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Censorship

Call For Action By Journalists Against Gag Rules After Key Legal Win

The Society of Professional Journalists is issuing a call to action for journalists to fight government restrictions on employee speech rights following what is believed to be the first time a journalist has won a legal settlement against gag rules on workers in public agencies. The settlement came in a suit brought by investigative reporter Brittany Hailer against the Allegheny County Jail in Pittsburgh for its rules prohibiting employees from speaking to the press or posting information on social media. After rounds of negotiations with Hailer’s attorneys, the county agreed in April that its employees and contractors “have constitutional rights to speak on matters of public concern when acting as private citizens and not purporting to represent the view of the [Allegheny County Bureau of Corrections].”

Israel’s Rescue Massacres Civilians And Censors Media

The Israeli government could have freed everyone that was held by Hamas since Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7, 2023, if it had continued the truce and negotiations that were taking place in November and December of 2023. The government has even killed some of the hostages in its attacks on Gaza, using the people it claims to care so much about as pawns, bargaining chips to serve nefarious ends at opportune moments. One such moment took place on June 8, 2024, when Israeli forces used humanitarian aid trucks as cover to rescue four hostages while also killing an estimated 274 Palestinians. These same forces killed journalist Abdalah Aljamal along with his wife and his father, and then claimed without proof that the family was holding one of the captives in their home.

Columbia Law Review Website Put Offline To Censor Palestinian Scholar

The Columbia Law Review (CLR) board of directors has taken down the publication’s website in response to its editors publishing a lengthy article about the Nakba by a Palestinian legal scholar, The Intercept reported on 4 June. The CLR publishes scholarly articles, essays, and student notes and is edited by Columbia Law School students. Five months ago, editors of the CLR had reached out to Palestinian human rights lawyer Rabea Eghbariah, asking him to contribute an article establishing the “Nakba” as a formal legal concept. Palestinians use the word, which means “catastrophe” in Arabic, to refer to the expulsion and dispossession of 750,000 Palestinians by Zionist militias in 1948.

Educators Celebrate As Judge Strikes Down ‘Banned Concepts’ Law

Education and free speech advocates cheered Tuesday's federal court ruling striking down New Hampshire's classroom censorship law, one of several so-called "white discomfort" bills passed in Republican-controlled states in recent years. U.S. District Judge Paul J. Barbadoro's 50-page ruling says that the New England state's so-called "banned concepts" law is "unconstitutionally vague" and contains "viewpoint-based restrictions on speech that do not provide either fair warning to educators of what they prohibit or sufficient standards for law enforcement to prevent arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement."

Biden Administration Working With Social Media Companies To Limit Pro-Palestinian Content

The Biden administration has publicly admitted that it is working with tech companies to “limit Hamas's use of online platforms, including social media,” part of a campaign to suppress pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel sentiment. Though there has been much speculation that the federal government is pressuring social media companies to police their networks, this is the first official confirmation of its counterterrorism efforts. A little-noticed readout for a May 15 Hague meeting between the State Department’s Coordinator for Counterterrorism Elizabeth Richard and other governments said that Richard “updated the group on U.S. efforts to engage tech companies in voluntary collaboration to limit Hamas’ use of online platforms, including social media, for terrorist purposes.”

Israeli Government Seizes AP’S Media Equipment In Latest Act Of Censorship

The Israeli government seized media equipment from the Associated Press after the news outlet refused to quit broadcasting a live shot of northern Gaza. Lauren Easton, who is the vice president of corporate communications for AP, condemned the Israeli government for its act of censorship. “The shutdown was not based on the content of the feed but rather an abusive use by the Israeli government of the country’s new foreign broadcaster law,” Easton stated. “We urge the Israeli authorities to return our equipment and enable us to reinstate our live feed immediately so we can continue to provide this important visual journalism to thousands of media outlets around the world.”

Lawsuit Succeeds In Lifting Gag Rules At Pittsburgh Jail

In a win for government accountability in Pennsylvania, the Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic at Yale Law School and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press have succeeded in lifting Allegheny County Jail rules that forbid employees from talking to the press or posting information on social media. As part of a settlement reached in the federal First Amendment lawsuit on April 23, the Pittsburgh jail has adopted new policies that affirm employees’ right to speak and to disclose wrongdoing at the jail. The policies also empower jail employees to speak out to the press on matters of public concern.

