Category Archives: Censorship

One of my favorite moments of political dissent was being detained by a police officer after ignoring his demand to stop shouting toward the presidential motorcade, Fuck Donald Trump! My catharsis was worth the handcuffs, and I can only imagine how much less satisfying the memory would be if I had instead chanted something as neutered as, Lets go, Brandon!

Tough-guy conservatism has reverted to teenaged, coded taunting, where cheering for Brandon is understood as a profane insult toward our current president. I dont know if this substitution of language is intended to seem clever or classy or simply sates the conservative instinct to communicate in dog whistles.

Whatever its etymology, Lets go, Brandon! which is conservative code for Fuck Joe Biden is cowardly self-censorship among a group of people who endlessly whine about being unable to speak honestly. Supposedly champions of free speech, conservatives are so spooked by the politically correct boogeyman of their imaginations that theyve preemptively canceled their constitutional right to cuss out politicians.

White Republicans are not the only folks who have convinced themselves they cant express whats truly on their mind. Dave Chappelle has made millions of dollars with a series of stand-up lectures about the persecution he has endured due to his discomfort with LGBTQ advancement, and even though there are few jokes in his routines, his act allows viewers to rationalize their hostility to LGBTQ rights through the pretext of humor.

Chappelle could shoot a transgender person on Fifth Avenue and Netflix wouldnt lose a subscriber. He is destined to be enshrined beside historys bravest stand-up comics, despite every working comedian having their own version of the rage-against-cancel-culture shtick that has elevated his legacy.

Chapelles latest Netflix special was cited in a meme that went viral after Jon Gruden resigned as head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders. Leaked emails revealed that Gruden freely used racist and misogynist language, but his departure after homophobic slurs came to light seemed to prove Chappelle was right: homos hop the line, and their rights receive priority protection.

The meme suggests Gruden was fired because homophobia has become a death sentence, nevermind that he voluntarily resigned or the dearth of sports figures who have been terminated after expressing anti-LGBTQ sentiments. NBA analyst Chris Broussard and former Atlanta Braves pitcher John Smoltz both tried to pretend it was perilous for Christians to voice religious objections to LGBTQ rights; but since their respective, spiritually vulgar condemnations of same-sex marriage, Broussard has risen from a beat reporter to hosting the morning show on Fox Sports, and Smoltz provided color commentary for this years World Series.

There is no more profitable punishment than being canceled. There is also no doubt that LGBTQ court victories, as well as increased representation in Hollywood and corporate marketing, have outpaced the evolution of a society that for centuries believed God hated gay people.

So, it cannot be surprising that, as illustrated by the Gruden episode and Chappelles meditative rants, even minorities and progressives would rather pledge solidarity with conservatives who feel muzzled by cultural changes than unify against bigotry with LGBTQ folks. There has undoubtedly been a cacophony of LGBTQ support and acceptance over the last decade, but many of the people who we thought were cheering for us were actually chanting an anti-queer equivalent of Lets go, Brandon!

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Self-Censorship and the Veneer of LGBTQ Acceptance - Georgia Voice

Conservative pundit Dennis Prager feels muzzled by ongoing Big Tech restrictions on his media company PragerU, the radio talker told The Washington Times on Tuesday.

If I say the wrong thing whatever that might be on my Fireside Chat podcast for PragerU, I can be yanked off YouTube or Facebook. When big business and big government work together to muzzle free speech, thats fascism, Mr. Prager said.

The nationally syndicated talk show hosts comments came as his company PragerU continues to wage a long legal battle against Googles YouTube.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year ruled unanimously against Mr. Pragers claim of illegal censorship of conservatives. But Mr. Prager continues to allege that YouTube prevents PragerU from advertising videos due to unexplained violations of community guidelines, restricting other videos as likewise inappropriate and adding a disclaimer that the content may be factually incorrect.

Never in the history of this country has free speech been in such jeopardy. Whats even more shocking is that the threat is not coming directly from the government but from woke corporations, Mr. Prager said.

One disputed video depicts Mr. Prager, who testified about it in July 2019 to a U.S. Senate committee hearing, discussing the Bibles commandment against killing. Mr. Prager said in his testimony that Google placed the video on a restricted list due to him using the word murder.

We go to extraordinary lengths to build our products and enforce our policies in a way that doesnt take political leanings into account, said Ivy Choi, a YouTube spokesperson. And were proud that YouTube continues to be a place where many different voices are welcome, including PragerU, which has 2+ million subscribers.

Attempts to reach Facebook and Twitter, who have issued no comments on his allegations, were unsuccessful.

PragerU has claimed that other videos and audio podcasts targeted for censorship center around dissenting opinions on COVID-19 lockdown policies.

