censorship
619 not quite sure what goes here yet
see CRT
see academic bill of rights horrorshow
see also retaliation (eg trump twitter)
320 promote to primary, as it is essential to authoritarian; triggered by linda mac superpac an then parscale campaign threatening to sic the FCC on biden superpac (crypto, except as w/ trump is more or less in plain sight:
// kathy griffin
Right-wing media outlets have repeatedly attacked the left for "cancel culture," and not all of the criticism has come from the right. Former President Barack Obama has complained that cancel culture has gone too far, and "Real Time" host Bill Maher has argued that progressives need to aggressively debate conservatives they disagree with — not try to silence them.
But in an article published on July 19, The Spectator's Brendan O'Neill cites an example of "cancel culture" coming from the right: Donald Trump supporters trying to shut down people who have made "tawdry" comments following the attempted assassination that Trump survived during a campaign rally in Western Pennsylvania on July 13.
"People who've made tawdry comments about the shooting are being hunted, doxxed, shamed, sacked," O'Neill observes. "Most decent folk will think it is wrong to make wisecracks about an incident in which a presidential candidate was targeted for death and an ordinary citizen was killed. I do. But should it be a cancellable offence, a reputation-shattering crime? I'm not sure it should."
READ MORE: **Economist Paul Krugman: Here’s the main thing Trump and Vance have 'in common'**
O'Neill cites the comedy duo Tenacious D as an example, noting that their tour was canceled after a tasteless joke about Trump during an appearance in Sydney, Australia.
"Crass? Yes," O'Neill writes. "Too soon? Sure. But a speech crime of such epic proportions that Tenacious D must now consider its future? That's an overreaction, surely?.... We need some perspective here."
The journalist adds, "A 64-year-old comedy rocker making fun of a tragic incident might not be everyone's cup of tea, but it is not the end of the world."
O'Neill emphasizes that some far-right Trump supporters who decry "cancel culture" are guilty of the very thing they rail against.
READ MORE:**'Moment of shame': Teamsters president ripped for GOP convention speech**
"So this is what we have to look forward to if Trump ousts Biden?" O'Neill laments. "Four more years of cancel culture? Those of us whose commitment to free speech is principled rather than contingent, who think everyone from JK Rowling to the Home Depot lady should enjoy the liberty of expression, really do have our work cut out for us."
READ MORE:**Did the assassination attempt help Trump, and if so, how?**
Read Brendan O'Neill's full article for The Spectator at this link.
judd pop info 12 22
high school English teacher Vicki Baggett speaking to a local media outlet, Studio 850 in September 2020.}:
When Wilma Rudolph Played Basketball is a book about the childhood of Wilma Rudolph, a legendary sprinter who won three gold medals at the 1960 Olympic games in Rome. The book, which is 32 pages long, is geared toward readers in elementary school.
The story focuses on Rudolph's childhood and the obstacles she had to overcome to achieve success. Rudolph, for example, had polio as a child and was forced to wear a leg brace. She was told by a doctor that she would never be able to walk without the brace. But Rudolph was determined.
As a Black child in the American South, Rudolph also faced racial discrimination and segregation. But Rudolph overcame both her physical limitations and societal prejudice to become a world-champion sprinter.
It is a wholesome and inspirational story. But When Wilma Rudolph Played Basketball is one of nearly 150 books that Vicki Baggett, a high school English teacher, is seeking to ban from school libraries in Escambia County, Florida. According to a challenge form submitted by Baggett on August 24, the purpose of When Wilma Rudolph Played Basketball is "race-baiting," and the book is not appropriate for any student. ...
big funder of school bd takeover?
https://www.alternet.org/human-rights/christian-book-banning/
https://www.alternet.org/2022/11/florida-judge-blocks-censorship-law/
dystopia
note aha-ish parental rights is almost only issue gop has for midterms, and key to sweatervest win va youngkin
https://www.mediamatters.org/greg-gutfeld/fox-news-host-greg-gutfeld-says-he-supports-book-banning-including-beloved-which-he
no lnx many
Angry Right-Wing Moms Are Trying to Have Librarians Arrested by “Constitutional Sheriffs”
BY JESSICA PISHKO
NOV 04, 2022
Pippin wearing a "Moms for Liberty" shirt and placing her hands over stacks of books.
Jennifer Pippin, president of the Indian River County chapter of Moms for Liberty, helped launch a criminal investigation of her local school library, seeking to criminalize Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, among other books. Giorgio Viera/Getty Images
In March, special counsel to the sheriff of Hamilton County, Tennessee, Coty Wamp, was campaigning for district attorney when she met with a group of parents calling themselves Moms for Liberty. Wamp said afterwards that she had facilitated a meeting between the “parents’ rights” group and the sheriff’s office because she thought law enforcement could help the group in its goal of banning books. “I think that there’s going to come a time with some of these books where it crosses a criminal line,” Wamp said. “It’s called contributing to the delinquency of a minor.” Wamp won that promotion to district attorney and was one of the earliest law enforcement figures to begin to establish a frightening new alliance between far-right sheriff’s offices and the radical right-wing parent’s group seeking to upend America’s educational system.
After Wamp’s meeting, she did not shy away from the possibility of filing charges for “criminal” books, although she later told Jezebel that she did not intend to suggest she was going to go about arresting librarians. Whatever her actual intentions, the alliance Wamp sought to foster is a dangerous one and one that is spreading.
Across the country, members of Mothers for Liberty, a far-right group focused on banning library books and whitewashing school curricula, have appealed to sheriffs as allies in these goals. Much like the partnerships between sheriffs and militia members, or sheriffs and election deniers, this alliance is another example of how sheriffs have become the arm of the law willing to enforce the radical agenda of the far-right. It also shows how determined groups like M4L are to be seen as having legal legitimacy—and how willing sheriffs are to provide it.
I have spent the past few years reporting on far-right sheriffs and their allies and confidants. One notable change since 2020 has been the increasing number of women who identify with the politics of far-right groups like the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association. While most people associate groups like CSPOA with hyper-masculine-fueled violence, women are often key facilitators between these groups and voters.
Much of this alliance emerged during the pandemic, when far-right parent groups opposed masking in schools. On forums like Facebook, these parents, mostly mothers, passed around information about the so-called constitutional sheriff movement, citing its members as potential allies. This blossomed into an anti-public-school movement focused on altering classroom curricula to eliminate material about racism, sex, or LGBTQ people; policing classrooms and libraries; eliminating requirements for all forms of vaccines as well as masking for COVID; and pushing parents to embrace home-schooling as an ideal way to escape federal and state government indoctrination.
While many anti-mask and election conspiracy rallies were filled with men clad in military-style apparel and carrying long guns, women presented a softer side and turned out in equal—if not stronger—numbers, in my observation. During the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association’s “Arise USA Resurrection Tour” last year, the two women founders of Freedom Angels appeared onstage to talk not just about resisting mask and vaccine orders but also about establishing entire communities free from government regulation, like food co-ops and alternative home-schooling. Large public events sponsored by CSPOA drew crowds approaching gender parity.
Moms 4 Liberty—their slogan is “Parents’ Rights”—is just one of these influential women-led groups. It was formed in Florida by Tina Descovich and Tiffany Justice after both lost their reelection campaigns for their respective local school boards. Their latest conference theme was “Joyful Warriors,” another example of how far-right women mitigate the toxic masculinity associated with groups like the Oath Keepers, border militias, and the Proud Boys. According to recent reporting by Mother Jones, the group now claims 100,000 members across 38 states.
While M4L has been accused of various direct actions like harassing local school board officials with emails, calls, and threats, it has lately begun to approach county sheriffs as a way to legitimize its grievances and gain actual traction in criminal courts. Granted, it hasn’t been too successful yet. But these alliances suggest that should it not achieve its goals via democratic means, M4L is perfectly willing to find its own firepower.
One strategy has been to bring criminal complaints to sympathetic sheriffs, which become “sex crime” investigations, further spreading the QAnon-influenced anxieties that children are being recruited or brainwashed by sex predators presenting as progressives. In the spring, Jennifer Pippin, who is an M4L chapter chair, filed a criminal complaint against a school library in Indian River County, Florida, for failing to remove dozens of books flagged by the members as inappropriate. The original list of books for examination included more than 150 titles, and while some were removed, not all of them were. In an email, Pippin told a member of the school board that she was focused on “ALL of the books currently in the libraries that have sex, rape, drugs etc etc in them that need to be removed immediately so they don’t get into the hands of anymore students in our district.” She threatened, “I’m holding all of you accountable.”
Indian River County Sheriff Eric Flowers—who last year was aSheriff Fellow at the far-right think tank Claremont Institute—assigned a sergeant to investigate the issue, reviewing emails between an M4L representative and various local officials. There were even annotated pages of the books in question, including sections of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, a 2005 novel by Jonathan Safran Foer about a 9-year-old boy whose father is killed in the 9/11 attacks. (The book has been the subject of previous attacks by some parents since it was published.) The pages are annotated with handwritten notes like “sexual encounter” and “masterbation.”
The six-week investigation resulted in a 74-page report, which concluded that “no crime occurred.” Whether patently unconstitutional charges are ultimately filed in cases like these, though, is not the issue. The chilling effect of the threat is.
That threat is real. In a letter to the school superintendent, Flowers wrote that “the totality of the circumstances do not allow us to make an arrest in this case,” but added, “We do not feel that this content is appropriate for young children even though it does not rise to the level of a crime.” Flowers then recommended “stricter oversight” for children’s books.
