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Ali hsan Arslan, a close confidant of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoan and a deputy from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), hired a former senior adviser to the Trump campaign, lobbyist Barry Bennett, US Department of Justice Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) records have revealed.

According to documents filed with FARA on Wednesday, Bennett says he will assist Arslan in his role as a member of parliament to develop better relations with key policy makers and thinkers in Washington. Bennett also says he will work with Arslan free of charge because he is Arslans friend.

Yet, despite the absence of a formal, paid contract between the two, Bennett seems to have disclosed his relationship with Arslan to meet the requirements of the US statute known as FARA. The Foreign Agent Registration Act requires certain individuals working as agents of foreign principalswho are engaged in political activities or other activities specified under the statuteto make periodic public disclosure of their relationship with the foreign principal, as well as activities, receipts and disbursements in support of those activities.

According to Bennetts FARA filing, his activities on behalf of Arslan may include communications with Members of Congress and Congressional staff, Executive Branch officials, the media, and with other individuals and organizations that could reference relations with the Republic of Turkey.

FARA disclosure filed by Barry Bennett:

Arslan, known as Mcahit (spelled Mujahid in English, meaning jihadist) in AKP circles, has been a close confident of Erdoan since his time as the mayor of stanbul. He is a businessman and one of the founding members of the AKP. Until his election to parliament in 2015, Arslan had no official titles but remained part of a core group that traveled almost everywhere with Erdoan.

In a 2004 cable on then-Prime Minister Erdoan, US Ambassador to Turkey Eric Edelman mentioned Mcahit Arslans name under the subtitle of corruption and said, Charges that Erdogan amassed his fortune through kickbacks as mayor of Istanbul have never been proven but we now hear more and more from insiders that close advisors such as private secretary Hikmet Bulduk, Mucahit Arslan, and Cuneyd Zapsu are engaging in wholesale influence peddling.

Bennett is a partner at Avenue Strategies, a lobbying firm he cofounded with former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski shortly after the 2016 presidential election. According to FARA records, the firms client list has included the governments of Qatar and Zimbabwe. Other noteworthy clients include Venezuelan petroleum giant Citgo and Virginia-based tobacco company Altria.

Before serving as senior advisor to the Trump campaign, Bennett managed the presidential run of Ben Carson, now the US secretary of housing and urban development.

The lobbying registration just weeks before the US election has fueled speculation about a last-minute effort by the Erdoan government to see the Trump administration take action on some of its priorities. These include avoiding potential sanctions, improving cooperation in Syria and pushing for the US to extradite exiled Turkish cleric Fethullah Glen, Erdoans arch enemy.

Turkish President Erdoan has been targeting followers of the Glen inspired movement since the corruption investigations of December 17-25, 2013, which implicated then-Prime Minister Erdoan, his family members and his inner circle.

Dismissing the investigations as a Glenist coup and conspiracy against his government, Erdoan designated the movement as a terrorist organization and began to target its members. Erdoan intensified the crackdown on the movement following a coup attempt on July 15, 2016 that he accused Glen of masterminding. Glen and the movement strongly deny involvement in the abortive putsch or any terrorist activity. Following the allegations, Glen called on the Turkish government to allow for an international investigation.

As part of the crackdown Erdoan dismissed some 150,000 public servants including members of the armed forces, police officers, teachers, doctors and academics by emergency decree-laws, detaining hundreds of thousands and seizing their assets.

Avenue Strategies and the Turkish Heritage Organization

This is not the first time Avenue Strategies relations with important Turkish figures have been revealed. In June 2019 Gnl Tol, director of the Turkey Program at Washington, D.C.,-based think tank the Middle East Institute, claimed in a tweet that THO had offered in an email to pay $350 to people who agreed to attend a conference at which Turkeys justice minister, Abdlhamit Gl, would talk about the Turkish governments judicial reform strategy. The email was sent by John Cpin, a partner in Avenue Strategies.

