who interact with it egypt's president abdel fatah reportedly urged president trying to make that designation in a meeting last month the u.s. special counsel robert muller has expressed concern over how his report on russian meddling in elections has been portrayed according to a justice department official sent a letter to attorney general william barr complaining about his interpretation of a report summary. the sixth round of talks between the taliban and the u.s. is due to begin in qatar in the next few hours the u.s. state department has said it's peace envoy. is visiting doha to meet with representatives of the afghan group so far the afghan government has been excluded from the dialogue now he too has given his first address as you emperor of japan he says he will rule in accordance with the constitution and work towards peace in japan and in the world he told formally became japan's one hundred twenty six emperor at midnight on tuesday those are the headlines they're listening posts

right now and i'll just share. a clandestine willed of illegal trade what you have here is not just park a logical object you're talking about a political dimension where the spoils of war smuggled and sold to auction houses and private collectors are selling and then artifact is worth finances the beheadings and must use in the middle east don't say don't that's one quick solution. trafficking on al-jazeera. sixty people killed hundreds. when the bomb blast happened the government shut off access. because a. lot of the heart of it got out shocking allegations that it shut down that section at best at. hello i'm richard gere's burden you're at the listening post here are some of the media stories that we're covering this week sri

lanka after the attacks the authorities pull the plug on social media but sri lankans almost immediately find a way around the blockage is france's yellow vests and the hostility they have for the news media the way their story is being reported a film star and a prime minister have a chat in front of the cameras what would you call that because apparently it wasn't political and thank you for joining us noam a british rapper manufactures some online dissent with the help of an animated noam chomsky it was carnage the worst violence in sri lanka since the end of the civil war ten years ago multiple church and hotel bombings on easter sunday that killed more than two hundred people in the immediate aftermath the government shut off access to social media facebook whatsapp instagram and fiber the rationale to stem the spread of hate speech and misinformation however there's a complex debate to be had here on the benefits of a social media shutdown versus the costs millions of. people could not contact

their friends and family because in sri lanka social media platforms are the internet itself such as the online reliance on sites like facebook and whatsapp moreover the evidence suggests that shutting off social media does little to check the spread of misinformation circumvention is all too easy and the blocks cut off authentic sources of information as well and in a country where politicians and the mainstream media have been known to deal in misinformation themselves an internet shutdown makes it harder to get to the truth or starting point this week is the sri lankan capital colombo. so the first explosion is of good around eight forty five he wanted to sunday morning. we didn't mean it's the first female started flowing through the social

media and some of the first photos clearly from members of the congregation never heard refried graphic we started getting you know dozens of. various groups. trying to figure out what happened and lots of speculation that didn't end up being true. around the one by a run what stopped functioning. was not loading. and also. platforms were not working anymore. within six hours of the coordinated explosions across sri lanka allegedly by a group that had pledged allegiance to isis the social media shutdown came into effect the online information vacuum was in place there was no official warning and the justification was slow in coming still the measures. it is no surprise to

outsiders social media observers and commentators around the world with misinformation and hate speech spreading across online platforms the blocks seem to make sense just not to those actually affected sri lankans my c.v. some western media what i see is someone going well you know just because of hate speech means to get its act together in reality. decisions what happens is the government just block me jerk reaction and you know people just have this way of information you have to sort of weigh the risks that come with social media and how it can be used to sort of incite violence and further violence which are like i seen in the past however in sri lanka you know most folks actually communicate through like what's up and viber and when you block

those makes it very hard to access information about what's going on and the fact that the news is being broken and through social media rather than through official media channels first and you know without any government statements right away i think cause people to really sort of panic. beyond the question of whether social media blockage is in the societal interest is the question of how effective blockages are particularly in a tech savvy country like sri lanka where the use of virtual private networks has grown widespread. just over a year ago in march of two thousand and eighteen the government attempted its first social media block after anti muslim violence erupted in central and eastern treelike more than a million social media users reportedly downloaded d.p.'s which circumvent blockages by masking a user's location allowing them to go online from what appears to be another

country so when the. this blockage occurred many sri lankans were ready everybody has b.p. in this country most everybody that i know has a v.p.n. installed in this spot for no devices and computers and so the first thing that people talk about when they get a hint that the government is trying to block social media is that b.p. is you should download that if you don't you should do it immediately so not sure about the effectiveness of a block in a context where the peons are saw broadly debated and discussed. but the day after the attacks tunnel bear one of the most popular v.p. ends in sri lanka was no longer accessible sri lankans who circumvent the social media blockage do not deny that online discourse can be problematic or even dangerous the fabrications misinformation and the hate speech are there for all to see however ethnic and religious divides have always existed in the country social media just gives them a prominence across multiple platforms they've never had before we started seeing

fabrications of pretty much everything the water hoax in particular. started receiving going to say just. where he copes going up and. of. us telling citizens not to drink the water actually being there will freak when we. look at leicester so you can imagine the kind of shock that must have people social media while a tool that was used and has been to incite hatred and violence is by no means the cause of such hatred and violence if you look at the history of since independence we've had cycles of violence and cycles of riots even and while i can see the. like facebook and even what's happened vibert have been used by far right extremist

groups to kind of propaganda narrative around the muslim community they've i know means are sort of cause of violence and i think blocking of those office is not going to result in violence against the muslim community. would be less dependent on social media if they had more faith in their mainstream news outlets but they do not call it the rajapaksa. of pax it was the country's president from two thousand and five to two thousand and fifteen under his watch journalists faced heavy government pressure and some paid for their work with their lives in two thousand and nine reporters without borders directly blamed the president and state owned media for inciting hatred and violence against journalists rajapaksa was voted out of office in two thousand and fifteen providing news outlets with some breathing space however late last year his successor tried to bring him back

