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For-profit newspapers have been banned from the Bruce Township hall after action taken by the Board of Trustees March 15.

At the center of the action is The Record Newspaper, a Romeo-based publication that began publishing in January 2015.

The topic arose after Treasurer Debbie Obrecht accused Supervisor Richard Cory of throwing away copies on display at the township hall left there by Record Editor and Publisher Larry Sobczak.

The treasurer claimed that coverage critical of Clerk Susan Brockmann led to Corys action.

Brockmann was arrested on Sept. 11, 2015 at the township hall after setting off an alarm attempting to enter the building at 3 a.m. A Michigan State Police crash report from that night listed her blood alcohol content at .20, more than double the level of intoxication in Michigan and above the .17 super drunk standard.

I think it is censoring the press, Obrecht told the board. We may or may not like stories that appear, but the idea is that it does benefit the community overall.

Cory denied that he removed the newspapers.

I dont know of anyone throwing them out. This has turned into a political thing for you, Cory told Obrecht. There are articles in there that you want people to read.

Sobczak said that he has been leaving a few copies of The Record at the township hall since December 2015.

Cory said the treasurer gave away copies of The Record to residents coming into her office for them to read articles relating to Brockmanns arrest, which is being adjudicated through the 42-2 District Court in New Baltimore. Sobczak said that he never told Obrecht to personally distribute The Record, but stands by her right to do so.

It is her First Amendment right to pass out whatever she wants, he said.

Treasurer Paul Okoniewski backed up the supervisors claim.

Should we talk about the email I got from a resident citing you for handing them (newspapers) out while people were paying their taxes? Okoniewski asked Obrecht. The person sent an email to the board asking you to cease and desist.

That is absolutely untrue, Obrecht quickly responded.

Brockmann did not acknowledge articles written about her were the issue with The Record. Instead, it was the inaccurate reporting of other stories in the past, she said.

He (Sobczak) doesnt report the news, Brockmann said. I dont think that is the kind of journalism we want in this township.

Obrecht said that if Cory could be handing out materials advocating for Greater Romeo-Washington Chamber of Commerce businesses, then The Record should also be available to the public at the township hall along with publications such as Macomb Now.Magazine.

The Chamber and the Macomb Now are not causing the problems in this building, The Record is causing the problems, Cory told Obrecht. You are only doing this for one reason because you dont like somebody in this building.

You are wrong, Obrecht replied.

Okoniewski offered a motion not to provide any for-profit newspapers in the hallway at the township hall.

The motion passed 4-1 with Obrecht as the lone opposition vote.

They are stomping on the peoples right to free speech and freedom of the press, Sobczak said. I hope the board gains some wisdom and rescinds their motion.

The Record publisher said that he has spoken with Cory since the meeting, but the two did not come up with a solution to getting the newspaper back into the township hall.

Michigan State Police troopers responded to an alarm at the Bruce Township Hall at 3 a.m. Sept. 11 for a possible breaking and entering incident.

According to an MSP crash report from that night, Brockmann backed her Jeep Commander into the responding vehicle of Trooper Roger Haddad. The damage was listed in the report as minor.

Brockmann was then taken into custody and transported to the Chesterfield Police Department for booking and a chemical test on the charge of operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated with a high blood alcohol content. She was released on $100 bond.

Brockmann was due back in Chesterfield Township district court March 22.

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Censorship allegation made as Bruce Township officials toss newspaper from hall - Shelby Township Source Newspapers

Censorship Is Never Acceptable Impact Magazine Yet the beauty of language is in its variety and its flexibility, and therefore we should oppose any attempt to censor language. Alas, that is what Cardiff Metropolitan University has done. By banning the use of certain words, they are impinging on ...

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Censorship Is Never Acceptable - Impact Magazine

Elizabeth Johnston - known online as the Activist Mommy -told CBN News that her followers have reported that they have difficulty accessing her page and sharing her posts.

Elizabeth Johnson at a pro-life rally last year

"People are contacting me saying, 'I cannot access your page at all--my app shuts down when I click on your page.' They say, 'I cannot share your page--there are no share buttons on your videos' or 'I cannot like your page--when I like your page and I go back the next day it is unliked,'" she said.

