Archive for the ‘Censorship’ Category

Will media censors never quit?ABC’s foolish omissions in RFK interview – New York Post

Rich Lowry

Opinion

By Rich Lowry

May 5, 2023 | 10:02pm

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was interviewed by ABC News. Polaris

ABC News did awide-ranging interviewwith Robert Kennedy Jr. the other day.

The ABC reporter asked him a number of challenging questions, notably about the lack of support from his own family for his presidential run.

It was interesting stuff, and good journalism having on the heterodox, newly minted presidential candidate, allowing him to make the case for his candidacy and forcing him to think and reflect out loud.

Then, came the note at the end: ABC, as a matter of editorial judgment, had left out portions of the interview where Kennedy had expanded on his anti-vaccine views (which were briefly discussed).

Now this is not, as a technical matter, censorship; ABC News isnt a government entity and can exercise whatever editorial judgment it pleases.

But the spirit of the exercise was in keeping with censorship, and it reflected how the press and social media platforms operated during the height of the pandemic when they were the self-appointed arbiters of Truth.

This is a mistake in editorial judgment for several reasons.

One, if you are going to interview RFK Jr., you should let him be RFK Jr.

Editing out his opinion on vaccines is a little like doing a pre-recorded interview with Bernie Sanders and carefully snipping out the socialism, or cutting out Donald Trumps support for building a wall.

Kennedys anti-vax perspective is one of his calling cards, and of a piece with his larger distrust of authority.

Moreover, like it or not, Kennedys worldview is now inherently newsworthy; he is a presidential candidate.

Its true that he isnt going to sweep all before him and win the Democratic nomination.

Still, hes polling at a remarkable 20% against an incumbent president who is ideologically compatible with his party and has suffered no major scandals (although one may be brewing over the family influence-peddling business).

Attention should be paid.

Two, the ABC decision shows how nothing has been learned from the pandemic.

Whatever inherent deference people felt to public-health experts at the outset of COVID should havedrastically diminished by the end, given how manipulative many of these authorities were, and how disastrous policy mistakes often had their imprimatur.

Three, in a free society, we default toward letting people propagate error, and rebutting it with better arguments.

The opposite reflex to shut down, rather than merely disagree with, people we believe are wrong has led to the lopsided censorship regime created by social-media platforms and the phenomenon of people being censored for views that should fall within the parameters of reasonable debate and have often proved correct.

Four, as a purely practical question, its not clear that trying to keep people from hearing disfavored opinions really works.

In our age of suspicion and of wildly diverse sources of information, it may only lend a kind of credibility to those views.

Fifth, the efficacy and safety of vaccines shouldnt be beyond debate.

Im not a fan of Robert Kennedy Jr. in general or of his views on vaccines in particular, which I consider paranoid and unfounded.

All you need to know is that he apparently thinks that Big Pharma forced out Tucker Carlson at Fox News.

That said, two things can be true at the same time: The COVID vaccines saved lives and were also over-sold.

For too long, the orthodox belief was that they kept people from getting COVID, and people who didnt get the jab were a threat to everyone around them.

This was the logic behind the COVID mandates that led to the deeply unjust firing of people who, for whatever reason, didnt want to get the shot.

Anyone who was fully on board with the dogma should now have at least atouch of modestyabout trying to shut down cussedly independent dissenting voices.

Whether the old high-handedness still prevails will be tested by RFK Jr.s upstart campaign, and the ABC interview suggests the answer is most definitely, yes.

Twitter: @RichLowry

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Will media censors never quit?ABC's foolish omissions in RFK interview - New York Post

Fear and Self-Censorship in Higher Education – Quillette

Like the rest of my generation, I have been anxious and apprehensive for as long as I can recall. The crippling anxieties of Gen-Z and younger millennials are everywhere apparent; we have a mental-health epidemic with a higher generational suicide risk, which have variously been attributed to awareness of worldly chaos, the COVID-19 pandemic, and chronic onlineness. We have grown up comfortable indoors, isolated with the computer, console, or TV, and reliant upon Instagram and disembodied voices in place of social interaction. We accept one or two posts as news and information we see online as facts, usually without further research. South Park has remodeled Cartman after the image of the doomscrolling, internally distraught Gen-Zer, and I cant help but see myself and my peers in him. This generational affliction has hindered our ability to communicate and problem-solve, and the technology upon which we are so hopelessly dependent has only enabled an inflation of animosity and alienation, further aggravating a crisis of hyperpolarization and mental-health issues.