An email sent to Gnl Tol by John Cpin on behalf of THO as shared by Tol on Twitter:

In response to Tols claims, THO President Ali nar shared the image of an email by Cpin to Tol apologizing for the misunderstanding and claiming that THO was not paying any honorarium.

The exchange revealed that Avenue Strategies was working for THO, with or without an official contract.

THO is a D.C.-based pro-Erdoan non-profit that, according to its website, promotes discussion and dialogue around Turkeys role in the international community and issues of importance in the U.S.-Turkey bilateral relationship. The sponsors of the organization include Turkish Airlines, which is owned by Turkeys sovereign wealth fund, and Turkish construction giants Kalyon and Kolin, two of the top winners of public tenders in Turkey during Erdoans term in office. In fact the firms were awarded so many contracts that they made it into the World Banks top 10 biggest global winners of public tenders,according to a report.

Beyond the Turkish government, THO also has close ties with Erdoans inner circle. Leaked emails published by Wikileaks in late 2017 show that THO was founded, with the involvement of Erdoans son-in-law and Minister of Treasury and Finance Berat Albayrak, who was at the time Turkeys energy minister, as a way to camouflage the Turkish governments lobbying activities in the US. The emails were stolen by a Turkish Marxist group called RedHack.

In the emails THOs former president, Halil Danmaz, details a roadmap to circumvent tax and other impediments in the laws by hiring journalists who could get access to American political and bureaucratic circles, including members of Congress. These journalists would then be paid to write and publish articles in American newspapers and news sites essentially advocating for Erdoans agenda and developing opinion in legislative circles.

The extent of the services provided by Avenue Strategies to THO is unknown. But given the direct ties of THO to Erdoans inner circle, the organization might have contracted Avenue Strategies to influence the Trump administration.

A report by Asbarez suggests that THO might in fact have also penetrated the Biden campaign. According to Ara Khachatourians report, Elvir Klempic, the former executive director of THO, was appointed national affinity and ethnic engagement director by the campaign of Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee for president.

THO, Ekim Alptekin and Russian ties

According to a Politico story, Dmitri David Zaikin, a Soviet-born former executive in Russian energy and mining companies, was also instrumental in the setting up of THO.

The organization got its start when Zaikin asked a Washington-based international political consultant named John Moreira to help set it up, Moreira told Politico. Zaikin has also had dealings with the government of Vladimir Putin, according to three people with direct knowledge of the activities.

Moreira told Politico he was paid to help manage the heritage organization but would not say by whom. He said he gave Zaikin weekly updates on the organizations activities and that Zaikin visited Washington about every other month. On at least one occasion, a man named Ekim Alptekin met with communications consultants working for the Turkish Heritage Organization, Moreira said.

Alptekin is a pro-government Turkish businessman whose payments to former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn for research and lobbying work against the Glen movement were central to a political controversy in the US. Alptekin was charged with hiring Michael Flynn as part of a secret, illegal US lobbying scheme on behalf of the Turkish government during and after the 2016 presidential campaign and is still at large and wanted by the FBI.

But three people with direct knowledge of the situation said it was more than just one meeting; Zaikin and Alptekin worked together to help coordinate pro-Turkish lobbying.

For his part Zaikin told Politico: I introduced [the Turkish Heritage Organization] to a few companies who I believed were industry professionals in good standing. I was present at a few meetings.

Zaikin did not sign checks or contracts lobbying firms were hired through the Turkish Heritage Organization and another nonprofit called the Turkish Institute for Progress, according to lobbying disclosure records. Zaikin also asked Moreira to help set up the Turkish Institute for Progress, Moreira said.

Leaked emails of Berat Albayrak also appear to show Zaikin receiving reports of those lobbying activities.

Zaikin, 49, was born in Ukraine and grew up as a citizen of the Soviet Union. He said in emails that doctors excused him from the Soviet military draft because of an injury and that his family left the Soviet Union in 1990. He subsequently became a Canadian citizen and now lives in London.

