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The rocky cliffs of Cuba split the ocean from the sky as our flight descended toward the tarmac at the Guantnamo Bay Naval Base. It was a clear afternoon in late June, and the first thing we were told before boarding the flight from Joint Base Andrews was not to photograph from the tarmac or plane. It was the start of a week at Americas most notorious military base, where absurd restrictions would dictate what I, and other journalists, could and could not see.

One misconception about Guantnamo was cleared up before I ever got off the plane. In my mind, everything was the prison. For so long, I associated this place with concertina wire, guard towers, and orange-clad anonymous detainees. In recent years, Id reported on some of those same detainees, now liberated, and I learned that my prejudices and fears about the vast majority of these men had been unfounded. They welcomed me into the community of brotherhood they had forged, and I was now visiting the place where so much of their lives had been stolen. I pressed my face to the window to see the prison where people I consider friends were tortured.

From the air, I saw security posts along what seemed to be the perimeter of the base, but it obviously wasnt the prison. Where the fuck is it? I thought with increasingly desperate glances out the window of the mostly empty chartered flight. I had a three-seat row to myself, television screens, pillows, blankets, and a full in-flight lunch service. Hundreds of Muslim men had arrived by air decades before to this very airstrip, beaten, shackled, hooded, and pissing all over themselves.

Just landed, I texted Mohamedou Ould Salahi on my T-Mobile burner smartphone. Its Swain. A few hours later, Salahi, or The Mauritanian, shot back, Hi. Did they put you in prison?

I soon learned that just about anything with photojournalistic value was off limits. As Guantnamo has aged, a shift has occurred in what the military wants journalists to cover. Under the current rules, members of the media are brought here to focus on the military commission proceedings at Camp Justice, where a very large, very cold, and very classified courtroom has been constructed to deal with the few remaining detainees who were ever charged with decades-old crimes against the United States. Press access to anything outside the court is described as a courtesy and subject to arbitrary restrictions.

An American flag flies at the Office of Military Commissions building in Guantnamo Bay on June 27, 2023.

Photo: Elise Swain/The Intercept

Salahi, my unofficial tour guide, had always been hooded when taken outside the prison. He had accurately predicted the first day of my trip that my military handler would placate us with little tourist excursions to various parts of the bay, as if we had sailed in on a Disney cruise. They want you to see McDonalds and, like, the beach. Thats not where the detainees were held, he said as we passed voice notes back and forth. [Its where] the detainees were held [that] you need to take photos of.

Over the course of my visit, I checked in with at least five former detainees who collectively spent lifetimes imprisoned here. Most didnt know about the novel media restrictions. Did you go to Camp Echo? Yemeni Sabri al-Qurashi texted me from Kazakhstan. Al-Qurashi has always maintained that he was arrested for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. After 12 years at Guantnamo, he was relocated to a country that has continued to treat him like a terrorist and where he has not been granted asylum, despite assurances from the State Department that he would be treated well.

Ask them to see Camp Delta 2, 3, 4, and Camp 5, and Camp Echo, and Camp 6, and Camp Platinum, Salahi urged from his new home in Amsterdam.

You can take pictures of the detainees, but not the face, said Sufiyan Barhoumi, who was eligible for release from Guantnamo under the Obama administration after all charges against him were dropped but had to wait five more years because Donald Trump halted transfers. He has been struggling to adjust to life as a free man back home in Algeria since April 2022.

Take pictures of what you can!

Iguanas fight at the Navy Gateway Inns and Suites hotel.

Photo: Elise Swain/The Intercept

As recently as 2018, reporters and photographers were allowed into the prison itself. Now, though, media isnt brought anywhere close to the permanent prison complex that houses the remaining 30 detainees. I was informed that members of the media would not be allowed to photograph even the old Camp X-Ray, the long-abandoned outdoor prison that held the very first detainees. I was shocked, since Camp X-Ray was listed as an approved location under the 2023 media guidelines. This took all locations that were even remotely related to the bases role as a detention site completely out of play. Denying any new visual documentation of the defunct former facility seemed egregious and irrational, especially following the unprecedented access given to the United Nations special rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights, Fionnuala N Aolin, in early 2023. The Biden administration had permitted her to tour the site and interview detainees as an independent investigator, and her findings were published two days after I had arrived at the base.