The Times reported Oct. 18 that Mr. Prager, a vaccine skeptic, had tested positive for the virus after deliberately seeking infection to acquire herd immunity.

Mr. Prager said Tuesday: A doctor cant offer his best medical advice to his patients without risking his medical license? When has that ever happened?

Marissa Streit, CEO of PragerU, said social media platforms routinely restrict the companys videos by preventing them from advertising and keeping the videos inaccessible to most of its followers for short periods.

These big tech companies invited us to invest in their platforms, but then they started changing the rules, making it impossible to benefit from reaching the very audience that we paid to build, Ms. Streit said.

She added that the California-based media company, which has 90 employees, is still seeking an explanation from Big Tech companies on why their videos get banned.

We dont understand which videos are inappropriate and why they flag them. They wont give us the guidelines and that allows them to take down things that they just dont like ideologically, Ms. Streit said.

She said PragerU signed a million-dollar annual lease last week on a 40,000 square foot building and has no plans to stop pushing out Mr. Pragers video content.

But PragerU isnt the only company complaining about Big Tech restrictions on political influencers.

The nonprofit Social Movement Technologies, an international NGO that advises the media campaigns of human rights protesters, called on Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to stop suspending the accounts of human rights activists while leaving other accounts intact.

Left or right, Twitter got a lot of good press for being accessible to democracy movements during the Arab Spring. Today, however, Twitter has left human rights activists of all stripes out to dry, and needs to fix its human rights problem, Hannah Roditi, the groups executive director, told the Times.

Transparency in how Big Tech censors content cant come soon enough for Mr. Prager, whose company purports to make edutainment like PBS, but without what it calls left-wing indoctrination.

Time to stand up and fight back, Mr. Prager said. No free speech, no America. Its as simple as that.

Originally posted here:
Conservative pundit Prager says he feels 'muzzled' by Big Tech censorship - Washington Times

The city-state is majority ethnic Chinese but has a sizeable Muslim minority, and has strict laws to curb hate speech and actions promoting ill-will between religious or racial groups.

The book, Red Lines: Political Cartoons and the Struggle Against Censorship is banned from distribution in Singapore, the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) said on Monday.

It has been deemed objectionable because it contains reproductions of cartoons published by French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, which led to violence and protests overseas, the regulator added.

The offensive Charlie Hebdo cartoons first appeared in 2006 and have been widely labelled as irresponsible, reckless and racist, it said in a statement.

Red Lines is by Cherian George, a Singaporean media professor now based in Hong Kong, and Sonny Liew, an award-winning Singaporean cartoonist.

Published in August, it features interviews with censored cartoonists around the world and explores censorship in graphic form.

In response to the ban, George said the authors did not agree with how Charlie Hebdo used cartoons that promoted anti-Muslim attitudes in Europe.

We showed a small number of them as examples of hate speech, he said in a statement to AFP. The intention was to educate readers about how some cartoons can harm vulnerable minorities in the West.

He said they knew some countries, like Singapore, would not accept the images and were prepared to edit the book for these markets, but the city-state choseto ban the book instead of letting them make the changes.

According to the IMDA, the book also contained denigratory references to Hinduism and Christianity.

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Anyone convicted of importing, selling, distributing, making or reproducing an objectionable publication faces a fine of up to 5,000 Singaporean dollars (US$3,700), imprisonment of up to a year, or both.

The French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo first joined some other European titles in publishing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in 2006.

In 2015 a massacre at its office killed 12 people, after it reprinted some of the controversial images.

A French teacher was beheaded by an extremist last year after showing his class Charlie Hebdos cartoons of the Prophet.

After French President Emmanuel Macron defended the right to publish cartoons, angry protests erupted in Asia and the Middle East. / AFP

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Book on censorship banned in Singapore - The Independent

Filipino teachers, researchers, school administrators, and other education professionals called out Commission on Higher Education (CHED) Chairperson Popoy De Vera for justifying the removal of so-called subversive books from libraries of various universities nationwide.

The Academics Unite for Democracy and Human Rights (ADHR) on Wednesday, Nov. 3, slammed De Vera for twisting the meaning of academic freedom to include book censorship and other forms of attacks on the free exchange of ideas that form the very essence of academic freedom.

When De Vera first broached the idea of constituting a panel of experts to redefine academic freedom back in January, we found it laughable because this is already enshrined in the 1987 Constitution, said ADHR lead convenor Dr. Ramon Guillermo.

Now it has become clear that the intention is to repress and limit the scope of academic freedom to whatever is acceptable to the state, added Guillermo who is also a former University of the Philippines (UP) Faculty Regent.

