Dr Jesse Owen Hearns-Branaman

Assoc Prof, Head Dept of Communications BNBU, Zhuhai. Research: Int'l journalism, media influences, epistemology, tourism, pedagogy

[Seth C. Lewis @SethCLewis]

My new book, Journalism in the Age of AI, is free and open access — coming August 3. Read the opening chapter today and sign up for early access to the full version → https://t.co/W6oFjRtbMf

[Yanis Varoufakis @yanisvaroufakis]

Keir Starmer was not merely a disappointment. He is a mendacious figure of ethical decrepitude, a man who won the Labour Party leadership based on promises that he jettisoned five seconds after winning - a Labour leader who dared banish from the Labour Party not only his predecessor but also remarkable human beings like director Ken Loach - the gentleman who has taken the historic Labour Party and transformed it into a vessel for the very oligarchy it was elected to restrain.

Consider the litany of Starmer’s moral and logical failures. He promised a 'different Britain', yet his actions were a masterclass in Tory-lite politics—using the same maxed-out credit card analogies that once served the austerity brigades to justify his own failure of vision. He promised a human rights lawyer’s approach but he embraced a racist-lite version of Farage.

On Europe, Starmer promised Brexiteers that Brexit is Brexit yet stood before those who yearn to rejoin the European Union, winked at them to make them feel that Britain would gradually reconnect, even rejoin, with the EU while offering nothing of substance. This is not leadership; it is a fraud.

And then there's the manner in which Starmer and his government rushed to offer Israel unequivocal support in pursuing its genocide in Gaza, sacrificing precious political and civil liberties in the UK by imprisoning grandmothers, priests and peaceful activists who dared support Palestine Action, an organisation that Starmer and his minions proscribed as terrorists for practising the usual activist tactics of trespassing to spray paint military planes that had demonstrably aided in the genocide. To add insult to injury, Starmer performed the diplomatic pantomime of recognising a Palestinian state, in a manner that ensured it would never happen.

But above all else, this is a government that has learned nothing from the post-2008 era. Starmer and his Chancellor are playing the same tired austerity game while enabling and empowering the Finance Curse perpetrated by the City of London, throwing in forgood measure cuts in international aid to fund a military spending trickle under the guise of a "Strategic Defence Review" . It is the same old doctrine: austerity for the masses, socialism for the financiers and the arms dealers.

History will remember Mr Starmer as a man without conviction, a Prime Minister who offers not a shred of honesty, but merely the cruel illusion of change. He is ethically decrepit because he had chosen, consciously, to abandon principle for power. And for that, history will indict him. Good riddance, I say.

https://t.co/sGfebPkDXR

[John Cusack @johncusack]

You are 100 % wrong - it’s was a backlash over and against corporate neoliberalism Obama represented that branded hope and change without any true meaning other than public decorum-
Trump was the end of the myth of democratic corporate neoliberalism - as anything other than another hustle
It was and still is Bernie or bust -
You can believe what is true or what makes you feel better -
Obama never made we Wall Street pay a penny for it gangserism - he led the drone assassination Program that was so insane and illegal it would make Nixon blush - your good old days were the very reason fascism came to be -
Wake the fuck up

[Dr Jesse Owen Hearns-Branaman @justjeshb]

@mashabani All of that seems perfectly normal to me for CNN. Ignorance, simplification, orientalism.

[Snicklink @snicklink]

🎶False flag, again?? 😱

[Ryan Grim @ryangrim]

An extremist group in Washington, DC has claimed credit for the terrorist attack on the Iranian bridge, promising further attacks on civilian infrastructure if its demands aren't met

[David Sirota @davidsirota]

Things are bad right now, but some perspective helps. Not too long ago, leaders of both parties forcibly sent American teenagers to die in Southeast Asia and then the they lied the country into another war that cost $1 trillion and killed a million people — all while the economy was being rigged for bankers and billionaires to loot everything.

Maybe the past politicians seemed to you like nicer dudes than the current White House occupant, but things have been going in the wrong direction for a very long time, even if you weren’t paying as much attention because everyone had been a little more polite.

The fact is, much of what we’re living through now is less an anomaly and more a horrible culmination.

[Dr Jesse Owen Hearns-Branaman @justjeshb]

@AsaWinstanley Either way it should be condemned, no?

[Dr Jesse Owen Hearns-Branaman @justjeshb]

@Tracking_Power Don't conflate anti-racism with pro-Zionism. All acts of racism need to be condemned.

[Richard Sanders @PulaRJS]

The BBC finally gains access to Gaza. The result is this truly appalling bit of reporting.

Up top Lucy Williamson observes "The Gaza of maps and memories is gone, replaced by a monochrome landscape of rubble stretching flat and still for 180 degreesm from Beit Hanoun on one side to Gaza City on the other."

Apparently this is the result of a disembodied entity called "the war."

She says the Israelis have returned continuously to this part of Gaza "as Hamas regrouped around its strongholds in the area." To most observers it has been blindingly obvious for more than a year that Israeli is engaged in a systematic campaign to render Gaza unliveable. In Beit Hanoun there is scarcely a stone standing on top of another stone. She really thinks this is all a by-product of fighting against Hamas?

No less than 10 of the paragraphs in the piece are "Israel says" paragraphs - almost none of them challenged.

"The ceasefire has faltered twice already", she says, which is an interesting way of describing the fact the Israelis are allowing in only a fraction of the aid they agreed to and have killed 240 Palestinians.

"Military censorship laws in Israel mean that military personnel were shown our material before publication. The BBC maintained editorial control of this report at all times," she says. If that's true, it just makes it all the worse.
https://t.co/36IHWSkh7s

[Dr Jesse Owen Hearns-Branaman @justjeshb]

@StarrSpanPort @Muskisacrunt25 @HeidiBachram You should go to Gaza and help count the chiden corpses burried under all the rubble.

[Dr Jesse Owen Hearns-Branaman @justjeshb]

@HelCol2025 @HeidiBachram Yes! Their pro-genocide rhetoric is disgusting!

[Dr Jesse Owen Hearns-Branaman @justjeshb]

@TaliGoldsheft Sounds like Islamophobia to me [insert meme]

[Neena Jha @DrNeenaJha]

Just so we are clear…

A British doctor can fly to Israel, join the IOF, participate in genocide & MURDER children - & be welcomed back & allowed to practice with no consequence

But a Bristish doctor who just SPEAKS OUT against genocide & the murder of kids gets arrested?!

WTF

[Dr Jesse Owen Hearns-Branaman @justjeshb]

@SarahGarne50949 @GBB1128505 @betty_friedrich @ProfAliceS Sounds like a good start!

[Dr Jesse Owen Hearns-Branaman @justjeshb]

@ProfAliceS "(mandatory)" = "I was just following orders"?

[Dr Jesse Owen Hearns-Branaman @justjeshb]

@ObhishekSaha "(as required)" = "I was just following orders"?

[JRP @JRPproject]

What started as a small collaboration has grown into one of the largest comparative efforts in journalism studies worldwide. Over these 13 years, the JRP project had the privilege of working with hundreds of colleagues across continents

[JRP @JRPproject]

The last in-person #JRPProject training of 2025 is happening on Sept 29–30 in Bangkok 🇹🇭

Hosted by Chulalongkorn University, we’re joined by teams from Thailand, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, China & Australia. Together we prepare for Wave 3!!