News

Wow, November got here fast. This year’s election cycle seemed shorter than usual. The presidential candidates were all but a foregone conclusion, until they weren’t. Now with election season finally here, things continue to be tense. Are smooth transitions between administrations a thing of the past, or has the fever from last cycle broken?

Despite the strange reality we live in now, politics have always been fertile ground for nerve-fraying anxiety. Whether that’s the paranoia of being under the all-seeing eye of the Nsa today, the tragedy of the assassinations in the 60s, or the scandals of the 70s, politics have never been for the faint of heart. Struggles for power rarely are.

Here’s some of our favorite political thrillers to put you in the right mood for election season:

War Room

For better or for worse, the documentary War Room defined ‘90s politics. Unlike the ‘80s,...

Brainy political lightning rod Oliver Stone isn’t making feature films anymore. Sure, he’d love to add a 21st to his 20 films to date; he just can’t find backers. His alternate route, like many other directors today, from fellow Cannes entrant Ron Howard (“Jim Henson: Idea Man”) to Martin Scorsese, is documentaries.

Stone has churned out a career total of ten, including recent 2021 Cannes entry “JFK Revisited” (Showtime) and 2022 eco-doc “Nuclear” (Abramorama). His latest, “Lula,” marks a move to the left from his much-criticized recent portraits of dictators such as Cuba’s Fidel Castro (HBO’s “Comandante”) and Russia’s Vladimir Putin (Showtime’s four-part “The Putin Interviews”).

Since his start as a filmmaker in the 1970s, the Yale-grad-turned-Vietnam-vet, now 77, has leaned into political fiction, from “Salvador,” “Wall Street,” and “W.,” to Best Director Oscar-winners “Platoon” and “Born on the Fourth of July.” His last Oscar nomination came in 1996, for “Nixon,...

Oliver Stone has always had one eye pointed south of the U.S. border.

It began with his phenomenal script for Brian De Palma’s Scarface, which transformed the famous Chicago gangster into a hardened Cuban refugee. After that, Stone directed the photojournalist saga Salvador, about the deadly civil war that gripped El Salvador in the 1980s. And later on he made a handful of documentaries about Latin American leaders, two of them featuring Fidel Castro and another one including such leftist figureheads as Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales.

Stone’s fascination with the dirty politics and violent class struggles of the southern hemisphere seems to perfectly align with the dramatic twists and nonstop conspiracies present in much of his other fictional work, from J.F.K. to Nixon to W to Snowden. In the director’s world, which he argues is ours as well, leaders are either corruptible or taken down by the corrupt,...

Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva, three times president of Brazil, was born in 1945. He grew up poor in Sao Paulo and left school early to help support his family. Having trained as a lathe operator, he reached a milestone when he became the first member of his family to earn more than the minimum wage. Initially reluctant to get involved in politics, he was president of the steelworkers’ union by the time he was 30, leading a strike that achieved better wages that he saw were soon soaked up by a rise in rents. “It was time for workers to think about ruling their own country,” he says in voice-over in Oliver Stone and Rob Wilson’s documentary, simply called Lula.

It is a remarkable political career, achieved against every kind of odds, recounted with admirable thoroughness. He was working in the years when most kids are in primary school; he...

A right-leaning video platform is ready to rumble in a court of law. Rumble, the platform that counts Tucker Carlson and Barstool Sports among its users, has filed a suit against Google.

In the suit, Rumble claims that Google has cost it billions by maintaining a monopoly in the digital ad business. According to Axios, Rumble was a Google Ads client before launching its own ad center in 2022. The suit claims that Rumble missed out on “billions” in revenue due to Google’s anti-competitive practices.

“Google exploits significant conflicts of interest that stem from its multiple roles in this electronically traded marketplace,” reads the complaint. “As a result, it is able to pocket a supra-competitive portion of every advertising dollar that passes through the Ad Tech markets it controls, ad-revenue that rightly should have passed through to publishers like Rumble and its content creators.”

The suit, which was filed in the Northern District of California,...

