is that the electorate isn’t thinking at all. In which case, Liam Dann’s reading of the entrails might be as good a guide as any.

I have attempted to cope with the avalanche of reportage, analysis and outright punditry from CNN, New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. I have tried to get a more detached view from the BBC, Guardian, and (God help me) Daily Mail. I have made my head hurt playing with The Economist’s poll prediction models.

I am no closer to predicting a winner than anyone else.

However, I do know what scares me.

If Donald Trump takes up residence in the White House again, the word “freedom” will lose its true meaning and become a captured phrase ring-fencing what the victor and his followers want.

Validating disinformation
“Media freedom” will validate disinformation and make truth harder to find. News organisations that seek to hold Trump and a compliant Congress to account will be demonised, perhaps penalised.

As president again, Trump could rend American society to a point where it may take decades for the wound to heal and leave residual feelings that will last even longer. That will certainly be the case if he attempts to subvert the democratic process to extend power beyond his finite term.

I worry for the rest of the world, trying to contend with erratic foreign policies that put the established order in peril and place the freedom of countries like Ukraine in jeopardy. I dread the way in which his policies could empower despots like Vladimir Putin. By definition, as a world power, the United States’ actions affect all of us — and Trump’s influence will be pervasive.

You may think my fears could be allayed by the possibility that he will not return to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Were Kamala Harris facing any other candidate, that would certainly be the case. However, Donald Trump is not any other candidate and he has demonstrated an intense dislike of losing.

I am alarmed by the possibility that, if he fails to get the required 270 electoral votes, Donald Trump could again cry “voter fraud” and light the touch paper offered to him by the likes of the Proud Boys. They had a practice run on January 6, 2021. If there is a next time, it could well be worse.

Sometimes, my wife accuses me of unjustified optimism. When I think of the Americans I have met and those I know well, I recall that the vast majority of them have had a reasonable amount of common sense. Some have had it in abundance. I can only hope that across that nation common sense prevails today.

I am more than a little worried, however, that on this occasion my wife might be right.

Dr Gavin Ellis holds a PhD in political studies. He is a media consultant and researcher. A former editor-in-chief of The New Zealand Herald, he has a background in journalism and communications — covering both editorial and management roles — that spans more than half a century. Dr Ellis publishes the website knightlyviews.com where this commentary was first published and it is republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The brave little shrubs are doing their valiant best to stay intact as a plant pot skids across our balcony in Cyclone Gabrielle’s first caress. With much worse yet to come I need to know what, where, and when.

I need information and, if I have to cut my way through a jungle of official sources, I will still be in the rain forest when Gabby takes me in her crushing embrace.

This, I tell myself, is precisely why we need news media. They draw together an overwhelming range of sources and condense information into a readily absorbed format.

Then they keep updating and adding to the picture.

As I write this commentary on Monday, that picture is already changing. An hour ago, the rain was a fine drizzle and there was little wind. Now the rain is heavier, and the wind is coming in strong gusts. In another couple of hours I expect the freight train that Northland residents heard as Gabrielle passed through, and the driveway will be a cascade.

Then the triangle of soil (that has already subsided by about 30 centimetres) may slide from the edge of the adjacent bush reserve into the stream below.

From my study window I see only a small picture, but I need a wider view. I need to know how my brothers and their families are faring in Northland and on the Awhitu Peninsula, what our friends in various parts of Auckland and the North Island will be experiencing. And I have a general concern for the well-being of the city I call home.

Good overall picture
I have been well-served by news media — websites, television, and radio — keeping me updated on the impact of the cyclone. I have a good overall picture of its effects so far and how it is tracking.

And I have details. I know which schools are closed. I know power outages are affecting 58,000 households and where this has closed supermarkets and stores. I know that, if possible, the mail will get through, but that Auckland Airport has cancelled most flights and Ports of Auckland is at a standstill.

While I waited for nature to do its worst (no, I shouldn’t say that because I’m sure Gabrielle isn’t the worst sociopath that climate change will spawn), I embarked on an exercise. I wanted to demonstrate the lengths to which members of the public would have to go to stay informed if they did not have the news media reporting on what may be the worst storm in Aucklanders’ living memory.

I assumed, for the purpose of the exercise I began at 10.30 a.m. on Monday, that the average person did not know a lot about the structures and operations of emergency management.

The Auckland version of civil defence has a name that is hard to remember so I started with the Auckland City website. The first thing I noticed was information on how to pay my rates and book an inorganic rubbish collection. Then I spied a banner right at the top headed “State of local emergency”. There was a link to Auckland Emergency Management (that hard to remember name).

The AEM homepage contained 77 links to other websites and sources of information on everything from the location of evacuation centres to Mayor Wayne Brown’s carefully documented declaration of a state of local emergency (vital information when you are trapped in your house under the crushing presence of a downed macrocarpa).

I clicked on the “latest media update” but the link didn’t seem to work. I was invited to click on “Our Auckland” for the previous update. Um, no, all I found was broad general information and direction back to the homepage.

