On Sunday morning, President Trump tweeted an attack on the 1619 Project, threatening to withhold funding from California schools teaching the popular journalism project focused on the rise and impact of slavery in the United States.With his newest tweet, the Presidents actions raise a troubling question:

Why is the Trump administration threatening to censor the way schools teach about the history of slavery and racism in the United States?

The Presidents assertion came in response to a tweet from an unverified account stating that California schools were teaching the 1619 Project curriculum. In response, Trump tweeted: Department of Education is looking at this. If so, they will not be funded!

Engraving shows the arrival of a Dutch slave ship with a group of African slaves for sale, ... [+] Jamestown, Virginia, 1619. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The 1619 Projectis a long-form journalism and multimedia initiative ofThe New York Times Magazine,started in August of 2019, 400 years after African slaves first landed on the shores of America. In its own words, the project aims to reframe the countrys history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of our national narrative. Recently, the 1619 Project teamed up with the Pulitzer Center todevelop school curriculumto use 1619 Project content in classrooms.

Trumps Sunday morning tweet continues a trend of his administrations provocative actions regarding educational approaches to racial injustice in America.

For example, on Friday, the Trump administration announced that it was planning to cease diversity training that it deemed anti-American.In a two-page memo addressed to the leadership of federal agencies, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought specifically directed federal executives to begin the process of identifying contracts with race-related content that it finds offensive.

All agencies are directed to begin to identify all contracts or other agency spending related to any training on critical race theory, white privilege, or any other training or propaganda effort that teaches or suggests either (1) that the United States is an inherently racist or evil country or (2) that any race or ethnicity is inherently racist or evil, the memo states.

Despite the timing, Trumps tweet isnt the first instance the Trump administration and its allies targeted the 1619 Project. InJuly, Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) introducedcongressional legislation, titled the Saving American History Act of 2020, with the stated purpose of preventing federal funds from being made available to teach the 1619 Project curriculum in elementary schools and secondary schools.

The proposed legislation claims that an activist movement is now gaining momentum to deny or obfuscate this history by claiming that America was not founded on the ideals of the Declaration [of Independence] but rather on slavery and oppression. It goes on to state that the 1619 Project is a racially divisive and revisionist account of history that threatens the integrity of the Union by denying the true principles on which it was founded.

Both Trumps tweet, as well as Cottons proposed legislation, beg a troubling question: why are Republican leaders trying to censor the teaching about the history of slavery and racism in the United States, and why now?

During a time when the United States is engaged in an emotional, and increasingly confrontational, dialogue over the legacy of its racist past,educators across the United States are also exploring waysto better teach the narratives of racial privilege and injustice that have led to the pervasiveness of institutional racism in America. By threatening to censor content that it finds objectionable, the Trump administration is not only treading dangerously on the underlying principles of a free and democratic society; it is also acting in a deeply hypocritical manner, as it otherwise generally endorses local autonomy on issues of education and school choice.

But perhaps most troubling of all, Trumps tweet and the arguments of his administration and allies demonstrate a belief that history should be taught in a a way that limits criticism of the United States. Further, Trump himself has shown that his is willing to take actions to constructively censor those whose views of history conflict with those of the administration.

Thats not teaching history, that is shaping national propaganda.

For a president who proudly proclaims that he has done more for the Black community than any other President in American history, his efforts to censor the painful story of the Black experience in America are a slap in the face of every Black person who lived that history from the past to the present.

American descendants of slavery deserve more than patronizing claims of support from Trump or any politician.The deserve recognition, justice, and reparations. And at the very least, they deserve to have their story told...

Starting with 1619.

Read more:

Call Trumps Attacks On The 1619 Project What They Are Censorship of American History - Forbes

Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook is often seen advocating and making tall claims about providing complete freedom of speech on the platform. However, time and again his claims have been found in complete contradiction to what Facebook actually does.

Recently, Facebook has announced that it is bringing an update in its terms of service. This update is more like a censorship warning which entails that Facebook will remove or restrict access to any content on the platform that can bring legal or regulatory risks for the company all over the globe. This term will come in effect from October 1st, 2020.

Many users in Australia,India and the US have reported that they have received notification updates from Facebook in which the company has warned the users of its changed policy. And the notification further reads that this action will come under section 3.2 of Facebooks terms of service and will start from 1st October.