UK documentary specialist Dogwoof has boarded international sales on Oliver Stone’s Lula, ahead of its world premiere at Cannes, where it will receive a special screening.

Gersh is handling US rights on the project, which follows the story of Brazil’s beloved president Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva, and his journey from the presidential palace to imprisonment for 19 months, and back again to regain the presidency in 2022.

The documentary, co-directed by Rob Wilson, features unprecedented access to Lula and his closest advisors through a series of interviews, revealing the inside story of ‘Operation Car Wash’ – a landmark anti-corruption probe...

Wil Wheaton has unloaded on Larry David for the Curb Your Enthusiasm star’s on-air Elmo attack.

The Star Trek: The Next Generation actor posted an intense 900-word essay on Facebook about the purportedly unscripted viral stunt, where David throttled the ever-cheerful and child-like Sesame Street icon live on NBC’s Today during a segment on mental health, and then told viewers “somebody had to do it.” David was prodded into apologizing for the incident, but he did so seemingly reluctantly and with a smile.

Wheaton had a strong reaction to the footage and revealed he was abused in a similar way growing up. His rant has made some reexamine last week’s incident — which was largely greeted with amusement online — while others are mocking the actor as “profanely oversensitive.”

“When I was growing up, my dad would grab me by the shoulders and shake me while he screamed in my face,...

German record label BMG recently “fired” the Pink Floyd co-founder, Roger Waters, after his latest comments regarding Israel, Ukraine and the United States.

BMG had signed a publishing agreement with hopes to release a re-recorded version of the band’s 1973 album Dark Side of the Moon. However, in response to his comments, the new CEO of the company, Thomas Coesfeld tossed the deal, and the re-recording was released by U.K. label Cooking Vinyl instead.

Waters has used his platforms to convey controversial claims. In a CNN broadcast last year, he spoke on President Joe Biden, claiming he is a “war criminal,” who was “fueling the war in Ukraine.” In speaking with the United Nations Security Council, Waters called Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “illegal,” but he “also condemn[s] the provocateurs in the strongest possible terms.”

He claimed to Rolling Stone that he is on a “kill list that is...

Music rights company BMG is preparing to split entirely from Roger Waters following controversial comments he made on Israel, Ukraine, and the United States, Variety reports.

According to the publication, the Pink Floyd co-founder and German-based company signed a publishing agreement in 2016 and had plans to release a re-recorded version of the band’s 1973 album Dark Side of the Moon last year. However, the deal was tossed after Thomas Coesfeld was hired as CEO on July 1, 2023, and the record was released by U.K.-based label Cooking Vinyl instead.

A...

Roger Waters, in classic Roger Waters fashion, suggested he’s not ready to rule out the possibility that Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel might’ve been a “false flag operation” during a recent interview with Glenn Greenwald.

During the conversation, Waters couched his discussions of the attack — during which Hamas militants killed more than 1,4000 people, many unarmed civilians, and took hundreds of hostages — in heavy speculation. For instance, he said his initial reaction to Oct. 7 was, “let’s wait and see what happened,” and that his second was: “How the...

Among the treasure trove of damning government documents leaked by Edward Snowden in 2013 that exposed the Nsa’s vast surveillance activities was one that detailed a secret U.K. program known as Phantom Parrot. It allows authorities to stop people entering the country in order to download their personal data from their phones and other electronic devices, even without their knowledge.

It’s also the title of Kate Stonehill’s debut feature documentary, which premieres in the Zurich Film Festival’s Border Lines sidebar. “Phantom Parrot” traces the case of U.K. human rights activist Muhammad Rabbani, who was found guilty in 2017 of a terror-related crime for refusing to provide his passwords to police at London’s Heathrow Airport under Britain’s Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000.

Rabbani is the international director of advocacy group Cage, which assists individuals who have been affected by state policies related to the so-called “war on terror.

On Monday, rap raconteur DJ Akademiks announced a partnership with rising media platform Rumble to live-stream exclusively on the platform three to five days a week. In a statement, Akademiks expressed, “I look forward to being one of the first to bring music and cultural conversations to a platform like Rumble. There have been many bad decisions at larger platforms where they haven’t put creators first, and they are disconnected from the community. I feel now is an inflection point for streaming platforms. I couldn’t be more excited...