Johnston went on to accuse the site of censorship and said that there should be a congressional hearing on the matter.

Facebook said that they were looking into the issues raised by Johnston.

In February, Johnston had her account frozen for seven days after she re-shared comments she made about homosexuality which were previously removed by Facebook.

Johnston, who has nearly more than 83,000 followers on Facebook, said: "Leviticus 18:22 and Leviticus 20:13 similarly call homosexual sex 'detestable' and an 'abomination'."

After the incident, aFacebook spokesperson said the post had been removed in error.

The spokesperson added: "Our team processes millions of reports each week, and we sometimes get things wrong. We are sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused."

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Christian blogger accuses Facebook of continual censorship - Premier

President Trump has already labeled major press outlets the fake news media and the enemy of the people. His administration has blocked major news outlets from a briefing because it didnt like what they published.

With that in mind, the public should understand censorship by PIO at the federal level: For years, in many federal agencies, staff members have been prohibited from communicating with any journalist without notifying the authorities, usually the public information officers. And they often are unable to talk without PIO guards actively monitoring them.

Now, conversations will be approved or blocked by people appointed by the Trump Administration, some of them political operatives.

The information about the administrative state that impacts our lives constantly is under these controls. They also cover much of the data through which we understand our world and our lives.

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In January, according to the Washington Post: Trump called the governments job numbers phony. What happens now that he is in charge of them?

Some of us may feel less comfortable with Trump people controlling this information flow. But actually a surge in these controls has been building in the federal government and through the U.S. culture for two decades or more.

In many entities, public and private, federal, state, and local those in power decree that no one will talk to journalists without notifying the PIO. Congressional offices even have the restrictions.

They are convenient for bosses. Under that oversight staff people are unlikely to talk about all the stuff thats always there, outside of the official story.

Beyond that, PIOs often monitor the conversations and tell staff people what they may or may not discuss. Frequently agencies and offices delay contacts or block them altogether. An article on the Association of Health Care Journalists website, advising journalists about dealing with the Department of Health and Human Services, says, Reporters rarely get to interview administration officials

Remember, those HHS people journalists cant talk to are at the hub of information flow on what works and doesnt with Obamacare, Medicare, and Medicaid. Or they know whether there are other perspectives on the numbers the agency publishes. Not to speak of the understanding about food and drugs, infectious disease, and medical and health policy research. Many of them could quickly stun us with the education they could give, if they were not gagged.

Another fact that gives pause is these restraints are just for journalists. There are no special rules or offices to stop staff people from having fluid communication with lobbyists, special interest groups, contractors, people with a lot of money, etc.

Fifty-three journalism and open government groups wrote to President Obama asking him to lift the mandate that PIOs be notified of contacts and the related restrictions in federal agencies. We met with people in the White House in 2015 to leave that message for the President. A year ago we pleaded in an editorial that Obama not leave these constraints in place, given the authoritarian rhetoric on the campaign trail and the fact no one can know how these controls will be used in one year or 20 years.

We wonder how former Obama officials feel now about their medications, given that FDA officials cant talk without Trump controls.

But is it ever even rational to just believe staff people who are under such coercion?

Some journalists - given our proclivity for believing we always get the story profess to not be concerned about the PIO controls, saying people on the inside will leak. But do we have any sense of how often that happens? Do we have a 75-percent perspective on an entire agency, or a 2-percent? Nobody leaked when EPA staff people knew that kids in Flint were drinking lead in water or when CDC had sloppy practices in handling bad bugs.

Understandably in shock at President Trumps attacks on the press, some feel these PIO controls are not a primary priority. Actually, this era makes it clearer than ever why we dont need to leave these networks of controls to people in power.

Kathryn Foxhall, currently a freelance reporter, has written on health and health policy in Washington, D.C., for over 40 years, including 14 years as editor of the newspaper of the American Public Health Association. Email her at kfoxhall@verizon.net.

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Another View: Trump-era PIO censorship - The Saratogian

Barney Rosset, the spirited subject of Michael Rosenthals new biography,Barney: Grove Press and Barney Rosset, Americas Maverick Publisher and His Battle against Censorship which will be the subject of a reading and book signing event at 4 p.m. Saturday, March 18at the Golden Notebook, 29 Tinker Street, Woodstock seems to have made only one key trip to Woodstock in his lifetime. That was in summer of 1951 when he headed here to buy half of the fledgling publishing company hed make his name with from Robert Phelps for $1500. Within weeks hed bought the other half and, while simultaneously studying at the New School, began a career.