This is just another indication that the most consistent thing about Guantnamo is inconsistency, said former detainee Moazzam Begg, a British citizen who was released from Guantnamo without charge in 2005. Begg is the current director of CAGE, a U.K.-based advocacy group for other victims of the war on terror. It seems that rules change and guidelines change according to who happens to be in charge. So your frustration as a journalist, I can see imagine, as a prisoner, where you have to live in that kind of environment, where you can quote the standard operating procedure better than the staff sergeant, but hell say, Well, no, we just changed that.

I really dont understand this treatment, Salahi fumed over WhatsApp. If they dont let you go and see what went on, or at least the place where the torture took place, what do they want? This is complete stonewalling; this makes me really very upset as a victim of that place.

Red flood lights at night illuminate the dock and surrounding waters at the marina at Guantnamo Bay on June 28, 2023.

Elise Swain

Salahi wasnt wrong. The locations I was allowed to photograph were of little journalistic value, and many had been recently documented by a behemoth in the news industry: the New York Times. That photo essay, titled Guantnamo Bay: Beyond the Prison, had garnered fervent criticism on social media, in part because it seemed to take a page out of the militarys playbook by ignoring Guantnamos sordid, torturous past to focus instead on the similarities between the base and a college campus. Mark Fallon, a former Naval Criminal Investigative Service counterterrorism special agent, explained why the little transparency that had once existed has dwindled to no access at all.

The U.S. government is hoping to control the narrative about what the American public knows or believes about the prisoners here at Guantnamo Bay, the global war on terror, and some of the war crimes that we committed in the name of the American people, specifically torturing prisoners in violation of U.S. code and international law, Fallon, the author of Unjustifiable Means, told me over a neat whiskey in the courtyard of the Navy Gateway Inns and Suites hotel one evening. He was the testifying witness that week in pretrial proceedings against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the detainee charged in the USS Cole bombing case. Fallon had helmed the original investigation into the Cole bombing, the attack on a U.S. naval ship in the port of Aden, Yemen, in 2000 that killed 17 Americans. Fallon later worked as an investigator at Guantnamo before the CIAs Rendition, Detention and Interrogation program began torturing men with enhanced interrogation techniques across black sites including at Guantnamo beginning in August 2002. A few months later, Fallon, then deputy commander of the Criminal Investigation Task Force, warned his leadership at the Pentagon that the new behavior he was starting to see at Guantnamo was the kind of stuff Congressional hearings are made of.

What they try to do is ensure that what is going on here does not impact the contemporary conscience of the American public, Fallon continued. Because if it does, there may be greater calls for accountability against those that tortured in our name. And the longer that you can keep that from occurring, the safer, not just [for] the torturers but [for] the torture advocates, the torture lobby. Those who believe that torture should be used as an instrument of national policy are in jeopardy. Their legacies are in jeopardy.

A lone chair, left, and a 21+ wristband, right, photographed inside the Navy Gateway Inns and Suites hotel on June 25, 2023.

Photos: Elise Swain/The Intercept

In truth, I had already started photographing out of spite. The prison might not exist here, but the ugly, cheaply manufactured urban sprawl of late-capitalist America did. Anything especially hideous and uncanny became a target for my lens. Free candy written in dust on the back of a white transport van. Dead crabs. A lone foldable chair inside an empty concrete room in the hotel. A grimy carpeted bathroom. Random graffiti tags of the logo of the infamous mercenary company Blackwater. Feral cats.

The tropical heat and general pro-war crime vibes were getting to me, so I started following Salahis advice: Just write about the hotel. Concentrate on that. And eating from McDonalds. If I was you, I would just do my whole article about the lifestyle. The staff. Just write about that because thats where you have access.

Top: Free Candy written on the back of a dirty government transport van. Bottom: A Blackwater logo spray painted on the tents near Camp Justice at Guantnamo Bay on June 27, 2023.