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Erdoan confidant signs former Trump advisor to lobby US lawmakers on Turkey's behalf - Nordic Research and Monitoring Network

CAIRO 11 October 2020: The ambassadors of the European Union and a number of European countries told Saturday Libyan Interim Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj that the maritime borders demarcation MoU he had signed with Turkey in December "infringes upon the sovereign rights of third states, does not comply with the law of the Sea, and cannot produce any legal consequences for third states," as indicated in a statement released by the EU Commission.

The head of the EU Delegation to Libya and the ambassadors of Austria, Denmark, Belgium, Finland, Spain, Sweden, and Norway met Sarraj to present their credentials.

The envoys reiterated the necessity of complying with the outcomes of Berlin Conference held in January embodied in pursuing a political solution and abiding by the arms embargo imposed on Libya.

The ambassadors hinted that further sanctions can be used by the EU "against those who undermine and obstruct work on different tracks of the Berlin process including on the implementation of the UN embargo on Libya, as well as those work against ongoing attempts to reform the security authorities, continue to plunder state funds or commit human rights abuses and violations all over the country."

The diplomats also displayed the role of EU Operation Irini in the implementation of the embargo and the prevention of oil smuggling.

On September 21, European Union foreign ministers agreed to sanction two individuals and three companies for violating the arms embargo on Libya, two diplomats told Reuters.

Both individuals are Libyan while the companies are based in Turkey, Jordan, and Kazkhstan and operate in the maritime and aviation sectors.

Those are Kazakhstans Sigma Airlines, Jordans Med Wave Shipping, and Turkey's Avrasya Shipping. According to Reuters, the assets of the Turkish firm have been frozen as its "cargo vessel Cirkin was involved in a naval incident between NATO members France and Turkey in June," and also used to smuggle arms to Libya.

Turkey denies the claims and says the ship was carrying humanitarian aid, as reported by Reuters.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned on August 6 a "criminal network threatening the stability and security of Libya."

In a statement, OFAC explained that the network consists of Faysal al-Wadi, operator of the vessel Maraya, and two associates who are Musbah Mohamed M Wadi and Nourddin Millod M Musbah. The office designated the Malta-based company, Alwefaq Ltd, and identified Maraya as blocked property.

Faysal al-Wadi and his associates have smuggled fuel from Libya and used Libya as a transit zone to smuggle illicit drugs, said Deputy Secretary Justin G. Muzinich. The United States is committed to exposing illicit networks exploiting Libyas resources for their own profit while hurting the Libyan people, the statement reads.

"Wadi has worked with a network of contacts in North Africa and southern Europe to smuggle fuel from, and illicit drugs through, Libya to Malta. Wadis illicit trafficking operation transported drugs between the Libyan port of Zuwarah and Hurds Bank, just outside Maltas territorial waters. Hurds Bank is a well-known geographic transfer location for illicit maritime transactions. Wadi also smuggled drugs and Libyan fuel into Malta itself. Wadi has kept all official documentation clear of his name, while being the primary organizer of smuggling operations using the vessel Maraya," OFAC indicated.

"As a result of todays actions, all property and interests in property of these persons, including the identified vessel, that are in or come within the United States or are in the possession or control of U.S. persons must be blocked and reported to OFAC. Unless authorized by a general or specific license issued by OFAC or otherwise exempt, OFACs regulations generally prohibit all dealings by U.S. persons or those within (or transiting) the United States that involve any property or interests in property of designated persons," the statement underlined.

The sanctioned company is most probably named after Al Wefaq Government (Arabic for the Government of National Accord (GNA)), which is a Tripoli-based interim government that is not elected but recognized by the United Nations.

Zuwarah, from which the fuel was smuggled, is a Mediterranean city western Libya lying to the west of the capital, Tripoli, and is controlled by the GNA militias.

On the same day the U.S. sanctions were announced, Libya, Turkey, and Malta issued a joint statement denouncing NATO's Operation IRINI aimed at enforcing arms embargo on Libya in the Mediterranean.