J.D. Vance, the ‘hillbilly’ venture capitalist and now Republican Senator from Ohio, frequently rails against the menace of Big Tech and its alleged bias against conservatives. Less frequent are his discussions about his investments in smaller tech firms — and how his calls to hobble giants such as YouTube could boost companies like Rumble, in which Vance has boasted he was the “first outside investor.”

A new report from the Tech Transparency Project (Ttp), previewed by Rolling Stone, takes aim at this disconnect, highlighting Vance’s “self-serving” advocacy for legal reforms...

Twitter claimed that it will begin nixing its blue legacy verified checkmarks next month, starting on April Fools’ Day, and charging those who wish to keep their once-free blue checkmarks $8 a month.

The move is “about treating everyone equally,” Twitter CEO Elon Musk tweeted to William Shatner on Sunday. Musk added, “There shouldn’t be a different standard for celebrities imo.” Yet despite his egalitarian approach to social media, Twitter accounts owned by celebrities may be getting preferential treatment, according to a Platformer report published Monday.

According to documents obtained by Platformer,...

House Republicans are preparing to remove Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) from the Foreign Affairs Committee, with a vote coming as soon as Wednesday. Why? It could be because they just don’t really like her — for some reason! — or perhaps it’s because they want to get back at Democrats for removing Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) from their committees for suggesting violence against their political opponents.

Republicans say they want Omar off the committee because of her past criticism of Israel. In response...

Can you remember the last time a documentary actually took your breath away?

I can. It happened on the evening of Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2014, in a theater at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The film was Citizenfour, which documented the encounters between National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden and the filmmaker/journalists Laura Poitras, Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill.

My datebook for the day simply said “Poitras”—she was on hand to introduce the picture, of which I had no particular expectations. Documentaries come, and documentaries go by the hundred, after all. This one, I thought, was just one more in a crowded season.

But within minutes I knew I was wrong, stunningly so. In a shocking act of cinematic transgression, Poitras and her colleagues had risked the rage of multiple governments to record evidence of vast surveillance overreach by virtually unfettered intelligence agencies. They had filmed Snowden in real time,...

“It means the work is causing some discomfort.”

Laura Poitras, the Oscar and Golden Lion-winning director of documentaries including Risk, Citizenfour and this year’s All The Beauty And The Bloodshed, revealed the calculated risks she takes and the extraordinary lengths to which she goes to protect her footage at a masterclass at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) this weekend where she is this year’s guest of honour.

She used the masterclass to voice her fears about what she believes will be an increased threat to filmmakers and journalists from governments if Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is extradited to the US.

As Elon Musk‘s second week running Twitter comes to a close, the social network is tilting toward outright anarchy.

The most visible problem arose from Musk’s harebrained idea of selling verification badges for 8 a month through the premium subscription Twitter Blue — without a mechanism for confirming the user’s identity. For years, you could trust that a blue check next to, for example, the name “Rudy W. Giuliani” indicated that the account was controlled by the former mayor of New York. With Musk’s version of Twitter Blue,...

More than her urgently and perceptively topical subject matter, American documentarian Laura Poitras has a habit, and penchant, not solely for making work about the right things, but in being there as they’re occurring, standing in the center of them unafraid. It’s not a documentary filmmaking language where you can carefully compose, refocus, and reframe a shot; it’s “start rolling and go,” and maybe hide it under your arm in case there’s some brute who might smash your camera and its Sd card. You can call this predominantly a journalistic skill: there she was in June 2013, flanked by the Guardian‘s Glenn Greenwald (now did his story turn elsewhere) and Ewen MacAskill, before legendary Nsa whistleblower Edward Snowden in her documentary Citizenfour—a vital audiovisual documenter of contemporary radical US history.

Turning even further towards domestic affairs—after 2017’s Risk couldn’t quite find the necessary...

