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Independence isnt on trial here, democracy is on trial, said Mas, outside the courthouse in February before his trial began. Indeed, this clampdown should concern any democrat. The majority of MPs in the Catalan parliament support independence, and while Mass pseudo-referendum cannot be treated as an impartial democratic exercise, it did reveal that a significant proportion of Catalans (81 per cent, in his referendum) support independence.

The shaky distinction made by the government seems to be that while people on the streets should be free to argue and campaign for independence, politicians are different. If people on the streets can talk about independence, why should deputies not be able to?, asked Carme Forcadell, speaker of the Catalan assembly, at the Catalonia Superior Court of Justice last year. Shes right. How can Catalonias politicians be representatives if they cannot debate Catalonias most talked-about political issue?

This is all part of a wider clampdown on dissident political views, on both left and right, in Spain. Last year, five members of Popular Unity Candidacy, a fringe left-wing Catalan party, were arrested for burning images of Spains King Felipe VI. Only two weeks ago, Madrid City Council banned a Catholic group from driving a bus through Madrid adorned with the slogan Boys have penises, girls have vulvas. Do not be fooled. It was deemed to be transphobic.

While the Scottish and Catalan independence movements share some common features, the climates in which they operate are very different. The SNP operates within a climate conducive to debate. In 2014, Scotland was allowed to hold a referendum. In the same year, Catalonia wasnt even allowed to hold a fake referendum. If the Spanish government wants to defeat the Catalans, they should do so through public debate, not shady political censorship.

Jacob Furedi is a spiked columnist. Follow him on Twitter: @jacobfuredi

Picture by: Getty

For permission to republish spiked articles, please contact Viv Regan.

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Censorship in Catalonia - Spiked

No one man should be this powerful

Rupert Murdochs appetite for media outlets resembles that of Wile E Coyote for a tasty Roadrunner.

And if the dirty digger is thwarted in his efforts say, by a hacking scandal that closes one of his newspapers and lands an editor in jail hes nothing if not persistent.

Murdoch already owns a huge chunk of the UK media across several platforms, and would therefore be a threat to media freedom even without the criminal behaviour of his underlings.

His renewed lunge for total control of Sky, handing him the 61 per cent he doesnt already own, would swallow up yet more of the market share for his particular brand of newsfotainment.

Culture Secretary Karen Bradleys decision today to refer the proposed 21st Century Fox/Sky merger to broadcast regulator Ofcom ought never to have been in doubt.

But given the intimate relations between the British political class and especially this government, the stench of corruption had to be overcome by a sustained campaign by Britains trade unions.

In a letter to Bradley on March 8 after her call for representations on the proposed merger, the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) made the case for referall to Ofcom, arguing further media concentration, especially in the hands of a dodgy corporation, is not in the public interest.

The NUJ has also been working with the Trades Union Congress and the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) to lobby the EU Commissions probe of the deal.

In a statement today, released ahead of Bradleys decision, NUJ acting General Secretary Seamus Dooley said:

The need for media plurality is recognised in the European Charter of Fundamental Rights and in that context the European Commission has a direct role in examining the proposed merger. []

We must ensure that at national and European levels every effort is made to halt the onward march of the Murdochs.

If this sounds a bit grand, consider the stakes. If Murdoch gets his way, the 21st Century Fox corporation would, in the words of the NUJ letter, directly control the dominant commercial news producers in the UK across television, radio and print.

Heres some more evidence from its statement today:

Sky and NewsCorp are already the biggest commercial news producers in the UK. Sky News Radio is the main news supplier to more than 280 commercial stations.

Skys only real competitor in radio news production is the BBC. In television, there are now only two UK-based 24-hour TV news channels Sky News and the BBC News Channel.

The proposed merger would make Murdochs company Britains largest newspaper provider, and bring together Britains monopoly satellite platform and its largest broadcaster by revenue.

This would hand Murdoch an unprecedented amount of power, and for this reason alone would be a scandal regardless of the mans policies, business interests or indirect criminal practices.

One hopes the Ofcom probe makes the right call based on the evidence, given the regulators sometimes odd rulings.Butmight it not be time to review our monopoly laws, so that no company can dominate any industry and make nonsense of the idea of a free market?

Reducing the maximum percentage market share would force Murdoch to break up and sell of his media empire, creating space for new outlets and easing the pressure on existing ones. This might have more impact than continued calls for press regulation by a government-backed committee.

In the meantime, we might reflect on the words of IFJ General Secretary Anthony Bellanger, ahead of Bradleys decision:

Media plurality is a cornerstone of democracy. Without it, all the talk of a free and independent media is nothing but empty words.