The foreign ministers of the three states met in Tripoli to discuss joint cooperation as Turkey and Malta expressed support to the GNA.

In December 2019, Turkey signed with the GNA two MoUs on defense and gas drilling in the Mediterranean.

Spokesperson of the Libyan National Army (LNA) Ahmed al-Mesmary had stated early in July that Turkey has transported into Libya 25,000 mercenaries. Those include 17,000 Syrian militants, 2,500 Tunisians who fought in the ranks of the Islamic State (IS) in Idlib and Aleppo, and other nationalities including the Sudanese.

Turkey has also sent 2,500 3,000 officers and military experts to co-command the operations rooms of the GNA militias and to pilot drones from mainly Tripoli's Mitiga Airbase. The LNA downed around 70 Turkish drones as they were targeting its concentrations.

The LNA announced downing on July 23 a Turkish reconnaissance plane west of the Libyan city of Sirte, which is currently controlled by LNA forces.

On July 22, the LNA warned Turkey against approaching the Libyan coast, threatening to target any hostile naval vessels in the Libyan waters.

Libyan tribes announced the closure of oil ports and fields in January as the revenues were used by the GNA to pay militants. Early in July, the tribes declared that oil facilities would resume operations. However, the LNA announced on July 11 that such facilities would remain closed until the demands of the Libyan people on dismantling militias are fulfilled. The Libyan National Oil Corporation (NCO) announced that the value of revenues lost until present is $6.5 billion.

On July 5, several "unknown aircraft" launched nine strikes against Oqba Bin Nafea Airbase located in Al Watiyah controlled by the GNA and Turkey. The outcome was the destruction of Hawk air defense systems, and a Koral electronic warfare system as well as the killing of a Turkish commander, and six officers as the operations room they were in was hit.

However, Commander of Mobilization at the LNA Khaled al-Mahgoub stated on July 20 that Turkey still uses Oqba bin Nafea airbase in Al Watiyah western the country to bring in military reinforcements less than a month from losing air defense and electronic warfare systems in strikes by "unknown flights."

The LNA's commander of mobilization unveiled July 25 that Syrian mercenaries transported by Turkey are being turned into police forces by the Ministry of Interior affiliated to the GNA.

The Libyan Armed Forces restored Sirte in January, and was advancing in the outskirts of Misrata and Tripoli. However, early in June, it lost Al Watiyah and Tarhouna, which was its last stronghold western the country, retreating into Sirte and Al Jufrah.

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Sarraj-Erdogan maritime demarcation MoU not binding to other states: EU - Egypttoday

Even as the world wrestles with a pandemic and overbearing public health measures, some legislative bodies are taking the opportunity to tighten the screws on speech they don't like. Several bills have passed, others are pending, and one was gutted by court review, but all represent new fronts in government efforts to impose censorship.

For free speech advocates, the luckiest break might have been the fate of a law passed by the French National Assembly in May. While existing requirements give companies 24 hours to take down content alleged by the government to glorify terrorist activity or to constitute child pornography, the new law would have changed that to one hour. In addition, online publishers would have been allowed a day to remove so-called "hate speech."

"The same 24-hour obligation would have applied to content reported for violation of a law that criminalizes speech that promotes, glorifies, or engages in justification of sexual violence, war crimes, crimes against humanity, enslavement, or collaboration with the enemy; a law that criminalizes sexual harassment; and a law that bans pornography where it could be seen by a minoramong others," reports Jacob Schulz at Lawfare. "The law did not carve out any exceptions; the 24-hour rule would have applied even in the case of technical difficulties or temporary surge in notifications."

In June, France's Constitutional Court struck down the vast majority of the law as an unconstitutional threat to freedom of expression. That's really the only good news to report so far.

France's blocked hate-speech law was inspired by Germany's notorious NetzDG law, which makes online platforms liable for illegal content.

