Latest news with #WGBH
Yahoo
21-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
This PBS Station In Boston's Sign Is Going Viral After Trump Defunded Them
Congress has passed a rescissions bill cutting $1.1 billion in federal funding for PBS and NPR. Donald Trump celebrated the cuts on Truth Social, saying, "THIS IS BIG!!!" And now, a picture from the outside of PBS station WGBH in Boston is going viral on Reddit: "Local. Trusted. Defunded." "Short and to the point," one person said. "Way to go WGBH! Don't pretend this is normal and don't be silent. Make them wear this forever," another person commented. And this person said they were, "Canceling Paramount + , subscribing to PBS Passport. Easy. Done." Other people eulogized the station: "RIP PBS. You taught us to be good people." Another person replied to that comment, saying, "They will be around still, they know they just need to make it another 3.5 years if we have a fair election." And then a bunch of people highlighted all of the good things WGBH has done over the years, "WGBH, especially WGBH, has done so much good for the country and it's children over the decades. If you weren't already on high alert and ready to go to the mat with these fuckers, here's your sign." This person pointed out that WGBH was home to Julia Child's cooking series The French Chef, "WGBH gave us Julia Child... for that, we owe them a debt that can never be paid." And this person said WGBH provides closed captioning for mainstream shows, "In addition to the mass amount of public radio and public television broadcasting produced at WGBH, they also provide closed captioning for many commercial programs as well." And for their part, WGBH commented on the thread: "Still here." Solve the daily Crossword
Buzz Feed
21-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Buzz Feed
This PBS Station In Boston's Sign Is Going Viral After Trump Defunded Them
Congress has passed a rescissions bill cutting $1.1 billion in federal funding for PBS and NPR. Donald Trump celebrated the cuts on Truth Social, saying, "THIS IS BIG!!!" And now, a picture from the outside of PBS station WGBH in Boston is going viral on Reddit: "Local. Trusted. Defunded." "Short and to the point," one person said. "Way to go WGBH! Don't pretend this is normal and don't be silent. Make them wear this forever," another person commented. And this person said they were, "Canceling Paramount+ , subscribing to PBS Passport. Easy. Done." Other people eulogized the station: "RIP PBS. You taught us to be good people." Another person replied to that comment, saying, "They will be around still, they know they just need to make it another 3.5 years if we have a fair election." And then a bunch of people highlighted all of the good things WGBH has done over the years, "WGBH, especially WGBH, has done so much good for the country and it's children over the decades. If you weren't already on high alert and ready to go to the mat with these fuckers, here's your sign." This person pointed out that WGBH was home to Julia Child's cooking series The French Chef, "WGBH gave us Julia Child... for that, we owe them a debt that can never be paid." And this person said WGBH provides closed captioning for mainstream shows, "In addition to the mass amount of public radio and public television broadcasting produced at WGBH, they also provide closed captioning for many commercial programs as well." And for their part, WGBH commented on the thread: "Still here."
Boston Globe
22-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
William Cran, ‘Frontline' documentarian, is dead at 79
He began his career with the BBC, but he mostly worked as an independent producer, toggling between jobs on both sides of the Atlantic. He was most closely associated with WGBH's 'Frontline,' for which he produced 20 documentaries on a wide range of subjects -- some historical, like the four-part series 'From Jesus to Christ' (1998) and 'The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover' (1993), and some focused on current events, including 'Who's Afraid of Rupert Murdoch' (1995). Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up He won a slew of honors, including four Emmys, four duPont-Columbia University awards, two Peabodys, and an Overseas Press Club Award. Advertisement In 1986, he produced 'The Story of English,' an Emmy-winning nine-episode series for the BBC and PBS about how English became the world's dominant language. He, with journalists Robert MacNeil, the PBS news anchor, and Robert McCrum, turned it into a book. Mr. Cran produced two multipart documentaries based on books by historian Daniel Yergin: 'The Prize' (1990), a Pulitzer-winning history of oil, and 'The Commanding Heights' (1998, with Joseph Stanislaw), about the history of the modern global economy. Advertisement These were complicated stories, but Mr. Cran was able to frame them around characters and narrative threads that kept viewers engaged over several nights. 