Del ruolo e dell’importanza della comunicazione nel mondo attuale, a livello sia di singole persone sia di organizzazione, molto si è scritto e, ancor più, si è detto, come testimoniano le numerose pubblicazioni e i molteplici dibattiti succedutisi nel corso di questi ultimi anni.

Il libro di Fabio Bolzetta, giornalista e presidente dell’Associazione dei Webmaster Cattolici Italiani (WeCa), se dunque può inscriversi in questa linea di tendenza ormai consolidata, si segnala però per l’originalità del particolare aspetto comunicativo preso in considerazione e per il suo grado di approfondimento elaborato. Questo volume, infatti, nasce da una ricerca di dottorato triennale dedicata ai seminaristi in Italia e ai social media: ricerca promossa da WeCa, con la supervisione dell’Università Pontificia Salesiana e in collaborazione con l’Ufficio nazionale per la Pastorale delle vocazioni e l’Ufficio nazionale per le Comunicazioni sociali della Conferenza episcopale italiana (Cei).

L’impianto del libro, arricchito dalla Prefazione di don Michele Gianola, direttore dell’Ufficio nazionale per la Pastorale delle vocazioni della Cei, nonché da un vasto repertorio bibliografico, webgrafico e filmografico, offre al lettore, oltre a una congrua illustrazione degli aspetti metodologici della ricerca, sia valutazioni e riflessioni sui suoi principali esiti, sia considerazioni di più ampio respiro.

Vengono presentate un’attenta analisi della relazione tra i giovani e i social media, con una puntualizzazione accurata dei molteplici aspetti in positivo e delle possibili criticità, e una descrizione del cammino intrapreso dalla Chiesa italiana nell’ambiente digitale, con una ricostruzione storica molto interessante. Non manca, inoltre, su quest’ultimo punto, un’analisi critica dell’impatto che su tale cammino ha avuto il diffondersi, agli inizi di questo decennio, del Covid-19 con le relative misure di lockdown.

Passando poi agli altri significativi aspetti scientifici del libro, vanno ricordate le pagine dedicate ai percorsi formativi adottati nei Seminari italiani, e quindi alla configurazione del nuovo profilo tipico del seminarista. Ne emerge una concreta opportunità per formulare alcune ipotesi di sviluppo dei percorsi formativi, riflesso dell’obiettivo della Chiesa italiana di rendere i sacerdoti capaci di utilizzare correttamente i nuovi mezzi di comunicazione nell’ambito di una pastorale che sappia cogliere la reale portata e il significato dei cambiamenti in atto nella società.

Anche da questa specifica angolazione, il libro rappresenta uno stimolo a sviluppare in modo sistematico, nel prossimo futuro, altre ricerche e approfondimenti su un aspetto rimasto finora in gran parte inesplorato, quale quello della comunicazione della Chiesa italiana e dell’ambiente digitale.

The post La comunicazione della Chiesa che verrà first appeared on La Civiltà Cattolica.

Dear Friend of Press Freedom,

Rümeysa Öztürk has been facing deportation for 227 days for co-writing an op-ed the government didn’t like, and the government hasn’t stopped targeting journalists for deportation. Read on for news from Illinois, our latest public records lawsuit, and how you can take action to protect journalism.

Enforce ICE restraining orders now

A federal judge in Chicago yesterday entered an order to stop federal immigration officers from targeting journalists and peaceful protesters, affirming journalists’ right to cover protests and their aftermath without being assaulted or arrested.

Judge Sara Ellis entered her ruling — which extended a similar prior order against Immigration and Customs Enforcement — in dramatic fashion, quoting everyone from Chicago journalist and poet Carl Sandburg to the Founding Fathers. But the real question is whether she’ll enforce the order when the feds violate it, as they surely will. After all, they violated the prior order repeatedly and egregiously.

Federal judges can fine and jail people who violate their orders. But they rarely use those powers, especially against the government. That needs to change when state thugs are tearing up the First Amendment on Chicago’s streets. We suspect Sandburg would agree.

Journalist Raven Geary of Unraveled Press summed it up at a press conference after the hearing: “If people think a reporter can’t be this opinionated, let them think that. I know what’s right and what’s wrong. I don’t feel an ounce of shame saying that this is wrong.”

Congratulations to Geary and the rest of the journalists and press organizations in Chicago and Los Angeles that are standing against those wrongs by taking the government to court and winning. Listen to Geary’s remarks here.

Journalists speak out about abductions from Gaza aid flotillas

We partnered with Defending Rights & Dissent to platform three U.S. journalists who were abducted from humanitarian flotillas bound for Gaza and detained by Israel.

They discussed the inaction from their own government in the aftermath of their abduction, shared their experiences while detained, and reflected on what drove them to take this risk while so many reporters are self-censoring.

We’ll have a write-up of the event soon, but it deserves to be seen in full. Watch it here.

FPF takes ICE to court over dangerous secrecy

We filed yet another Freedom of Information Act lawsuit this week — this time to uncover records on ICE’s efforts to curtail congressional access to immigration facilities.

“ICE loves to demand our papers but it seems they don’t like it as much when we demand theirs,” attorney Ginger Quintero-McCall of Free Information Group said.

If you are a FOIA lawyer who is interested in working with us pro bono or for a reduced fee on FOIA litigation, please email lauren@freedom.press.

Read more about our latest lawsuit here.

If Big Tech can’t withstand jawboning, how can individual journalists?

Last week, Sen. Ted Cruz convened yet another congressional hearing on Biden-era “jawboning” of Big Tech companies. The message: Government officials leaning on these multibillion-dollar conglomerates to influence the views they platform was akin to censorship.

Sure, the Biden administration’s conduct is worth scrutinizing and learning from. But if you accept the premise that gigantic tech companies are susceptible to soft pressure from a censorial government, doesn’t it go without saying that so are individual journalists who lack anything close to those resources?

We wrote about the numerous instances of “jawboning” of individual reporters during the current administration that Senate Republicans failed to address at their hearing. Read more here.

Tell lawmakers from both parties to oppose Tim Burke prosecution

Conservatives are outraged at Tucker Carlson for throwing softballs to neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes. But the Trump administration is continuing its predecessor’s prosecution of journalist Tim Burke for exposing Tucker Carlson whitewashing another antisemite — Ye, formerly known as Kanye West.

Lawmakers shouldn’t stand for this hypocrisy, regardless of political party. Tell them to speak up with our action center.

What we’re reading

FBI investigating recent incident involving feds in Evanston, tries to block city from releasing records (Evanston RoundTable). Apparently obstructing transparency at the federal level is no longer enough and the government now wants to meddle with municipal police departments’ responses to public records requests.

To preserve records, Homeland Security now relies on officials to take screenshots (The New York Times). The new policy “drastically increases the likelihood the agency isn’t complying with the Federal Records Act,” FPF’s Lauren Harper told the Times.

When your local reporter needs the same protection as a war correspondent (Poynter). Foreign war correspondents get “hostile environment training, security consultants, trauma counselors and legal teams. … Local newsrooms covering militarized federal operations in their own communities? Sometimes all we have is Google, group chats and each other.”

YouTube quietly erased more than 700 videos documenting Israeli human rights violations (The Intercept). “It is outrageous that YouTube is furthering the Trump administration’s agenda to remove evidence of human rights violations and war crimes from public view,” said Katherine Gallagher of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Plea to televise Charlie Kirk trial renews Senate talk of cameras in courtrooms (Courthouse News Service). It’s past time for cameras in courtrooms nationwide. None of the studies have ever substantiated whatever harms critics have claimed transparency would cause. Hopefully, the Kirk trial will make this a bipartisan issue.

When storytelling is called ‘terrorism’: How my friend and fellow journalist was targeted by ICE (The Barbed Wire). “The government is attempting to lay a foundation for dissenting political beliefs as grounds for terrorism. And people like Ya’akub — non-white [or] non-Christian — have been made its primary examples. Both journalists; like Mario Guevara … and civilians.”

freedom.press/issues/time-to-e…

Last week, Sen. Ted Cruz convened yet another congressional hearing on Biden-era “jawboning” of Big Tech companies. The message: Government officials leaning on these multibillion-dollar conglomerates to influence the views they platform was akin to censorship. Officials may not have formally ordered the companies to self-censor, but they didn’t have to – businesspeople know it’s in their economic interests to stay on the administration’s good side.

They’re not entirely wrong. Public officials are entitled to express their opinions about private speech, but it’s a different story when they lead speakers to believe they have no choice but to appease the government. At the same time the Biden administration was making asks of social platforms, the former president and other Democrats (and Republicans) pushed for repealing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the law that allows social media to exist.

It’s unlikely that the Biden administration intended its rhetoric around Section 230 to intimidate social media platforms into censorship. That said, it’s certainly possible companies made content decisions they otherwise wouldn’t have when requested by a government looking to legislate them out of existence. It’s something worth exploring and learning from.

But if you accept the premise — as I do — that gigantic tech companies with billions in the bank and armies of lawyers are susceptible to soft pressure from a censorial government, doesn’t it go without saying that so are individual journalists who lack anything close to those resources?

If it’s jawboning when Biden officials suggest Facebook take down anti-vaccine posts, isn’t it “jawboning” when a North Carolina GOP official tells ProPublica to kill a story, touting connections to the Trump administration? When the president calls for reporters to be fired for doing basic journalism, like reporting on leaks? When the White House and Pentagon condition access on helping them further official narratives? A good-faith conversation about jawboning can’t just ignore all of that.