In search of weather
On my return I went in search of the weather and clicked on a link to the Metservice website. There was a fresh update on the red and orange alerts that had been well-canvassed elsewhere, accompanied by a map that was 24 hours old (it was updated shortly thereafter).

Back to the homepage.

Next, I wanted an update on road travel. I clicked first on the Auckland Transport link and then on road closure warnings. Another click and I was looking at eight area designations and found my residence (on the central Auckland isthmus) under “south urban”. Another click I was confronted by an alphabetical list of street names with no indication of the suburb, but it didn’t matter because these were simply streets with warnings of potential closure. The roads that were closed were on a separate list (another click) that did include suburbs.

But what about the highways and byways outside Auckland? That required separate excursions, first to the Waka Kotahi website then to local authority websites such as the Thames Coromandel District Council’s excellent site which also contained warnings of potential coastal inundations from storm surges.

Back to the AEM homepage and another journey to find out about power outages. There were links to the Vector and Counties Energy websites. To check whether my brother in Northland was still without power, I had to leave the AEM site because he is outside its emergency jurisdiction.

The Northpower outages map was easy to use and took me straight to his location (power restored) while the Vector map for central Auckland seems designed to push anxious customers over the edge.

My other brother’s part of the Awhitu Peninsula has communications links that I might charitably describe as tenuous, so I wanted to check whether he still had cellular coverage. I decided to check the three main providers. Spark’s outages information was top of the home page and informative while 2 Degrees was equally useful even though it required scrolling to the bottom of the homepage.

Sales pitches
Vodafone seemed too intent on selling things to me and I gave up on its website, opting instead for a Google search.

What of Gabrielle’s effect on the rest of the country?

Civil Defence now has the much easier to remember title of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA). By and large its Cyclone Gabrielle page points me back to the places I had already been, although it offered the alternative of Facebook pages. East Cape seemed to be in for a pounding, so I clicked on the Tairāwhiti Civil Defence Facebook page. Most of its content was in the form of timely warnings rather than updates. Like all Facebook pages, the order of posts reflected the latest addition, not necessarily relative importance. And there were links and more links to other sites.

I returned to the NEMA homepage and completed my exhausting journey with a click back to the Auckland Emergency Management website, satisfied that I had proven my point, at least to myself. A level of digital competence and almost endless patience is required to access the information we seek in emergencies.

All I can say is thank God for news media. They carry out a vital task in emergencies like Cyclone Gabrielle. They bring together a mass of information which can be readily — and quickly — accessed by the public. To that they add their vital role in holding power to account, as they demonstrated during the Auckland Anniversary Weekend floods and will doubtless do again after this cyclone has passed. You will not find that on an official website.

Crucially, news media are available in forms that do not require digital competence or digital access. Newspapers, television, and radio are readily available and each has its own strengths — print provides in-depth information and advice, television brings home the reality of the storm, and radio has immediacy.

If Gabrielle is as nasty as the scene outside my window is beginning to suggest, we could lose power and mobile coverage. Then all those official websites will count for nothing, but my transistor radio — complete with a new set of batteries — will continue to bring me the news and help me to stay safe.

Dr Gavin Ellis holds a PhD in political studies. He is a media consultant and researcher. A former editor-in-chief of The New Zealand Herald, he has a background in journalism and communications — covering both editorial and management roles — that spans more than half a century. Dr Ellis publishes the website knightlyviews.com where this commentary was first published and it is republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

COMMENTARY: By Gavin Ellis of Knightly Views

Nothing justifies the killing of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and the wounding of her colleague Ali al-Samoudi during an Israeli raid on Jenin in the Occupied West Bank. Nothing.

I believe the renowned reporter died at the hands of Israeli armed forces and that she was deliberately targeted because she was a journalist, easily identified by the word PRESS on the flak jacket and helmet that did not protect her from the shot that killed her. Her wounded colleague was identically dressed.

I am left in no doubt about the culpability of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) on a number of grounds.

Several eyewitnesses, including an Agence France-Presse photographer and another Al Jazeera staffer, were adamant that there was no shooting from Palestinians near the scene of the killing. Shatha Hanaysha, the Al Jazeera journalist who had been standing next to Abu Akleh against a high wall when firing broke out, stated they were deliberately targeted by Israeli troops.

Israeli spokesmen who initially laid the blame on Palestinian militants became more equivocal in the face of the eyewitness accounts, although they would go no further than saying she could have been accidentally shot from an armoured vehicle by an Israeli soldier.

That is about as close to an admission of guilt as the IDF is likely to get.

However, perhaps the strongest evidence of IDF culpability is the fact that the killing of Abu Akleh is part of a pattern of targeting journalists. Reporters Without Borders — which has called for an independent international investigation of the death that it says is a violation of international conventions that protect journalists — says two Palestinian journalists were killed by Israeli snipers in 2018 and since then more than 140 journalists have been the victims of violations by the Israeli security forces.