We can only exclaim that the fall festivals “are back!” so many times before it ceases to be true, but in the case of the 2022 season, we’re still working well within the confines of rock-solid logic. The fall festivals are back! After unspooling as all-virtual affairs, truncated in-person gatherings, or some combination of the two over the last two years, the biggest fall festivals — Venice, Telluride, the Toronto International Film Festival, and the New York Film Festival — are all launching full-scale in-person events in the coming weeks.

And what a bevy of new films do they have to show off. This year’s fall festival season includes new films from Steven Spielberg, Frederick Wiseman, Laura Poitras, Martin McDonagh, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Andrew Dominik, Sarah Polley, Lena Dunham, Luca Guadagnino, Sam Mendes, Joanna Hogg, Chinonye Chukwu, Jafar Panahi, Todd Field, Darren Aronofsky, Gina Prince-Bythewood, and Noah Baumbach, and that’s only the start.

What led to TBS’ decision to pull the plug on “Full Frontal with Samantha Bee” after seven seasons? An unlucky mix of low ratings, the shifting political climate post-Trump, a shakeup in comedy after the Warner Bros’ merger with Discovery — and lingering fallout from her Ivanka Trump incident of 2018. The death of the show, which frequently took shots at the Trumps and the Supreme Court, was skewered by conservatives like Glenn Greenwald who dismissed “Full Frontal” as “a feminist legacy as trivial and inconsequential as it was failed and pointless.” Also Read: ‘Full Frontal With Samantha Bee’ Canceled at TBS After 7 Seasons Well that’s unkind, but late night has arguably never been a welcoming environment for women: Joan Rivers, who became the first woman to host a late-night talk show in 1986, had a one-year run before seeing the show taken over by a man. Bee did not respond to...

On Thursday’s episode of his Fox News show, Tucker Carlson let forth quite a rant bashing unnamed reporters who have debunked a conspiracy theory he keeps plugging. And on his list of bash-ees? Apparently one of his own coworkers, national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin.

Tucker Carlson has for the last couple of weeks frequently talked about one of the lies Vladimir Putin has advanced to justify his unprovoked invasion of Ukraine: accusing the United States of funding biological weapons research in Ukraine. Carlson seems to believe this is true or at least possible, but it actually isn’t true. In fact, what actually happened is that the U.S. has been funding efforts to safely convert old Soviet-era bioweapons labs for use in more benign purposes.

The stories have been debunked by multiple reporters, even on Fox News. But on Thursday’s episode of “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Carlson doubled...

One of the first things Reality Winner did when she was released from federal prison in June was start building a paddock for a horse named Trouble, and a small shed for her gym equipment beside it.

Winner, a former Nsa contractor, was training for a powerlifting competition when she was arrested in June 2017, accused of leaking classified information to The Intercept. When the FBI showed up at her house that day, her main preoccupation was getting her perishable groceries into the fridge and figuring out who would feed her...

When Michael Moore was in parochial school he started a newspaper dedicated to covering the comings-and-goings of his teachers and classmates. Initially, the nuns thought it was cute. Their attitude changed, however, after he share his iconoclastic take on a sacred topic.

“I wrote a critical article about the eighth grade football team and that was the end of it,” remembers Moore. “They shut it down.”

So began a long oppositional history, one that saw Moore clashing with the powers that be over his movies, books and journalism. In 2001, for instance, HarperCollins initially refused to release Moore’s book “Stupid White Men” because the News Corp.-owned publisher believed its blistering criticism of President George W. Bush would be seen as tone deaf in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. In 2003, Moore’s documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11” was caught up in a struggle between Miramax and its parent company Disney over whether...

Rumble, a video site that positions itself as a safe haven from people who think they’re oppressed by “Big Tech,” has reportedly sealed six-figure content deals with well-known political figures in an effort to bolster its user base. Former Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard and journalist Glenn Greenwald are among those who will be paid to […]

Visit Tubefilter for more great stories.

A stray thought for Hollywood: Just because Donald Trump is campaigning for free speech—last week, he announced a class-action anti-censorship lawsuit against Twitter, Facebook and Google—doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea.

Free speech, that is. I don’t know about the lawsuit, which will have to reconcile the tech giants’ First Amendment rights and legal protections with a claim that they have abused their immunity by acting as politically one-sided censors.

More heat than light will be shed as the suit works its way through the courts and media mill. But never mind Trump. Freedom of expression is something the movie business should start worrying about, sooner rather than later.

It’s no secret that the movies—like the rest of pop culture—have been operating in an ever-narrower field when it comes to what can be portrayed on-screen, and by whom. Even to identify the...

Journalist Glenn Greenwald said Saturday that he was the victim of a home invasion and robbery in Brazil last month, where at one point, the burglars stuck a gun in his mouth.

He detailed the experience in an essay on his Substack, noting the events took place March 5. A representative for Brazilian law enforcement did not immediately return a request for comment.

While reflecting on reports of a recent home invasion in California, Greenwald explained that he, his husband and their two children have been staying at a rental farm outside of their Rio de Janeiro home and he was there alone the night of March 5. An off-duty police officer was there providing security to the home.

“Within seconds, three men wearing full black face masks descended on me, all pointing guns at me. They told me to walk toward a small stand-alone room near the house and began pushing me to go faster.

This week a bipartisan group of lawmakers proposed a solution to the dominance of Google and Facebook: Give the news media a whole lot more heft.

Their bill, the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, would allow print, online and broadcast outlets to band together to negotiate content deals with online distributors. The aim is to boost local media in particular, with widespread newspaper closures and layoffs and a decline in once reliable sources of ad revenue.

At a House Judiciary antirust subcommittee hearing on Friday, the case was certainly made that the situation for local media is dire: As the subcommittee chairman and chief sponsor of the bill, Rep. David Cicilline (D-ri) pointed out, one in five newspapers closed in the past 15 years, and the number of journalists working for print outlets has been cut in half. At least 200 counties have no local newspapers at all, he said.

Cicilline didn’t say it,...

In the latest socially distanced episode of our Useful Idiots podcast, hosts Matt Taibbi and Katie Halper are joined by friend-of-the-podcast Glenn Greenwald.

Matt and Katie cover Neera Tanden’s contentious confirmation hearing to become the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (Omb). Our hosts break down the exhaustive GOP questioning of Tanden, in which lawmakers notably cited troves of her old, shit-talking tweets, many of which were aimed at Sen. Bernie Sanders and his supporters. This included a debate around the phrase “ignorant slut.”

“You just had...

Ever since she brought Edward Snowden’s story to the masses with the Oscar-winning “Citizenfour,” Laura Poitras has built a career out of chasing the truth, even at the expense of her own safety. Last fall, it came at the expense of her job. In an open letter published Thursday, the documentary filmmaker said she was fired from First Look Media, the nonprofit investigative journalism entity that owns Field of Vision, the documentary production company where she did much of her work.

Poitras said the company terminated her contract in November after she criticized the company’s publication, The Intercept, for its handling of whistleblower Reality Winner in a story published in 2018. Winner is an Nsa specialist who shared classified documents about U.S. cybersecurity efforts to meddle in Russian elections. She was arrested by federal investigators before the story was published and is currently serving a five-year prison sentence,...

First Look Media co-founder Laura Poitras published an open letter Thursday, writing that she’s been fired from First Look, the nonprofit that owns investigative journalism outlet The Intercept and the documentary studio Field of Vision. Poitras said the firing, which happened back in November, came after she publicly criticized The Intercept’s handling of whistleblower Reality Winner. She says the organization is betraying its founding mission to serve as a public watchdog anchored in deep, investigative reporting.

The Oscar-winning documentarian wrote that she was terminated on November 30, ostensibly without cause, but she connected the move to her speaking out about the way The Intercept handled the Winner case. Winner, an Nsa intelligence specialist, in 2017 sent the publication classified documents about Russian meddling in the US election. Federal investigators traced the documents back to Winner before The Intercept published its story; she is serving a five-year sentence for the leak.

In the latest socially distanced episode of our Useful Idiots podcast, hosts Matt Taibbi and Katie Halper are joined by none other than newly-freelance journalist Glenn Greenwald. [Editor’s note: This episode was taped on November 5th, the Thursday after Election Night.]

Matt and Katie take a deep dive into how some of the early results will speak to the future of both parties, assuming there is a Joe Biden victory over President Donald Trump.

“The Democratic Party is going to take this as a validation of all of the tactics of the last four years, which we spent a lot of time chronicling, that really were terribly ineffective,...

In this week’s quarantine episode of our Useful Idiots podcast, hosts Matt Taibbi and Katie Halper are joined by Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept, who has yet again found himself in the middle of some media controversies.

For Democrats suck, Katie breaks down the recent viral Joe Biden clip, in which Biden plays “Despacito” from his phone at a rally during Hispanic Heritage Month. “That’s what we call Hispandering,” says Katie, who translates the sensual lyrics of the song into English for our listeners.

Katie also gets fired...

Exclusive: Visual journalism outfit Field of Vision is teaming with Spotlight production co Topic Studios to offer $250,000 in emergency financial help for struggling documentary freelancers during the coronavirus lockdown.

The two companies are divisions of First Look Media, the org set up by eBay founder and philanthropist Pierre Omidyar with doc heavyweights Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill, and Laura Poitras.

More from Deadline'Lambs Of God': Streamer Topic Takes North American Rights To Australian Drama Starring Jessica Barden, Essie Davis & Ann DowdAwkwafina Teams With Topic Studios For Feature Exploring Role Of Chinatown Restaurants In Rise Of West Coast Punk SceneStreamer Topic Picks Up 10 Fremantle Shows, Including 'The Miracle' From 'Young Pope' Producer Wildside

Industry freelancers have been particularly hard hit by the economic aspects of the crisis, with film and TV production halted around the world. As such, the fund is aiming to support the most vulnerable by providing life assistance grants,...

A day after federal prosecutors loyal to Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, filed charges against him for being a member of a “criminal organization,” Pulitzer Prize winner Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept was in good enough spirits. The Brazilian government’s decision to hit him with 126 felony charges came out of the blue — he learned about it Tuesday while preparing to go horseback riding with his son.

“I was scrolling through my phone, and suddenly I see a headline, ‘Glenn Greenwald indicted …’ ” he says. “I thought, ‘What?’ ”

A day later,...

In this week’s episode of our Useful Idiots’ podcast, hosts Matt Taibbi and Katie Halper are joined by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and co-founder of The Intercept, Glenn Greenwald. The trio discuss Russiagate and the importance of applying skepticism to mainstream narratives.

“Intuitively, the whole script of ‘Russia is infiltrating American politics, the Kremlin is manipulating American discourse, our political enemies are secretly loyal to the Russian government,’ all of that… falls very poorly with me because it’s so redolent of the Cold War script,” says Greenwald. “At the very best,...

Laura Poitras became a rock star of the documentary world with 2014’s Oscar-winning “Citizenfour,” an explosive and definitive account of the Edward Snowden story that brought Poitras’ investigative filmmaking to a global audience. Since then, she has completed just one feature, the Julian Assange portrait “Risk,” but supported countless others as the co-creator and executive producer behind Field of Vision, the documentary film unit designed to support investigative filmmaking on a wavelength similar to her own.

Now, she’s ready to return to her filmmaking full time. Poitras is stepping down from her leadership position at Field of Vision to focus on her next feature, though will remain onboard at parent company First Look Media. Charlotte Cook, who co-founded the project with Poitras and filmmaker A.J. Schnack in 2015, will continue to lead the organization.

“In the last year, I felt like that Field of Vision established itself in the documentary field,...

Last weekend, I published a book chapter criticizing the Russiagate narrative, claiming it was a years-long press error on the scale of the Wmd affair heading into the Iraq war.

Obviously (and I said this in detail), the Wmd fiasco had a far greater real-world impact, with hundreds of thousands of lives lost and trillions in treasure wasted. Still, I thought Russiagate would do more to damage the reputation of the national news media in the end.

A day after publishing that excerpt, a Attorney General William Barr sent his...

Georgetown University stressed the need for “respectable dialogue” following outcry over Professor Christine Fair, issuing a statement to TheWrap disassociating the university from a tweet in which Fair called for the castration and execution of white men.

“Georgetown urges members of our community to engage in robust but respectable dialogue. While we protect speech and expression, we condemn uncivil and disrespectful discourse that is inconsistent with our values,” a representative for the university said.

“The views faculty members expressed in their private capacities are their own and not the views of the university. Our policy does not prohibit speech based on the person presenting ideas or the content of those ideas even when those ideas may be difficult controversial or objectionable,” the school added. “Why faculty members may exercise freedom of speech, we expect their classroom to be free of bias and geared toward thoughtful, respectful dialogue.”

Also Read: Trump...

President Trump finds himself backed into a corner, wagging a fire poker at anyone or anything that dares cross him — the liberal media, his former lawyer-fixer, defenestrated White House aides, a dead senator. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation continues to gain strength with each passing week, and more and more members of Trump’s inner circle are reportedly cooperating with Mueller’s team and opening their respective vaults. (In the case of one of Trump’s New York Rich Guy Friends, David Pecker, there exists a literal vault...

The editorial staff at investigative digital news site the Intercept has unanimously ratified its first contract, negotiated by the Writers Guild of America East.

The guild and the site, founded by Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill, and Laura Poitras, made the announcement Wednesday.

The three-year collective bargaining agreement includes a first-of-its-kind diversity provision that ensures at least two candidates from groups traditionally underrepresented in journalism will be interviewed for any vacant bargaining unit position not being created for a specific candidate or for purposes of promoting an existing bargaining unit employee.

The contract also creates a Diversity Committee of both bargaining unit members and editorial management that will meet quarterly to discuss, assist, and partner with human resources and management on current and potential diversity and inclusion initiatives at the Intercept.

Management has also agreed to conduct an annual demographic survey providing newsroom employees with an anonymous opportunity to self-identify with respect to,...

Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine is teaming with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald and Suzanne Gilbert (The Untold History of the U.S.) to develop and produce its first feature-length documentary on decorated tennis star and activist Martina Navratilova.

It will spotlight Navratilova’s social and political activism for women and the Lgbt community, told through Greenwald’s personal lens – a gay child growing up in the Reagan-era Florida.

“The issues raised by Martina’s legacy resonate now more than ever, which is why it’s so important to tell her story to new generations of engaged young people who may not be aware of the vital role she played in shaping expectations around female identity and Lgbt equality,” said Charlotte Koh, Head of Digital Media & Programming for Hello Sunshine. “Having producers Glenn and Suzanne reframe Martina’s impact on society through the lens of Glenn’s personal coming-of-age journey creates a fresh,...

Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine is developing its first feature-length documentary about tennis legend Martina Navratilova in partnership with Glenn Greenwald and Suzanne Gilbert.

The documentary will explore Navratilova’s achievements as a social justice pioneer told through Greenwald’s personal lens as a gay child growing up in Reagan-era Florida. The documentary will examine Navratilova’s impact on him as his childhood hero, how people find role models, and what people seek when they feel isolated, judged, or cast aside by society.

“The issues raised by Martina’s legacy resonate now more than ever, which is why it’s so important to tell her story to new generations of engaged young people who may not be aware of the vital role she played in shaping expectations around female identity and Lgbt equality,” said Charlotte Koh, head of digital media and programming for Hello Sunshine.

Koh is also producing the project.

Tennis legend and activist Martina Navratilova is getting the documentary treatment from Hello Sunshine, the Reese Witherspoon-run media company that focuses on telling female-driven stories.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald, whose work with Edward Snowden was chronicled in the Academy Award-winning CitizenFour, and Suzanne Gilbert (The Untold History of the U.S.) are producing the feature-length project.

According to Hello Sunshine, the doc will tackle Navratilova’s story “through Greenwald’s personal lens — a gay child growing up in the Reagan-era Florida. The documentary will examine Navratilova’s impact on him as his childhood hero, how we all ...