'I learned from him that less is more, that the script is not a shortened version of the book, but rather captions to go with the picture,' Yergin wrote in an email. 'He always stuck to the facts, but he always wanted dramatic tension.' Both documentaries were well-received, despite their potentially dry material. 'Using every familiar element of the documentarian's art, producer-director William Cran has created a masterpiece,' The Washington Post wrote of 'The Commanding Heights.' William Cran was born Dec. 11, 1945, in Hobart, on the island state of Tasmania, Australia. His mother, Jean (Holliday) Cran, was a teacher, and his father, John, was a science lecturer. The family moved to London when William was 6. He studied classics at Oxford, and though he knew early on that he wanted to make documentaries, he also dabbled in theater, directing two plays in London. After graduating in 1968, he became a trainee at the BBC, where he rose to producer, using then-novel techniques such as reconstructed scenes, and pursuing new genres including true crime. One early documentary was '1971 Luton Postmaster Murder,' about two men who were wrongly convicted of killing a British postmaster. But Mr. Cran grew tired of being what he called a 'company man,' and left the BBC after eight years. He moved to Toronto in 1976, becoming a senior producer for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.'s investigative news program 'The Fifth Estate.' Two years later, David Fanning, an executive at WGBH in Boston, reached out to him about a documentary program he was creating called 'World.' Advertisement Mr. Cran flew to Boston for a meeting -- and got stuck in the blizzard of 1978. While holed up at Fanning's home, the two cooked up an idea for Mr. Cran's first documentary for the program, 'Chachaji: My Poor Relation,' a story of modern India told through the family of writer Ved Mehta. 'What was particular about Bill is that each one of his films is different,' Fanning said in an interview, adding, 'He would do these surprising things. He would say: 'I think I want to build a set. I want to build a bedroom in the studio.'' Fanning trusted Mr. Cran so much that in 1983, when 'World' was rebranded as 'Frontline,' with a tighter focus on current events, he asked Mr. Cran to produce its first two documentaries, with the first about corruption in the NFL. The next 'Frontline' subject, '88 Seconds in Greensboro,' probed the 1979 deaths of five people after a pro-communist march was attacked by members of the Ku Klux Klan and American Nazi Party in North Carolina. Four local camera crews had filmed the bloodshed. Mr. Cran and his team 'edited the combined footage into an amazingly complete anatomy of a murder,' wrote TV reviewer David Bianculli in the Akron Beacon Journal. In 1993, Mr. Cran led a 'Frontline' documentary team that looked into possible abuses and compromises by the longtime FBI director in 'The Secret File on J. Edgar Hoover.' The four-part series built a case that Hoover, who led the agency (and its forerunner) from 1924 to 1972, potentially made concessions to organized crime and other groups to avoid public disclosures of his gay relationships. Advertisement 'Our investigation found that this master of political blackmail was wide open to blackmail himself,' Mr. Cran said. 'There is overwhelming evidence that the mob knew it had nothing to fear from Hoover's FBI.' One of Mr. Cran's most historically expansive documentaries, the series 'From Jesus to Christ' (1998), took shape after Fanning met with a WGBH producer, Marilyn Mellowes, who was working on a documentary to bring more cultural and political context to the life of Jesus and the New Testament. Fanning agreed to bring aboard additional resources, including Mr. Cran as a senior producer and director. 'We make no judgment about faith, and we make no judgments about divinity,' Fanning told journalists. The documentary framed the life of Jesus in the wider realities of Roman-controlled Galilee, described by scholars as a center of Jewish resistance and activism. Jesus, meanwhile, was not raised amid a pastoral idyll - as portrayed in some accounts - but mingled with people from across the Roman world and was probably well aware of the political foment around him, the documentary suggested. Mr. Cran's first marriage, to Araminta Wordsworth, ended in divorce. His second wife, Stephanie Tepper, who worked with him as a producer on several films, died in 1997. His third wife, Polly Bide, died in 2003. He married Vicki Barker, a CBS journalist, in 2014. She survives him, as do three daughters from his second marriage, Jessica, Rebecca and Chloe Cran; his sister, Vicki Donovan; and a granddaughter. Many of Mr. Cran's films continue to be watched. 'Two months ago,' Yergin said, 'I was walking up Madison Avenue and someone -- out of the blue, startled to see me -- stopped me to say that watching 'Commanding Heights' had changed his life.' Advertisement Material from The Washington Post was used in this obituary.