The company has recently indicated that they are planning to block people and news publishers in Australia from sharing news. This plan has come into existence after Australia proposed an anti-trust law that asked tech giants like Facebook to pay a fair share of money to Australian media outlets for the news they provide to the platform.

However, now this new change in content moderation and policing is not going to be limited to Australia only, as Facebook has said that this update is going to be global, and it will give more flexibility to the company to change their services in Australia and rest of the world so that the companys operation is not hampered.

Now also, the timing of this update is crucial and people all over the world are just joining the dots to connect this move with the upcoming US Presidential Election in November. This change will give authorities in the US and India the power to police content on a greater scale now, and all of this seems to be well-planned and staged for the upcoming election where everyone knows that Facebook would play a pivotal role!

This update is facing a lot of opposition from users all over the world.

Photo: Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket / Getty Images

Read next: Facebook announces a new research partnership to examine the impact of both Facebook and Instagram on key political trends in the upcoming elections

Read more from the original source:

Facebook is bringing an updated content censorship term for its users from October 1st - Digital Information World

It looks like Joe Rogan has been censored.

Rogan, who has a history of denouncing social media censorship, as seen below, just found his most controversial episodes omitted from the Spotify platform.

After a ground-breaking $100 million deal with the streaming giant, one has to wonder if Rogan has that same energy for his new bossesor if its enough to shut him up.

In the past, Joe Rogan interviewed some people that didnt deserve to have a platform. Milo Yiannopoulos, Chris DElia, and Stefan Molyneux were just a few of the many awful people that Rogan gave a platform to while hiding behind the guise of free speech to legitimize their disgusting philosophies.

And lets not forget the time that Joey Diaz bragged about coercing female comics to have oral sex with him.

These episodes and more are missing from Spotifys library, though its unclear if its due to Joe Rogans choice, Spotifys choice, or just a technical oversight. And thus far, neither Rogan nor Spotify has commented on the matter.

But that hasnt stopped people from wrongly crying about censorship.

Its shocking how few people including Joe Rogan understand what the First Amendmentreallyentails.

Far too many people believe that the First Amendment of the United States Constitution says that people can say what they want, when they want, without fear of recourse or consequence.

But thats not true.

The First Amendment guarantees freedoms concerning religion, expression, assembly, and the right to petition. It forbids Congress from both promoting one religion over others and also restricting an individuals religious practices. It guarantees freedom of expression by prohibiting Congress from restricting the press or the rights of individuals to speak freely. It also guarantees the right of citizens to assemble peaceably and to petition their government.

The emphasis is mine, but notice the keyword in the phrase: Congress. That means thegovernmentcannot arrest you for speaking out against it, nor can thegovernmentthrow members of the press in jail for writing dissenting opinions against it (as often happens in other countries).

The First Amendment doesnotapply to private companies which means that Spotify is under no obligation to host episodes of The Joe Rogan Experience that goes against its corporate policy. And lest you think this is a political move, and Spotify is a leftist liberal company, the company has also excluded episodes of the show that featured left-leaning heroes like Tommy Chong.

This fun little webtoon about the First Amendment sums it up.

Joe Rogan isnt going to speak up against Spotifys alleged censorship of his show because evenheknows that theyre well within their rights.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of CCN.com.

Originally posted here:

Will Joe Rogan Have The Guts To Call Out Spotify For 'Censorship'? - CCN.com

Joe Rogans arrival on Spotify has sparked a backlash among fans, after episodes featuring controversial right-wing guests appeared unavailable on the platform.

However, fans have claimed that a number of past episodes have not been added to Spotify, many of which feature appearances from far-right figures including Milo Yiannopoulos and Alex Jones.

One Rogan fan tweeted that Spotify 86d the Alex Jones episodes, plus more controversial guests in the early hours of 1 September, leading to many other right-wing fans claiming that episodes had been censored.

The apparent missing episodes have led many of Rogans fans to demand answers, with some threatening to abandon the show altogether.

Joe is dead to me if he doesnt address this, wrote one Reddit commentator. This goes against his we need to talk to everybody shtick. Im not interested in listening to curated podcasts by his employer.

Another added: Joe sold out. Its coming to us as a surprise, but this had to be part of the plan. He can talk the talk as a free speech advocate all he wants, but when push came to shove, he took the money and agreed to be censored. Pretty disappointed, but whatever.

As part of Rogans Spotify deal, the radio personality will produce podcasts and accompanying videos for the platform.

Towards the end of 2020, his show will be made exclusive to Spotify, meaning that listeners will no longer be able to tune in on platforms such as Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts or Stitcher. Rogans YouTube channel will remain intact, albeit will no longer publish full episodes of his programme.

In a statement in May, Rogan said: It will be the exact show. Im not going to be an employee of Spotify, were going to be working with the same crew, doing the exact same show. The only difference will be it will now be available on the largest audio platform in the world. Nothing else will change.

Read more:

Joe Rogans Spotify move condemned by fans over right-wing censorship claims - The Independent

Apple hit back at criticism over moves to comply with government censorship, emphasising its backing for freedom of information and expression in a statement outlining its human rights policy.

The company stated it believes in the critical importance of an open society in which information flows freely, which it explained sometimes results in conflict with government bodies.

With dialogue, and a belief in the power of engagement, we try to find the solution that best serves our users, their privacy, their ability to express themselves, and their access to reliable information and helpful technology.

In February, investors pushed Apple to respond to concerns related to its decision to remove VPN services from its App Store in China, calling for a public commitment to freedom of expression.

Apple faced further backlash in the middle of the year when it reportedly removed thousands more apps from its marketplace in China to comply with local laws.

See the original post here:

Apple reacts to censorship censure - Mobile World Live

It is no secret algorithms dominate our online social lives it is not as if we arent making our own decisions when it comes to who we talk to or what media we consume, but it would be wilfully ignorant to ignore how systems have been programmed to categorise, collect, and suggest data just based on our likes and follows. This exposes us to content, people and ideas that we just would not have found on our own but it begs the questions of how much control do these systems have in restricting what we see?

This brings us to shadow banning.

Shadow banning is the decision of a social media platform to partially or wholly obstruct a persons content from being interacted with preventing new people from searching for your content, ensuring you do not appear under hashtags or even limiting how often you are suggested as a person to follow are just a few ways this can be achived. Platforms such as Instagram and Tiktok rarely acknowledge the claims of this nature but rather point to their right to remove posts that do not align with their Community Guidelines and how agreeing to use the platform is consenting to their power to do so.

In the grand scheme of things, having your videos taken down or fewer people finding and engaging content is not the greatest detriment to the world, but there is a significant pattern to who is being shadow banned. If I refer back to Tiktoks community guidelines, they claim to scrap videos created to facilitate harm onto others but within the guidelines, they make an effort to reiterate that they allow educational, historical, satirical, artistic, and other content that can be clearly identified as counterspeech or aims to raise awareness of the harm caused by dangerous individuals and/or organisations. This quote and their statement to show support of the Black Lives Matter movement will come as surprise especially to the number of black creators that have seen their engagement rates fall and their videos be taken down on their app.

Instagram has shown itself to be just as complicit in this there has been significant backlash from sex workers, sex educators and often queer inclusive sex-positive spaces on the app. Chante Joseph in her Guardian piece exposed the grey area that is not as clearly defined as Instagrams no nudity policy where the administrators can flag content as sexually suggestive; many people argue that this is necessary to ensure children are not exposed to inappropriate content rather than parents taking accountability or social media platforms at least attempting to introduce any form of age restriction, the onus is placed on creators. But consider, for example, LGBTQIA+ creators; their accounts are providing information that young people who may not have even come out to themselves would otherwise be able to access so they can process and understand their feelings in a healthy space that wasnt available to them just a decade ago. In essence, these guidelines about what a person is allowed to share is being defined by some arbitrary moral standard where discussions of sex specifically those outside the realm of the heteronormative are something to be protected from, even though there are very few spaces that allow for them in real life either.

Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Facebook all are often steeped in their reputation of being superficial and resting on the self-gratification of people wanting to be seen (which isnt even itself a bad thing), but besides that they can be used to share ideas, political thoughts and knowledge. So when black creators attempting to inform the masses are restricted from sharing information or when sex workers messages on misogyny are inaccessible because their page is considered too sexually suggestive (a term not defined so therefore difficult to avoid), the silence is deafening. Shadowbanning is a threat to us because it maintains for us the illusion of control. Yet the whole idea is synonymous with censorship and the obstruction of information. Further, this obstruction is dictated by what platforms see as appropriate so the power we assumed we had in our voices can still be silenced.

Excerpt from:

Shadow banning and its role in modern day censorship - Cherwell Online

TORONTO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--As TunnelBear supports individuals in countries like Venezuela and Belarus that have recently experienced internet censorship by providing short-term crisis solutions, the VPN company has made a commitment to providing long-term solutions for those that face ongoing internet censorship in their country. TunnelBear today announced its next step in the fight against online censorship with an offering of 10GB/month of free usage on TunnelBears VPN network for those in Iran.

Months of development have led to the ability to provide access to TunnelBear in Iran, where many VPNs are blocked. The VPN provider has spent months working to combat online censorship in Iran through a structured four-stage technical development framework, which addresses VPN distribution, API blocking, connecting to a VPN, and maintaining a VPN connection.

Iran is the only country - aside from mainland China - where internet users experience censorship across all four stages of the VPN technical framework.

All TunnelBear users in Iran will have a free 10GB monthly allowance. This is equivalent to around 20 hours of browsing otherwise blocked social media sites, or around 800 hours of secure web browsing.

Were proud of the technical progress weve made over the past several months to make TunnelBear available to internet users in Iran, said Justin Watts, head of engineering at TunnelBear. TunnelBear will always be on the side of an open and uncensored internet, and our upgrade for Iran is the first of many anti-censorship improvements to come.

Irans policies are some of the worst in the world for internet freedom. The countrys government and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps operate an advanced internet filtering system to prohibit social media sites, anti-religious content, some gaming platforms, and more. Last winter, Iran experienced a country-wide internet shutdown for one week in the wake of protests against gasoline prices and the government response.

TunnelBear, along with several other VPN providers, is currently blocked in Iran. This means that people have to resort to alternative app stores and social media channels to access digital security tools like VPN. Watts added, There were many roadblocks on the way to tackling such a robust censorship ecosystem, and we are still learning with the help of our friends on the ground.

The VPN provider believes the technical strides made in Iran across the four stages of censorship framework will help their user base in other censored countries as well.

TunnelBear built support for the Encrypted Server Name Indicator (ESNI) TLS extension into their Android application, making it the second app to ever have full ESNI support.

ESNI is the next frontier in online privacy, Watts continued. It allows us to encrypt a privacy loophole within HTTPS. Weve found that much of the time for our users, ESNI works when other anti-censorship techniques fail. Weve open sourced our ESNI work, and we encourage other providers and applications to adopt this, as ESNI is most effective when used at a wide-scale.

Beyond TunnelBears focus on anti-censorship in Iran, the provider is monitoring censorship on a global scale, to ensure they can deploy solutions and technical updates as censorship spikes in countries or regions across the world.

About TunnelBear

TunnelBear is a very simple virtual private network (VPN) that allows users to browse the web privately and securely. It secures browsing from hackers, ISPs, and anyone that is monitoring the network. TunnelBear believes you should have access to an open and uncensored internet, wherever you are.

See the article here:

TunnelBear Circumvents Iran VPN Block, Launches 10GB Monthly Offer in the Country - Business Wire

Facebook has announced changes to its Terms of Service that will allow it to remove content or restrict access if the company thinks it is necessary to avoid legal or regulatory impact.

Users of Facebook's app have started receiving notifications regarding a change to its Terms of Service which states:

Effective October 1, 2020, section 3.2 of our Terms of Service will be updated to include: "We also can remove or restrict access to your content, services or information if we determine that doing so is reasonably necessary to avoid or mitigate adverse legal or regulatory impacts to Facebook."

This particular section of the Facebook TOS includes agreements about who can and can't use Facebook and the things that you are and aren't allowed to do on the platform.

The reaction on social media, in particular on Twitter has been mixed to say the least. One user commenting: "Facebook's terms of service update translated to plain English: "We will remove content not because it is incorrect, misleading, illegal, or spreads dangerous misinformation, but because removing it might help prevent us from getting caught allowing it." One user said the update was "absolutely terrifying."

Another commented "smells like Election interference and censorship to me!" and a human rights commenter further noted:

Disturbing new addition to #Facebook terms of service that could be used to justify online censorship, particularly with govts using restrictive national laws to order social media platforms to censor information critical of the govt or monarchy in violation of #OnlineFreedom

The new clause in the TOS is quite wide and vague, but it seems reasonable to think that it could indeed be used to justify removing content at the behest of a government or nation if Facebook thought it was being threatened by some kind of legal action or regulatory scrutiny.