"Germany's Network Enforcement Law, or NetzDG requires social media companies to block or remove content that violates one of twenty restrictions on hate and defamatory speech in the German Criminal Code," Diana Lee wrote for Yale Law School's Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic. "In effect, the NetzDG conscripts social media companies into governmental service as content regulators," with millions of euros in fines hanging over their heads if they guess wrong.

That model of delegated censorship has proven to be as infectious as a viral outbreak, taking hold in over a dozen other countries.

"This raises the question of whether Europe's most influential democracy has contributed to the further erosion of global Internet freedom by developing and legitimizing a prototype of online censorship by proxy that can readily be adapted to serve the ends of authoritarian states," Justitia, a Danish judicial thinktank, warned in a 2019 report.

It's no surprise when countries like Russia, Turkey, and Venezuela emulate intrusive legislation from elsewherethey don't need much encouragement. But we've already seen that French legislators followed in Germany's lead, and lawmakers in the U.K. are poised to do the same.

"In the wrong hands the internet can be used to spread terrorist and other illegal or harmful content, undermine civil discourse, and abuse or bully other people," fretted a 2019 British government paper on "online harms." The paper specifically cited NetzDG as a potential legislative model.

Last week, British lawmakers debated the very broad powers that the government seeks.

Their proposals "introduce a new concept into law'legal but harmful' for online speech," cautions Ruth Smeeth of Index on Censorship. "It's conflating what is already illegal, such as incitement and threat, with speech which we may disagree with, but in a free society is, and should be, legal."

Austria is also considering a NetzDG-inspired law that would require the removal of "content whose 'illegality is already evident to a legal layperson'" explains Martin J. Riedl, a native Austrian and Ph.D. student at the University of Texas at Austin's School of Journalism and Media. The law would further encourage compliance by "forbidding their debtors (e.g., businesses who advertise on platforms) to pay what they owe to platforms" that don't conform to the law.

That's expected to encourage even more "overblocking" by platforms worried that they'll face a financial death penalty if they guess wrong as to content's legal status.

Still, Austrians may not be able to out-flank their role models. Germany this summer moved to make NetzDG even more restrictive by adding mandatory "hate speech" reporting requirements.

Brazilian lawmakers, too, are considering legislation that started as NetzDG-inspired before morphing into a campaign against so-called "fake news" (because, apparently, any excuse for controlling speech is a good excuse when you work in government).

"It is vague on the matter of what's considered fake news, which it describes as false or deceptive content shared with the potential to cause individual or collective harm," wrote Brazilian journalist Raphael Tsavkko Garcia for the MIT Technology Review. "This ambiguity leaves it to the state to decide what kind of content is considered false or potentially harmful, and could allow those in power to manipulate the definition for political gain."

The U.S. faces its own speech- and privacy-threatening legislation in the form of the Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies (EARN IT) Act of 2020. The legislation, which was introduced in the House of Representatives last month, invokes children and the dangers of child pornography on its way to threatening platforms with the loss of Section 230 protection against liability for content posted by users if they don't adopt government-dictated "best practices."

"The EARN IT bill would allow small website owners to be sued or prosecuted under state laws, as long as the prosecution or lawsuit somehow related to crimes against children," warns the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "We know how websites will react to this. Once they face prosecution or lawsuits based on other peoples' speech, they'll monitor their users, and censor or shut down discussion forums."

This world-wide wave of censorship legislation piggy-backs on pandemic-related concerns about the quality of information and the safety of communications available to people confined to their homes. It has sometimes been passed by legislatures empowered by health-related states of emergency. Yet again, a crisis eases the way for governments to accumulate powers that would face greater resistance in happier times.

"Governments around the world must take action to protect and promote freedom of expression during the COVID-19 pandemic, which many States have exploited to crack down on journalism and silence criticism," the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression warned in July.

That timely heads-up is hampered only by the fact that governments are well aware of the situationand consider it a feature, not a bug.