Before going to college, I felt pretty confident in my convictions. In high school, I regularly testified in the Texas State Legislature and Austin City Council, where I spoke about issues including sex trafficking, paid sick leave, and postpartum depression. While I advocated for what I believed in and connected other young people to avenues of democratic participation, I also operated with a level of hostility that neglected community building. At school and in my community, I was known as a social-justice activist, and played the part of self-righteous progressive who some admired and others feared, ready to jump down anyones throat at the first hint of an offensive utterance.

This behaviormodeled by other Internet-educated activistsis a product of fear and anxiety, fueled by cultural panic, media narratives, Internet oversocialization, extremist spectacles, and deliberate division. A thoughtful political alternative to anxiety, offering strategic solutions to societal problems, has yet to capture the attention of young progressives en masse, and this has cast aware yet inactive people adrift in the throes of the culture wars and trapped them in a toxic relationship with hyperpolarization and hypervigilance. If it hadnt been for my bittersweet college experience, I might still be stuck in this dynamic of dichotomous dread, like a hearty portion of my infographic-obsessed generation.

I started at Barnard College of Columbia University in the Fall of 2020. New York City was relatively shut down, classes had been moved to Zoom, and people seemed to be losing their minds. At the beginning of the COVID era, I felt somewhat hopeful when ordinarily apolitical people were inspired to dig into every worldly woe that content creators hyped up. But by May 2020, I realized that this cultural change had merely created an echo chamber fed by unarticulated fears of alienation.

Soon, girls who had made homophobic or antisemitic comments about me in the past were coming out as nonbinary, adding they/them, ACAB, BLM, and sometimes a rainbow flag to their social-media bios, and declaring themselves proud converts to digital progressivism. It was performative, theatrical, and intended to show that they were as enlightened as their activist peers. I would be thrilled if I thought people were actually thinking critically and genuinely dedicated to advocacy, but they arent. They seek social acceptance, not social change, and this has resulted in bleak and narrow classroom discussions. My old (and now kicked) habit of ideologically charged verbal warfare became an Olympic sport; anyone who smelled blood pole-vaulted down the nearest open esophagus.

I did not share my identity when I introduced myself in class, and this was the beginning of my social downfall. By the second semester, I had already been accused of being transphobic and co-opting the trans experience after my poetry classmates read pieces I had written about my penis envy and simultaneous phallus phobia. None of my peers asked me how I identified, nor did anyone stop to wonder why I would write about this kind of thing in the first place. In addition to leaving notes on my poem and condemning its offensiveness in critique, one student requested that I conference with my professor about my concerning material. They denounced my poetry as derogatory (which it wasnt) when it would have been more appropriate to describe it as vulgar, lowbrow, and just plain bad (which it was).

To my chagrin, my queer peers proved to be among the most unwelcoming and jaded people with whom I interacted while at Columbia. I had foolishly assumed that the compassionate Left would want to include others and welcome dialogue. Thankfully, I found some solace among faculty, who encouraged me to share my ideas and also worried about the dearth of free and productive classroom debate. Throughout my degree track, but especially since COVID, students have remained quiet when encouraged to express divergent or possibly controversial opinions. Most analyze the world through the hyperidentitarian script spoon-fed to us all by social media.

My peers and I were afraid of three things: (1) Looking stupid, (2) offending someone, and (3) social ostracization. For a generation so keen on displaying individualism through gender identity, we are paradoxically terrified of being seen as different. To say that I was depressed about the communal hypervigilance in classrooms would be an understatement; I was catastrophizing about how this culture of self-silencing would impact us in the long run. Thus began a senior thesis investigation which released all the hair-triggers of my classmatesplastic surgery, cancel culture, and the oversocialization of Gen-Z progressives (who fail to embody any kind of leftism besides angrily reaffirming the zeitgeist of self-loathing, crippling anxiety, and inaction).

When the day came to present my thesis, I received much anticipated pushback from those I thought would object to my Freud and Houellebecq citations. About half the class freaked out when I said that breast implants can cause cancer and therefore posed a risk to transwomen who seek augmentations for gender affirmative care. They became even angrier when I claimed that the image of women we are affirming is informed by pornography and the male gaze, concerns that preoccupied second-wave feminist activists like Andrea Dworkin.

I was accused of legitimizing the idea of cancel culture and was asked to provide examples of people who have lost their livelihoods and wellbeing to cancellation. But as writer Clementine Morrigan has often argued, the people who suffer most from socially enforced censorship are often alienated to begin with. Celebrities are not usually taking life-altering financial hits that will upend their stability, nor do they lose their social networks from saying something objectionable, but ordinary people are less well-protected from caustic harassment campaigns. And while cancel culture may not appear to have material effects for most, its aggressive promotion of oppositional conformity certainly propels radicalism on both sides.

In the 1960s and 70s, liberals were the free-speech enthusiasts of the United States. Students and activists used the first amendment to protect their vocal opposition to the Vietnam War.

The Warren and Burger eras of the Supreme Court, associated with ending school segregation and instituting Roe v. Wade, ensured free-speech protections by enforcing and protecting the Federal Communications Commissions Fairness Doctrine, which required that broadcasts give equal coverage to controversial issues. Worried about network monopolies and biased reporting, the Fairness Doctrine meant that if a personal attack was aired, the other side was allotted time to respond. But in 1987, under the Reagan Administration, FCC protections were stripped and inflammatory talk-radio began to flourish. While Republicans claimed a deregulation victory, they simultaneously upended free and fair speech media protections for the country, and helped rear the crisis of hyperpolarization.

Most major news networks are partial, which explains the growing attraction of independent writers on Substack and publications like this one. But faithlessness in media institutions is a net negative for everyone, as it tells the public that there is no stable and trusted source capable of providing a broad overview of the worlds daily events. Though conservatives would like to erase their own history and blame the Left for the current manifestation of hyperpolarization, this systemic phenomenon has been festering for decades. It is fueled by a critical thinking deficit and hyperpartisanship, which in turn sprouts from famished public-education guidelines, outrage-inducing news conglomerates, and the politicians who profit from culture-war content.

Like the modern Left, conservatives are prone to conniptions, and unembarrassed to employ reactionary tactics that violate First Amendment values when it suits them. This can be seen in the recent surge in book bans. Floridas Governor Ron DeSantis has protested that book ban is a misleading term, and that the legislation is intended to shield children from porn and material that might induce anguish. While the text of the Stop W.O.K.E. Act and related legislation does not explicitly state that schools can remove books related to the Holocaust or American history, it does advocate the protection of student sensitivities, which is pretty comical coming from those who say they value facts over feelings. Such laws set a precedent that literature related to identity, and material which is subjectively concerning or anxiety-producing, can be taken out of students hands.

Before and after Trump, conservative parents have continued to attack the updated versions of Anne Franks The Diary of a Young Girl due to the inclusion of homosexual themes.

Illustrated Anne Frank book removed by Florida school

A high school along Floridas Atlantic Coast has removed a graphic novel based on the diary of Anne Frank after a leader of a conservative group challenged it, claiming it minimized the Holocaust. Anne Franks Diary: The Graphic Adaptation was removed from a library at Vero Beach High School after

In the 1980s, conservatives inspired by the Moral Majority crusaded to ban The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, two classics of the American literary canon, due to their sexual content. A decade before, Slaughterhouse-Five came under fire for its profanity and, you guessed it, sexual content. While this trend of book banning has plagued American politics for some time, its ostensible goal of protecting children from sexually explicit literature and possibly uncomfortable topics is futile when parents, legislators, and kids alike all know that the Internet is swamped with far more graphic material.

Perhaps even more worrying and authoritarian than the book bans is the censuring of Montanas trans legislator Zooey Zephyr. Zephyr has been barred from House debates for the rest of the 2023 session after she said she hoped her fellow lawmakers would see the blood on [their] hands after passing restrictions on gender affirmative care.

Judge rejects Zooey Zephyrs bid to return to Montana House

Republican lawmakers accuse the Montana Democrat of stoking violence with her remarks.

The Montana House has not allowed the representative to speak for several days now, and many have (rightly) called this silencing undemocratic. Besides the obvious issues with censoring an elected politician, the bill passed by the Montana legislature (and since signed into law by the states governor) is poorly written, with nondescript fiscal notes, little to no plan for enforcement, and broad overreaches, bringing state government further into the private lives of Montanas population. The subjective offensiveness of her remarks does not justify her silencing. This isnt a partisan phenomenon, but a widespread neurosis that has infected all who fail to filter out the omnipresent fumes of the culture wars.