30 journalists killed since 2000
By its tally, at least 30 journalists have been killed since 2000.

Of course, those deaths are but one consequence of the IDF’s disproportionate response — in terms of the number of victims — to actions by Palestinian militants over the occupation of the West Bank. Since the present Israeli government took office last year, 76 Palestinians have died at the hands of Israeli forces.

There has been condemnation of such deaths, particularly when they include a number of children. So the reaction to the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh was sadly predictable. In other circumstances the outcry would dissipate and Israeli forces would continue to carry out their government’s wishes.

However, three things may make the condemnation louder, longer and more effective.

First was the fact that, although she was born in Jerusalem, she was a United States citizen. This could well explain the US Administration’s statement condemning the killing and its willingness to back a similarly reproachful UN Security Council resolution.

The second factor was that, although a Palestinian, Abu Akleh was not a Muslim. She was raised in a Christian Catholic family. It may not be a particularly becoming trait but the ability of the West to identify with a victim affects the way in which it reacts.

However, it is the third factor that may have the most telling effect on the long-term consequences of her death. I am referring to the desecration of her funeral by baton-wielding armed Israeli police.

Pallbearers assaulted by police
The journalist’s coffin was carried in procession from an East Jerusalem hospital to the Cathedral of the Annunciation of the Virgin in the Christian Quarter of the Old City where a service was held before burial in a cemetery on the Mount of Olives. However, shortly after the pallbearers left the hospital the procession — waving Palestinian flags and chanting — was assaulted by police.

Mourners were hit with batons, stun grenades were detonated, and a phalanx of armed police in riot gear advanced on the coffin. The procession scattered in disarray and, as the pallbearers tried to avoid the police action, the coffin tilted almost vertical and was in danger of falling to the road.

At that point, an Al Jazeera journalist providing commentary on live coverage of the funeral said an an anguished voice: “Oh my God. Such disrespect for the dead, for those mourning the dead. How is that a security threat? How is that disorderly? Why does it require this kind of reaction, this level of violence on the part of the Israelis?”

The horrifying scene was captured by international media and shown around the world

“The Israeli army is asking people if they are Christian or Muslim. If you’re Muslim you weren’t allowed in.” – @ajimran

Israeli occupation forces are attacking Palestinians during the funeral of killed Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. pic.twitter.com/Xq3VkeOCqn

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) May 13, 2022

Why did the police act as they did? Apparently because it is illegal to display the Palestinian flag and chant Palestinian slogans. Even after Abu Akleh’s coffin was transferred to a vehicle, police ran alongside to tear Palestinian flag from the windows.

The message was clear: There was no contrition on the part of Israeli authorities for the death of the Al Jazeera journalist. The justification for the police action was pathetic. There were lame excuses that stones had been thrown at them. In other words, it was business as usual.

That may not be the way the world sees it. Nor, indeed, the way it may be seen by many ordinary Israelis who would have been affronted by the indignity shown to the remains of a widely respected woman who died doing her job.

‘Time for some accountability?’
Yaakov Katz, the editor of the Jerusalem Post, an English-language Israeli newspaper, said on Twitter: “What’s happening at Abu Akleh’s funeral is terrible. This is a failure on all fronts.” In a later message he asked: “Is it not time for some accountability?”

The targeting of journalists aims to intimidate and to prevent them from bearing witness, particularly where authorities have something to hide. That is why, for example, we have seen seven journalists killed in Ukraine, 12 of their colleagues injured by gunfire, and multiple reports of clearly identified journalists coming under fire from Russian forces.

One might have thought the international community — and in particular Israel’s close friend the United States — would have put significant pressure on Tel Aviv to cease such intimidation a year ago after Israeli aircraft bombed the Gaza City building that was home to various media organisations including Al Jazeera and the US wire service Associated Press.

Israel claimed, without any evidence and contrary to AP’s own knowledge, that the building was being used by Hamas, the Palestinian nationalist organisation.

Associated Press chief executive Gary Pruitt said after that attack that “the world will know less about what is happening in Gaza because of what happened today”. Aidan White, founder of the Ethical Journalism Network described the bombing as a “catastrophic attempt to shut down media, to silence criticism, and worst of all, to create a cloak of secrecy”.

That, no doubt, was what Tel Aviv intended.

Yet there were no recriminations sufficient to change the course Tel Aviv was on. As the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh so tragically illustrates, Israel has continued its policy of intimidation and violence against journalists.

Sooner or later, it will come to realise that such actions diminish a government in the eyes of the world. The death of Abu Akleh and the indignity shown to her remains have added significantly to the damage to its reputation.

Dr Gavin Ellis holds a PhD in political studies. He is a media consultant and researcher. A former editor-in-chief of The New Zealand Herald, he has a background in journalism and communications — covering both editorial and management roles — that spans more than half a century. Dr Ellis publishes a website called Knightly Views where this commentary was first published and it is republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz