Amanda Wilson AM

Company director, ex-Editor of @smh, Member of the Order of Australia. #Journalism #media #Writing #PublicInterest #Governance #Digitalinclusion

[Tatiana Walk-Morris @Tati_WM]

For the love of God, bring back fact-checkers. Bring back copy editors. Bring back public editors. Bring back standards. Everybody tighten TF up.

[BBC News (UK) @BBCNews]

Wes Streeting resigns as health secretary - his letter in full https://t.co/WYrPAblv5D

[alan rusbridger @arusbridger]

It’s curious that @IpsoNews, which was established to enforce standards in the UK press, hasn’t launched an investigation into @pressgazette findings of more than 1,000 “experts” who don’t exist being quoted by journalists. It’s called fiction and it appears to be systematic

[Timothy Snyder @TimothyDSnyder]

The Hungarian election is about Russian oligarchy and its support of the international far right. That’s why Vance is there. He is a node in that network.

[Sonya Douglas @SonyaDouglas]

The fictional Handmaid’s Tale assigned a certain aesthetic to female resistance, but the reality isn’t quite so picturesque

Afghan women living in a real life Gilead show us what true courage, ingenuity and resilience look like

Listen to them

Support them

Help them fight back

[Freedom of the Press Foundation @FreedomofPress]

"Journalists don’t work for the government and their right to publish government leaks is protected by the first amendment which, despite Trump’s efforts, remains the law of the land," FPF's Seth Stern told @jeremymbarr.
https://t.co/1lQILsSCqn

[The New Yorker @NewYorker]

After ChatGPT launched, about a dozen of OpenAI’s top engineers held secret meetings to discuss whether its founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman could be trusted. @RonanFarrow and @AndrewMarantz report. https://t.co/e79WDv26Hw

[Global Investigative Journalism Network @gijn]

In other conflict zones like Ukraine and Iraq, journalists have faced risks but still had mobility. They could often get physical access to a bombed site after a battle, interview survivors, or meet eyewitnesses face to face. The war in Gaza has allowed none of this.

https://t.co/r1UGSriPUa

[Patrick Wintour @patrickwintour]

Seyyed Mostafa Tajzadeh,one of the leading political prisoners in Evin Prison, wrote this letter to Trump (edited)
“Greetings
This letter is written by a pro-democracy and peace-loving political prisoner who is serving his 11th year in Evin Prison and hears the terrifying and destructive sound of bombs and missiles from inside the prison every day and every night, to Your Excellency, who issued the order to start this war as the President of the United States of America. I am writing this letter to declare my firm opposition to a war that has already caused great damage and casualties and, if it continues and possibly escalates, could lead to a full-scale tragedy and impose great unavoidable suffering on people who have no role in this incendiary act and who oppose it.

🔸I remind you, you always call yourself against war and worthy of receiving the Nobel Peace Prize and you criticize your former presidents for getting the US involved in two costly and failed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. You also proudly talk about ending 8 wars in the past year.

🔸However, you have started a war that not only lacks a UN Security Council resolution, but even your traditional allies in Europe, all of whom are members of NATO, have refused to join it. Because they consider it to be devoid of legal and political validity.

🔻Mr. President!

🔸According to the statement of the Foreign Minister of Oman - the mediator of the negotiations - Iran's proposals in the last round of negotiations in Geneva had made the agreement fully accessible and could have resolved Washington's nuclear concerns. Therefore, it is necessary to answer the world, and especially the two nations of Iran and the United States, why did you issue the order to attack Iran during the negotiations? And why, despite repeated emphasis on achieving the set goals and a four-to-six-week war timeframe, do you then announce your new decision to bomb civilian targets, including power plants, desalination plants, bridges, refineries, and other Iranian infrastructure? Your Excellency, you know very well that such a strategy is contrary to international law, violates United States law, and is an inhuman declaration of war against the brave and just Iranian people. The attempt to destroy and turn Iran into hell would turn the recent illegal war into a completely dirty and catastrophic one, set the region on fire, and once again fuel anti-American sentiment in Iran and many countries around the world.