We seem to be unable to separate neo-Nazis, child predators, serial rapists, and every other image of evil from bad-faith actors and from those who are parsing ideas or sharing their experiences. Attacking our neighbors over objectively minimal differences and tone-deafness only pushes people to the fringes. Detransitioners like Chloe Cole and Prisha Mosley have run into the (temporarily) hospitable arms of Matt Walsh, a deliberately corrosive right-wing pundit at the Daily Wire. The automatic rejection of detransitioners by progressive activists has been a terrible miscalculation. Detransitioners are vulnerable young people in need of support and compassion, but because there is currently no room for heterodox narratives on the Left, detransition advocates have fallen in with anti-trans conservatives with social clout and cash. Alliances with figures like Walsh will only make nuanced dialogue harder, and detransitioners risk becoming pawns of conservatives who support outright bans on gender affirming care, even for adults. The upshot is a political culture that continues to thrive on division and mutual hatred.

Not everyone in my class pole-vaulted down my throat. Some of my peers spoke about their fear of offending their classmates. Most of those who contributed to the discussion (rather than automatically dismissing my thoughts out of hand) were born abroad, came from immigrant families, or didnt spend all their time on social media. In other words, those who had actually been exposed to different perspectives seemed to be the most openminded. They said that they felt hopelessthey didnt want to risk saying something inflammatory, nor did they see how people could cooperate to alleviate common suffering in an atmosphere of stress and stratification.

After listening to this, I pointed out that a culture of hypervigilance is counterproductive to the kind of social progress and community-building that leftists claim to value. Dismissing our neighbors as idiots traps us in a dynamic of blaming the individual and pitting ourselves against people instead of the superstructural causes of hardship. And if those who are unproductively critical of Gen-Z cant see that weve been hoodwinked by our elders who created this atmosphere, then efforts to diminish division will be fruitless.

Its fair to say that I got a taste of my own medicine, but Im happy to report that for the past three or so years, Ive mellowed and found people to talk to who are not brainwashed by TikTok algorithms. I am still highly conscious of my words, though I hold back less and give myself grace. But self-silencing will remain a culturally derived trait for Zoomers on the Left who remain painfully conscious of the online panopticons power. It is worth knowing ones audience before speaking, but the widespread stifling of expressionand the concomitant dismissal of the democratic debate, cooperation, and compromiseis dangerous.

Half-baked and unfamiliar ideas can help us to collaborate and to build on one anothers thoughts. Even if something is deemed unnerving or objectionable, isnt it more productive to debateto seek and find common ground, to fine-tune theoriesthan to attack and punish others for differences of opinion and experience? If conversation is avoided or shut down, progress becomes hopeless. If, on the other hand, we are able to discuss and disagree, we can move past fear towards a healthier body politic.

I hope that more young people are becoming aware of the absurdities of the prevailing climate. Some are. But unless we can conquer our anxiety and restructure the way we interact, dreams of social unification will remain dead on arrival. Hyperpolarization precludes coalition building, and I find it hard to understand why so many progressives are unable to grasp this obvious point. We have fallen into the same dynamic as the Right: alienating our own while preaching against alienation, further nourishing the collective crisis of anxiety and depression.

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Fear and Self-Censorship in Higher Education - Quillette

Censorship at YU: The Commentator Controversy – The Commentator – The Commentator

Since its inception, The Commentator has been a constant presence at YU. Even if not everyone reads it, it is always present, churning out articles about happenings on and off campus. As a student-run paper, it is not beholden to the administration or its standards, and over the years writers and editors have taken advantage of that liberty. Unfortunately, not everyone approved of their adversarial antics, and it appears that significant attempts were made to curtail The Commentator's influence.

In the fall semester of 1999, copies of The Commentator and The Observer began to go missing. On two separate occasions, YU Facilities had covertly removed hundreds of issues of The Commentator from public spaces for safety and aesthetic reasons. At the time, it was apparently common practice for YU to remove student publications prior to public events. Administrators were unfazed, with one noting, theyve been doing this for years it's not surprising that they did it this time either.

These two instances, however, drew particular attention, as the issues in question contained several articles deeply critical of the administration. One issue questioned the dismissal of a secretary, and another suggested that YU had misused an $8 million gift. Claims of conspiracy presumably abounded, and an article was published in the next edition of The Commentator alleging that YU Facilities was deliberately censoring the paper. But almost nobody got to read it. Before distribution, 1800 copies of the issue mysteriously disappeared.