as prime minister. that led to a legal standoff lasting. fifty one days over what came to be known as sri lanka's soft coup most mainstream news outlets supported the return of rajapaksa. so you're not going to stop the hunt there will be another but they were activated with us so they. hope it was a near. a look better than the. eventuality the court overturned rajapaksa appointment rulings that it was unconstitutional that made us realize that our media is no longer serving the public interest. vested interests hard news. review and television with a few honorable exceptions are all captured there is much that is not right with social media but the web and social media is all the last is left for us to

verify and ask to find out and ask to express social media also played an important role again in trying to be very critical of how the coup is being conducted in exposing the kind of bribery that are being made by this sort of new form and government there should be it was really important in all of that i shudder to think what would have happened if there was no social media or block building that fifty one because of the crisis the who could have succeeded and that's the problem media is compromised media is corrupt and they have created the public interest rate this is sad but realistic assessment of traditional law means tree media. sri lanka social media blockage was supposed to have ended by now but on friday president matthew souter santa said there is still too much misinformation out there and if the platforms fail to control it they may be banned

permanently under the declared state of emergency the government also has the power to cents. their main stream news outlets far from seeing the end of misinformation sri lankans have been left with a lack of information. but discussing other media stories that are on our radar this week with one of our producers you knock shirazi mina india is now halfway through its general election process which lasts for a month and there is this strange story about a non political interaction with the country's leading politician prime minister narendra modi so what was that about. this was clearly an attempt by mary and the more the to get a boost from bollywood through an interview conducted by the phone star. questions it was broadcast online by asian news international and i it's a private news agency that benefits from close access to not in the more the and

his party the b j p of course many mainstream channels then picked up the interview and anna did its entirety. the tone was beyond informal it was phoning and this interview has been positioned quite carefully to avoid falling afoul of election commission rules now conventional broadcast interviews are banned while voting is under way and so this interview was labeled a nonpolitical interaction so this is modi in the b j p spotting a loophole in the election rules and just taking advantage of an absolutely me using the bollywood card to do that you see there are many mainstream outlets that are openly aligned with the b.g.p. but the prime minister is not taking any chances bollywood actors have posed for selfies with him they've tweeted in support of him in fact there was even a film a biopic that was slated for release just as voting began with the election

commission then intervened and said it would have to wait until after results are announced ok going back to social media now for a minute the meeting this week between the c.e.o. of twitter and one of the platforms best known users donald trump what were they talking. well reportedly one of their discussions was about something that trumpet tweeted just hours before the meeting took place he said twitter was constantly taking people off the list that's his way of saying that they were fiddling with his follower numbers now dorsey explained that as part of twitter's efforts to clean up the site a lot of fake accounts and bots have been killed and so follower numbers are being affected for people across twitter but this plays into donald trump's suspicion which exists amongst other conservatives that somehow these big tech companies are out to get the american right correct yeah this is an ongoing conversation happening on the american right that twitter google facebook they're all out to suppress their presence now have to see given the number of pick and changing

algorithms there is a case to be made for more clarity in how online platforms function which way to really get into trouble however is when it fails to take action in cases where the rules are clearly being violated take trying for example he regularly treats tweets sexist racist and insightful messages jack dorsey however has clarified that twitter does hold public and prominent leaders in to a different standard earlier this year he said we believe it's important that the world sees how global leaders think and how they act there is a new policy however in the works for twitter where they will label offensive tweets and explain why they made up on the site now that will be interesting to see ok thanks mia. turning to france now where president emmanuel mccraw has just announced a tax cut of five billion euros it was one of several new reforms and a victory of sorts for all the yellow vest protesters who first hit the streets almost six months ago demonstrating over the price of fuel the cost of living and

tax fairness macro initially tried to appease the movement by boosting the minimum wage but it didn't work and when that fire consumed part of paris is not a damn cathedral and macro led the fight. raising efforts for the reconstruction he played right into the protesters hands those multimillion dollar donations from billionaires which happen to be tax deductible underlined the issues of tax inequality and the government's priorities the media are more than just a subplot in this protesters complain about the underreporting of police violence the sensationalizing of the demonstrations and reporters have been restricted manhandled by police and subjected to arrest so the yellow vests are producing their own coverage live streaming across social networks listening posts are now on the tussle between the media the state and.

something i want to make that's. something you know something. more. than a story. secret get this just. don't . stop money can. do something. you can. see that. will at least one of. the.

things that they knew. it could even just as. the year of a school is at twenty three the twenty third consecutive week of protests across france the numbers on this. streets were boosted in the aftermath of the not fire and the billions of dollars that flooded in for reconstruction. the demonstrators who first took to the streets and roundabouts over the rising price of fuel before raising other economic issues and now targeting institutions they say of protecting the rich and powerful at the expense of the people they reserve a special place in their placards for the police and their sometimes brutal response as well as the journalists some of whom have been attacked by protesters. the protesters anger towards the media is understandable but it cannot justify violence or hatred of all media because this ends up being a hatred of democracy democracy is about respecting the media even when you don't

like what the media says of course there was a strong grievance when the yellow vest movement began that the media was not reporting their side of the story most notably with regard to police violence. we're going today journalism is a profession that stands discredited by the yellow vests and wider french society at france and we are lucky enough to have great proximity to the parts of france that accuse journalists of only covering paris and middle and upper classes and of forgetting those sections of society that feel discerned and invisible. and yet that said. what i found.