ADHR alleged that De Vera is diverting the attention to respecting the prerogative of schools when the issue is about book censorship and the real threat this poses to the freedoms of academic institutions, faculty, and students.

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Guillermo stressed that academic freedom includes the right to challenge dominant ideologies without fear of repression thus, book censorship represses the freedom to pursue knowledge and engage in social critique sans reprisals and persecution.

CHED wishes to make book censorship, by itself a concrete threat on academic freedom, acceptable by reducing academic freedom to the matter of respecting administrative prerogative of affected universities Guillermo added.

Furthermore, Guillermo pointed out that CHEDs calls for respecting book censorship defies logic noting that it was the governments National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) and military that have been actively calling for the removals of these books from libraries in the first place, thereby intruding on the academic freedom of affected higher education institutions.

ADHR said that CHED in the Cordillera Administrative Region late in October 2021 issued regional memo nos. 113, series of 2021 calling on all universities and colleges to surrender subversive reading materials to authorities.

To oppose book censorship, the ADHR launched an online petition dubbed Defend Academic Freedom, Hands Off Our Libraries (https://forms.gle/HRm3NiwUsp5Zghb68) which has garnered over 400 signatures from members of the countrys academic community as of press time.

ADHR also launched the Aswang sa Aklatan website (https://handsoffourlibraries.crd.co) which seeks to provide the public updates on the #HandsOffOurLibraries campaign as well as free and easily accessible resource of endangered books and materials.

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Book censorship is an assault on the very essence of academic freedom, CHED told - Manila Bulletin

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has called for an end to Instagrams censorship of the Tamil Guardian and for Facebook to be more transparent, after the news website had its account disabled last month.

The London-based English-language website is one of the main sources of news about the Tamil community in Sri Lanka and the rest of the world and has more than 19,000 followers on Instagram, and yet it was censored in the most brutal manner, with no prior warning and no explanation, said RSF in a statement released this morning.

It went on to detail how despite the Tamil Guardians efforts to contact Facebook and Instagram, no response was received and despite a 12-hour temporary reinstatement, the account had simply disappeared from cyber-space.

Without the least explanation, without the least justification, Instagrams managers deprived nearly 20,000 followers of the news that theTamil Guardiannormally publishes on its Instagram account, said Daniel Bastard, the head of RSFs Asia-Pacific desk. We call on those in charge at Facebook, Instagrams owner, to restore the account at once and to demonstrate more transparency and responsibility in the management of their algorithms. This kind of censorship is completely unacceptable.

The standard response that Facebook sent to the Tamil Guardian simply said that accounts may be disabled for violating Facebooks community guidelines. No further explanation was provided.

In the absence of transparency, the algorithms used by Facebook to regulate its social media can be manipulated by troll armies or social bots ghost accounts designed to generate automatic messages with the aim of getting content deleted or accounts shut down, continued the press freedom organisation.

The disabling of the account last month provoked outrage across the world, with Tamil lawmakers in the North-East joining parliamentarians in Canada and the United Kingdom in expressing their condemnation.

This disabling of the Tamil Guardian account on Instagram came despite the news outlet continuing to post freely on Twitter, where it is a verified account, and other platforms, with content never having been flagged or removed elsewhere. The newspaper has also never been accused of breaching any laws in the United Kingdom with regards to proscribed terrorist organisations or concerns ever having been raised by British authorities.

Last month, the news website also revealed how Sri Lankas Criminal Investigation Department had formally written to the social media platform, calling for posts by the news website to be removed.

We have functioned freely on other platforms, despite the efforts of the Sri Lankan state to stop us, said a statement from the newspaper last month.

For many of our stories, our correspondents based in the North-East brave harassment and reprisals from the Sri Lankan security forces to bring crucial insight to the plight of the Tamil people. Our journalists have faced beatings, interrogations and have even been forced to leave the island in the lineof their work. Now, Instagrams broad and blunt censorship has effectively strengthened the Sri Lankan states repressive approach to clamping down on freedom of expression.

Facebook and Instagram are pandering to an authoritarian state.

See the full RSF statement here.

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Reporters Without Borders calls for Tamil Guardian's Instagram to be reinstated - Tamil Guardian

According to the Palestinian Committee to Protect the Journalists (PCPJ), Israeli forces arrested 9 Palestinian journalists just in October.

AhlulBayt News Agency (ABNA): According to the Palestinian Committee to Protect the Journalists (PCPJ), Israeli forces arrested 9 Palestinian journalists just in October.

15 other Palestinian journalists were reportedly wounded by Israeli forces during the operation. According to the latest report of the Palestinian Prisoners of War Club, the number of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails has reached 4,600, including 200 children and 35 women, and 500 are in administrative detention.