When the students investigated, senior security officials confirmed that Jeffrey Socol, director of Facilities Management, had instructed the staff to remove the copies. This was the last straw for the editors, who demanded reimbursement to the tune of $2000 and an immediate stop to the suppressive activity. My goal is to put a stop to this, said co-Editor in Chief Aaron Klein. And if initiating a lawsuit is what it is going to take, we are prepared to do that.

To add even more pressure, Harold Levy, a member of the Board of Regents, sent then-President Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm a letter asking why YU was silencing student publications. A second member of the board suggested that the matter might become subject to investigation if it was not promptly clarified. As public interest grew, reporters from The New York Times reached out to YU for comment, which they elected not to provide. The day before NYT published their article, YU gave The Commentator an $1850 reimbursement, along with a letter from the dean asserting that the university did not condone removing or disposing of any newspapers. The Observers missing copies were not mentioned in the article, nor were they reimbursed for the 1,200 missing newspapers. It pains me to discover that Yeshiva only recognizes the discarding of student newspapers is wrong only when reporters bring it to their attention, and not when their own students do, said SCWSC President April Simon. The removal of issues was discontinued, but the controversy did not end there.

In the February 2000 issue, co-Editor in Chief Alex Traiman reported that the Presidents Circle, a group that allocated funds to various student activities, had elected not to contribute to The Commentator in the upcoming semester. This was despite providing Sterns paper, The Observer, with a whopping $13,000 for new equipment. Traiman attributed this discrepancy to The Commentators ongoing feud with the administration, claiming that stooping to such punitive measures is quite simply immature.

In the following edition, Louis Tuchman, co-chair of the Circle, responded sharply to Traimans allegations, clarifying that the Circle was under no obligation to provide them with funds every semester, and you can be sure we will not do so. In addressing the funding discrepancy, he said that the money given to The Observer only begins to redress the historical funding imbalance between the two papers. As a final riposte, he criticized Tramain for speculating at the Circles intentions without comment from any of the members.

When reviewing The Commentator of twenty years ago, it is difficult to tell how much of the editors criticism (and there is a lot of criticism) is founded, and how much of it is just angsty anti-administration posturing. The relationship between the two organizations in this era was extremely tenuous. This is perhaps best exemplified by Traimans scathing March editorial, Oh. Youre Just Stupid. where he refers to administrators as grumpy, Dumb and Dumber, and simply a few pennies short a dollar. In addition, New York Times reporter Jeremy Peters suggested that Klein deliberately tried to up the paper's metabolism by publishing a series of articles that were highly critical of the school administration. Recognition of this enmity is key when considering the extent to which The Commentator is reliable here.

Commentator issues from this era often present biased accounts of events. The Columbia Scholastic Press Association reviewed The Commentator in 2002 and gave them an overall grade of C+, at least in part for their unreliable reporting. In their notes at the end, their very first criticism stated that more effort should be placed on objective reporting on news pages. Many of the front-page stories reflect a definite bias Front-page news stories must be objective! Opinion should be clearly labeled as such. In addition, they received poor grades for accuracy, fairness and completeness. It seems like reliability was a recurring issue at this time.

In this case, however, it seems that their outrage was, if not justified, at least well-founded. The fact that reputable outside sources like The New York Times and the Board of Regents were involved, and that YU eventually reimbursed The Commentator, both indicate that YU did make some effort to censor the paper, an effort that would repeat itself in the coming months and years.

In fact, just a year prior, YU had confiscated and concealed vending machines owned by The New York Times. I was very upset, said Eric Schubert, then NYTs sales manager for YU. It was removed from inside the building, so I knew it had to be Facilities. After several unsuccessful attempts to contact the relevant administrators, The Commentator gained access to a storage room where they found and photographed the missing machines. It is still unclear why Facilities objected to the machines in the first place, or why they did not contact The Times to have them removed properly. Despite their differences, the fact that these two newspaper confiscation controversies occurred within a month of each other is curious, and may bolster The Commentators reliability in this case.

The Commentators tumultuous relationship with YUs administration is on full display in this saga, and highlights timely questions about what can and should be said. The era we currently find ourselves in is, like any other, mired in its own tumult, and The Commentator has not shied away from reporting on delicate situations. It is my hope that conscientious reporting remains a priority, and that gripes between the paper and faculty can be left in the past. Despite its challenges, the fight to preserve the papers autonomy was clearly not in vain, as it continues to respectfully tackle the issues and events that shape YU.