Adam Barnett is staff writer for Left Foot Forward. Follow him on Twitter@AdamBarnett13

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Rupert Murdoch wants to control the news. Ofcom must stand up for media freedom - Left Foot Forward

New York Times

'Shots Fired': A Mystery With a Message About Police Shootings New York Times During the Zimmerman trial, many people were sending George Zimmerman money to help with his costs, as opposed to focusing on the young boy who was murdered. That lack of empathy and humanity was shocking. We felt inverting it was a good way to ... 'Shots Fired' tries to merge conversation on race and police with entertaining TVWashington Post all 7 news articles »

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'Shots Fired': A Mystery With a Message About Police Shootings - New York Times

One of the topics that generates strong feelings in the online world is adblocking. Many users love it, but many publishers hate it. That's a big problem, because advertising has turned into the main way of funding what appears on the Internet. As adblockers become more common, so the advertising revenue available to pay for creating articles, images, sound and video diminishes. Some want to ban adblockers, but that's hardly a solution: forcing visitors to your site to view ads they hate is not a good way to foster a long-term business relationship. Improving ads seems a better approach, but that's easier said than done, and may come too late now that so many people have installed adblockers.

The other obvious solution is to charge people to view online material. There's been a certain reluctance to try that approach, partly because of the misleading slogan "information wants to be free", and partly because historically it hasn't worked in general. But it seems that major online players in China are now starting to roll out the paid-for model, perhaps in part because adblockers are widely used there, as in the West. Here's what the biggest online service, WeChat, with a billion accounts created, and at least 700 million active users, is trying, as reported by technode:

WeChat, Tencent Holdings Ltd.'s social networking and chat app, will roll out paid services for the content offered by official accounts, an authority at the Chinese internet giant told Yicai Global.

WeChat invited selected official accounts to trial its paid content function, which is not open to general users for the time being.

As their name suggests, WeChat's "official" accounts are a step up from personal ones. They can be be verified for a fee, and allow services to be offered. A few years ago, there were 8 million such accounts; the number today is likely to be higher. The same technode article reports on research carried out by WeChat's parent company Tencent:

A survey of more than 1,700 netizens conducted by a Tencent research unit found 55 percent of respondents had paid for professional knowledge or advice, including paid content and documents in the past year. Over 50 percent of Chinese netizens have paid or are willing to pay for contents, compared with only 30 percent two years ago, an iResearch report found.

Another established Chinese company that hopes it can get its users to pay for online material is Douban, an upmarket social network focusing on the arts, with around 200 million users. China Film Insider has news about Douban Time, a new paid-for service:

Douban Time will feature curated texts, images and sound from experts and writers in different fields. Catering to its audience, Douban Times first offering is a 102-episode poetry review program which will invite poets and critics to give lessons in poetry appreciation.

Although 102 episodes on poetry appreciation might sound like something of a specialized offering, it is probably well-suited to Douban's sophisticated user base. And perhaps it will turn out that the solution to finding alternative business models for online publishing is precisely this kind of niche approach, rather than the current advertising system based on volume, that is now struggling badly.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

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Is This The Future Of Online Publishing? Leading Chinese Social ... - Techdirt

A German court has overturned a decision that would have required Berlin to transport whistleblower Edward Snowden to Germany and shield him from the U.S. government. Germany's Federal Court of Justice published a rulingWednesday in favor of the German government's position that Snowden didn't need to travel to Berlin for questioning from an ongoing investigation into U.S. surveillance.

German officials suggestedSnowden, a former National Security Agency employee who lives in Russia, be questioned via a video link instead. But Snowdenhas refused to cooperate with the investigation unless he is granted immunity and is allowed to travel to Berlin, according to local media reports.

German lawmakers launched theinvestigation into U.S. spyingin March 2014 after Snowden shared documents detailing Washington's mass surveillance of its allies and enemies across the globe, as well as U.S. citizens. After twolawmakers overseeing thegovernment committee's probedemanded that Snowden be calledin as a witness,the federal court ruled in February that the former NSA security contractor should travel to Berlin with the guarantee that he wouldn't be extradited to the U.S.

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Lawmakers from theChristian Democratic Union and Social Democratic Party appealed the ruling. The court's decision made public Wednesday backed up their stance that Snowden wasn't crucial to the investigation. Germany also argued it could not guarantee Snowden's protection because he is wanted in the U.S. on espionage charges.

The Snowden leaks disclosed that Washington spied onChancellor Angela Merkel's phone, among otherrevelations.Lawmakers from the opposition Greenand Left parties had requested that Snowden be allowed into Berlin.

My standard was that spying among friends is not acceptable, and if it happens we have to intervene, Merkel toldlawmakers in February as part of the investigation. She notedthe importance and difficulty of finding the right balance between freedom and security.

ButMartina Renner of the Left Party said the Germangovernmentfears [Snowdens] testimony.

When the leaks were first revealed in 2013, dozens of German political leaders called on Berlin to offer Snowdenasylum.Heiner Geissler, the former general secretary of Merkel's Christian Democrats, said at the time: "Snowden has done the Western world a great service. It is now up to us to help him."

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Edward Snowden Latest: NSA Leaker Won't Leave Russia for ... - Newsweek