Here are some more incidents Cruz and his colleagues have not held hearings about:

• A Department of Homeland Security official publicly accused a Chicago Tribune reporter of “interference” for the act of reporting where immigration enforcement was occurring. Journalism, in the government’s telling, constituted obstruction of justice. That certainly could lead others to tread cautiously when exercising their constitutional right to document law enforcement actions.
• Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard attacked Washington Post reporter Ellen Nakashima by name, suggesting her reporting methods — which is to say, calling government officials — were improper and reflected a media establishment “desperate to sabotage POTUS’s successful agenda.” Might that dissuade reporters from seeking comment from sources, or sources from providing such comment to reporters?
• When a journalist suggested people contact her on the encrypted messaging app Signal, an adviser to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said she should be banned from Pentagon coverage. The Pentagon then attempted to exclude her from Hegseth’s trip to Singapore. Putting aside the irony of Hegseth’s team taking issue with Signal usage, it’s fair to assume journalists are less likely to suggest sources lawfully contact them via secure technologies if doing so leads to government threats and retaliation.
• Bill Essayli, a U.S. attorney in California, publicly called a reporter “a joke, not a journalist” for commenting on law enforcement policies for shooting at moving vehicles. Obviously, remarks from prosecutors carry unique weight and have significant potential to chill speech, particularly when prosecutors make clear that they don’t view a journalist as worthy of the First Amendment’s protections for their profession.

Sources wanting to expose wrongdoing ... will think twice about talking to journalists who are known targets of an out-of-control administration.

There are plenty more examples — and that doesn’t even get into all the targeting of news outlets, from major broadcast networks to community radio stations. They may have more resources than individual reporters, but they’re nowhere near as well positioned to withstand a major spike in legal bills and insurance premiums as big social media firms (who this administration also jawbones to censor constitutionally protected content).

And hovering over all of this is President Donald Trump himself, whose social media feed doubles as an intimidation campaign against reporters. Our Trump Anti-Press Social Media Tracker documents hundreds of posts targeting not only news outlets but individual journalists. It’s documented over 3,500 posts. Unlike Biden-era “jawboning,” threats like these come from the very top — people in a position to actually carry them out. And unlike Biden’s administration, Trump’s track record makes the threat of government retribution real, not hypothetical.

Trump views excessive criticism of him as “probably illegal.” He has made very clear his desire for journalists to be imprisoned, sued for billions, and assaulted for reasons completely untethered to the Constitution, and has surrounded himself with bootlicking stooges eager to carry out his whims. “Chilling” is an understatement for the effect when a sitting president — particularly an authoritarian one — threatens journalists for doing their job.

It’s not only that these journalists don’t have the resources of Meta, Alphabet, and the like. They also have much more to lose. Tech companies might get some bad PR based on how they handle government takedown requests, but it’s unlikely to significantly impact their bottom line, particularly when news content comprises a small fraction of their business.

But journalists don’t just host news content, they create it. Their whole careers depend on their reputations and the willingness of sources to trust them. Sources wanting to expose wrongdoing, who often talk to journalists at great personal risk and try to keep a low profile, will think twice about talking to journalists who are known targets of an out-of-control administration.

Other news outlets might be reluctant to hire someone who has been singled out by the world’s most powerful person and his lackeys. Editors and publishers — already spooked about publishing articles that might draw a SLAPP suit or worse from Trump — will be doubly hesitant when the article is written by someone already on the administration’s public blacklist.

Unlike Biden’s antics, the Trump administration has cut out the middleman by directly targeting the speech and speakers it doesn’t like. And it wields this power against people with a fraction of the resources to fight back. If that’s not jawboning, what is?

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The Black Response and Impact Boston will present The Criminalization of Self-Defense, a community education event on Thursday, November 20, from 6:00 to 8:30 PM at The Community Art Center in Cambridge, MA. We are proud to be one of the sponsors of it. Please register in advance.

It is a free and public gathering that will explore how self-defense is criminalized, particularly for Black, Brown, and marginalized survivors, and how communities can reclaim safety through resistance, advocacy, and care.

Featured Speakers will be:

• Prof. Alisa Bierria – Survived and Punished / UCLA
• Meg Stone – Impact Boston
• Kishana Smith-Osei – Massachusetts Women of Color Network
• Lea Kayali – Palestinian Youth Movement Boston

The Community Art Center is at 119 Windsor Street, Cambridge. It is a nine minute walk from Central Square and the MBTA Red Line stop there.

FREE food and childcare will be provided. TBR will collect food donations for the network of free CommunityFridges. Please bring nonperishable food items to contribute. More details are available.

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