The Nation’s Conscience

New York City - I am sitting on a fire escape across the street from Columbia University with three organizers of the Columbia University Gaza protest. It is night. New York City Police, stationed inside and outside the gates of the campus, have placed the campus on lockdown. There are barricades blocking streets. No one, unless they live in a residence hall on campus, is allowed to enter. The siege means that students cannot go to class. Students cannot go to the library. Students cannot enter the labs. Students cannot visit the university health services. Students cannot get to studios to practice. Students cannot attend lectures. Students cannot walk across the campus lawns.

TikTok Law Is An Attempt To Censor, Not A Warning To Big Tech

As US lawmakers’ agitation over TikTok culminates in a law that threatens a nationwide ban if the social media platform isn’t sold to a US buyer within nine months, an emergent media narrative finds a silver lining. Every legislative move targeting TikTok, the story goes, has the potential to inspire much-needed regulation of tech behemoths like Meta, Amazon, Google and Apple. But by conflating the US’s legal treatment of TikTok—a subsidiary of the Beijing-based ByteDance—with that of its own tech industry, media obscure the real reasons for the law’s passage. This was apparent in a New York Times piece (4/25/24) headlined “TikTok Broke the Tech Law Logjam. Can That Success Be Repeated?”

Chris Hedges: Thank You For Support Following Cancellation Of My Show

I have received hundreds of messages of support, including over 400 on Substack alone, since my show was canceled by The Real News. More than 100 of you became paid subscribers. I cannot answer you all individually, but each message, each new subscription, means I can go on. I write and broadcast for you. I see myself in you. I refuse to dumb down anything to reach a wider audience. I do not try to be entertaining. I assume, like me, you love books and the world of ideas, the nuances and complexities that make up the human condition. I assume you care about the truth.

McCarthyist Attack On Gaza Protests Threatens Free Thought For All

With the encouragement of the state, universities from coast to coast are taking draconian steps to silence debate about US-backed violence in the Middle East. The Columbia University community looked on in shock as cops in riot gear arrested at least 100 pro-Palestine protesters who had set up an encampment in the center of campus (New York Post, 4/18/24). The university’s president, Nemat Shafik, had just the day before testified before a Republican-dominated congressional committee ostensibly concerned with campus “antisemitism”—a label that has come to be misapplied to any criticism of Israel, though the critics so smeared are often themselves Jewish.

Resist Congressional Efforts To Silence Free Speech On Palestine

U.S. Representative Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, sent a letter on March 27 to officials at Rutgers University castigating “senior administrators, faculty, staff, academic departments and centers, and student organizations” for creating “a pervasive climate of antisemitism,” and an alleged “failure to protect Jewish students.” This letter is a small part of a larger assault on progressive pedagogy and activism at college campuses which is currently sweeping the country. The House Committee, aiming to silence campus supporters of Palestine, has already targeted some of the nation’s most high-profile private universities and is now turning its attention to public institutions, starting with Rutgers University.

Indigenous Leaders, Land Defenders Censored At RBC’s Annual Meeting

Indigenous leaders and land defenders attended Royal Bank of Canada’s 2024 Annual General Meeting (AGM) on April 11 to send the bank their message: put an end to fossil fuel financing. Delegates from across North America travelled to Toronto, O to criticize RBC’s ongoing funding of fossil fuel projects and their violations of Indigenous and human rights. But RBC’s efforts to listen to Indigenous and frontline land defenders were shallow to say the least. During the questioning period, a mere 60 seconds were allotted to delegates, some of which were interrupted by RBC’s board, executives and shareholders.

Canceling The Valedictorian

The University of Southern California’s (USC) cancellation of its 2024 valedictorian, Asna Tabassum’s, commencement speech on Monday garnered attention from national and international media. Andrew T. Guzman, the provost, announced the university’s decision to cancel the speech on April 15, citing security reasons. Guzman stated: “Unfortunately, over the past several days, discussion relating to the selection of our valedictorian has taken on an alarming tenor. The intensity of feelings, fueled by both social media and the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, has grown to include many voices outside of USC and has escalated to the point of creating substantial risks relating to security and disruption at commencement. We cannot ignore the fact that similar risks have led to harassment and even violence at other campuses.”

I Resigned From World Central Kitchen

At the time I resigned in early March, I was the only staff member of Palestinian descent at World Central Kitchen (WCK).1 I resigned in protest of extensive, unexplained censorship regarding Gaza at the organization. WCK leadership is taking a stand six months too late, only after 7 of its personnel were killed. World Central Kitchen is a food relief NGO, founded by celebrity chef José Andrés in response to 2010’s disastrous earthquake in Haiti. While the vast majority of the organization’s work is in response to natural disasters, WCK had made exceptions, including feeding the National Guard and law enforcement during the January 6 insurrection, and in 2022 activated wholesale in Ukraine.
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