🔻Mr. Trump!
🔸Iranians are independent and freedom-loving and defend the Iranian identity and territorial integrity, as well as their dignity and honor, under any circumstances.
🔸An intervention that has so far, in addition to inflicting suffering and hardship on the people, has had no result other than weakening civil society, the private sector, national development, and the transition to democracy in Iran.
🔸You should not have started this illegal war, and now you need to end it as soon as possible to prevent even greater losses and casualties. Of course, resorting to diplomacy is a two-way task, and the only way to overcome this disastrous crisis is to adopt a win-win strategy and strive to achieve a comprehensive agreement and a lasting ceasefire. Accordingly, the Iranian side must also do its part, by avoiding zero-one views of the situation, to prevent the destruction of By giving in to the democratic demands of the majority of the people and by addressing international concerns about its nuclear activities, it will pave the way for an honorable agreement. But the share and responsibility of the US government and its president are much greater, because this illegal, costly and avoidable war was started by the army of that country on your orders. Therefore, foresight, humanity, and even the national interests of the United States dictate that Your Excellency, as the initiator of the war, show courage and stop this destructive war today.”
Tajzadeh
Evin Prison.

[IFJ @IFJGlobal]

#Iraq🇮🇶: One week ago, Shelly Kittleson, an American freelance journalist, was abducted in Baghdad and has been detained by a suspected Iraqi paramilitary group ever since. We call on the authorities to do everything in their power to secure her release. https://t.co/Y0ohNRxRr2

[Ronan Farrow @RonanFarrow]

(🧵1/11) For the past year and a half, I've been investigating OpenAI and Sam Altman for @NewYorker. With my coauthor @andrewmarantz, I reviewed never-before-disclosed internal memos, obtained 200+ pages of documents related to a close colleague, including extensive private notes, and interviewed more than 100 people.

OpenAI was founded on the premise that A.I. could be the most dangerous invention in human history—and that its C.E.O. would need to be a person of uncommon integrity. We lay out the most detailed account yet of why Altman was ousted out by board members and executives who came to believe he lacked that integrity, and ask: were they right to allege that he couldn't be trusted?

A thread on some of of our findings:

[Ronan Farrow @RonanFarrow]

This announcement arrives hours after our investigation (https://t.co/ZOusgFy2c9) described how OpenAI dissolved its superalignment and AGI-readiness teams and dropped safety from the list of its most significant activities on its IRS filings—and how, when we asked to speak with researchers, working on existential safety, a representative replied "What do you mean by 'existential safety'? That's not, like, a thing."

[Tommy Vietor @TVietor08]

Trump and his team are disclosing a LOT of detail about this rescue mission - how they found the US pilots, how they tricked the Iranians, CIA capabilities - when we are still at war, pilots are flying over Iran daily, and this could happen again. Seems like a bad idea!

[Timothy Snyder @TimothyDSnyder]

We are seven months away from the most consequential midterm election in the history of the United States. Meanwhile, we are fighting a war. These are the structural conditions for a coup attempt in which a president tries to nullify elections and take permanent power as a dictator. If we see this, we can stop it, overcome the movement that brought us to this point, and make a turn towards something better.
https://t.co/3EFUACrS3S

[Gerard Baker @gerardtbaker]

You don’t get why trust matters. To ask allies to follow you into war requires a high level of confidence in your leadership. No one in Europe has that faith in Trump.They could all invade Iran one day and get hit the next with a 100% tariff because he didn’t like someone’s tweet

[Alberto Alemanno 🇪🇺 @alemannoEU]

So it begins:

Italy is now rationing jet fuel at four major airports Bologna, Milan Linate, Venice, Treviso through April 9.

Priority goes to medical flights, state aircraft, and routes over 3 hours.

Everyone else: good luck.

This is what European energy dependency looks like in practice.

Actual planes, soon grounded or rerouted, because Europe dismantled its energy strategy piece by piece — first the Green Deal rollback, then the LNG pivot, now a supply crunch that hits civilians at the gate.

The irony? The Commission is currently selling energy independence as its new banner.

[The New Yorker @NewYorker]

Alpha-male training programs have taken off during the second Trump Administration. “Alpha-ness has become the official demeanor of American power,” Charles Bethea writes. https://t.co/o567JCCEoK

[AccuWeather @accuweather]

Uluru transformed by rain 🌧️

Heavy rainfall turned the iconic rock into a series of flowing waterfalls, creating a rare and spectacular sight.

[NSW Health @NSWHealth]

NSW Health is advising people in western and northern Sydney to be alert for signs and symptoms of measles after being notified of three new confirmed cases.

[Ilan Goldenberg @ilangoldenberg]

Actually, the guy who was the point person for Iran at the White House and was fired by the Trump Administration after being Loomered wrote EXACTLY that warning 4 days before the war started. The article was titled “Why Iran Will Escalate.” But who needs experts…

https://t.co/CHufUnZivQ