Some users were much more upbeat about the change, suggesting it could lead to more false news and misinformation being removed.

The move could be linked to recent changes in Australia, where the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is preparing a bill that would require both Facebook and Google to compensate news outlets when stories are published on their respective platforms.

As noted, the changes to Facebook's terms of service take effect from October 1, 2020.

Read more here:

Facebook is changing its Terms of Service, and users are not happy - Windows Central

By Kevin Reed 5 September 2020

Earlier this year, the World Socialist Web Site was officially blacklisted from r/politics, the largest political subreddit on the link-sharing social media site Reddit, with no explanation given.

On August 28, an article entitled, Trump runs for Fhrer inexplicably made it past the blacklist, having been shared by a Reddit user in the r/politics subreddit. It quickly won thousands of upvotes, received over 600 comments, and was elevated onto Reddits front page.

The r/politics moderators immediately sprang into action. They labeled the WSWS article as coming from an Unacceptable Source and shut down the political discussion among Reddit members.

As we reported on Saturday, the censored WSWS articlewhich analyzed President Trumps nomination acceptance speech at the 2020 Republican National Conventionbecame instantly popular because it said what the establishment media refused to. It exposed Trumps law and order response to the mass protests, his appeals to the police, military and federal paramilitary forces, and his tirades against socialism and Marxism as part of an attempt to establish a personalist presidential dictatorship and create a fascist movement in the US.

The articles thousands of upvotes were accompanied by overwhelmingly supportive comments, including the following:

These events make clear the nature of Reddits censorship of the WSWS. It is aimed at silencing left-wing criticism of the US political establishment, under conditions in which broad sections of its own readers are hungry for news and analysis from just such a perspective.

Moreover, the WSWS analysis pointed out that the only reason Trump has been able to take his dictatorial plans as far as he has is because of the spinelessness of his Democratic Party opponents. As the article explained, the Democrats have consistently blocked any appeal to the broad majority of the population and, in particular, the working class, and this is because, as one of the two parties of Wall Street and big business, the Democrats are just as terrified of, and hostile to, the growth of mass popular opposition to capitalism as Trump is.

However, for the r/politics moderators, this analysis by the WSWS is considered unacceptable. And, approximately nine hours after the WSWS article was sharedand after it had received 9,200 upvotes (93 percent of those who voted) and more than 600 commentsthe r/politics moderators labeled the article from an Unacceptable Source and shut down the political discussion.

The subreddit moderators political censorship of the WSWS article Trump runs for Fhrer comes as no surprise given their previous removal of wsws.org from the r/politics domain whitelist.

On May 26, Reddit users attempting to post links from the World Socialist Web Site to r/politics were informed that the wsws.org domain had been removed as a recognized source of news and analysis on the subreddit.

Subsequent attempts by users to publish links to articles from wsws.org were returning an automated system message that says, Your submission was automatically removed because wsws.org is not on our approved source whitelist. r/politics has a number of conditions that domains must adhere to in order to be approved as an acceptable source.

As we explained in an earlier article on April 3, regarding the banning of the World Socialist Web Site from the r/coronavirus subreddit, the removal of the wsws.org domain by moderators is unmistakably an act of political censorship designed to block our analysis of the unfolding crisis from reaching the public.

In the case of the r/coronavirus ban in April, moderators claimed that WSWS articles were off-topic political discussion. In the more recent case of r/politicsa subreddit specifically devoted to political topics and political discussionthe moderators have resorted to a cruder form of censorship: the false claim that the World Socialist Web Site is unacceptable.

We have also pointed out that the World Socialist Web Site is recognized internationally as a major source of authoritative Marxist journalism and analysis. Articles on the site are frequently quoted by leading authors and journalists around the world and in dozens of academic papers. Articles and statements on wsws.org are translated into 24 languages and the site is followed daily by a growing international audience of hundreds of thousands of readers.

Both recent instances of political censorship by Reddit moderators were recently noted by Matt Taibbithe freelance journalist and contributing editor for Rolling Stonein his May 29 blog post Planet of the Censoring Humans, which surveyed a series of recent online censorship actions by the social media platforms Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Reddit.