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Photo Caption:An empty newspaper rack outside the library

Photo Credit: The Commentator

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Censorship at YU: The Commentator Controversy - The Commentator - The Commentator

McCaul, HFAC Members Demand Answers on GEC’s Role in … – House Foreign Affairs Committee

Media Contact 202-226-8467

Washington, D.C. Today, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX), Subcommittee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman Brian Mast (R-FL), Subcommittee on Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations Chairman Chris Smith, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL), Rep. Keith Self (R-TX), Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL), and Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) sent an oversight letter to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken regarding censorship perpetrated or facilitated by the Global Engagement Center (GEC). Last year, after the States Departments Inspector General issued a detailed report chronicling inappropriate actions by the GEC, members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee determined it was appropriate to delay reauthorizing the GEC until issues related to internal staffing, organizational structure, and policy priorities were resolved.

Since that time, however, additional news has come to light that suggests the GEC continues to stray from its founding mission through its subsidized censorship of free speech and disfavored opinions particularly by established conservative media and individuals. The committee intends to exercise its full legislative and oversight jurisdiction over the GECs lack of transparency.

The GECs founding mission, effectively, was to provide a ready resource for the truth about America and our fight against global terror, particularly ISIS, the members wrote. [But now we] are forced to wonder about the authority by which the GEC justifies its mission creep, and the direction of its current evolutionary trajectory. Congress originally authorized the GEC to support the development and dissemination of fact-based narratives and analysis to counter propaganda and disinformation directed at the United States and United States allies and partner nations. While the GEC performs some unquestionably important work, it has also provided social media companies with access to tech applications that detect and either knock down or flag malign-foreign-influence activity, but, according to the FBI, also might accidentally pick up U.S. people[s] information.

The full text of the letter can be found here and below.

Last year, after the States Departments Inspector General issued a detailed report1 chronicling inappropriate actions by the Global Engagement Center (GEC), members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee determined it was appropriate to delay reauthorizing the GEC until issues related to internal staffing, organizational structure, and policy priorities were resolved.

Since that time, however, additional news has come to light that suggests the GEC continues to stray from its founding mission through its subsidized censorship of free speech and disfavored opinions particularly by established conservative media and individuals through grants, partnerships, and awards to entities including the Global Disinformation Index, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, the Atlantic Councils Digital Forensics Research Lab, and Moonshot CVE. The GEC also appears to take the official position that populism whether at home or abroad is an affront to democracy and the First Amendment rights of all Americans. For example:

In 2021, the GEC spent $275,000 producing a counter-disinformation video game that programmed audiences to associate citizen critiques of government waste, fraud, and abuse with a social media disinformation campaign.

In 2020, the GEC produced a similar counter-disinformation video game explicitly targeting political misinformation, apparently modeled off the U.S. 2020 presidential election cycle.

In the above counter-disinformation video games, the GEC selected and supported the University of Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab, whose recent disinformation research includes:

Targeting U.S. conservatives

Targeting climate change deniers

Targeting vaccine skeptics

Targeting election deniers

The GECs founding mission, effectively, was to provide a ready resource for the truth about America and our fight against global terror, particularly ISIS. We therefore are forced to wonder about the authority by which the GEC justifies its mission creep, and the direction of its current evolutionary trajectory.

Congress originally authorized the GEC to support the development and dissemination of fact- based narratives and analysis to counter propaganda and disinformation directed at the United States and United States allies and partner nations. While the GEC performs some unquestionably important work, it has also provided social media companies with access to tech applications that detect and either knock down or flag malign-foreign-influence activity, but, according to the FBI, also might accidentally pick up U.S. people[s] information.

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution prohibits government officials from censoring disfavored speakers and viewpoints. Merely labeling speech misinformation or disinformation does not strip away First Amendment protections, and government officials may not circumvent the First Amendment by inducing, threatening, and/or colluding with private entities to suppress protected speech.

In 2019, Richard Stengel, the very first head of the GEC after its 2016 founding, published an op-ed in the Washington Post calling for an effective end to the First Amendment. This fact calls into question not only the founder, but the founding vision of the GEC itself. Stengel went on to say in a televised interview: [T]he basis of the First Amendment, the marketplace of ideas model, is actually not working. Marketplace of ideas is this notion that good ideas will drive out bad ideas. Well, it was kind of a mystical notion coming from Milton and John Stewart Mill and that doesnt really happen anymore Im actually very sympathetic now to the U.S. adopting some versions of hate speech laws in Europe.