Photos: Elise Swain/The Intercept

There was only one truly American way to forget the crime scene underfoot at Guantnamo Bay and that was to drink. At the Tiki Bar, armed military police stood in pairs while young soldiers, support staff, and visitors to the base all converged under multicolored lights and neon signs to fuel their historical amnesia and try to find someone to go home with. One young man was so wasted that I had to push him off me. Another member of the military, seeing my must-be-displayed-at-all-times press badge, told me he was a dolphin trainer. After confiding that he wasnt allowed to speak to me, he added a gentle reminder that journalists werent welcome: Fuck the media!

Saturday night dancing at the Tiki Bar on June 25, 2023.

Photo: Elise Swain/The Intercept

Later in the week, a Navy ship docked at the port, and the sprawling military base was suddenly overrun with sailors looking for something to do on their one night off. That afternoon, our military media escort gave three hitchhikers a ride in our white transport van. I climbed into the middle row of the van as they quietly offered me a juice from the backseat. The orange juice bottle contained a mixed Disaronno cocktail. Oh, yall have nutcrackers out here?! I said, reminded of the fruit punch drinks illegally sold at beaches in New York City. No one understood what I was talking about. Still, they asked me to come to the beach with them, and I agreed. They let me keep the secret drink.

We climbed boulders and called insults to each other while swimming in the warm water. That evening, I went to dinner with a colleague at OKellys, an Irish pub run by Jamaican staff where the best thing on the menu is fajitas. There, I ran into the three men again. The group swelled, and more men gathered around our table, ordering an obscene number of Jell-O shots. As the only age-appropriate and single woman in the entire bar, I was assailed with brazen pickup lines. One man offered to go in the bathroom and take an unsolicited dick pic to send me. I tried to make a joke out of it: He didnt need to go all the way to the bathroom since I had a disposable flash film camera I had bought at Guantnamos only store. To my horror, he snatched the camera, held my gaze, and shoved it down his pants. The flash went off. The entire table erupted with howls of laughter. Suddenly, the 21+ wristband Id been given at the door, with the sexual assault hotline number printed on it, made more sense.

Jell-O shot aftermath at OKellys Irish pub, one of the few places members of the media can go without a military chaperone.

Photo: Elise Swain/The Intercept

The constant humidity reminded me of my childhood in Sarasota, Florida, only 700 miles across the Caribbean from Camp Delta. Consumed with anxiety, I was barely sleeping. Court started early each morning. The defendant, al-Nashiri, opted out of attending the pretrial arguments all week, so we never saw him in person. The sleep deprivation, and the disconnect between physically being at Guantnamo but not seeing any prisoners or prison cells, was slowly chipping away at my sense of reality.

But I still had a job to do. I was reduced to begging the public affairs officer, Lt. Cmdr. Adam Cole, to at least take me on a drive-by of the detention center and Camp X-Ray. After spending countless hours together, he seemed committed to letting me photograph as much as possible, as I had arrived with a large DSLR and the job title of photo editor. While I was ostensibly there only to cover the al-Nashiri pretrial hearings, Cole recognized that journalists have other interests, especially if its the first time theyve come to the base. I wanted to photograph as many of the permissible b-roll locations as possible.

All my photography had to be completed before Thursday afternoon, when we had our operational security, or OPSEC, review. An extensive list of protected information meant that my extremely tightly cropped photographs had to be viewed by various military public affairs officers, or PAOs, and security officials prior to publication.

An Army military police soldier allows a photograph while questioning me outside Camp Justice at Guantnamo Bay on June 27, 2023.

Photo: Elise Swain/The Intercept

By now, I had already experienced how quickly photographing at Guantnamo could go south. Forgetting myself in the intense midday sun outside the media center, I grabbed my Canon and pointed it straight up at the sky. I wanted to get a silly photo of a familiar raptor a turkey vulture soaring overhead. As I lowered the lens, remembering where I was, it was already too late. Men, one with a gun strapped across his chest, had quickly closed in, surrounding me, to ask where my PAO was I shouldnt have been using my camera without him there. Stunned, I asked, Can I take a photo of the gun? before confessing I had been a bad girl and pleading with them to not tell my new friend Cole that Id unwittingly broken the rules.

With the OPSEC review looming and my sanity slipping, I climbed into Coles transport van for one last photo excursion. We would drive by Camp X-Ray on our way to the Skyline overlook, which offered a scenic view over the sprawling base below. No photos, Cole reminded.

I could barely see anything. It was far below us, and the van climbed steadily, hardly slowing down. There it is, Cole said. A few minutes later, we stood high above the bay at dusk. Dark clouds swirled like smoke overhead as a gentle rain began. Unable to see through my drenched glasses, I took them off and the landscape blurred even more. I felt myself starting to cry. I had come all this way to see the reality of Guantnamo Bay, only to find myself blocked at every turn.

A view from the Skyline overlook is the closest I was able to get to photograph Camp X-Ray, nearly invisible in the lower center right, at Guantnamo Bay on June 28, 2023.

Photo: Elise Swain/ The Intercept

Its always embarrassing to be in tears as a woman in a professional setting. I tried to regain my composure, overwhelmed and frustrated to be denied a true view of a place that defined my countrys abject moral failure. I thought I understood a little of how slowly the years had gone for the prisoners. A week here was an eternity, but two decades wasnt long enough for the military to come to grips with what it had done. There was Guantnamo, still open, still making the same mistakes. Defeated and demoralized, Id never been more professionally disappointed. Standing atop that hill, I felt as if I were watching Sisyphuss boulder the journalists goal of getting the American public to care about Guantnamo roll back down to the bottom.

Cole had explained that it wasnt his decision to nix Camp X-Ray, but rather the Naval Station Guantnamo Bay PAO Joycelyn Biggs who had decided it was off limits. Biggs was stressed. The entire Navy is short staffed, she told me on a phone call when I asked her about it. Every single photo that you take, someone in my office has to look at it and vet it. That is work hours. That is resources that are being diverted from my office. She wanted me to understand that I wasnt her problem, that I was there to cover the court: Anything that you do outside of [military commission] trials is a courtesy.

Lt. Cmdr. Adam Cole shows media the beach, left, and wears a Dont Tread on Me patch on his Navy fatigues, right.

Photo: Elise Swain/The Intercept

For all of Biggss concerns that allowing photos of Camp X-Ray would lengthen the OPSEC review, I had to laugh when the entire process for all three journalists visiting that week took just over 10 minutes. What a strain on resources. Everyone crowded around as Biggss deputy flipped through my photos.

What is this?! Cole asked about a clear plastic tube.

It was in the lighthouse bathroom, I replied.

And you just took a picture of it?

Of course.

And you wanna publish it? And youre gonna be like They use this [to] torture people? Cole asked. It did remind me of the painful nasogastric tubes they had used to force-feed hunger striking detainees. But I laughed and said that he had just given me a perfect quote for the photos caption.

I hate you, Cole said.

Left: A statue of Ronald McDonald in the Guantnamo Bay lighthouse museum. Right: A clear plastic tube from a dehumidifier drains into the museums bathroom sink.

Photos: Elise Swain/The Intercept

Despite my irritations, a kind of nostalgia emerged when I described the sights, sounds, smells, and frustrations of this visit to my formerly imprisoned friends.

When you describe to me every corner, all the details of GTMO, I feel like I am with you, Barhoumi said in a voice memo. I feel like I never left this place. When I complained about the lack of access and general censorship, he could relate. I feel you, he told me. It depends on who is in charge, thats my experience. You have to have a big heart because they will piss you off. Just use your wisdom and keep going.

After only a week, I was ready to leave. The constant monitoring and prescreening of my images had been invasive. To decompress, I sat at the marina near the hotel at sunset and watched the sky fade from blue to black as the eerie red glow of the docks flood lights spilled into the green water like blood.

Water at the Guantnamo Bay marina changes from green to red as flood lights turn on at night.

Photo: Elise Swain/The Intercept

I tried to imagine a distant future when former detainees could visit this place as free men and when, perhaps, Guantnamo would become a monument for national reflection. I hoped that they, too, would one day watch the sun slowly sink beneath the wide-open sky and make peace with the place that had permanently derailed their lives. I would love the place to be converted to a museum, just like Robben Island. I would volunteer and work sometime, Salahi told me. I think the former detainees should run it.

My plane back to Washington, D.C., took off late one afternoon from the empty Guantnamo runway. I looked out the window for a final chance to see the prison. I thought about the remaining 16 men there who have been cleared for release but are still waiting for their own liftoff. I wondered what the rest of their lives would look like. I thought again of al-Qurashi and the paintings hed made while imprisoned here. His painting of a wooden ship fighting to stay afloat in rough seas stuck me as a metaphor for this place.

What an injustice it was, I thought, that so many of the men who had suffered needlessly here still werent truly free. In a perfect world, former detainees would see this prison close. They would be exonerated, get an apology, receive reparations, and find help with rehabilitation. They would be allowed to visit the McDonalds and the beaches and watch the dusk settle over the crystalline water that teemed with life.

Cuba faded into the distance through the small window. I never did see the prison, just as those detained there had never seen anything of Guantnamo beyond their bars. And apart from the handful of obscure photos that manage to survive OPSEC review, they probably never will.

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Censorship Has Never Been Worse at Guantnamo Bay - The Intercept

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Ban The Books: Censorship Demands Reach Record Numbers, The ... - Athens Messenger

The National Union of Journalists of Ukraine has appealed to the Armed Forces of Ukraine over its severe restrictions on reporting in combat zones of the countrys stalled NATO-backed counteroffensive.

The appeal comes in the wake of a report by French newspaper Le Temps that the Ukrainian government had effectively banned all foreign journalists from visiting the front unless they had received personal permission from the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valery Zaluzhnyi, a known admirer of the Ukrainian fascist Stepan Bandera.

As the head of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine Serhiy Tomilenko reported on Facebook on Wednesday, In recent days, the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine received numerous appeals from accredited journalists regarding severe restrictions on the work of mass media at the front. In particular, the media claim that the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has now completely banned filming in the combat zone, any coverage of special and foreign equipment, and the admission of the media to positions and command posts.

Tomilenko noted that the National Union seeks to protect the interests and rights of journalists and requested thatthe General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine offer answers to several questions concerning the restrictive ban on journalists working at the front.

In particular, it is important for us to hear answers to the following questions: what contributed to such a large number of restrictions for accredited journalists regarding the coverage of events at the front? Do all these prohibitions apply only to our Ukrainian colleagues or to foreign ones as well? (The National Union has received reports that priority for work in the war zone is being given to representatives of foreign mass media), Tomilenko wrote.

Tomilenko couched his appeal in pro-war nationalist terms, prostrating his organization before the right-wing government of President Volodymyr Zelensky. He claimed, In fact, all these bans make it impossible for media representatives to show Russian aggression, tell and write about it, as well as highlight the heroic resistance of the Ukrainian defense forces to the occupiers.

In the Le Temps article, Ukraines Deputy Minister of Defense Hanna Maliar claimed that the bans were a matter of operational security and cited an air attack on Ukraines 82nd Brigade that allegedly occurred in response to a Forbes article published from the front.

Maliars lying claims are typical of government officials who seek to both justify their attacks on democratic rights and cover up their own responsibility for the mass death of workers and youth. During the second Iraq War, the administration of President George W. Bush banned coverage of coffins of US soldiers returning from Iraq.

In reality, Ukraines Western-backed counteroffensive was destined to fail and result in mass Ukrainian casualties against an entrenched and well-fortified Russian army, a fact that was well known by the CIA and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, as investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported last week.

According to Hershs sources, the counteroffensive propaganda was a show by [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky and there were some in the administration who believed his bulls..t.

Rather than operational security, the fact that the Zelensky government has cracked down further on its censorship of the front is further confirmation that Zelenskys vaunted counteroffensive is slow and bloody, as the Wall Street Journal admitted earlier this week.

Since the start of the counteroffensive in June, over 5,000 pieces of military equipment have been destroyed. It is estimated that at least 40,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed, and undoubtedly tens of thousands more Ukrainian soldiers are permanently disabled or disfigured.

While the Ukrainian government has intensified its restrictions as of late, censorship of journalists has been the policy of the NATO-backed Zelensky government throughout the course of the war.

Earlier in March, in the run-up to the ongoing counteroffensive, the Armed Forces of Ukraine updated its policy on journalists access.

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From now on, the commanders in the areas of responsibility will determine the zones for the presence of media representatives by their decisions. The following zones are provided: green, where the work of accredited media representatives is allowed without the accompaniment of a public relations officer or a press officer; yellow, where media representatives are allowed to work only accompanied by a press officer; and red, where the work of accredited media representatives is prohibited, the Armed Forces representative Bohdam Senk stated.