Earlier, PCPJ said in a report that Israeli government had violated the rights of Palestinian media workers 652 times since the beginning of the year. The report also states that the Israeli military has attacked journalists several times during this period. During the 11-day war on Gaza in May a journalist was killed and 59 media centers were damaged by Israeli airstrikes.

The committee has called on the international community to protect the Palestinian journalists who are always targets to Israelis attacks. It also called for pressures on Tel Aviv to release 24 captured journalists.

In an annual report in January, the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS) asserted that Israel violated rights of Palestinian journalists 490 times in 2020.

Systemic violation of international laws

The Israeli government continues to detain Palestinian journalists in violation of the international laws. The torture and detention of journalists is in complete violation not only of Israeli domestic law but also of the international law. Reporters Without Borders (RWB) also warned last month that journalists and families of prisoners in Palestine were at risk of arbitrary detention after totally unfair convictions.

Elsewhere in the world, in Turkey for example, Western reactions are made to violations of rights of the journalists. Last year, the European Court for Human Rights reacted to detention of journalists by Turkish government, stating that temporary and long-term sentences for journalists in Turkey are merely based on suspicious cases and there are no persuasive pieces of evidence to deprive the journalists of their right of freedom before judicial proceedings.

The cases of violation of the rights of the journalists in the occupied Palestinian territories have been way more compared to Turkey but the Western institutions choose to turn a blind eye.

It was in the shadow of this Western blindness that Tel Aviv razed to ground Al-Jalaa media tower in Gaza city with bunker buster bombs that penetrated the foundation of the tower, which hosted Associated Press and Aljazeera offices. The pictures of the bombardment were aired by world media live. The shocking and terrifying attacks, an apparent war crime, remained practically unaddressed by the international community and Western governments.

Israeli officials have repeatedly proven that they do not shy away from violating international laws in the light of the West's silence and support. Last week, the Israeli envoy to the UN tore up a Human Rights Watch report condemning Tel Aviv. The Israeli regime has been violating the UN resolutions for many years, and settlements in the West Bank are the most obvious form of violation of the international laws.

Seeking to cover up crimes

Tel Aviv knows that the more it cracks down on the journalists, the more it can throttle the stream of information about the Palestinian circumstances. Therefore, the regular attacks on the journalists are coming with the aim of preventing world awareness of the realities in the occupied territories.

The Israeli military routinely attacks, beats, arrests, seizes equipment of journalists covering protests against settlement projects, raising the cost of reporting on the situation in Palestine so that limited journalists can cover. With risks of long-term detentions and inhumane conducts by Israeli forces, journalists usually have much difficulty and restrictions reporting from Palestine.

Also, there is a systemic censorship policy followed by the Israeli officials. The Israeli regime, despite claims of being democratic, has in place laws of martial supervision of the news and media productions and therefore applies a strict regime of censorship. The Israeli Military Censor (IMC) is a unit of the Israeli army which watches over the publication of information regarding the military network and the general security. The IMC has Censorship Agreement signed in 1966 with representatives of media outlets. The Israeli media are ruled by a 1945 emergency law imposed when Palestine was under the British mandate. This censorship includes content published on television and radio networks and in newspapers and even books, and before it is published, it should be examined by the relevant center, and what is dangerous from the point of view of military censorship should be removed from the content. Naturally, content related to Palestine and against the Israelis favor is easily deleted and censored. Tel Aviv is in complete control over the cyberspace and communication networks of the Palestinian territories.

Cover-up of the Israeli crimes in Palestine takes place both through detaining and silencing the journalists and also officially by the government agencies on Tel Aviv-controlled cyberspace and communication networks. These actions explain why Israeli crimes less frequently find their way to the international media.

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Analysis: How Tel Aviv censoring information on its crimes? - AhlulBayt News Agency ABNA24

While legally this topic shares much with other forms of censorship, internet censorship specifically deals with the restriction of online content. The largest point of interest is the reach of the internet regardless of what policies one country creates concerning allowable content, providers in other countries can post whatever is allowed under their respective legal systems. While countries have made attempts to restrict what is obtainable, such as Google and China striking a deal over filtering its search engine, the ease of accessibility remains the largest obstacle to being able to control what people can find online.

Wikipedia Definition & Overview Internet CensorshipInternet censorship is the control or suppression of the publishing of, or access to information on the Internet. It may be carried out by governments or by private organizations at the behest of government, regulators, or on their own initiative.

American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) webpage on Internet CensorshipThe ACLUs vision of an uncensored Internet was clearly shared by the U.S. Supreme Court when it declared, in Reno v. ACLU, the Internet to be a free speech zone, deserving at least as much First Amendment protection as that afforded to books, newspapers and magazines.