Yahoo
19-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
‘A horrible, horrible thing.' N.H. man's detention at Wyatt reminds us why facility must close
Protestors gather to demand freedom and due process for Fabian Schmidt — a German-born New Hampshire man being held at the Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls on Tuesday, March 18, 2025. Left foreground, Zack Mezera of Working Families Party speaks to the crowd with Fr. Jarrett Kerbel of Saint Luke's in East Greenwich at bottom right. (Photo by Michael Salerno/Rhode Island Current) Imagine being detained for days in a federal prison facility without knowing why. That's what is happening to Fabian Schmidt. And it's happening in Rhode Island. Once again, a detention facility in the smallest city in the smallest state is involved in a federal immigration enforcement nightmare. And, once again, we have a moment for all Rhode Islanders to ask what kind of government activity we want in our backyard. Schmidt, a German-born, U.S. permanent resident who lives in Nashua, New Hampshire, was stopped at Boston's Logan Airport on March 7 upon returning from a vacation in Europe. His mother told WGBH that, at the airport, her son was stripped naked by agents and placed in a cold shower. He was also placed on a mat in a bright room, given little water or food, and denied access to mental health medication. He collapsed and was taken to a local hospital. U.S. Customs and Border Patrol disputes this account. 'These claims are blatantly false with respect to CBP,' said Assistant Commissioner of Public Affairs Hilton Beckham Tuesday in a statement. 'When an individual is found with drug related charges and tries to reenter the country, officers will take proper action.' U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has declined requests for comment about the case from multiple news organizations, including Rhode Island Current. Schmidt had a prior marijuana-related misdemeanor from California that his lawyer, David Keller, says had been resolved. What law Schmidt may have violated to prompt his arrest and detention remains unclear. Neither he nor his lawyer have been informed of any charges, Keller told reporters, including journalist Steve Ahlquist, at a protest outside the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls Tuesday night. Schmidt was transported to Wyatt after his arrest at Logan, and remains detained there more than a week later. 'It's seriously a horrible, horrible thing that he's being held here,' Keller said. Protestors gathered outside the facility to express their outrage over Schmidt's treatment and the broader actions of ICE under President Donald Trump. But this moment also refocuses attention on the future of Wyatt itself. The facility opened in 1993, when the cash-strapped former manufacturing city needed money, and a private prison was seen as a solution. Ensuing years did indeed bring a windfall: Between 1994 and 2009, Central Falls received millions in host fees. They also brought scandal. Wyatt has faced lawsuits alleging 'malicious and sadistic' treatment of detainees and a lack of treatment for prisoners in withdrawal from opiates. In 2019, a guard who worked at Wyatt drove a truck into a crowd of protestors at the prison's gate. A few years later, the facility's warden resigned after facing charges of multiple felonies for domestic abuse. The most notorious incident occurred in 2008, when 34-year immigration detainee Hiu Lui 'Jason' Ng died from illnesses and injuries that were neglected (and actively exacerbated) at the facility. Ng's death prompted a lawsuit from the Rhode Island ACLU and a multimillion dollar settlement. In the aftermath, ICE pulled detainees from Wyatt — but it resumed housing them there during President Donald Trump's first term. Once again, we have a moment for all Rhode Islanders to ask what kind of government activity we want in our backyard. Now that Trump is back in office, Wyatt remains in heavy use by ICE. At one point last month, the facility reportedly held more than 100 ICE detainees. And so we have an unrestrained federal approach to immigration being used at, among other places, a Rhode Island facility with an abysmal track record. The situation is dangerous — and it demands swift action. In the short term, first, we can ask our federal delegation to demand that the Wyatt (and all federal detention facilities) abide by basic principles of humane treatment, including the Bill of Rights' prohibition of 'cruel and unusual punishment.' We can ask the same of the facility's five-member, publicly appointed board of directors. And given the recent track record of ICE, and Director Tom Homan's statement that 'I don't care what the judges think,' Rhode Islanders ought to demand another pause on ICE detention at Wyatt. We know from past experience that the stakes are life and death. The only way to ensure an end to Wyatt's cruelty and dysfunction would be to shut it down. The arguments for this are especially compelling. The people of Central Falls don't like it. In 2019, a survey of city residents found that 98% of respondents had negative feelings about the facility. That same year, the city's then-Mayor James Diossa, now general treasurer, called the Wyatt 'a massive brick and barbed wire monument