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German-Style Internet Censorship Catches On Around the World - Reason

The New York Times Guild, the union of employees of the paper of record, tweeted a condemnation on Sundayof one of their own colleagues, op-ed columnist Bret Stephens.Their denunciationwas marred by humiliating typos and even more so by creepy and authoritarian censorship demands and petulant appeals to management for enforcement of company rules against other journalists. To say that this is bizarre behavior from a union of journalists, of all people,is towoefullyunderstate the case.

What angered the union today was an op-ed by Stephens on Friday which voiced numerous criticisms of the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1619 Project, published last year by the New York Times Magazine and spearheaded by reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones. One of the Projects principal arguments was expressed by a now-silently-deleted sentence that introduced it: that the countrys true birth date is not 1776, as has long been widely believed, but rather late 1619, when, the article claims, the first African slaves arrived on U.S. soil.

Despite its Pulitzer, the 1619 Project has become a hotly contested political and academic controversy, with the Trump administration seeking to block attempts to integrate its assertions into school curriculums,while numerousscholars of history accuse it of radically distorting historical fact, with some, such as Brown Universitys Glenn Loury, calling on the Pulitzer Board to revoke its award. Scholars have also vocally criticized the Times for stealth edits of the articleskey claims long afterpublication, without even noting to readers that it made these substantive changes let aloneexplaining why it made them.

In sum, the still-raging political, historical, and journalistic debate over the 1619 Project has become a majorcontroversy. In his Friday column, Stephens addressed the controversy by first noting the Projects positive contributions and accomplishments,then reviewed in detail the critiques of historians and other scholars of its central claims, and then sided with its critics by arguing that for all of its virtues, buzz, spinoffs and a Pulitzer Prize the 1619 Project has failed.

Without weighing in on the merits of Stephenss critiques, some of which I agree with and some of which I do not, it is hardly debatable that his discussing thisvibrant multi-pronged debate issquarely within his functionas a political op-ed writer at a national newspaper. Stephens himself explained that he took the unusual step of critiquing his ownemployerswork because the 1619 Projecthas become, partly by its design and partly because of avoidable mistakes, a focal point of the kind of intense national debate that columnists are supposed to cover, contending that avoiding writing about it out of collegial deference is to be derelict in our responsibility to participate insocietys significant disputes.

But his colleagues in the New York Times Guildevidentlydo not believe that he had any right to express his views on these debates. Indeed, they are indignant that he did so. In a barely-literate tweet that not once buttwice misspelled the word its as its not a trivial level of ignorance for writers with the worlds most influential newspaper the union denounced Stephensand the paper itself on these grounds:

It is a short tweet, as tweets go, buttheyimpressively managed to pack it with multiple ironies, fallacies, and decreestypical of the petty tyrant. Above all else, thisstatement, and the mentality it reflects, is profoundly unjournalistic.

To start with, this is a case of journalists using their union not to demand greater editorial freedom or journalistic independence something one would reasonably expect from a journalists union but demanding its opposite: that writers at the New York Times be prohibited by management from expressing their views and perspectives about the controversies surrounding the 1619 Project.In other words: They are demanding that their own journalistic colleagues be silenced and censored. What kind of journalists plead with management for greater restrictions on journalistic expression rather than fewer?

Apparently, the answer is New York Times journalists. Indeed, this is not the first time they have publicly implored corporate management to restrict the freedom of expression and editorial freedom of their journalistic colleagues. At the end of July, the Guild issued a series of demands, one of which was that sensitivity reads should happen at the beginning of the publication process, with compensation for those who do them.

For those not familiar with sensitivity reads: consider yourself fortunate. As the New York Times itself reported in 2017, sensitivity readershave been used by book publishers to gut books that have been criticized, in order tovet the narrative for harmful stereotypes and suggested changes. The Guardian explained in 2018that sensitivity readers are a rapidly growing industry in the book publishing world to weed out any implicit bias or potentially objectionable material not just in storylines but even in characters. It quoted the author Lionel Shriver about the obvious dangers: there is, she said, a thin line between combing through manuscripts for anything potentially objectionable to particular subgroups and overt political censorship.