Taibbi wrote, In late April, the World Socialist Web Sitewhich has been one of the few consistent critics of Internet censorship and algorithmic manipulationwas removed by Reddit from the r/coronavirus subreddit on the grounds that it was not reliable. The site was also removed from the whitelist for r/politics, the primary driver of traffic from Reddit to the site.

The subreddit r/politics was created in August 2007 and is one of the most widely used forums on Reddit. Out of 1.2 million subreddits on the news aggregation platform, r/politics ranks at number 56. It has 6.5 million members with tens of thousands actively participating users at any one moment. At the time of this writing, for example, there are approximately 150,000 users participating in live online political discussions on r/politics on a range of topics.

There are more than 1,020 news source domains included on the r/politics whitelist. These include newspaper publishers (359), policy think tanks (188), web publishers (183), magazine publishers (118), television networks (48), international news agencies (39), polling and research organizations (37), radio broadcasters (19), US government agencies (10), news wire services (10) and political parties (9).

The r/politics whitelist includes numerous right-wing publisherssuch as The Federalist, Breitbart.com and theWashington Timeswho engage in promoting racism, xenophobia, conspiracy theories and completely false and dangerous information about the coronavirus pandemic.

The World Socialist Web Site had been previously whitelisted nearly three years ago by the subreddit and, since August 2017, hundreds of article links have been shared. These articles have resulted in some of the most popular discussions on r/politics and produced a combined total of hundreds of thousands of upvotes and tens of thousands of comments.

We demand answers from the moderators of r/politics to the following questions:

Finally, we call upon all Reddit users and others who defend free speech rights to demand an end to political censorship by r/politics moderators and that the World Socialist Web Site be restored to the subreddit whitelist with an accompanying official statement to this effect.

The author also recommends:

Reddit moderators censor WSWS article on Trumps speech at Republican convention [29 August 2020]

Reddit bans 2,000 communities in major censorship action [2 July 2020]

Why is the World Socialist Web Site banned from the subreddit r/coronavirus? [3 April 2020]

Google is blocking the World Socialist Web Site from search results.

To fight this blacklisting:

Read more:

End the blacklist of the World Socialist Web Site on Reddit! - WSWS

Don Kahle| Register-Guard

The presidential campaign will consume Americans attention for the next two months. Debates begin in less than four weeks. Media companies can do extraordinary work to meet a deadline. They have only a few dozen days to reset their broadcast practices. They must learn new ways to enforce the community standards that inform them.

Broadcasters lease the public airwaves. This arrangement has always required them to uphold certain community standards. A code of ethics was broadly applied to the entire industry. For many years, certain behaviors and words were not allowed over the public airwaves.

This is not censorship. Maintaining standards, understood in advance and applied in all situations, is integral to the public trust. Freedom of speech should have no practical limits, but amplification carries certain responsibilities. If theres a microphone involved, standards must be upheld.

Even and especially when a speaker wont abide by the standards, the broadcasters must even if that speaker is a candidate for or the current president of the United States. Granted, its not a good look to be turning off the microphone of the most powerful person on the planet, but decorum shouldnt eclipse decency.

Broadcasters have tried to uphold standards for truth and honesty, but real-time fact-checking is usually impossible and always ineffective. Debunking a lie requires first repeating it, focusing attention on the false assertion, further amplifying its reach.

Instead, media companies must expand their skill set. They must learn to avert their gaze. Most media companies do not allow reporters and camerapersons to film a premeditated, ongoing crime. They are trained instead to call authorities and do what they can ethically to prevent the crime.

Youve never seen a hostage-taker negotiate his demands over the public airwaves with a news team inside, broadcasting an exclusive scoop. This is why.

I grew up watching the Chicago Cubs play baseball on TV. If a fan jumped onto Wrigley Field and interrupted the game, security would corral and remove the overly exuberant fan. At least thats what I assume happened, because broadcasters refused to show the intruder scampering across the outfield.

The same lesson applies here.

Republicans made hash of the Hatch Act during their convention. From the White House, their candidate taunted his adversary (and the media) by bragging about their willful violation: The fact is, were here and theyre not.

Media companies knew in advance that the administration intended to use the White House as a campaign backdrop. Their legal council could have told them the Hatch Act would be violated. If this event amounted to a premeditated crime, they had ample time to inform the campaign that their cameras wouldnt be attending.