Tennis legend and activist Martina Navratilova is getting the documentary treatment from Hello Sunshine, the Reese Witherspoon-run media company that focuses on telling female-driven stories.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald, whose work with Edward Snowden was chronicled in the Academy Award-winning CitizenFour, and Suzanne Gilbert (The Untold History of the U.S.) are producing the feature-length project.

According to Hello Sunshine, the doc will tackle Navratilova’s story “through Greenwald’s personal lens — a gay child growing up in the Reagan-era Florida. The documentary will examine Navratilova’s impact on him as his childhood hero, how we all ...

Glenn Greenwald unleashed a bit of vitriol over the weekend, taking out his knives for his former friend, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow. “I used to be really good friends with Rachel Maddow,” he told New York Magazine in an interview published Sunday. “And I’ve seen her devolution from this really interesting, really smart, independent thinker into this utterly scripted, intellectually dishonest, partisan hack.” Greenwald snagged a Pulitzer Prize in 2013 for his work with Nsa leaker Edward Snowden and later founded his own company, First Look Media, with the help of billionaire Pierre Omidyar. A spokesperson for MSNBC did not immediately respond to...

Kevin Spacey is being criticized for “hiding under the rainbow” after he came out in the same statement in which he apologized for alleged unwanted sexual advances towards actor Anthony Rapp when Rapp was just 14.

In an interview with BuzzFeed published Sunday, Rapp, now 46, alleged then-26-year-old Spacey invited him to his Manhattan apartment for a party in 1986. (They were both starring in hit Broadway plays at the time.) Rapp says he was the only teen at the party and spent most of the evening in a bedroom watching television. After the party ended, he said, Spacey came into the room,...

Simon Brew Jun 30, 2017

Jon Ronson talks to us about writing Okja, writing films, his upcoming projects and Jason Statham...

This is the second time that Den Of Geek has had the pleasure of interviewing author, screenwriter and broadcaster Jon Ronson. The occasion this time was the release of the film Okja, that he’s co-written. The first time? Well, that seemed like a good place to start this interview…

I did always wonder how I’d start a conversation with you, given that the last time you and our website crossed, it nearly brought down Den Of Geek altogether…!

You know what, I’ve got a memory of this. But my memory’s so shit, you’re going to have to remind me!

You touched on it in the early passages of The Psychopath Test. We interviewed you ahead of the release of the film The Men Who Stare At Goats,...

MaryAnn’s quick take… A gripping précis of what Edward Snowden learned at the CIA and Nsa, why he went public, and why it matters. Entertaining yet also deeply unsettling. I’m “biast” (pro): big fan of Oliver Stone, and of Edward Snowden; love the cast

I’m “biast” (con): nothing

I have not read the source material

(what is this about? see my critic’s minifesto)

Snowden opens in June 2013, as journalists Laura Poitras (Melissa Leo: London Has Fallen, The Big Short) and Glenn Greenwald (Zachary Quinto: Star Trek Beyond, Hitman: Agent 47) first meet and interview, over several days, Nsa whistleblower Edward Snowden (Joseph Gordon-Levitt: The Night Before, The Walk), in a hotel in Hong Kong. My first thought upon my second viewing this weekend of Oliver Stone’s (Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, W.) gripping docudrama about these shocking real-life events is...

Following the recent disclosure of over 9,000 thousand top secret documents by Wikileaks, it has become public knowledge that the CIA have been spying on users of Smart TVs within their homes. The latest evidence has sparked yet another conversation about the current surveillance powers wielded by government agencies.

The leak disclosed that the Samsung F8000 Smart TV could be used to eavesdrop on conversations of users without consent. The program named “Weeping Angel” can, according to the documents, provide agency hackers access to the smart TV sets through the built-in voice control microphone, enabled remotely. In a press release from Wikileaks it was stated that, “The attack against Samsung smart TVs was developed in cooperation with the United Kingdom’s MI5. After infestation, Weeping Angel places the target TV in a ‘Fake Off’ mode, so that the owner falsely believes the TV is off when it is on. In ‘Fake...