As creepy as sensitivity readers are for fiction writing and other publishing fields, it is indescribably toxic for journalism,which necessarily questions or pokes at rather than bows to the most cherished, sacred pieties. For it to be worthwhile, it must publish material reporting and opinion pieces thatmight be potentially objectionable to all sorts of powerful factions, including culturally hegemonic liberals.

But thisis a function which the New York Times Union wants not merely to avoid fulfilling themselves but, far worse, to deny their fellow journalists. They crave a whole new layer of editorial hoop-jumping in order to get published, a cumbersome, repressive new protocol for drawing even moreconstraining lines around what can and cannot be said beyond the restrictions already imposed by the standard orthodoxies of the Times and their tone-flattening editorial restrictions.

When journalists exploit their unions not to demand better pay, improved benefits, enhanced job security or greater journalistic independence but instead as an instrument for censoring their own journalistic colleagues, then the concept of unions and journalism is wildly perverted.

Then there is the tattletale petulance embedded in the Unions complaint. In demanding enforcement of workplace rules by management against a fellow journalist they do not specify which sacred rule Stephens allegedly violated these union members sound more like human resources assistant managers or workplace informants than they do intrepid journalists. Since when do unions of any kind, but especially unions of journalists, unite to complain that corporate managers and their editorial bosses have been too lax in the enforcement of rulesgoverning what their underlings can and cannot say?

The hypocrisy of the Unions grievance is almost too glaring to even bother highlighting, and is the least ofits sins. The union members denounce Stephens and the paper forgoing after one of its [sic] own and then, in the next breath, publicly vilify their colleagues column because, in their erudite view, it reeks. This is the same union whose members, just a few months ago, quite flamboyantly staged a multi-day social media protest a quite public one ina fit of rage becausethe papers Opinion Editor, James Bennet, published an op-ed by U.S. Senator Tom Cotton advocating the deployment of the U.S. military to repress protests and riots in U.S. cities; Bennet lost his job in the fallout. And many of these same union members now posturing as solemn, righteous opponents of publicly going after ones colleagues notoriously mocked, scorned, ridiculed, and condemned, first privately and then publicly, another colleague, Bari Weiss, until she left the paper, citing these incessant attacks.

Clearly this is not a union that dislikes public condemnations of colleagues. Whatever principle is motivating them, that is plainly not it.

Ive long been a harsh criticof Stephenss (and Weisss) journalism and opinion writing. But it would never occur to me to take steps to try to silence them. If they were my colleagues and published an article I disliked or expressed views I found pernicious, I certainly would not whine to management that they broke the rules and insist that they should not have been allowed to have expressed what they believe.

Thats because Im a journalist, and I know that journalism can have value only if it fosters divergent views and seeks to expand rather thanreduce the freedom of discourse and expression permitted by society and by employers. And whatever one wants to say about Stephenss career and record of writing and Ive had a lot of negative things to say about it harshly critiquingyour own employers Pulitzer-winning series, one beloved by powerful media, political and cultural figures, is thetypeof challenge to power that many journalists who do nothing but spout pleasing, popular pieties love to preen as embodying.

Therehas never been a media outlet where I have worked or where I have been published that did not frequently also publish opinions with which I disagree and articles I dislike, including the one in which I am currently writing. I would readily use my platforms to critique what was published, but it would never even occur to me take steps to try to prevent publication or, worse, issue pitiful public entreaties to management that Something Be Done. If youare eager to constrict the boundaries of expression, why would you choosejournalism of all lines of work? Itd be like someone whobelieves space travel to be an immoral wasteof resources opting to becomean astronaut for NASA.

Perhaps these tawdry episodes should be unsurprising. After all, one major reason that social media companies which never wanted the obligation tocensorbut instead sought to be content-neutral platforms for the transmission of communications in the mold of AT&T turned into active speech regulators was because the public, often led by journalists, began demanding that they censor more. Some journalists even devotesignificant chunks of their careerto publicly complaining thatFacebook and Twitterare failing to enforce their rules by not censoring robustly enough.