Amnesty International Internet CensorshipAmnesty International portal with news, blogs and issues on Internet Censorship.

Google Battles With China Over Internet CensorshipThis article shows Googles battle with internet censorship in many countries like China and at least 40 other countries in the world.

Googles Fallout With ChinaThis article describes the stringiest internet censorship in China and its recent fallout with Google.

How Internet Censorship WorksAn explanation of the methods of restricting online content.

Internet Censorship and ControlA collection of peer reviewed papers on the topics of Internet Censorship and Control.

Internet Censorship by CountryInternet censorship by country provides information on the types and levels of Internet censorship or filtering that is occurring in countries around the world. Includes map.

Internet Censorship Huffington PostRecent posts that relate Internet censorship.

Internet Censorship Mashable WebsiteRecent stories and news about Internet censorship.

Internet censorship in China and IranThis newspaper article illustrates for the need to stop internet censorship in countries like Iran and China to promote wider internet access to the public.

Internet Censorship in China New York TimesNews about Internet Censorship in China

Internet Censorship News ABC News

Internet Censorship World MapThis world map shows that what countries are affected by censorship around the world.

Internet Freedom Index WebsiteRecent news that relate Internet freedom.

OpenNet InitiativeA group involved with monitoring and reporting on internet censorship/surveillance.

Promoting free expression on the internetGoogles stance on the freedom of expression on the internet.

Pros and Cons of CensorshipThis article discusses the pros and cons of internet censorship.

PsiphonA software service that bypasses online filtering of content by acting as a web proxy.

Reporters Without Borders Internet enemies campaignReporters Without Borders has information on the freedom levels in all countries, including information specifically on internet freedom. They also have rankings for the countries with the worst current conditions for internet freedom.

TED Talk: A look behind the Great Firewall of ChinaJournalist Michael Anti gives a unique look beyond the Great Firewall of China in a recent TED Talk. Watch below.

TED Video: Rebecca MacKinnon Lets take back the Internet!In this powerful talk from TEDGlobal, Rebecca MacKinnon describes the expanding struggle for freedom and control in cyberspace, and asks: How do we design the next phase of the Internet with accountability and freedom at its core, rather than control?

Telecommunications Act of 1996 & Reno v. ACLUThe Telecommunications Act of 1996, with Title V featuring preliminary restrictions surrounding pornographic material on the internet. Additionally, it maintained that ISPs are not liable for the actions of users of their services. However, in 1997, the Supreme Court upheld the 1996 case Reno v. ACLU, citing an infringement on free speech.

The Trend of Internet CensorshipThis article describes the ongoing and rising trend of internet censorship in many countries.

Top 10 Internet-censored CountriesUSA Today releases news about top 10 Internet-censored countries around the world.

Video YouTubeFaceblocked: Internet Censorship in China. (05/26/10)

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Internet Censorship - George Mason University

Amnesty International has released a report documenting how the pandemic affected freedom of expression and the impact of misinformation.

According to its findings, some countries have used censorship and punishment to reduce the quality and quantity of information reaching the public domain, thus damaging people's ability to understand how to deal with COVID-19.

Speaking to Euronews, Amnesty International researcher on human rights defenders Lisa Maracani said COVID-19 only aggravated a problem that had existed for years.

"We know that there is a shrinking civic space all around the world. This has been going on for years. But I think the pandemic precipitated this process," Maracani said.

She urged lawmakers to do more to regulate social media, pointing to their responsibility in spreading misinformation.

"We need digital regulations on them, and this can be done by looking at how they operate and their business model and how that algorithm functions because they are driving a certain type of information that is damaging," she told Euronews.

Maracani believes governments have enacted free speech restrictions that were unnecessary.

"We want states to stop going after people sharing information, going after journalists, going after human rights defenders. They really need to step back from that sort of censorship," the researcher said.

Watch the full interview in the video player above

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Amnesty report reveals use of censorship to reduce quality of public information - Euronews

Alisa Cromer | for Editor & Publisher

Ask any journalist what makes their blood pressure go up on deadline. It is being routed to a public affairs office without getting the interview, missing a deadline, or just getting a pre-screened department-organized message. Theres no opportunity for follow-up questions or even an off-the-record conversation.

Lately, the public and even local reporters who have not covered a Washington, D.C. beat are unaware of how restricted access has become at the federal level.

District journalists are no longer allowed into federal buildings without an escort and appointment. It is assumed that every interview will be coordinated through public affairs representatives, who are political appointees. If the public information officer (PIO) is not interested in a story or the reporter, they ignore their inquiries or slow-roll it so that the reporter misses the deadline. Its now common practice for PIOs to join calls and monitor live interviews.