Other sheriffs—especially those in Florida, where M4L began and has garnered support from Gov. Ron DeSantis—have conducted similar investigations into so-called dirty books, and while no criminal charges have resulted thus far, they indicate that going to the sheriff is an accepted strategy. In Flagler County, Florida, another M4L member filed an almost identical complaint to Pippin’s. And in Polk County, Florida, a dark money group called County Citizens Defending Freedom funded a series of complaints about books (under the guise of citizen complaints) to Sheriff Grady Judd, who deemed the material “vile and nasty and inappropriate” but not pornographic. Judd added that the matter was “under review to determine if there will be a criminal investigation” based on additional complaints, which all appear to have stemmed from the same dark money group that produced the initial complaints.
Sheriff candidates in many counties are also courting M4L members as political allies, appearing alongside them at events, providing legal legitimacy to their fears, and contributing to the spread of misinformation. Sheriff Wayne Ivey of Brevard County, who was recently exposed for potentially trying to bribe political candidates he did not like to exit races and endorse his preferred candidates, has embraced M4L-allied members for school board.
In Tulsa, Oklahoma, Sheriff Vic Regalado did an April speaking event with an M4L county chair in which he supplied background on “applicable laws,” explaining that many criminal laws do not apply to book banning, even things that would “make a normal person puke.” He noted, however, regarding a book of poetry, “If an individual on the streets of Tulsa, Oklahoma, were showing this to a child, they would be in cuffs like that”—snapping his fingers—“and they would be prosecuted, but I don’t know that they would be convicted in today’s world.”
“This is now accepted,” he continued, waving a page around, arguing that a jury would be unlikely to convict because “a lot of parents are apathetic,” and blaming in particular single mothers. He ended by promising to consult with the district attorney about “how we can insert law enforcement into this thing.”
It might seem unusual to have elected law enforcement—especially in a time of much-hyped fears of violent crime and alleged understaffing—insert themselves into whether a book should be in a school library. Sheriffs, as politicians, need not justify the use of their resources, though, whether they are used to solve murders, investigate non-existent election fraud, or thoroughly report out whether Jonathan Safran Foer’s book about 9/11 is too sexy for the youths.
The alliance between sheriffs and M4L makes further levels of political sense as well. Local police chiefs are unlikely to be allies, as their budgets are scrutinized by city leadership and they tend to be in larger cities. Sheriffs serve longer terms than police chiefs and are politicians at heart, having the ability to deploy time and personnel however they see fit, with little if any oversight. And even if there were oversight, in most states where M4L is active, it has the support of state actors and other powerful politicians. Investigating a school book is both safe, easy, and popular in these jurisdictions, especially compared with solving actual crime.
https://www.alternet.org/2022/09/doesnt-get-to-tell-county/ xian ~ gay
mma 922
As we enter Banned Books Week 2022, a new movement to gut public school libraries is sweeping the nation, with far-right “parental rights” group Moms for Liberty and two pro-censorship organizations — Book Look and Book Looks — at the forefront.
Moms for Liberty’s book banning campaign is growing in both size and intensity, with a clear strategy: manufacture moral panic in your community to pressure public schools into removing titles with LGBTQ themes or discussions of racism in American history. With the help of Book Look and Book Looks, it's been increasingly successful.
With over 200 chapters, Moms for Liberty has become the largest driver of the nationwide book banning crusade, which has led to harassment and threats against public school teachers, librarians, and education officials. Moms for Liberty chapters have challenged Martin Luther King Jr. and the March to Washington because of “photographs of political violence” and Ruby Bridges Goes to School because of “racist remarks,” among other objections. Moms for Liberty is also a vocally anti-LGBTQ organization and has advocated for trans bathroom bans in public schools.
Now, Media Matters has obtained documentation showing that Moms for Liberty has created “Books/Library Director” chapter positions that would be responsible for surveying and evaluating library book lists and challenging them within local school districts. These positions would allow each individual chapter to have a member organizing the gutting of public school libraries. One chapter has already started a “book review committee” and encouraged parents to go to their child’s public school open house and take pictures of books in the library containing “material most of us would not want our kids reading.”
Media Matters has also uncovered evidence that Moms for Liberty chapters “have teamed up” with Book Look and Book Looks, which appear to be distinct entities that are crowdsourcing parents’ book reviews and using them as justification for literature bans in public schools. And while the two organizations are separate, they use nearly the same book rating system, have overlapping book reviews, and operate in a seemingly identical manner.
[13 reasons why]
Book Look and Book Looks both collect reports to expedite the process of challenging books, helping conservative activists organize campaigns around parents’ outrage and demand a book’s removal without even reading it. Anonymous volunteers create reports by documenting examples of profane or inappropriate content with their corresponding page number, which are then packaged into “easy to understand book content reviews centered around objectionable content.” Books are given a rating on a scale from zero to five, with zero being “appropriate for all audiences” and five being “might be arrested for reading at school board meetings.”
The rating system allows heavily biased right-wing reviewers to disguise themselves as objective arbiters. For example, a Book Looks report about Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home — an award-winning graphic novel about the author’s “journey from childhood to college student to adult in relation to both her identity as a lesbian and her dynamic with her family, particularly her father who is a closeted gay man” — cites the depiction of “alternative sexualities” and “alternative gender ideologies” among other justifications for why it should be removed from school libraries. It was given a four rating: “Not for minors.”
In addition to rating books, sharing out-of-context quotes on Facebook of “objectionable” books is another part of the groups’ broader strategy that they say “gathers attention” on social media and “gets people engaged with outrage.” Individuals are also encouraged to send school boards snippets of the most objectionable books and attend board meetings to “ask publicly about progress,” or, “if you have brave volunteers, attempt to read some passages from these books and ask if the board thinks this is OK for minors. Let them stand behind this material and own it if they are not working to get rid of it.”
Notably, Book Look’s website directs parents to links about the anti-LGBTQ “grooming” smear and articles about Moms for Liberty “fighting against porn” in schools; it also provides users with anti-trans memes to spread on social media. Some of the group’s infographics push back against the accusation that Book Look and Moms for Liberty encourage banning books, claiming that they “support the process of challenging and removing books in school libraries” and establishing “book boundaries” — which they argue is distinct from “the banning of books.” (It’s not.)
There is a clear electoral initiative in this strategy, as the last point on Book Look’s plan of action is to “vote them [school board members] out next election if they refuse to work on this issue.” Taking over school boards has been a key strategy of Moms for Liberty since its inception, and it’s no surprise that the group's efforts are accelerating as the midterms approach.
In addition to overlapping strategies, there is an undeniable connection between Moms for Liberty and these two organizations. Book Look was originally formed as the Moms for Liberty Library Book Committee, and while Book Looks claims to be unaffiliated with Moms for Liberty, Book Riot uncovered that the organization was actually spearheaded by a Moms for Liberty member. Book Looks also uses the same rating system that was shared on the Moms For Liberty Brevard County public Facebook page one month before the group formally began.
Even though the organizations are clearly tied, they have successfully duped reporters. The Washington Post extensively reported on Book Look and Book Looks without mentioning their close affiliation with Moms for Liberty (although the piece did quote the chair of a local Moms for Liberty chapter praising the group’s efforts to “prevent children from encountering sexually explicit material”). MIT’s Technology Review did the same.
Moms for Liberty has positioned itself at the center of the book banning movement to whitewash American history and push an anti-LGBTQ agenda while placing right-wing propaganda in school libraries instead. And it is using the cover of supposed parent reviews to advance this right-wing campaign, intentionally stoking outrage and encouraging distrust in public schools.
- Jon Skolnik @ Salon: What’s behind the right-wing book-ban frenzy? Big money, and a long-term plan.
Tags: Charlie Kirk Mike Lindell Sidney Powell Round-Up Turning Point USA
https://www.salon.com/2022/02/08/whats-behind-the-right-wing-book-ban-frenzy-big-money-and-a-long-term-plan/
...last week, The Guardian reported GUK that a number of ostensible grassroots groups on the frontlines of the "parental rights" movement have connections to right-wing politicians and donor networks who are highly skilled at "astroturfing" local conflicts on a national scale.
Notable among these groups is Moms for Liberty, a 70,000-member nonprofit with 165 chapters throughout the country. The group is operated by Tina Descovich and Tiffany Justice, two former school board members. But according to its articles of incorporation, Moms for Liberty was originally co-founded and co-directed by Bridget Ziegler, the wife of Christian Ziegler, vice chairman of the Florida Republican Party, as Media Matters noted. Marie Rogerson, a former campaign consultant who now serves as the group's director of development, formerly worked for Republican state Rep. Randy Fine, according to Treasure Coast Newspapers. Fine himself has been a central figure in Florida Republicans' crusade against "critical race theory."
While Moms for Liberty is perhaps the most high-visibility advocacy groups of its kind, there are many others in the mix. Groups like Parents Defending Education and No Left Turn in Education also operate in the same ecosystem and, like Moms for Liberty, have connections to big players in right-wing politics. ...
rELATED: "Parental rights" started on the Christian fringe — now it's the GOP's winning issue
Parents Defending Education — a self-described "grassroots organization" promoting "the restoration of a healthy, non-political education for our kids" — is led by Nicole Neily, whose résumé is littered with connections to the Koch brothers. Neily was the president and founder of the pro-free speech group Speech First, which according to The Nation, runs "a highly professional astro-turfing campaign, with a board of former Bush administration lawyers and longtime affiliates of the Koch family." Neily has also served in leadership capacities at the Independent Women's Forum and the Cato Institute, both of which are direct recipients of Koch cash.
At present, nonprofit law does not require nonprofit organizations such as Moms for Liberty to disclose their donors. But in an interview with Salon, Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice denied speculation that the group is funded by big-money benefactors, claiming it is mostly financed through memberships, small donations, and t-shirt sales. ...
trms 27th
It was last fall when local Republicans' efforts to ban books started to look like a national trend. A county in Virginia removed LGBTQIA fiction from school libraries. Around the same time, a Kansas school district started pulling several well-known novels from school libraries, including "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood and a Pulitzer Prize winning play from August Wilson.
It was against this backdrop that a Republican state legislator in Texas put together a list of 850 books he believed might make students feel uncomfortable — and then asked schools which of the titles are available to students.
Nora Pelizzari, a spokesperson for the National Coalition Against Censorship, soon after told The Washington Post, "What has taken us aback this year is the intensity with which school libraries are under attack.... [T]his feels like a more overarching attempt to purge schools of materials that people disagree with. It feels different than what we've seen in recent years."
The campaign clearly isn't fading. NBC News reported overnight:
A Tennessee school board voted to remove "Maus," a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust, from the district's curriculum after officials objected to eight instances of profanity and an image of a nude woman. The McMinn County Board of Education's Jan. 10 vote to remove the novel, published by cartoonist Art Spiegelman about his Jewish parents' experiences in Nazi concentration camps, was 10-0, according to meeting minutes.
The fact that the unanimous vote to remove the celebrated work about the Holocaust came shortly before Holocaust Remembrance Day made matters just a bit worse.
It'd be easier to overlook stories like these if they were far and few between, but that's simply not the case. Axios reported last week, "School districts from Pennsylvania to Wyoming are bowing to pressure from some conservative groups to review — then purge from public school libraries — books about LGBTQ issues and people of color. "
he article quoted Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom, saying, "I've worked for this office for 20 years, and we've never had this volume of challenges come in such a short time."
NBC News reported a week earlier that dozens of Black authors are finding their works "are being pulled from school libraries under the pretext that they're teaching critical race theory.... Most of the books that are targeted for bans don't teach critical race theory but are written by and about people of color."
As we've discussed, these fights are not altogether new. Conservative activists have launched all kinds of related efforts for generations, targeting books they deemed morally and socially unworthy for one reason or another.
But there's evidence that the renewed book-banning campaign is intensifying, even as many on the right complain about "cancel culture
you'd think that scopes trial inherit the wind thing would slow them down: big tailwind boost by CRT, but prolly benefits from homophobe roots, alt rt boost anti-sem? see TRMS on az? one really anodyne classic? see 1/27
Orwellian': Tennessee school board just banned a Pulitzer Prize graphic novel from Holocaust curriculum
January 27, 2022
TheMcMinn County School board in Tennessee just voted 10-0 to ban the use of the Pulitzer Prize winning novelMAUS by Art Spiegelman, from the school’s 8th grade curriculum. The graphic novel is considered by...
"Walk Like an Egyptian" was one of the songs which were claimed to have been banned by Clear Channel following the September 11, 2001 attacks. Snopes in researching this found that the list was simply suggestions regarding songs to be sensitive about when deciding what to play.[9][10] It was also included in a "list of records to be avoided" drawn up by the BBC during the Gulf War.[11][12]
==
https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/songs-banned-from-radio/
The term "political correctness" is often described by Republicans to attack liberals and progressives they view as hypersensitive, but Republicans have their own version of "political correctness" and ideas on what one should or should or shouldn't say. Right-wing political correctness was painfully evident in the months and years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and some of it came from the supporters of President George W. Bush who comprised the management at Clear Channel. Journalist Cheyenne Roundtree, in an article published by the Daily Beast on September 9, looks back on the songs that Clear Channel excluded following 9/11.
After 9/11, Roundtree recalls, "Even family-friendly Disney Channel played a part in hammering home the idea of nationalism in having a handful of its beloved child stars, including Hilary Duff, Shia LaBeouf, and twins Tia and Tamera Mowry, wax lyrical about the American flag…. It was in this same vein of thinly veiled propaganda wrapped up in patriotism that the country's largest radio company, Clear Channel Communications, now iHeartRadio, attempted to ban more than 150 songs from the airwaves across its roughly 1200 stations."
Roundtree continues, "Any song that mentioned airplanes was targeted, as well as war, death, and fire. The de facto ban seemed primarily to target rock, punk and heavy metal bands, such as Alice in Chains, System of a Down, and every single track by Rage Against the Machine. But relatively innocuous songs were included too, including 'Walk Like an Egyptian,' because of its references to the Middle East;the hopeful lyrics of John Lennon's 'Imagine'; Louis Armstrong's 'What a Wonderful World'; and Frank Sinatra's cheery 'New York, New York.'"
The Bangles' 1986 smash "Walk Like an Egyptian" is a fun, goofy song from the Ronald Reagan era — hardly an ode to jihadists. But as Roundtree points out, the very fact that it had "references to the Middle East" suddenly made it unacceptable to Clear Channel execs.
"At the time," Roundtree explains, "Clear Channel moved quickly to stamp out reports that it had issued a mandate that barred stations from playing these songs. But when the full list eventually leaked, top executives hurriedly placed the blame on those at the local level, calling it 'a grass-roots effort that was apparently circulated among program directors,' although the final compiled list, known as the 'Clear Channel memorandum,' was sent out by company management."
On September 17, 2001 — six days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks — Slate reported that Clear Channel's do-not-play guidelines included not only edgy heavy metal favorites like Metallica's "Seek and Destroy" and Ozzy Osbourne's "Suicide Solution," but also, Pat Benatar's 1983 hit "Love Is a Battlefield" and Bobby Darin's recording of "Mack the Knife" (an English-language version of a German cabaret standard from the 1920s). Slate observed that "many of the songs on the list are ridiculous in their tenuous connection to anything even remotely offensive to survivors of the September 11 attack."
Roundtree comments, "On the surface, it makes sense for stations perhaps not to play songs about death, airplane crashes, or anything doomsday-related out of an abundance of caution and sensitivity for freshly traumatized listeners — who had just witnessed a terrorist attack unfold in real time on their TVs. But in hindsight, it reeks of needless censorship."
Nora Pelizzari, director of communications for the National Coalition Against Censorship, believes that Clear Channel's post-9/11 do-not-play list went to ridiculous extremes.
Pelizzari told the Beast, "It's one thing to say, 'OK, we're not going to release a movie that depicts anything eerily similar to what happened on 9/11 because we feel now is not the moment when that's going to get a good response…But John Lennon's 'Imagine' was on that list. What's the justification there? The idea that we shouldn't be talking about peace, we shouldn't be talking about people coming together as one — that somehow that was going to be the wrong moment to be talking about that?"
Rage Against the Machine,a rap-metal band with a hard-left point of view, were totally banned from airplay under Clear Channel's do-not-play guidelines.
"It just reinforces this sort of nativist patriotism that is really troubling to see reinforced by private companies, because what it really suggests is that dissent is unpatriotic, when in fact, America is built on the right to disagree with the government," Pelizzari told the Beast. "We must be allowed to access dissenting views and opposing views to express our own dissent, our own confusion, our own anger, our own agreements. That's how our democracy functions. Disagreement and debate are crucial to thoughtful decision-making. In times of crisis, it's even more important to make sure that we're allowing dissenting voices to be heard."
https://theintercept.com/2020/10/05/voa-reporters-conflict-of-interest-memo
AMID ALLEGATIONS OF political interference at Voice of America, a Trump ally who heads the outlet’s parent agency hasissued restrictive policy guidelines on conflicts of interest that would require journalists who are publicly critical of government agencies to recuse themselves from covering that agency.As an example, it says journalists who “like” a social media comment that “disparages the President” should recuse themselves from covering Donald Trump.
On Sunday afternoon, VOA staff were sent a memo on the policy dated October 2 by Michael Pack, a former conservative filmmaker who is currently the CEO of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, or USAGM, the agency that oversees VOA.Pack was previously a close associate of former White House adviser and far-right activist Steve Bannon. The memo, which was first reported Sunday night by NPR, was accompanied by an updated“social media policy” that reflects Pack’s guidance.
Intercept spoke with three VOA journalists about the memo, all of whom requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly. The three journalists said the policy had sparked immediate concern that such a broad definition of “conflicts of interest” could be used to target journalists whose coverage VOA management deemed too critical of the Trump administration. Two of the journalists also expressed concerns that Pack’s guidance ran afoul of the agency’s “firewall” — a legal requirement that VOA remain free from government interference, including from USAGM.
A spokesperson for USAGM did not respond to multiple requests for comment,
[doc]
all three journalists also described an increasingly aggressive internal review process, in which VOA managers review rank-and-file journalists’ coverage for evidence of political bias. On Sunday, NPR reported that VOA’s longtime and scrupulously neutral White House reporter Steve Herman was the subject of such an internal investigation into whether his coverage of the White House was biased. Two journalists at VOA told The Intercept that a number of other investigations have taken place of less high-profile reporters, often resulting in reporters being told to provide more airtime for right-wing viewpoints.
“Conflicts of interest are not limited to those involving the recipient of money, ownership of stock, or gifts. The rule is broader,” the memo says. “Simply put, it is a conflict of interest for a journalist to participate personally and substantially in reporting on an issue: (1) in which they have a personal interest or (2) have publically personally expressed a political opinion.”
The conflict of interest policy outlined by Pack goes further than typical journalistic ethics policies, which usually stress neutrality or objectivity but do not characterize voicing a single opinion as a conflict.
The memo goes on to say that public criticism offered on any issue is grounds for recusal from reporting on that issue. The memo offers as an example if a VOA journalist “publicly criticizes the U.S. Department of Justice’s leadership for, among other things, implementing the policies and protecting the prerogatives of the Administration,” they “must recuse themselves from reporting on the Department and the part of the Administration implicated by the criticism.” The memo also says that staff should not cover any issue in which they are affected by government policy, giving the example that J-1 visa holders should “recuse themselves from any story involving J-1 visas.”
The memo cites the New York Times’s Ethical Journalism Handbook and the Washington Post’s “Policies and Standards” Page, which respectively contain language about “neutrality” and “fairness.” But the CEO’s memo turns minor violations of journalistic objectivity — a malleable concept to begin with — into a punishable offense. And, against the backdrop of Pack’s tenure at USAGM, employees worry that the broad standard lays a groundwork that could be used to punish journalists or water down coverage of the Trump administration.
One VOA journalist told The Intercept that “this new guidance is so vague and so broad that it could be used to silence journalists for covering almost anything within their own countries. … If a journalist working in the U.S. on a J-1 visa can’t cover the J-1 visa issue, can a journalist in America who breathes air not cover policy about clean air?”
The memo says that other behavior, like “liking” a comment on Facebook, can be scrutinized as well. “For example, a journalist who on Facebook ‘likes’ a comment or political cartoon that aggressively attacks or disparages the President must recuse themselves from covering the President,” the memo says.
Bill Grueskin, a professor of professional practice at Columbia Journalism School, told The Intercept by email that conflict of interest policies typically define a “conflict” more narrowly. He gave examples like holding stock in a company you cover or having a spouse at the agency you cover.
“We can all be personally affected by almost any government action, whether it’s adjusting Social Security contributions or living near a national forest,” Grueskin wrote. “By setting such vague standards, VOA is opening up the possibility that these policies will be enforced arbitrarily, to harass reporters who don’t fall in line with the agenda their bosses are pushing.”
Pack’s memo has also raised concerns about VOA’s “firewall,” a policy that exists to protect VOA from outside government influence. VOA’s firewall is written into its congressional charter. Passed into law by the 1994 Broadcasting Act, the firewall “prohibits interference by any U.S. government official in the objective, independent reporting of news … free of political interference,” VOA’s website says. “The firewall ensures that VOA can make the final decisions on what stories to cover, and how they are covered.”
Thomas Kent, a former president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty who also teaches at Columbia University, told The Intercept that the networks under USAGM, including VOA, have an obligation to set policies for fairness and neutrality. “The law says that the government and the head of USAGM should not be making editorial decisions and must respect the editorial decisions of all the networks. In that sense, I think that a memo of this sort should be coming from the heads of the networks, not the head of USAGM,” Kent said.
Related
How Voice of America Persian Became a Trump Administration PR Machine
**Since Pack became the head of USAGM in June, he has been accused of trying to politicize coverage at VOA.** Shortly after his confirmation, hefired the heads of four media organizations under USAGM’s purview, including the heads of Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks. Pack later gave an interview with pro-Trump news outlet The Federalist, in which he speculated that the groups he oversaw would be “a great place to put a foreign spy” — a comment some in VOA thought could subject their overseas colleagues to reprisals. And in the same interview, while stressing that he would not tell specific journalists what to report, he nonetheless said it was his job “to drain the swamp, to root out corruption and to deal with these issues of bias.”
Pack’s comments caused controversy at VOA, and a group of 14 journalists at VOA signed a letter denouncing the actions and remarks about spies. One source told The Intercept that Pack’s past comments are an important factor in how VOA employees are viewing the new guidance.
“Given Pack’s past comments saying that there is an inherent left-wing bias in VOA and … that his job is to correct that bias, this kind of sudden emphasis on our social media policy very much makes me think that they’re looking at some of our social media profiles online to substantiate those claims.”
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aha: censorship seems like a bad thing, anti-transparency which has all kinds of neg downstream effects such as corruption, but with soc med we have lost quality assurance filters, so we need some form of it but eternal question is who will/can do it well fairly? (who decides who decides?)
[aha: kind of scary that a superpac (which is spozed to be indep?) is throwing around its wt as if it's a legit org, not a effing slush fund of dark $ whose main purpose is to give cover to funder and cand on neg attack ads (often right before election when cannot be countered/debunked?)
one wonders if this is local tv stations stading up for democracy and free speech, or their refusal to play ref, or more darkly, they just want the massive ad revenue flowing from dark money superpacs]
aha 520 this id trump superweapon so can't afford to have even innoc factcheck link attached thus goes to war/retaliantion
he claims/implied HIS freedom of sp isat stake? victim? our that of all of us? trumpistas?
bunch // AN 520
https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/donald-trump-just-issued-his-most-serious-threat-yet-to-free-speech
salon
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Alex HendersonMay 28, 2020
Although Twitter has been one of President Donald Trump’s favorite modes of communication, he is furious with the social media outlet this week for fact-checking two of his tweets: Twitter…
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/kellyanne-conway-paints-target-on-back-of-twitter-executive-in-charge-of-fact-check-label/
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authoritarian
https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/trump-goes-ballistic-over-twitters-fact-check-but-he-has-no-idea-what-hes-talking-about
That didn’t take long.
Around 5:30 PM Twitter slapped a label on two of President Donald Trump’s tweets, inviting social media users to “get the facts about mail-in ballot.” It’s the first time Twitter has placed what some are calling a “warning label” on any individual tweet.
And while others say it’s not sufficient – Trump lies remain and the label isn’t especially strong – Trump went ballistic just two hours later.
Despite the fact that Trump was engaging in voter suppression, he is accusing Twitter of “interfering in the 2020 Presidential Election."
'They are saying my statement on Mail-In Ballots, which will lead to massive corruption and fraud, is incorrect, based on fact-checking by Fake News CNN and the Amazon Washington Post.”
Actually, his tweets are filled with lies and falsehoods, no fact-checking required.
But Trump did not stop there.
In yet another example of his belief that he is all powerful, Trump decreed, “Twitter is completely stifling FREE SPEECH, and I, as President, will not allow it to happen!”
The President, who has never read the U.S. Constitution and little to no understanding of it, does not comprehend that he is using a private platform operated by a private company, and the only “free speech” guarantee is when the government “stifles” it.
Twitter can do what they want. And they have.
cody f
Twitter finally took a minor step to address the deluge of distortions, lies, and blatant disinformation flowing from President Donald Trump’s account.
Now, following a pair of Trump’s bogus tweets sent Tuesday morning spreading lies about mail-in voting, Twitter has inserted an alert telling readers to “Get the facts about mail-in ballots” as seen below:
https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/twitter-finally-takes-a-step-to-counter-trumps-online-disinformation
...[twet] Clicking the link brings readers to a page that addressed Trump’s falsehoods. It explained:
On Tuesday, President Trump made a series of claims about potential voter fraud after California Governor Gavin Newsom announced an effort to expand mail-in voting in California during the COVID-19 pandemic. These claims are unsubstantiated, according to CNN, Washington Post and others. Experts say mail-in ballots are very rarely linked to voter fraud.
It continued:
Trump falsely claimed that mail-in ballots would lead to “a Rigged Election.” However, fact-checkers say there is no evidence that mail-in ballots are linked to voter fraud.
– Trump falsely claimed that California will send mail-in ballots to “anyone living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there.” In fact, only registered voters will receive ballots.
– Though Trump targeted California, mail-in ballots are already used in some states, including Oregon, Utah and Nebraska.
While it’s important to rebut Trump’s attempt to manipulate the election and mislead the population about the integrity of American democracy, it’s easy to see how this solution from Twitter will raise further problems.
Conservatives will undoubtedly be outraged by the fact-check. Given how social media outlets have caved to faux and unjustified conservative outrage in the past, it’s easy to imagine that Twitter will respond poorly to these attacks.
It also creates the problem that the rest of Trump’s Twitter feed remains littered with disinformation and lies, including smears about President Barack Obama and former Vice President Joe Biden and a horrendous conspiracy theory insinuating baselessly that former Rep. Joe Scarborough murdered a congressional staffer. Correcting some lies and not others could create the appearance that Twitter is putting its seal of approval on misinformation.
Some, including Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), have advocated that Twitter ban Trump completely because of his abuse of the platform. Ultimately, someone like Trump leaves companies like Twitter in an incredibly difficult, perhaps impossible, situation. The best solution is to get reckless spreaders of disinformation out of power.
https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/trumps-campaign-files-frivolous-lawsuit-against-tv-station-for-airing-attack-ad-slamming-his-coronavirus-response
no lnx
Trump campaign sues Wisconsin TV station over ad using his words on coronavirus
By Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America - Donald Trump, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=52647057
Written by Alex Henderson April 14, 2020
President Donald Trump’s initial response to the coronavirus pandemic has been the subject of various attack ads, including one from the Lincoln Project (a group of Never Trump conservatives that includes attorney George Conway) and one from Priorities USA (a Democratic super PAC). The theme of those ads is that Trump hasfailed to take the coronavirus threat seriously. And in Wisconsin, Trump’s reelection campaign has filed a frivolous lawsuit against WJFW-TV (which airs NBC programming in North-Central Wisconsin) for airing the Priorities USA ad — calling it “false and defamatory,” claiming that the ad takes Trump’s words out of context.
The campaign filed the lawsuit on Monday, April 13 in Price County Circuit Court. The ad by Priorities USA, called “Existential Threat,” depicts a graph and timeline that uses actual statements Trump made in January and February — for example, “This is their new hoax” and “We have it totally under control.” A variety of Trump critics, from liberals and progressives to centrists to Never Trump conservatives, have been using these quotes to tar and feather Trump and demonstrate that he spent months downplaying the severity of coronavirus. But the Trump campaign, in its lawsuit against WJFW-TV, takes issue with the way Trump’s words “the coronavirus” and “this is their new hoax” are used together — arguing that the ad makes it sound like Trump was saying “the coronavirus, this is their new hoax” as a single sentence. However, the intonation in Trump’s voice makes it sound like two different statements made at different times: Trump’s tone of voice is much lower on “the coronavirus” than it is on “This is their new hoax.”
Law & Crime reporter Jerry Lambe explains, “The tone and deflection of the speech between the first and second phrases is quite different, but the Trump campaign’s lawsuit suggests the text on the screen contains a comma to connect the phrases in a way which suggests they were uttered together.”
Trump’s “this is their new hoax” assertion was made at a South Carolina rally on February 28. Downplaying the threat that coronavirus posed in the U.S. — even though it had killed thousands of people in China — the president argued that Democrats were using coronavirus as a “hoax” just as they had used impeachment and the Ukraine scandal as a “hoax.” Trump’s campaign is claiming that he was saying that Democrats were perpetrating a hoax, not that coronavirus itself was a hoax. But clearly, Trump was downplaying coronavirus’ severity and the threat that it posed in the U.S. — where, according to John Hopkins University in Baltimore and CNN’s coronavirus/Hopkins page, it had killed more than 23,600 people as of Tuesday morning, April 14.
In the lawsuit, Trump’s campaign argues that “Trump’s actual remarks demonstrate that he was specifically referring to the Democrats’ politicization of the coronavirus pandemic when he used the word ‘hoax.’”
Lambe also points out that although the lawsuit “refers to the defendant as WJFW-NBC,” it “is formally filed against Northland Television, LLC, the corporate owner of the local affiliate. The affiliate is not owned by NBC but broadcasts the network’s programming.”
The Lincoln Project’s attack ad, titled “Distraction,” is equally scathing. In that ad, anti-Trump conservatives tear apart the absurd claim that Trump, in January and February, was distracted from coronavirus because of his impeachment. That ad argues that when the World Health Organization (WHO) was warning that coronavirus was a “global health emergency,” Trump was too busy with “campaign rallies and golfing” to seriously address the crisis:
Priorities USA has released an official response to the Wisconsin lawsuit, asserting, “This is pretty simple: Donald Trump doesn’t want voters to hear the truth, and he’s trying to bully TV stations into submission. The truth is that Trump ignored warnings from experts and his own team and downplayed the coronavirus even as it spread unchecked across the country and the world. Americans are now suffering as a result of his inaction. We will never stop airing the facts and holding the president accountable for his actions.”
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OMG
https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/read-the-letter-trumps-campaign-sent-to-tv-stations-threatening-the-fcc-could-pull-their-licenses-over-coronavirus-ad/
no lnx
Read the letter Trump’s campaign sent to TV stations threatening the FCC could pull their licenses over coronavirus
Written by David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement March 26, 2020
Lawyers for President Donald Trump’s official Super PAC, America First Action, tried to get TV stations in key battleground states to stop airing an anti-Trump ad that focuses on his horrific mismanagement of the coronavirus crisis. The TV stations refused to pull the ad, placed by the pro-Biden Super PAC Priorities USA (PUSA), which rightly noted that the pro-Trump Super PAC did not even have standing to make the demand.
So President Trump’s official campaign stepped in to do what his Super PAC could not.
Attorneys for the Donald J. Trump for President campaign sent a Cease and Desist letter to those TV stations demanding they stop airing the anti-Trump ad.
Not only did they make that demand, but they threatened that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which the President controls in that he appoints its commissioners, could pull their broadcast licenses if they did not comply.
The letter reads in part: “your station has an obligation to cease and desist from airing [the ad] immediately to comply with FCC licensing requirements, to serve the public interest, and to avoid costly and time-consuming litigation.”
It also says “we formally demand that your station refuse to continue airing it to meet your responsibilities not to broadcast false information,” which is ironic given the number of falsehoods and lies Trump tells on a daily basis which are often broadcast by news networks.
It adds, “your station has a responsibility to ‘protect the public from false, misleading or deceptive advertising,’” and threatens that “your failure to remove this deceptive ad … could put your station’s license in jeopardy.”
This is the ad the Trump campaign claims is “patently false, misleading, and deceptive,” says he did not call the coronavirus a “hoax,” and essentially claims the ad says he did.
Trump refused to take the threat of the coronavirus seriously, now he won’t take responsibility as his administration has been totally unprepared for this crisis. pic.twitter.com/Jdh1GY9HHS
— Priorities USA (@prioritiesUSA) March 23, 2020
The letter can be read on the Trump campaign’s website.
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https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/09/12/anti-muslim-fanatic-david-horowitz-speaks-influential-american-legislative-exchange-council
9/18
He wasintroduced as “one of America’s heroes.”
The man who took the stage in front of hundreds of state legislators at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)’s annual meeting this August was none other than David Horowitz, an influential leader and moneyman in the anti-Muslim movement.
His presence at the event immediately sparked outrage. Dozens of progressive organizations in the following weeks launched a campaign to pressure corporations to stop supporting ALEC. In a piece published September 6, Horowitz blamed the backlash on his group, the David Horowitz Freedom Center, being included on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s hate map.
Horowitz has ties to the Trump administration and is a pivotal figure connecting anti-Muslim extremists and politicians. The ALEC invitation provided him with yet another powerful platform.
Horowitz’s virulent, conspiratorial rhetoric
Horowitz adopted his usual conspiratorial tone in front of the influential group of policymakers. He turned to his favorite topics:
At the K-12 level, school curricula have been turned over to racist organizations like Black Lives Matter and terrorist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood. … Ludicrous doctrines dear to the left like ‘gender fluidity’ and ‘white skin privilege’ are being taught to first graders.
Horowitz has in the past compared the multiracial, nonviolent Black Lives Matter movement to the Ku Klux Klan and regularly raises the specter of “islamofascism.” The “real race war,” he has declared, is against white people.
To solve this “political subversion of our schools by an anti-American left,” Horowitz proposed “a code of ethics” that he wrote for K-12 teachers:
“All we need is a state legislature to pass it. It’s just based on the Hatch Act and it would bar teachers from taking partisan positions in the classroom.”
The Hatch Act is a 1939 law banning political speech for government executive employees.
ALEC and Horowitz’s shared priority: free speech bills
Horowitz has made a name for himself through extreme-right institution building. His David Horowitz Freedom Center (DHFC) and its affiliated online magazine, FrontPage Mag, have become a repository of anti-Muslim and extreme-right ideologies. DHFC, which SPLC lists as an anti-Muslim hate group, sees its mission as confronting “the efforts of the radical left and its Islamist allies to destroy American values.” It has partnered with the likes of white nationalist enabler Milo Yiannopoulos to take on American campuses, as both took up the banner of defending free speech from what they called college campuses’ censorship.
ALEC, in turn, is a conservative and libertarian network that brings together state legislators and powerful corporations to draft sample legislation across the country. Its funders include the conservative billionaire brothers, Charles and David Koch. ALEC has helped author pro-business and regressive model legislation enabling gerrymandering, union-busting, school privatization and voter suppression.
Horowitz and ALEC have a common cause. ALEC has long pushed for restrictions on protests in schools and universities by drafting so-called “free speech” bills in various states, citing anti-LGBT Christian legal powerhouse Alliance Defending Freedom as an influence. The effort, now popular on the far right, is based on a mythical “campus free speech crisis,” and seeks to quell non-violent opposition to on-campus speakers, conservative speakers in particular.
ALEC’s model “free-speech” legislation does not go as far as other conservative groups’ bills. Sample free speech legislation drafted by the Koch-funded Goldwater Institute, for example, pushes for student protesters’ expulsion. However, the public head of ALEC’s Center to Protect Free Speech, Wisconsin State Senator Leah Vukmir, promoted a bill (SB 351) that sanctions those who “infringe on the rights of others to engage in or listen to expressive activity,” making clear the bill’s attempts to silence dissent. The bill failed.
A mouthpiece for ALEC’s call for a constitutional convention
At the conference, Horowitz emerged as a cheerleader for one of ALEC’s most ambitious projects.
ALEC is one of the key drivers behind efforts to get two-thirds of the states to call for a constitutional convention under Article V of the Constitution, to permanently amend the document with changes favorable to its causes. Under its guidance, 28 of the necessary 34 states have already passed articles calling for a balanced-budget amendment.
At the event, Horowitz came out as a vocal supporter for a constitutional convention, which he called the only way to put an end to “the greatest institutional threat to constitutional order” — the power of the Supreme Court. He claimed the court had overstepped its powers by banning official prayers in public school (Engel v. Vitale), legalizing abortion (Roe v. Wade) and passing marriage equality ( Obergefell v. Hodges). He told the assembled state legislators:
The convention of the states is your chance, and probably your only chance, to do something about this to reform the court as necessary, to prevent the federal government from extruding its powers into areas which it was never designed to do, to prevent it from destroying individual freedoms through socialist programs like Obamacare. The convention of the states is your opportunity to leverage your powers.
This too would be beneficial to ALEC, which has also sought to curtail judicial power to advance its own interests, especially after parts of its model legislation have been struck down by the Supreme Court.
A constitutional convention, Horowitz further mused, is “made for the Trump era. It provides an opportunity to follow the examples of our president’s boldness.”
Horowitz’s growing political influence meets ALEC’s affinity for bigots
Horowitz has seen his influence grow during the Trump presidency, as more and more of his allies joined the administration. He has longstanding links to Stephen Miller, the architect behind many of the White House’s anti-immigrant policies. The DHFC also organizes lavish conferences like the annual “Restoration Weekend.” These events bridge together anti-Muslim extremists like Pamela Geller with powerful political figures. Past attendees have included Jeff Sessions, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), former White House advisers Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka, and Florida gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis.
ALEC is a highly secretive group, so it’s hard to say if this was the first time Horowitz took the stage at one of its events. Still, when he started his speech, he called the CEO of ALEC, Lisa Nelson, an “old friend.”
Regardless, it is not the first time ALEC served an anti-Muslim and nativist agenda. As Hatewatch reported, at an ALEC conference in 2016, anti-Muslim Idaho state representative Eric Redman met with Christopher Holton, a staffer with the anti-Muslim hate group Center for Security Policy. Both have proposed so-called anti-Sharia bills, legally redundant efforts that foment a sensational fear of Islam and American Muslims subverting American law.
ALEC, generally, has had a long history of collaborating with anti-immigrant and racist legislators, on top of pushing out voter suppression bills and challenges to direct democracy. One of the most regressive pieces of anti-immigrant legislation the nation has known, Arizona’s SB 1070 can be attributed to the group. Passed in 2010, SB 1070 allowed law enforcement officers to check people’s immigration status if they suspected they were undocumented, and stop and arrest them without a warrant. The law, which incentivized racial profiling, sparked waves of protest and legal challenges. It also prevented undocumented people from seeking jobs.
The bill was sponsored by virulent anti-immigrant then-state senator Russell Pearce, and written with input from Kris Kobach, now Kansas’s secretary of state. Kobach is an anti-immigrant activist who worked as a lawyerfor the legal arm of the anti-immigrant hate group Federation for American Immigration Reform(FAIR) and has long fought for voter suppression.
Pearce also submitted the bill to ALEC’s Public Safety Task Force, on which he sat alongside the private prison corporation Corrections Corporation of America. The bill was redrafted there, and would ensure that the crackdown on undocumented people would funnel money directly into the private prison industry that detained them, with which politicians behind SB 1070 had a number of existing ties. The task force eventually accepted the law as “model legislation” to be replicated throughout the country. SB 1070 has since been gutted and its enforcement weakened due to legal challenges, with parts of it struck down by the Supreme Court.
One of ALEC’s founders, Paul Weyrich, long facilitated the relationship between the prison industry, the nativist movement and legislators, and even harbored ties to famous Nazi collaborators. Apart from Pearce, ALEC members have included Daryl Metcalfe, the founder of State Legislators for Legal Immigration, which sought to abolish birthright citizenship and depicted immigrants as “invaders.” It also collaborated with FAIR.
ALEC hasn’t shied away from associating with state legislators with ties to hate groups, and it’s telling that they welcomed a hate-group leader directly to their stage. The recording of Horowitz’s remarks clearly shows that he was greeted by an enthusiastic and receptive crowd. Horowitz even claimed he received a standing ovation. By inviting an anti-Muslim bigot so openly, ALEC sends the message it remains comfortable associating with hateful figures.
Wisconsin Rep. Chris Taylor, a Democrat and critic of ALEC who was in the room during Horowitz’s speech, asked:
“[The] Horowitz’s of the world, who ALEC at least publicly has kept at a distance during my tenure, are now becoming part of the ALEC universe. Are ALEC supporters, including their corporate funders, willing to embrace this hate-mongering to continue to advance their corporate agenda?”
https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/09/12/anti-muslim-fanatic-david-horowitz-speaks-influential-american-legislative-exchange-council
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_Bill_of_Rights
tikTok Told Moderators: Suppress Posts by the “Ugly” and Poor
Sam Biddle, Paulo Victor Ribeiro, Tatiana Dias
The China-based social media company also has policies censoring various forms of political speech, leaked documents reveal.
the makers TIKTOK, the Chinese video-sharing app with hundreds of millions of users around the world, instructed moderators to suppress posts created by users deemed too ugly, poor, or disabled for the platform, according to internal documents obtained by The Intercept. These same documents show moderators were also told to censor political speech in TikTok livestreams, punishing those who harmed “national honor” or broadcast streams about “state organs such as police” with bans from the platform.
These previously unreported Chinese policy documents, along with conversations with multiple sources directly familiar with TikTok’s censorship activities, provide new details about the company’s efforts to enforce rigid constraints across its reported 800 million or so monthly users while it simultaneously attempts to bolster its image as a global paragon of self-expression and anything-goes creativity. They also show how TikTok controls content on its platform to achieve rapid growth in the mold of a Silicon Valley startup while simultaneously discouraging political dissent with the sort of heavy hand regularly seen in its home country of China.
On TikTok, livestreamed military movements and natural disasters, video that “defamed civil servants,” and other material that might threaten “national security” has been suppressed alongside videos showing rural poverty, slums, beer bellies, and crooked smiles. One document goes so far as to instruct moderators to scan uploads for cracked walls and “disreputable decorations” in users’ own homes — then to effectively punish these poorer TikTok users by artificially narrowing their audiences.
Today, The Intercept and The Intercept Brasil are publishing two internal TikTok moderation documents, recreated with only minor redactions, below. One lays out bans for ideologically undesirable content in livestreams, and another describes algorithmic punishments for unattractive and impoverished users.The documents appear to have been originally drafted in Chinese and later — at times awkwardly — translated into English for use in TikTok’s global offices. TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Beijing-headquartered company that operates a suite of popular sites and social apps, a sort of Chinese analog to Facebook. ByteDance, founded in 2012, has come under scrutiny by the U.S. government over its ties to the Chinese Communist Party and numerous reports that the app’s censorship tactics mirror those of Beijing; Sens. Chuck Schumer and Josh Hawley have both worked to limit TikTok’s use by government personnel, arguing that it presents a risk to national security.
TikTok spokesperson Josh Gartner told The Intercept that “most of” the livestream guidelines reviewed by The Intercept “are either no longer in use, or in some cases appear to never have been in place,” but would not provide specifics. Regarding the policy of suppressing videos featuring unattractive, disabled, or poor users, Gartner stated that the rules “represented an early blunt attempt at preventing bullying, but are no longer in place, and were already out of use when The Intercept obtained them.”
Sources indicated that both sets of policies were in use through at least late 2019 and that the livestream policy document was created in 2019. Gartner would not explain why a document purportedly aimed at “preventing bullying” would make zero mention of bullying, nor why it offers an explicit justification of attracting users, not protecting them.
Excluding Undesirable Users From the “For You” Fire Hose
One moderation document outlining physical features, bodily and environmental, deemed too unattractive spells out a litany of flaws that could be grounds for invisibly barring a given clip from the “For You” section of the app, where TikTok videos are funneled to a vast audience based on secret criteria. Although what it takes to earn a spot on the “For You” section remains a mystery, the document reveals that it took very little to be excluded, all based on the argument that uploads by unattractive, poor, or otherwise undesirable users could “decrease the short-term new user retention rate,” as stated in the document. This is of particular importance, the document stresses, for videos in which the user “is basically the only focus of the video … if the character’s appearance or the shooting environment is not good, the video will be much less attractive, not worthing [sic] to be recommended to new users.”
... [docs]
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/the-dark-roots-of-political-censorship-in-the-american-system
no lnx
The dark roots of political censorship in the American system
President Donald J. Trump speaks with reporters on the South Lawn driveway of the White House Thursday, Aug. 1, 2019, prior to boarding Marine One to begin his trip to Cincinnati. (Official White House Photo by Tia Dufour)
Written by Adam Hochschild / TomDispatch March 18, 2020
Every month, it seems, brings a new act in the Trump administration’s war on the media. In January, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo exploded at National Public Radio reporter Mary Louise Kelly when he didn’t like questions she asked — and then banned a colleague of hers from the plane on which he was leaving for a trip to Europe and Asia. In February, the Trump staff booted a Bloomberg News reporter out of an Iowa election campaign event.
The president has repeatedly called the press an “enemy of the people” — the very phrase that, in Russian (vrag naroda), was applied by Joseph Stalin’s prosecutors to the millions of people they sent to the gulag or to execution chambers. In that context, Trump’s term for BuzzFeed, a “failing pile of garbage,” sounds comparatively benign. Last year, Axios revealed that some of the president’s supporters were trying to raise a fund of more than $2 million to gather damaging information on journalists at the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other media outfits. In 2018, it took a court order to force the White House to restore CNN reporter Jim Acosta’s press pass. And the list goes on.
Yet it remains deceptively easy to watch all the furor over the media with the feeling that it’s still intact and safely protected. After all, didn’t Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan rail against the press in their presidencies? And don’t we have the First Amendment? In my copy of Samuel Eliot Morison’s 1,150-page Oxford History of the American People, the word “censorship” doesn’t even appear in the index; while, in an article on “The History of Publishing,” the Encyclopedia Britannica reassures us that, “in the United States, no formal censorship has ever been established.”
So, how bad could it get? The answer to that question, given the actual history of this country, is: much worse.
Censoring the News, Big Time
Though few remember it today, exactly 100 years ago, this country’s media was laboring under the kind of official censorship that would undoubtedly thrill both Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo. And yet the name of the man who zestfully banned magazines and newspapers of all sorts doesn’t even appear in either Morison’s history, that Britannica article, or just about anywhere else either.
The story begins in the spring of 1917, when the United States entered the First World War. Despite his reputation as a liberal internationalist, the president at that moment, Woodrow Wilson, cared little for civil liberties. After calling for war, he quickly pushed Congress to pass what became known as the Espionage Act, which, in amended form, is still in effect. Nearly a century later, National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden would be charged under it and in these years he would hardly be alone.
Despite its name, the act was not really motivated by fears of wartime espionage. By 1917, there were few German spies left in the United States. Most of them had been caught two years earlier when their paymaster got off a New York City elevated train leaving behind a briefcase quickly seized by the American agent tailing him.
Rather, the new law allowed the government to define any opposition to the war as criminal. And since many of those who spoke out most strongly against entry into the conflict came from the ranks of the Socialist Party, the Industrial Workers of the World (famously known as the “Wobblies”), or the followers of the charismatic anarchist Emma Goldman, this in effect allowed the government to criminalize much of the Left. (My new book, Rebel Cinderella, follows the career of Rose Pastor Stokes, a famed radical orator who was prosecuted under the Espionage Act.)
Censorship was central to that repressive era. As the Washington Evening Star reported in May 1917, “President Wilson today renewed his efforts to put an enforced newspaper censorship section into the espionage bill.” The Act was then being debated in Congress. “I have every confidence,” he wrote to the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, “that the great majority of the newspapers of the country will observe a patriotic reticence about everything whose publication could be of injury, but in every country there are some persons in a position to do mischief in this field.”
Subject to punishment under the Espionage Act of 1917, among others, would be anyone who “shall willfully utter, print, write or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States.”
Who was it who would determine what was “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive”? When it came to anything in print, the Act gave that power to the postmaster general, former Texas Congressman Albert Sidney Burleson. “He has been called the worst postmaster general in American history,” writes the historian G. J. Meyer, “but that is unfair; he introduced parcel post and airmail and improved rural service. It is fair to say, however, that he may have been the worst human being ever to serve as postmaster general.”
Burleson was the son and grandson of Confederate veterans. When he was born, his family still owned more than 20 slaves. The first Texan to serve in a cabinet, he remained a staunch segregationist. In the Railway Mail Service (where clerks sorted mail on board trains), for instance, he considered it “intolerable” that whites and blacks not only had to work together but use the same toilets and towels. He pushed to segregate Post Office lavatories and lunchrooms.
He saw to it that screens were erected so blacks and whites working in the same space would not have to see each other. “Nearly all Negro clerks of long-standing service have been dropped,” the anguished son of a black postal worker wrote to the New Republic, adding, “Every Negro clerk eliminated means a white clerk appointed.” Targeted for dismissal from Burleson’s Post Office, the writer claimed, was “any Negro clerk in the South who fails to say ‘Sir’ promptly to any white person.”
One scholar described Burleson as having “a round, almost chubby face, a hook nose, gray and rather cold eyes and short side whiskers. With his conservative black suit and eccentric round-brim hat, he closely resembled an English cleric.” From President Wilson and other cabinet members, he quickly acquired the nickname “The Cardinal.” He typically wore a high wing collar and, rain or shine, carried a black umbrella. Embarrassed that he suffered from gout, he refused to use a cane.
Like most previous occupants of his office, Burleson lent a political hand to the president by artfully dispensing patronage to members of Congress. One Kansas senator, for example, got five postmasterships to distribute in return for voting the way Wilson wanted on a tariff law.
When the striking new powers the Espionage Act gave him went into effect, Burleson quickly refocused his energies on the suppression of dissenting publications of any sort. Within a day of its passage, he instructed postmasters throughout the country to immediately send him newspapers or magazines that looked in any way suspicious.
And what exactly were postmasters to look for? Anything, Burleson told them, “calculated to… cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny… or otherwise to embarrass or hamper the Government in conducting the war.” What did “embarrass” mean? In a later statement, he would list a broad array of possibilities, from saying that “the government is controlled by Wall Street or munition manufacturers or any other special interests” to “attacking improperly our allies.” Improperly?
He knew that vague threats could inspire the most fear and so, when a delegation of prominent lawyers, including the famous defense attorney Clarence Darrow, came to see him, he refused to spell out his prohibitions in any more detail. When members of Congress asked the same question, he declared that disclosing such information was “incompatible with the public interest.”
One of Burleson’s most prominent targets would be the New York City monthly The Masses. Named after the workers that radicals were then convinced would determine the revolutionary course of history, the magazine was never actually read by them. It did, however, become one of the liveliest publications this country has ever known and something of a precursor to the New Yorker. It published a mix of political commentary, fiction, poetry, and reportage, while pioneering the style of cartoons captioned by a single line of dialogue for which the New Yorker would later become so well known.
From Sherwood Anderson and Carl Sandburg to Edna St. Vincent Millay and the young future columnist Walter Lippmann, its writers were among the best of its day. Its star reporter was John Reed, future author of Ten Days That Shook the World, a classic eyewitness account of the Russian Revolution. His zest for being at the center of the action, whether in jail with striking workers in New Jersey or on the road with revolutionaries in Mexico, made him one of the finest journalists in the English-speaking world.
A “slapdash gathering of energy, youth, hope,” the critic Irving Howe later wrote, The Masses was “the rallying center… for almost everything that was then alive and irreverent in American culture.” But that was no protection. On July 17, 1917, just a month after the Espionage Act passed, the Post Office notified the magazine’s editor by letter that “the August issue of the Masses is unmailable.” The offending items, the editors were told, were four passages of text and four cartoons, one of which showed the Liberty Bell falling apart.
Soon after, Burleson revoked the publication’s second-class mailing permit. (And not to be delivered by the Post Office in 1917 meant not to be read.) A personal appeal from the editor to President Wilson proved unsuccessful. Half a dozen Masses staff members including Reed would be put on trial — twice — for violating the Espionage Act. Both trials resulted in hung juries, but whatever the frustration for prosecutors, the country’s best magazine had been closed for good. Many more would soon follow.
No More “High-Browism”
When editors tried to figure out the principles that lay behind the new regime of censorship, the results were vague and bizarre. William Lamar, the solicitor of the Post Office (the department’s chief legal officer), told the journalist Oswald Garrison Villard, “You know I am not working in the dark on this censorship thing. I know exactly what I am after. I am after three things and only three things – pro-Germanism, pacifism, and high-browism.”
Within a week of the Espionage Act going into effect, the issues of at least a dozen socialist newspapers and magazines had been barred from the mail. Less than a year later, more than 400 different issues of American periodicals had been deemed “unmailable.” The Nation was targeted, for instance, for criticizing Wilson’s ally, the conservative labor leader Samuel Gompers; the Public, a progressive Chicago magazine, for urging that the government raise money by taxes instead of loans; and the Freeman’s Journal and Catholic Register for reminding its readers that Thomas Jefferson had backed independence for Ireland. (That land, of course, was then under the rule of wartime ally Great Britain.) Six hundred copies of a pamphlet distributed by the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, Why Freedom Matters, were seized and banned for criticizing censorship itself. After two years under the Espionage Act, the second-class mailing privileges of 75 periodicals had been canceled entirely.
From such a ban, there was no appeal, though a newspaper or magazine could file a lawsuit (none of which succeeded during Burleson’s tenure). In Kafkaesque fashion, it often proved impossible even to learn why something had been banned. When the publisher of one forbidden pamphlet asked, the Post Office responded: “If the reasons are not obvious to you or anyone else having the welfare of this country at heart, it will be useless… to present them.” When he inquired again, regarding some banned books, the reply took 13 months to arrive and merely granted him permission to “submit a statement” to the postal authorities for future consideration.
In those years, thanks to millions of recent immigrants, the United States had an enormous foreign-language press written in dozens of tongues, from Serbo-Croatian to Greek, frustratingly incomprehensible to Burleson and his minions. In the fall of 1917, however, Congress solved the problem by requiring foreign-language periodicals to submit translations of any articles that had anything whatever to do with the war to the Post Office before publication.
Censorship had supposedly been imposed only because the country was at war. The Armistice of November 11, 1918 ended the fighting and on the 27th of that month, Woodrow Wilson announced that censorship would be halted as well. But with the president distracted by the Paris peace conference and then his campaign to sell his plan for a League of Nations to the American public, Burleson simply ignored his order.
Until he left office in March 1921 — more than two years after the war ended — the postmaster general continued to refuse second-class mailing privileges to publications he disliked. When a U.S. District Court found in favor of several magazines that had challenged him, Burleson (with Wilson’s approval) appealed the verdict and the Supreme Court rendered a timidly mixed decision only after the administration was out of power. Paradoxically, it was conservative Republican President Warren Harding who finally brought political censorship of the American press to a halt.
A Hundred Years Later
Could it all happen again?
In some ways, we seem better off today. Despite Donald Trump’s ferocity toward the media, we haven’t — yet — seen the equivalent of Burleson barring publications from the mail. And partly because he has attacked them directly, the president’s blasts have gotten strong pushback from mainstream pillars like the New York Times, the Washington Post, and CNN, as well as from civil society organizations of all kinds.