Which isnt to suggest that Rossets ties to Woodstock ended there. Consider the nature of what this mischievous Chicago native, who based himself in the Hamptons for decades, created and eventually lost at Grove and its offshoots Evergreen magazine and Grove Press Films. He was the guy who brought Beckett and Gide, Robbe-Grillet and the Beats to mass markets. His taking on the nations once-strict censorship laws on behalf of D.H. LawrencesLady Chatterleys Lover, Henry MillersTropic of Cancer, and William BurroughsNaked Lunchcost him years and fortunes, but also ended all such fights against books while also earning him huge profits for a small, idiosyncratic indie publishing firm. Evergreen, during its short but noteworthy run, premiered Sartre and Camus essays, Albee plays, and Che Guevaras deathbed diaries alongside nudie photos and the first underground comics. Rossets distribution ofI Am Curious (Yellow)broke down screen taboos against nudity, opening the floodgates for the New American Cinema (while also, according to Rosenthal, sounding the death knell for a burgeoning foreign art film cinema in the U.S.).

Barney Rosset was born and raised during a time where liberal, and even socialist or communist, was not a bad word. He came out of a Chicago known for its art and progressivism; worked in the Army during a war that championed democratic values over bullying fascism. And he found his way with the help of a family fortune small enough to have limits yet big enough to allow him a bit of playing. He flourished at a time when literature and the arts in general, alongside science and philosophy, were as respected as business acumen. It was a brief era when you could sell hundreds of thousands of copies of edgy books such asThe Autobiography of Malcolm Xor the early self-help pioneerGames People Play, or push anti-colonial theses into the nations classrooms with ease.

It was what led to a wave of well-to-do, hard-charging New Yorkers finding ways to set up alternative lives outside of their city, in a Quonset hut in East Hampton as Rosset did, or upstate as many others (including his fellow Chicagoan Albert Grossman) would do. Which in turn led to a bettering of circumstances for creators of all stripes, even without the incomes a Rosset and his peers could boast.

Rosenthal, who splits time between NYC and Woodland Valley outside Phoenicia, is expert at zooming in on the societal elements that make Barney Rosset and Grove Press story important. We get the crusading free speech battles, the confident manner in which our best and brightest business folks were once able to push their own tastes on a culture not yet fully enamored with bottom lines and prurient mass tastes, and what life during the Great Society final years of progressivisms golden age could be like, from all-day rum and cokes to open sexuality.

But Rosenthal, while never supplying the novelistic touches many readers have come to expect from these life and times style biographies, is also pitch-perfect at demonstrating the underbelly of Rosset and Groves success, as well as that of the entire 1960s. Publication of works by Che and Castro lead to someones shooting of a missile into the publishers offices (no one was hurt), which much later leads to his paranoia about having been targeted by the CIAwhich even later proves to be partly true. The mans fondness for women and open sexuality, rushes through a slew of marriages (including his first to noted Abstract Expressionist painter Joan Mitchell) to distanced kids and eventual charges of misogyny that led, in combination with his employees wish for better terms, to union pressures and a much-publicized labor battle. Moreover, Groves very success pushed Rosset to overestimate his own prowess as a tastemaker and business force, which led to over-expansion and the loss of his business first to the Getty family, and later to Atlantic Press (where it still hobbles on).

Barney: Grove Press and Barney Rosset, Americas Maverick Publisher and His Battle against Censorshipis much more than a local interest book, although its local connections are still strong (including its editor, Nick Lyons). Its a book for book lovers, culture mavens, and all who still harbor interest in the 1960s and how we got to where we all are now from where we thought we were then.

Michael Rosenthal, also known for his years as a professor at Columbia University, reads from and signs copy of this fun and deep book at Golden Notebook, 29 Tinker Street in Woodstock, at4 p.m.onSaturday, March 18. Seewww.goldennotebook.comfor further information

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Michael Rosenthal's Barney: Fighting censorship - Hudson Valley One