The change was also protested by journalists at the time who objected to the arbitrary and restrictive nature of the red zones, which they claimed were being applied to even peaceful areas.

As the Ukrainian Institute for Mass Media reported about the protest, Members of the Media Movement, Ukrainian and foreign journalists declare the inadmissibility of the new excessive restrictions on the work of the media during martial law. Zoning as it is introduced by operational-strategic groups of troops actually makes it impossible for journalists to work not only along the entire front line, but also in peaceful settlements.

The increasing mass censorship of journalists has been noted even by publications that generally support the war and the relentless US propaganda of unprovoked Russian aggression.

As Luke Mogelsen, a contributing writer at the New Yorker, told the Intercept in June, Ive covered four wars, and Ive never seen such a chasm between the drama and intensity and historic import of the reality of the conflict on the one hand, and the superficiality and meagerness of its documentation by the press on the other. Its wild how little of whats happening is being chronicled. And the main reason, though not the only one, is that the Ukrainian government has made it virtually impossible for journalists to do real front line reportage.

The Zelensky governments blatant attack on freedom of the press and its systematic undermining of any factual and honest reporting on the war not only exposes, yet again, the lie that the imperialist war waged against Russia in Ukraine is about democracy. It also underscores that nothing that is reported in the official pro-war media about what is happening in Ukraine can be taken at face value.

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Ukrainian journalists protest army censorship of reporting on the ... - WSWS

Levent Kenez

Media outlets and journalists who express criticism of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan are facing a noticeable decrease in their visibility on YouTube and Google. Additionally, there has been a substantial decrease in the viewership of content produced by critical media outlets. At first, this trend was ascribed to waning political engagement among supporters of opposition parties following Erdogans re-election on May 28. Nevertheless, suspicions have since arisen that algorithmic methods are being employed to enforce a kind of censorship.

Particularly on YouTube, the most influential factor affecting the viewership count of a program is the recommendation to users. This is determined by an algorithm based on viewers previous habits, subscriptions and search history, which then presents videos on the home page. If a video is not recommended on the YouTube homepage, the likelihood of that video receiving a large number of views is significantly low.

Investigative journalist Adem Yavuz Arslan, who moved to the United States due to pressure from the Erdogan regime, has stated that readers have informed him that his YouTube channel is not being recommended. Arslans channel has been banned by the government in Turkey, but the video can be watched if the link is clicked. Arslanshared on X, formerly known as Twitter,that a viewer recounted being unable to access the video despite receiving a notification about the upload of a new video.

Blent Korucu, a prominent Turkish journalist who currently resides in exile in Sweden, co-hosts a morning program every day on the TR724 YouTube channel. While he considers the decline in interest following the elections to be a natural occurrence, he remains unconvinced that the plunge in viewership can be exclusively attributed to this factor. Speaking to Nordic Monitor, Korucu voiced his concerns, stating, It appears that weve lost the engagement of three out of every four viewers, a trend that strongly hints at some form of external interference. The Erdogan regime has imposed a spectrum of censorship measures, but arguably, this situation ranks among the most severe. Our broadcasts unfold in real time, fostering an interactive rapport with our audience. Even the most loyal viewers complain about the difficulty of accessing the broadcast. Ironically, algorithms are designed to tailor recommendations according to viewer preferences and habits.

Not only exiled journalists but also outlets critical of the governmentin Turkey have complaints about YouTube and Google. Secular television channel Halk TV claimed in a broadcast this week that it has been subjected to censorship by Google. According to the channel, restrictions on Halk TV within Googles News and Discover applications have intensified even further since the elections. The visibility of Halk TV news on Google experienced a significant decline, reaching a nearly 50 percent drop. Additionally, Halk TV alleged that Google favors pro-government channels. For instance, despite searches for Halk TV being approximately 300 percent more than those for pro-government CNN Trk, Google prominently features CNN Trk by 52 percent more than Halk TV in news-related searches.