A belief in the virtues of free expression was once a cornerstone of the journalistic spirit. Guilds and unions fought against editorial control, notdemandedgreater amountsbe imposed by management. They defended colleagues when they were accused by editorial or corporatebosses of rules violations, not publicly tattled and invited, even advocated for, workplace disciplinary measures.

But a belief in free expression is being rapidly eclipsed in many societal sectors by a belief in the virtues of top-down managerial censorship, silencing, and enhanced workplace punishment for thought and speech transgressions. As this imperious but whiny New York Times Guildcondemnationreflects, this trend can be seen most vividly, and most destructively, in mainstream American journalism. Nothing guts the core function of journalism more than this mindset.

Update: Oct. 11, 2020, 8:40p.m. ETThe New York Times Guild moments ago deleted its tweet denouncing Stephens and the paper, and thenposted this:

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The New York Times Guild Once Again Demands Censorship Of Colleagues - The Intercept

Since late May, fact checks, censors, warnings and even removals have appeared on President Trumps social media posts. Throughout the pandemic, social media companies have been exposed for censoring all kinds of voices, like medical professionals, politicians, event organizers and even the president.

The problem many have with this censorship is that the majority of these voices appear to be conservative-leaning. Is it true that companies like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are silencing those with opinions they dont agree with? Is big tech truly infringing upon the First Amendment and taking away individuals and the presidents right to free speech?

While this narrative has been effective in stirring the emotions of those who agree with the voices being censored, its most likely not the case.

The censorship, which began as far back as March, was introduced by most big social media companies as a method to combat dangerous misinformation regarding the pandemic.

Misinformation is one of the biggest problems related to the pandemic and has made an incredibly complicated issue even more so. Removing harmful, incorrect information from social media sounds like a great step to prevent dangerous underreaction or overaction on a large scale.

However, this was much easier said than done.

Almost immediately, people started to take issue with new censorship policies when posts on Facebook were mistakenly blocked by a bug in their anti-spam system. The blocked posts included sources many thought to be legitimate and well recognized like Buzzfeed and USA Today. The bug was soon corrected, but the conspiracy theories had just begun.

Fox News Tucker Carlson spoke about a viral video on TouTube by doctors who were suggesting that the COVID-19 death count was heavily inflated and that serious policy changes were necessary. The video was taken down by YouTube, and Carlsons main argument was that media giants were silencing any form of dissent from the opinions of those in power. This may sound like something to be seriously worried about, but its actually the exact kind of misinformation that threatens our safety.

The doctors statements, thought by many to be a credible source of information, have since been completely debunked and proved to be filled with a variety of statistical errors. YouTube was right to censor this information as it was false and had it been spread any further, it couldve persuaded the millions who saw it to take the pandemic much less seriously and act accordingly.

On May 26, 2020, Twitter placed the first fact check warning on one of Trumps tweets. The president and many of his supporters were outraged, as it seemed as though Twitter was participating in partisan bias and trying to silence Trump for a difference in political views.

However, when the information contained in the tweet and the surrounding situation is examined closely, it becomes clear why this censorship was justified and necessary for American safety. The tweet was an argument for the theory that mail-in ballots are completely untrustworthy and shouldnt be used in the upcoming election. The reason Trump made this argument wasnt that it was true, but because he knows his supporters are more likely than the opposition to disobey quarantine standards and come out in larger numbers for an in-person event, as they have been for months, to protest the quarantine laws.

The tweet was a political move filled with misinformation that could still put people in danger. This is exactly the kind of censorship that isnt done because of partisan bias, but because false information could put our national health in danger.

Shortly after Trumps tweet was censored, a federal appeals court rejected a lawsuit claiming that these social media agencies were suppressing conservative views.

Evan Holden is a sophomore political science major. Contact Evan at holdened@dukes.jmu.edu.

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Opinion | Is big social media censoring those they disagree with? - The Breeze