A century ago, except for a few brave and lonely voices, there was no equivalent. In 1917, the American Bar Association was typical in issuing a statement saying, “We condemn all attempts… to hinder and embarrass the Government of the United States in carrying on the war… We deem them to be pro-German, and in effect giving aid and comfort to the enemy.” In the fall of that year, even the Times declared that “the country must protect itself against its enemies at home. The Government has made a good beginning.”
In other ways, however, things are more dangerous today. Social media is dominated by a few companies wary of offending the administration, and has already been cleverly manipulated by forces ranging from Cambridge Analytica to Russian military intelligence. Outright lies, false rumors, and more can be spread by millions of bots and people can’t even tell where they’re coming from.
This torrent of untruth flooding in through the back door may be far more powerful than what comes through the front door of the recognized news media. And even at that front door, in Fox News, Trump has a vast media empire to amplify his attacks on his enemies, a mouthpiece far more powerful than the largest newspaper chain of Woodrow Wilson’s day. With such tools, does a demagogue who loves strongmen the world over and who jokes about staying in power indefinitely even need censorship?
Adam Hochschild, a TomDispatch regular, teaches at the Graduate School of Journalism, University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of 10 books, including King Leopold’s Ghost and Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939. His latest book, just published, is Rebel Cinderella: From Rags to Riches to Radical, The Epic Journey of Rose Pastor Stokes.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel (the second in the Splinterlands series) Frostlands, Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.
Copyright 2020 Adam Hochschild
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https://theconversation.com/librarians-could-be-jailed-and-fined-under-a-proposed-censorship-law-130682
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nat'l archives blurred anti trump signs in foto of women's march (exhibit? apologize?) also purged records of sex assault and death in ice camps?
https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/right-wing-review-boards-in-missouri-would-pave-way-for-arresting-librarians-over-books-deemed-inappropriate
no lnx
Right-wing ‘review boards’ in Missouri would pave way for arresting librarians over books deemed ‘inappropriate’
Written by Julia Conley / Common Dreams January 17, 2020
The Missouri Library Association says it is monitoring a bill put forward in the state House by a Republican lawmaker, which, if passed, could create committees across the state with the power to jail librarians for distributing material the panels deem “inappropriate.”
Under the Parental Oversight of Public Libraries Act (H.B. 2044), locally elected “parental library review boards” would be permitted to unilaterally remove books they decide are sexually explicit or otherwise inappropriate for young readers from library shelves.
Libraries that allow children to borrow books that have been banned or whose access has been restricted would risk losing state funding, and librarians could be ordered to pay fines of up to $500 or sentenced to jail time for up to a year.
The Missouri Library Association (MLA), a non-profit which advocates for library service and librarians, said in a statement and on social media on Wednesday that it “will always stand against censorship and for the freedom to read, and therefore opposes Missouri House Bill 2044.”
MO Library Assoc.
@MOlibraries
- Jan 15, 2020
Replying to @MOlibraries
The Missouri Library Association will always stand against censorship and for the freedom to read, and therefore opposes Missouri House Bill 2044. (2)
MO Library Assoc.
@MOlibraries
The Missouri Library Association is committed to supporting all types of libraries. MLA exists to support the mission, vision, and values of those libraries, which connect their communities to vital resources. (3)
The Missouri Library Association is committed to supporting all types of libraries. MLA exists to support the mission, vision, and values of those libraries, which connect their communities to vital resources. (3)
MO Library Assoc.
@MOlibraries
We support the American Library Association’s Library Bill of Rights and Freedom to Read Statement. Public libraries exist to provide equitable access to information to all of its users, as it is key to having an informed populace. (4)
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3:31 PM - Jan 15, 2020
Twitter Ads info and privacy
See MO Library Assoc.'s other Tweets
Baker told local radio news station KOAM that the bill came out of his desire to ensure libraries are a “safe environment, and that [children] are not going to be exposed to something that is objectionable material.”
MLA President Cynthia Dudenhoffer rejected that explanation.
“Public libraries already have procedures in place to assist patrons in protecting their own children while not infringing upon the rights of other patrons or restricting materials,” Dudenhoffer said. “Missouri Library Association will always oppose legislation that infringes on these rights.”
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an 919
https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/facebook-removed-doctors-fact-check-of-false-anti-abortion-video-because-ted-cruz-complained
no lnx
Facebook removed doctors’ fact-check of false anti-abortion video because Ted Cruz complained
Written by Igor Derysh / Salon September 14, 2019
Facebook removed a fact-check authored by three doctors rebutting an anti-abortion video’s false claims because Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and other Republicans complained in a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Facebook told BuzzFeed News on Wednesday that it removed the fact-check pending a review after Cruz, Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota and Sen. Mike Braun of Indiana accused the social media giant of being biased against conservatives.
The videos in question featured Lila Rose, the founder of the anti-abortion group Live Action. Both videos falsely claimed that “abortion is never medically necessary.”
Three doctors authored a fact-check for Health Feedback, an organization that seeks to debunk misleading medical coverage. The fact-check deemed the video “inaccurate,” noting that “certain medical conditions such as placenta previa and HELLP syndrome can make abortion a necessary medical procedure in order to prevent the mother’s death.”
“Certain life-threatening conditions during pregnancy can make abortion medically necessary in order to save the mother’s life,” the fact-check said. “Preserving both the life of the mother and child by inducing early delivery, as the video suggests, is only possible if the fetus’ gestational age is advanced enough that it stands a chance of survival outside the womb. As this is not always the case, early delivery is not always a suitable alternative to abortion.”
Facebook flagged the videos on Aug. 30, BuzzFeed News reported, adding a link to the fact-check next to the videos and notifying followers of the Live Action page that the videos had been rated as false.
The social network also told Live Action administrators that it would throttle their reach “because of repeated sharing of false news,” according to a screenshot published by the group.
Rose lashed out on Twitter, calling the doctors behind the fact-check liars and “abortionists.”
Two of the doctors have ties to reproductive rights organizations, BuzzFeed News noted. Dr. Daniel Grossman, an obstetrics and gynecology professor at the University of California, San Francisco,sits on the board of the NARAL Pro-Choice America foundation. Dr. Robyn Shickler is a fellow with Physicians for Reproductive Health, which says its goal is to “improve access to comprehensive reproductive health care, including contraception and abortion, especially to meet the health care needs of economically disadvantaged patients.”
Cruz and the other Republican senators cited these affiliations to complain to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg that his social network was behind the “censorship” of conservatives and suggested that doctors who “perform abortions” are not qualified to discuss abortion.
The four Republicans sent a letter to Zuckerberg claiming that the fact-check was “performed by two pro-abortion activists with significant ties to to abortion-rights advocacy organization, both of whom are paid to perform abortions.”
“No reasonable person would describe Grossman or Schickler as neutral or objective when it comes to issues of abortion,” the senators wrote of the doctors, “yet Facebook relied on their rating to suppress and censor a pro-life organization with more than 3 million followers.”
The letter went on to allege that Facebook has been repeatedly “biased” toward conservatives on Facebook, especially when it comes to anti-abortion views.
The senators claimed that the fact-check violated the code of conduct created by the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), which BuzzFeed News noted had certified Health Feedback’s parent organization, Science Feedback, which relies on scientists and doctors to fact-check media coverage.
Facebook told BuzzFeed News that it took down the fact-check on Wednesday pending a review by the IFCN.
“We have been in touch with the IFCN which has opened an investigation to determine whether the fact checkers who rated this content did so by following procedures designed to ensure impartiality,” a company spokesman told the outlet. “While the IFCN investigates, we are removing the relevant fact checks and have communicated this to the members of the US Senate who brought this specific concern to our attention.”
The IFCN said in a statement that it will review materials related to the fact-check and determine if anything violated its code of conduct. In the meantime, the video pushing false information debunked by actual doctors who are experts in their field will continue to circulate on Facebook without restriction.
Grossman told BuzzFeed News that his work “doesn’t make me biased — it makes me a well-informed expert. If the question were about cardiac care, we would expect the answer to come from a well-respected cardiologist, and this should be no different.”
Schickler told the outlet that she doesn’t have a “political agenda.”
“I’m an advocate because it’s part of a physician’s job to advocate for the health and well-being of our patients,” she said.
Both doctors agreed that removing the fact-check was a dangerous precedent for the social network to set.
“It is very concerning that a letter from a group of senators can silence the voices of medical and scientific experts,” Grossman said. “This sets a precedent where politics matter more than scientific evidence.”
Grossman said in a tweet that it is “reasonable” for the fact-check to be investigated further.
“But in the meantime they should take down [Rose’s] videos, too,” he wrote. “They’re so full of misinformation that they’re really dangerous.”
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/how-neoliberalism-enabled-restrictions-on-free-speech-by-allowing-facebook-to-do-the-us-governments-dirty-work/
As the largest player in a multi-billion-dollar industry, Facebook increasingly faces complaints that it has illegally censored content and has violated users’ constitutional rights to freedom of speech.
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Facebook purged hundreds of political pages and accounts last fall when responding to criticism that it too easily allowed the spread of “fake news.” It’s removed posts about racism and about breastfeeding. It’s blocked content at Russia’s demand. Now it’s taking on the anti-vaxxers and political extremists. Users who post questionable items or material that otherwise violates Facebook’s rules can find themselves in “Facebook Jail.”
As the largest player in a multi-billion-dollar industry, Facebook increasingly faces complaints that it has illegally censored content and has violated users’ constitutional rights to freedom of speech. Free speech protections only apply to governmental bodies and not businesses, people argue back. While such is currently law, political realities demand that free speech protections evolve.
First some background....