Due to the lack of transparency regarding the GEC, and its potential violations of the Constitution, I write to request that you provide the committee the following documents and information no later than May 11, 2023:

All documents and communications between the GEC and any entity with a domestic presence in the United States, including media outlets, mentioning disinformation, disinfo, misinformation, misinfo or malinformation.

All documents and communications regarding the U.S. Department of States contracts, grants, cooperative agreements, or other agreements for assistance covered in section 200.40 Federal financial assistance of the OMB Uniform Grant Guidance to any of the following entities:

Material preservation is essential for Congress to conduct a comprehensive fact-finding investigation into actions by the GEC and grantees in stifling, censoring, and silencing conservative speech through the guise of labeling it as misinformation, disinformation, or malinformation.

More specifically, this request should also be construed as an instruction to preserve all documents, communications, and other information, including electronic information and metadata, that is or may be potentially responsive to this congressional inquiry. This includes electronic messages about the determined topic that are sent using official and personal accounts or drives, including records created using text messages, phone-based messaging applications, or encryption software. For purposes of this request, preserve includes taking reasonable steps to prevent the partial or full destruction, alteration, deletion, shredding, wiping, relocation, migration, theft, mutilation, reckless, or negligent handling of responsive documents, communications, and information that could render the information incomplete or inaccessible.

Please notify all relevant current and former employees, colleagues, officials, contractors, subcontractors, and consultants who may have worked on documents, communications, or information that is or would be potentially responsive to this congressional inquiry. Thank you for your cooperation in this critical oversight matter.

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McCaul, HFAC Members Demand Answers on GEC's Role in ... - House Foreign Affairs Committee

The Comedian Taking on India’s New Censorship Law – WIRED

The Supreme Court responded by charging him with contempt, but he refused to apologize, saying in an affidavit: The suggestion that my tweets could shake the foundation of the most powerful court in the world is an overestimation of my abilities.

As a comedian, Kamras work is at risk from the new rules. Other comics have been targeted because of their work. In February 2021, Munawar Faruquiwas arrested in Madhya Pradesh for a joke hed told more than a year before, after a member of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party accused him of harming religious sentiments.

Kamra points out that the rules could easily be used against satire on the internet. In March, he tweeted a picture of Prime Minister Modi delivering a speech in parliament with several lawmakers listening. The face of billionaire industrialist Gautam Adani had been photoshopped onto all of the lawmakers. Adani has been accused of benefiting from his proximity to Modi.

Comedy is about satire and a bit of exaggeration, Kamra says. But with the new IT rules, I stand the risk of being deplatformed retrospectively by finding three things I said satirically, claiming them to be fake.

But he adds that his legal challenge isnt about him. This is bigger than any one profession. It will affect everyone, he says.

He points to wide discrepancies between the official account of Covids impact on the country and the assessment of international agencies. The WHO has said that Covid deaths in India were about 10 times more than the official count. Anybody even referring to that could be labeled a fake news peddler, and it would have to be taken down.

In April 2021, Indias most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, was ravaged by a second wave of Covid-19 and a severe shortage of oxygen in hospitals. The state government denied there was a problem. Amidst this unfolding crisis, one man tweeted an SOS call for oxygen to save his dying grandfather. The authorities in the state charged him with rumor-mongering and causing panic.

Experts believe the amendments to Indias IT rules would enable more of this kind of repression, under a government that has already extended its powers over the internet, forcing social media platforms to remove critical voices and using emergency powers tocensor a BBC documentary critical of Modi.

Prateek Waghre, policy director at the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF), a digital liberties organization, says the social media team of Modis Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) hasitself freely spread misinformation about political opponents and critics, while reporters going to the ground and bringing out the inconvenient truth have faced consequences.

Waghre says the lack of clarity on what constitutes fake news makes matters even worse. Looking at the same data set, it is possible that two people can arrive at different conclusions, he adds. Just because your interpretation of that data set is different to that of the governments doesnt make it fake news. If the government is putting itself in a position to fact-check information about itself, the first likely misuse of it would be against information that is inconvenient to the government.

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The Comedian Taking on India's New Censorship Law - WIRED