And then there are the gag orders, implied or by memo, so federal government employees cannot talk directly to the press without imperiling their career.

These practices are now deeply embedded into government culture and getting worse every year, leaders of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) told E&P during a recent vodcast on the topic. SPJ, a group with 6,000 members, calls it censorship by PIO. Its such a bane that the association created an entire web page dedicated to the issue.

In July 2021, SPJ and 24 more journalists' associations wrote a letter to the White House with specific demands: To be allowed direct contact with sources, access to federal buildings, and that requests for interviews be granted.

At the local level, access to officials and information is less controlled; however, dozens of police departments and state agencies have explicit and implicit gag orders preventing employees from talking to the press, according to new research by the Brechner Center.

Science reporting has also been at the heart of the national controversy, Matthew T. Hall, opinion editor at The San Diego Union-Tribune., told E&P. This was especially true during the Trump administration, when the pandemic surged and the CDC was late with information. Last year, The Washington Post decried its gag order to prevent employees from talking, surfaced by a Freedom of Information Act request after a lawsuit.

The Biden administration promised openness, but by July 2021, after just six months in office, the EPA faced its first stress test and folded. When whistleblowers reported a rubber-stamping of toxic chemicals, the chief of staff in the Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics, Allison Pierce, sent a memo reminding employees not to talk to the media without going through public affairs.

Tim Wheeler, chair of the Society of Environmental Journalists Freedom of Information Task Forcechair of the and an editor at the Chesapeake Bay Journal, says none of this is shocking nor new.

An army of PIOs is managing the information, he said. You are getting your information filtered as often as not, or they dont get back to you at all.

March 2021 Let the Sunshine In webinar

Just after the Biden administration settled in, Wheeler hosted a webinar with the pithy title, Let the Sunshine In. Will EPA reopen its doors to the press? for SEJ members to meet the new office of public affairs at the Environmental Protection Agency.

He started by talking about Bidens promised openness and the executive order to restore scientific transparency. How do you intend to restore transparency? Does that include the ability for reporters to interview staff and get a timely start on answers to questions?

Lyndsay Hamilton, enthusiastic, whip-smart and just two months on the job as associate administrator for the office, took the lead. Nick Conger, the EPAs press secretary, was playing back-up.

Hamilton said her goal is a positive, transparent relationship. She views media relations as a service we provide ... We are committed to sharing timely, accurate information to the best of our ability ... it is your job to always ask for more. If we cant (get you what you need), dont be afraid to ask about the why.

Conger started with, Can we just say happy Sunshine Week? He talked about empowering regional executives to answer media questions but still coordinated with public affairs.

Next question.

Wheeler asked, There was a time when reporters did not have to go through a PIO for permission or have minders present at the interview. Can we go back to that, and if not, why not?

Hamilton responded, Im not going to debate the word minders with you, and explained that staffers sit in on interviews to be helpful. She said the role of media relations is to make sure journalists are connected to the right source, that sources are comfortable talking to media, to let conversations play out, and to follow up on items we need to do. Accuracy is another issue.

Besides, she has allowed interviews without a staffer listening in. They are not on every call.

Wheeler had brought some messages from environmental journalists who could not attend. One wrote that she was so excited about getting a thorough response by email from a scientist that she was giddy. Three more said that they never got their requested interview. Two were regional reporters, but a district reporter said he had not had an on-the-record interview with someone at the EPA since the Obama administration.

Hamilton responded that the new EPA would strive to do better. She gave out her and Congors emails as go-tos in case of a problem, noting that theirs is still a small team of political appointees.

There may be other reasons for no response. For example, scientists may not want to talk, and We dont require them to. We are certainly straining to do our best We might miss an email here and there.

Wheeler had another question, The two scientists recently talked to me on the record without coordinating (with your office). Did they violate EPA policy?

Well, Im not going to track them down unless you want me to, Hamilton answered. We do ask (them) to coordinate with public affairs, but Im glad you got the information.

What if a scientist is speaking at a scientific conference, and I approach them afterward, during a break. Are they allowed to talk to me? he asked.

Hamilton stuttered a bit. Sure, I mean. Absolutely. Sure. I mean, they are in a public forum already. Yeah, absolutely.

Well, Wheeler noted, Ive seen a PR official swoop into the conversation in some instances ... Just so you know.

Hamilton added that she does this, too. As the PR person on site, I do sometimes join a conversation to know who the reporter is, where they are from We do like to know what people are saying about the agency.

What about the Executive Order that Biden signed 24 hours into his presidency, directing agencies to review scientific integrity practices and identify more effective ways of interacting with the media.

