Hacker News Reader

> By the way, Kevin Rothrock is the host of the podcast ‘The Naked Pravda’ from Meduza, which is one of the main independent news outlets in Russian now

That's ironic because Meduza is apparently based in Latvia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meduza:

> Meduza (Russian: Медуза, lit. 'jellyfish')[2][3] is a Russian- and English-language independent[7] news website, based in Latvia.

Another such shocker is that WikiLeaks is not based in the US.

How is that ironic?

Russia is a regime where reporting things that disagree with the official govt line is punishable by 15 years in prison[1]. It is not at all surprising that an independent news outlet reporting on and for Russia would choose to be based in a different, but nearby jurisdiction.

[1] https://news.sky.com/story/ukraine-invasion-russia-passes-la...

>Russia is a regime where reporting things that disagree with the official govt line is punishable by 15 years in prison.

Yes, sure, in a democratic country it's absolutely impossible that a person reporting things that disagree with the official govt line may spend even a single day in prison.

Julian Assange can confirm.

I'm not sure why you worded this in such a combative manner? It is undeniably true that any government comprised of humans will move to conceal or shut-up inconvenient sources of truth that make their actions look bad.

I agree.

I recently read the book "American Muckraker" by James O'Keefe. It has quite a few examples of that in modern US.

Based on unconfirmed rumors, similar things do happen here in Montenegro as well.

In the US plenty of news agencies have reported on leaked information that the government wasn’t fond of without being imprisoned. The case with Assange is a bit special as he sought out and helped people steal and release information that they were not permitted to release.

If he made an effort to truly remain separate from the sourcing of information, as most reputable reporting agencies do, then he’d likely not be in prison.

Look at the release of the Pentagon Papers.

> That's ironic because Meduza is apparently based in Latvia

It's relocated to Latvia and founded by a former main editor of lenta.ru (a pretty big news agency) after it was raided by government.

These sites say "invasion", which is against the new Russian law.

I want to see what the Russian propaganda is saying to their people. I haven't been able to find a site.

https://english.pravda.ru/

Might just be the translation, but their propaganda is so simple... Provide very little actual content.

As for the events in the tweet: guess it's time to dust off my trusted Nokia 1200.

I recommend following him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/KevinRothrock, as well as this list, which features his account plus a number of other high-quality accounts reporting on what's happening in Ukraine: https://twitter.com/i/lists/1467909429534380034

Meduza is solid for russian/european news. Especially their analytical podcasts. I recommend donating if you’re NOT currently in russia

>after being declared a ‘foreign agent’ and losing risk-averse advertisers, Meduza lives on direct contributions from readers.

A covert foreign agent, also known as a secret agent of a foreign government, may in some countries be presumed to be engaging in espionage. Some countries have formal procedures to legalize the activities of foreign agents acting overtly. An example is the 1938 United States law, the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), the governing statute of which contains a wide-ranging and detailed definition of "foreign agent."[1]

Looks like those stupid Russian barbarians are just silly copycats. They have simply stolen everything from their intelligent democratic predecessors.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Agents_Registration_Ac...

We've banned this account for using HN primarily for political/ideological/nationalistic battle. That's not allowed here, and we ban accounts that do it, regardless of what they're battling for. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

‘The Naked Pravda’ happens to have an episode on the differences between the Russian ‘foreign agent’ status and its US counterpart, and in the practices of how they're used: https://meduza.global.ssl.fastly.net/en/episodes/2021/05/08/...