Likewise, debate moderators have time to inform both campaigns about real-time consequences for misbehavior. Both candidates could be given a list of misstatements they have made on the campaign that have been determined to be false or misleading. Repeat any of these untruths, and your microphone will be turned off for 90 seconds.

All sides hope for clarity in November. News outlets must demand clarity and reject confusions from the candidates.

DonKahle(fridays@dksez.com) writes a column each Friday for The Register-Guard and blogs atwww.dksez.com.

More:

Kahle: Upholding the public trust - The Register-Guard

The old bromide that everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not their own set of facts has certainly lost almost all currency in the kaleidoscopic world of Trump.

Manipulation and suppression of science was supposed to have been solved in the last administration. When the George W. Bush era ended, years of blatant alteration of science on topics ranging from climate change to reproductive health forged a political consensus that such abuses should not recur. The solution announced by the Obama White House in March 2009 was to direct agencies to adopt policies to protect the integrity of scientific information as well as the scientists who face reprisal for doing this work.

Because this effort relied upon agencies to set aside their own institutional agendas and to self-police, the Obama initiative was largely a failure. Different agencies produced a hodgepodge of aspirational goals with little follow-through or enforcement. One indication of how weak this effort was is embodied in an EPA Scientific Integrity Policy that is so limp that it was repeatedly embraced by Scott PruittEdward (Scott) Scott PruittConspicuous by their absence from the Republican Convention EPA looks to other statutes to expand scope of coming 'secret science' rule EPA ordered to reconsider New York efforts to tame downwind pollution MORE, secure in the knowledge that the policy would not impede him in the slightest, no matter how hard he put his thumb on agency scientific scales.

A key lesson we should draw from this experience, amplified by the Trump administrations evermore ham-handed interventions to contort government science is simply this: Counting on self-restraint or self-enforcement from the executive branch in safeguarding the integrity or accuracy of official science is utter folly.

Consider the science integrity legislation previously introduced. Congress appears poised to make the same mistake again. Merely mandating that agencies develop and somehow enforce scientific integrity standards appears destined to produce rhetorical results, as there is no enforcement mechanism to correct deviations from vague legislated standards of integrity. Instead, Congress should consider measures that are both absolutely clear and are judicially enforced.

A basic challenge is that federal scientists and their work products presently havescant legal protection. To remedy this deficiency, Congress should consider two proposals calculated to make real differences:

One would protect scientists by classifying participation in the peer review process, whether as an author or reviewer, as a protected activity enforced in the same way and through the same legal processes employed by the federal Whistleblower Protection Act.

Since federal scientists are not typically reporting waste, fraud or abuse, government scientists often find themselves and their work with little legal protection. Instead, these scientists are simply doing their jobs too well, on issues with political sensitivity.

Congress could change this by declaring that scientific work is itself legally protected activity. Significantly, this proposal would extend legal protection from reprisal to scientists targeted due to the political implications of their work for compiling data or reaching findings that conflict with official talking points.

Protecting participation in the peer review process would also provide the scientific community, the public and Congress with an unvarnished and ongoing view of the best available science as it evolves, trumping current agency restrictions.

The second proposal would protect science by statutorily requiring that all scientific or technical work, whether still in draft form or even if officially rejected, be included in the administrative record made available to litigants in any court challenge. Demands for production of the full record would be judicially enforced through the discovery process.

This proposal would accomplish two critical functions: one, undo Trump-ordered censorship of records to exclude dissenting information or reports kept in prolonged draft status; and two, empower specialists to supplement the record with inconvenient facts for which the agency would have to account in litigation. To the extent that official censorship of the record becomes legally futile, the organizational incentive to try to suppress information would be diminished.

Since the beginning of the Republic, high government officials have sought to control the message and prefer to hide information that undermines that message. But today, these engrained bureaucratic tendencies are now not just tolerated but encouraged to run rampant. Not only is Congress itself a victim of the executive branchs scientific manipulation, but leaving these dynamics unchecked threatens to further erode public confidence in the truthfulness of their government.

Recognizing that things have gotten so out of hand, Congress must enact new, strong enforcement mechanisms to free us from the grip of alternative facts. Failure to do so will mean we did not learn the hard lesson of the Trump experience and we have left the door open for it to be repeated.

Jeff Ruch is the Pacific director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Follow the organization on Twitter @PEERorg.

Read more from the original source:

Science protections must be enforceable | TheHill - The Hill