Did he mean going through a spokesperson? asked Wheeler.

Not sure we have a full answer, Hamilton said. We will soon.

Todays censorship

Censorship by PIO is so insidious in part because the media have quietly gone along. No reporters have faced arrest for pushing back. Stories get published. Even if the information is managed, the job gets done.

We are not printing blank pages, but part of the story is missing, explains Kathryn Foxhall, who covered the medical and science beat, including the CDC, for decades.

It will be correct; probably it will be interesting. It will suffice, but there will be all kinds of things that are not mentioned, like budget, political pressures, differences of opinion within the agency, she said.

Foxhall, who has referred to PIOs as censors, minders, controllers and spies in articles and speaking engagements, was one of the earliest and still one of the fiercest proponents for press access. In September, she was awarded SPJs Wells Memorial Key award for her efforts.

To give an example of how covering Washington changed during her career, she likes to tell a story from the Reagan era, when she could talk to a source unsupervised. She was interviewing a high-level source at the CDC about recent budget cuts just as the AIDS epidemic unfolded.

He was saying, Well make do and blah blah blah, Foxhall recalled. I was trying to get off the phone, when I asked what he would say if he were off the record. He reversed course and absolutely exploded. The story I wrote massively changed, and those changes could have saved lives.

Today, these confidential conversations have been largely eliminated. We now have over 4 million pandemic dead, she said.

For over two decades, public health agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration, have controlled public scrutiny of themselves.

So how did this happen?

Foxhall says she first noticed sources redirecting her to official channels in the early 1990s. The newsroom talked about these blocks and what to do about it. There was some eyeball rolling. but you could still get around it with some people skills, she said. Over the years, it got tighter and tighter.

Another reason is the way governments are organized. Department heads are political appointees, while the staff, scientists and lower-level public affairs officers are career employees and subject matter experts.

Over time, each presidential administration inserted a growing layer of political appointees of PIOs on top of the careerist departments and started pulling strings, steering coordinating all speech to reporters.

Ironically, Obama was more of a micromanager of information released by lower-profile federal agencies than Trump. Despite his rhetoric, Trump was primarily interested in controlling departments involved in high-profile news stories and essentially left the lower-profile departments alone, sources say.

With Biden, micro-management has returned. PIOs, who are political appointees, have started to weigh in on every piece of information and interview that goes out, including which reporters and news outlets get access, and rewriting press releases with political messages in mind.

It hasnt helped that the news media shed thousands of journalists who migrated over to these expanded public affairs offices.

Wheeler does not blame these former journalists. It is not always the PIO, but the president and governors and people they appoint who control dissent and contraindications, Wheeler said, adding, Some of my best friends are PIOs.

And there are other factors. After 9/11, access to federal buildings was restricted, so credentialed reporters could no longer enter without an appointment and escort. COVID-19 shut down most public meetings and other events that provided face-to-face opportunities for journalists to meet public officials without a chaperone.

To report this story, we contacted eight government PIOs by email. One went off the record, on deep background. One was afraid to talk because she was new. Finally, one said she would get back to me with a time but missed the deadline.

The other PIOs at the CDC, EPA, the Department of Interior, the National Association of Government Communicators, and Health and Human Services had not responded by deadline.

A case to battle restricted access

If the media is going to challenge the culture of restricted access, the battle will probably be fought in the courts.

Frank LoMonte, the First Amendment attorney at the Brechner Center, who has written a white paper on case law as a roadmap for news media to use in the future, feels the courts have favored employees talking about their jobs despite blanket gag orders.

The reality is that the employee always wins. We have dug back as far as we can, and the judges say the gag orders are too broad every time. These are 24 cases and all kinds of judges, he said. The bottom line is that (legally) you cannot enforce a gag order preventing an employee from discussing their work with the news media, he said.

The most important Supreme Court case, United States v. National Treasury Employees Union, circa 1995, only confirmed the legal status on which the lower courts have always agreed.

We know (blanket gag orders) exist. We know they are pervasive across all levels of government. But Im here to tell you its a dead man walking. They are all illegal; they are just waiting for someone to sue, LoMonte said.

Whats missing is the perfect case.

Most plaintiffs in existing case law have been government employees, such as schoolteachers and police officers. However, with the decline of labor unions who supplied the money and the lawyers, these cases dried up.

So today, LoMonte is setting the stage for a media organization to file suit eventually. It just must be the right case to avoid creating a legal precedent that could worsen things.

So what would the perfect case look like?

According to LoMonte, the media should look for a government agency with a blanket gag order policy that is clear and in writing. An employee handbook is better than a mass email. A mass email is better than a series of single ones, and any email is better than a verbal rebuke. The CDC emails, though explosive at the time, he said, did not make the cut.