to out-of-control capitalism, corporate greed, and social injustice' and called for its closure. In the years since, lawmakers from Central Falls have repeatedly introduced legislation that would shut the facility down. The facility is a moral stain on our state. The concept of a privately-run prison facility with a profit motive was objectionable from the start. And these perverse incentives were aptly, if grotesquely, summarized in 2009, when, in the wake of Ng's death, the jail's chairman told the Providence Journal, 'Frankly, I'm looking at it like I'm running a Motel 6… I don't care if it's Guantanamo Bay. We want to fill the beds.' (He was fired shortly thereafter.) A lengthy 2008 New York Times article captured the moral costs of the facility, which persist and are likely to get worse during Trump 2.0. The financial justifications for Wyatt no longer apply. Following the removal of ICE detainees after Ng's death, impact payments to Central Falls from the facility have been sporadic. When discussing the financial relationship between Wyatt and Central Falls, former mayor Lee Matthews has said the city was sold a 'bill of goods.' In 2019, Diossa said 'from 2010 to 2014, the city received zero payments from the Wyatt.' Lately it's been bondholders, rather than local citizens, who are fighting hardest to keep Wyatt operational. And then there is the fact it could be something so much better. The federal criminal justice system could adapt to Wyatt's closure. The upside for Central Falls could be massive. Central Falls is famously small, with an area of less than 1.3 square miles, and the Wyatt occupies a 3-acre space large enough to house 770 detainees near the Blackstone River. Instead of a prison, this could be a great site for affordable housing in a state that desperately needs it. Or, in light of Central Falls's dearth of green space, a park for picnics, concerts, and food trucks. Or even a performing arts venue in honor of the Oscar-winning Central Falls native Viola Davis. For now, it remains the setting of the detention of Fabian Schmidt and countless others who, as Rhode Island Sen. Jonathan Acosta, a Central Falls Democrat, said in 2021, 'are being treated as though they are among the worst of our criminals, when their only crime is their desire to become Americans.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Euronews
19-03-2025
- Euronews
Commission warns Alphabet and Apple they're breaking EU digital rules
The German foreign ministry has updated its travel advice for Germans travelling to the US after three German nationals were denied entry and detained as they tried to enter. "A criminal conviction in the United States, false information regarding the purpose of stay, or even a slight overstay of the visa upon entry or exit can lead to arrest, detention, and deportation upon entry or exit," information on the ministry's website now explicitly says. Advice for travellers now also warns that possessing an electronic system for travel authorisation (ESTA) document – the automated system that determines the eligibility of visitors to travel to the US under the visa waiver programme – does not automatically guarantee entry into the US. "The final decision on whether a person can enter the United States rests with the American border authorities. But this is no surprise; it is the same in Germany," a ministry spokesperson told German daily Der Spiegel. The foreign ministry was also keen to point out that the updated guidance doesn't constitute a travel warning to the US. The updated travel advice comes after the foreign ministry said on Monday it was probing the case of three of its citizens who had been denied entry and placed in detention as they tried to enter the US. "The Federal Foreign Office is aware of three cases in which German citizens were unable to enter the United States and were placed in deportation detention upon entry," a foreign ministry spokesperson said. Among those detained was Fabian Schmidt, 34, a legal permanent US resident. According to US outlet WGBH, he was detained at an airport in Boston before being transferred to a detention facility in Rhode Island. Schmidt's mother, Astrid Senior, claimed in an interview that her son was "violently interrogated" at the airport before being stripped naked and forced into a cold shower by two officials. The two other nationals affected were Jessica Brösche, a 29-year-old tattoo artist from Berlin, and Lucas Sielaff, 25, from Saxony-Anhalt. Both have since been sent back to Germany. Brösche had attempted to enter the US from Tijuana in Mexico while travelling with her friend, a US citizen. According to the online fundraiser set up to fund her return, authorities originally told her she would be detained for several days, but that what ensued instead was an "alarming sequence of events" with Brösche transferred and kept at the Otay Mesa Detention centre for more than six weeks. Brösche's friends alleged she was put in solitary confinement for nine days during her ordeal. According to ABC 10News, San Diego CoreCivic, the company that owns the detention centre where Brösche was held, denied those claims. Sielaff returned to Germany in early March after two weeks in detention his girlfriend, Lennon Tyler, told Swiss daily Tages-Anzeiger. He had