Another media outlet lodging complaints against Google is the Szc newspaper. According to the paper, they are subject to a concealed form of censorship by Google. In a statement, Szc claims that Googles News and Discover applications have been giving more prominence to media organizations with known government affiliations while reducing visibility for independent media for some time. Following the elections in May, this situation became even more perplexing.

The decline in visibility of Szc on Google that began before the elections gained momentum after the elections. The visibility of Sozcu.com.trs news dropped from levels of around 20-25 million to below 10 million, the statement says.

It is no secret that the Erdogan government, which controls almost all media outlets in Turkey, is unhappy with critical content, especially that published abroad, on social media and plans to build a legal mechanism that censors critical posts and videos.

Since 2019 the Erdogan government has successfully introduced several bills in parliament that posed significant sanctions threats to social media platforms. The government aimed to regulate these platforms through penalties and access bans. Moreover, the government employed a sort of carrot-and-stick strategy by advertising heavily on these platforms, in addition to using the threat of punitive measures, to exert its influence.

Google was the first global company to announce that it would cooperate with the government. Nordic Monitor previouslyreported that Gnen Grkaynak, who represents Google and its YouTube service as well as X in Turkey, said in a statement in parliament that he managed to break the hesitation felt by global social media companies to comply with the new Turkish law, which was adopted to further clamp down on criticism of the Erdogan government.

I can proudly say that [Google] was one of the first companies to [comply with the new law], Grkaynak told lawmakers on December 2, 2021, bragging about how his client rushed to meet the demands of the Turkish authorities.

As you can imagine, when such legislation is passed at a time when there was hesitation from the viewpoint of international firms such as Who will do what, should we be the first to do it or not, what will the effects be? we think Googles stance by taking such a step [to appoint a representative] on January 12, 2021 set an example in terms of efforts to comply with the legislation, he added in his statement to the newly established parliamentary Committee on Digital Outlets.

Originally posted here:
Google, YouTube accused of censoring Erdogan critics - Nordic Research and Monitoring Network

From: Lisa Ingellis

Columbus

As a concerned parent and graduate of BCSC schools, could we stop pandering to the extreme and divisive factions of our society? Bills have been filed in states like Arizona and Texas that allow for fining teachers for telling the truth while obliterating requirements to teach about slavery and the writings of Martin Luther King Jr. Whats next? Burning books because we dont like whats in them? Well, maybe.

As The Republic mentioned in an Aug. 23 article on the recent school board meeting, the board has planned a working session Sept. 11 to discuss policies around library books. This policy review comes after the board received a petition calling for the school board to implement standards for profanity and vulgarity across the Bartholomew County K-12 schools.

I watched the school board meeting livestream on Aug. 21 so my daughters, both students, could hear the discussion regarding the selection of materials for school libraries. There were some ridiculous points made by some speakers drawing laughter from my kids, namely referring to books in our libraries as porn and objecting to teacher/student relationships due to pedophiles working in public schools. All of this disappoints and saddens me, especially in light of increasing amounts of censorship around the United States. I want my kids to have the same access to a diverse array of literature that I had. I also want them to continue to be taught real, accurate history, and not some version that makes a small group feel better about themselves.

Interestingly, the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) and American Library Association (ALA) have developed guidelines for handling formal complaints to school library collections, which are meant to safeguard students First Amendment rights by limiting the ability of community members of school boards to exercise content- or viewpoint-based censorship. BCSC has an existing policy that seems to be somewhat in alignment with this. Both national organizations recommend community members complete formal reconsideration requests in writing to school principals, and that schools form reconsideration committees, made up of teachers, librarians, school administrators and members of the community, who receive training in intellectual freedom and library policies, before they read, discuss and collectively reevaluate the availability of a particular book in the school. ALA guidelines make clear that committee members are to set aside their personal beliefs and use objective standards, and that books are to remain in circulation until the process is complete and a final decision is made.

Lets avoid the embarrassment experienced in Hamilton County recently as they went off the rails in banning a number of excellent pieces of young adult literature, including The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. I sincerely hope committee members, principals, superintendents and school boards here will act with the constitutional rights of students in mind. Namely, knowing it is better to allow access to literature for those who might want it than to eliminate access for all based on the concerns of any individual or faction.

See the article here:
Letter: BCSC should put students right to read before censors ... - The Republic