Asked if hes worried that governments wont just vague up their cultural policies after reading this article thinking here of the EPAs broad guidelines to please coordinate he said not to worry. Plenty of government agencies at the state and local level outline exactly what employees cant say.

His new research has already turned up a couple of dozen illegal policies at police departments, including the NYPD, despite the fact it has already been sued once on the issue and lost. Sixteen state agencies in Georgia also have explicit gag order policies.

His advice to journalists is to start documenting.

Ask the (sources) who were gagged, Did you see a memo? Run it to the ground and document it, he told SPJ attendees on the stage with Foxhall. Get the agency on the record. Where did it come from, who made it?

Another culprit in Censorship by PIO is the media itself.

The press acquiesced, Foxhall contended. Why isnt the news industry fighting the controls? One of the top reasons, in my opinion, is that we need their stuff. Its easier and inexpensive to quote an official source. If the press parrots (an official source), it takes about an hour to write it up. (But) we dont want to discredit our own story by saying how little we know.

She suggested that journalists need to start consistently writing about their access and make it part of the story. Lose the embarrassment that journalists are supposed to know everything, and therefore we cant admit that these people are successfully blocking our newsgathering.

The San Diego chapter of SPJ gives Brick and Window awards once a year to highlight the access issue.

We need to call attention, Matthew T. Hall said. Im hoping someone at the Biden administration watches when this is published and picks up the phone.

Alisa Cromer is the editor of LocalMediaInsider, an online trade journal covering the media industry. She grew up in Washington, D.C.

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Censorship by PIO - Editor And Publisher Magazine

Viennas museums are putting their works on view in a place where few world-class institutions have ever shown their art: OnlyFans. On that site, visitors can now see an account set up by the citys tourism board where suggestive works from Viennese institutions like the Albertina and the Leopold Museum are being posted.

The Viennese are very open-minded, Helena Hartlauer, head of media relations at the Vienna Tourist Board, said of the unusual move.

OnlyFans is an app where viewers can pay a subscription fee to access exclusiveand often eroticcontent from a creator. Now, for $4.99 a month, people can view painted nudes and risqu statues culled from the collections of Viennas finest museums, which maintain that these artworks are not necessarily sexual in nature. The citys tourism board said the move to post artworks on the platform came after repeated censorship on other social media platforms.

In July, the Albertinas TikTok account was suspended and then blocked for displaying the art of Nobuyoshi Araki, whose photographs often feature sexually explicit images of nude women. Then in September, when the Leopold Museum promoted its 20th anniversary by posting a work by Art Nouveau illustrator Koloman Moser, the campaign was flagged as potentially pornographic by Facebooks algorithms. To avoid any repercussions, the museum switched out that image for a less objectionable work. That warning recalled Faceboooks deletionof a post by the Natural History Museum of Vienna showing the Venus of Willendorf, an ancient fertility talisman depicting a naked woman with enlarged breasts.

In migrating these offerings to OnlyFans, Hartlauer claimed that Viennas museums were enacting more than just a publicity stuntthey were also aiming to start a conversation about the necessity of social media and the problems associated with it. According to Hartlauer, while some might argue that these museums could use other pieces to promote themselves, the matter is not quite so simple, given that it is growing harder and harder to tell what will be labeled explicit. These platforms arent transparent at all, Hartlauer said.

Museums, of course, arent alone in this frustrating struggle with social media platformsartists have also voiced concerns about the guidelines for social media like Instagram. In a recent op-ed for ARTnews, artist Clarity Haynes described repeatedly trying to post nude self-portraits by photographer Laura Aguilar, only to have them deleted each time. This kind of censorship does not exist in a digital vacuum, Haynes wrote, describing the deletions as homophobic, racist, fatphobic, and misogynistic.

The Viennese museums new OnlyFans recalls another attempt at launching a platform for sexually suggestive art. This past summer, Pornhub started the Classic Nudes guide, an app that allowed users to find images of nudes in the worlds most renowned art institutions. Museums didnt respond well to that initiative. The Louvre in Paris, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, and the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid all threatened to suePornhub for its recreations of famous paintings in their holdings, among them Titians Venus of Urbino (1538), which is held by the Uffizi.

By contrast, Viennas tourism board said it was making no pretensions about the sexuality and nudity of artworks in its collection. We also wanted to do this to show solidarity with artists who are censored, Hartlauer said. If you cant show your artwork on social media this can really be an obstacle to your communications efforts, and even to your career.

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Following Social Media Censorship, Viennese Museums Take Their Art to OnlyFans - ARTnews