entered the US on a tourist visa and visited Mexico for a short trip. Germans who have a valid tourist visa to the US are generally allowed to travel visa-free for up to 90 days, according to the US embassy website in Germany. Green card holders are generally allowed to travel abroad and re-enter the US after stays lasting less than six consecutive months, according to the US government. Wednesday's decisions by the European Commission in a number of cases involving compliance of US big tech with the European digital legislation are unlikely to improve relations between the US and the EU. A year after launching an investigation, the Commission has concluded that Alphabet's failure to let developers steer consumers outside its app stores to other offers means it does not comply with the Digital Market Act (DMA). According to the Commission, the US giant does not allow any form of communication between developers and consumers and dissuades consumers from leaving Alphabet's environment with a warning message. In a separate investigation the EU executive found that Google was self-preferencing its services such as shopping, hotels and travel, giving its own offers prominence in the search results over third parties' services, which is forbidden by the DMA. If Alphabet does not abide by the Commission's findings by offering a compliance solution, it risks a fine of up to 10% of its global annual turnover. In a separate decision on Wednesday the Commission gave Apple two years to enable the operability of devices from other brands with its iPhones to comply with the DMA. Apple was accused in June of breaching the DMA for preventing developers from steering consumers outside its ecosystem. If the tech giant has not offered solutions to ensure its devices work with third-party smartwatches, headphones, and virtual reality headsets within two more years, non-compliance action could ensue. Apple is also under a non-compliance investigation launched a year ago under the DMA whose conclusion should be presented by the EU enforcer in the coming weeks. In this case, the Commission should decide whether Apple's measures prevent users from freely choosing browsers outside Apple's ecosystem. A last investigation targets the tech giant's new contractual terms for developers to access alternative app stores and the possibility to offer an app via an alternative distribution channel. The result of the investigation should be known by June. EU probes into US tech giants have irked US President Donald Trump and US Congressional lawmakers. In February, two members of the US House of representatives sent a letter to Commission Vice-presidents Henna Virkkunen and Teresa Ribera arguing that the DMA was directed against US companies and that the fines incurred were equivalent to taxes. Online users are claiming the European Union has banned Romania's ultranationalist candidate Călin Georgescu from competing in the country's presidential elections. In one post on X, a German far-right political activist blamed the ban on 'EU-dictatocracy'. Another user alleged Europe was forbidding candidates from running in elections. Multiple accounts also claim to show Romanians protesting against alleged EU corruption. But while hundreds of protesters took to the streets after Georgescu was disqualified from the presidential race, the crowds did not come close to near the hundreds or hundreds of thousands displayed in online videos. In fact, a Euroverify reverse image search revealed the images come from anti-corruption protests in Serbia, not Romania. Although Georgescu won the first round of Romania's presidential elections in November, the results were annulled by the country's constitutional court. Declassified intelligence reports revealed a Russian-backed campaign to influence voters on social media, with a strong focus on TikTok. This led Georgescu, who is a fierce NATO and EU critic, to be dubbed the "TikTok Messiah". This wave of online disinformation comes after a ruling was issued in March by Romania's Constitutional Court — and not by the EU. Romania's highest court upheld the decision to reject Georgescu's candidacy in the election rerun scheduled for May. Prior to this, Romania's Central Electoral Commission had suspended Georgescu's candidacy application. This body has the power to reject candidates who do not meet the required legal conditions to hold presidential office. Candidacies are assessed on a case-by-case basis, meaning that Georgescu could try his luck at a future election. In mid-March, the body also suspended MEP Diana Sosoaca, the leader of the ultra-nationalist S.O.S Romania party known for her pro-Russia views, from participating in the presidential race. In a Facebook live streamed during the ruling, Sosoaca told her followers that "this proves the Americans, Jews and the European Union have plotted to rig the Romanian election before it has begun". The European Commission has taken measures to tackle foreign interference in the Romanian elections, but it has not banned candidates. In December, the commission announced the launch of legal proceedings against TikTok, due to a 'suspected breach' of the Digital Services Act. The platform is accused of failing to mitigate risks which threatened the integrity of Romania's November elections.
