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WASHINGTON Two days after Christmas last year, Richard P. Donoghue, a top Justice Department official in the waning days of the Trump administration, saw an unknown number appear on his phone.

Mr. Donoghue had spent weeks fielding calls, emails and in-person requests from President Donald J. Trump and his allies, all of whom asked the Justice Department to declare, falsely, that the election was corrupt. The lame-duck president had surrounded himself with a crew of unscrupulous lawyers, conspiracy theorists, even the chief executive of MyPillow and they were stoking his election lies.

Mr. Trump had been handing out Mr. Donoghues cellphone number so that people could pass on rumors of election fraud. Who could be calling him now?

It turned out to be a member of Congress: Representative Scott Perry, Republican of Pennsylvania, who began pressing the presidents case. Mr. Perry said he had compiled a dossier of voter fraud allegations that the department needed to vet. Jeffrey Clark, a Justice Department lawyer who had found favor with Mr. Trump, could do something about the presidents claims, Mr. Perry said, even if others in the department would not.

The message was delivered by an obscure lawmaker who was doing Mr. Trumps bidding. Justice Department officials viewed it as outrageous political pressure from a White House that had become consumed by conspiracy theories.

It was also one example of how a half-dozen right-wing members of Congress became key foot soldiers in Mr. Trumps effort to overturn the election, according to dozens of interviews and a review of hundreds of pages of congressional testimony about the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6.

The lawmakers all of them members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus worked closely with the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, whose central role in Mr. Trumps efforts to overturn a democratic election is coming into focus as the congressional investigation into Jan. 6 gains traction.

The men were not alone in their efforts most Republican lawmakers fell in line behind Mr. Trumps false claims of fraud, at least rhetorically but this circle moved well beyond words and into action. They bombarded the Justice Department with dubious claims of voting irregularities. They pressured members of state legislatures to conduct audits that would cast doubt on the election results. They plotted to disrupt the certification on Jan. 6 of Joseph R. Biden Jr.s victory.

There was Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the pugnacious former wrestler who bolstered his national profile by defending Mr. Trump on cable television; Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona, whose political ascent was padded by a $10 million sweepstakes win; and Representative Paul Gosar, an Arizona dentist who trafficked in conspiracy theories, spoke at a white nationalist rally and posted an animated video that depicted him killing Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York.

They were joined by Representative Louie Gohmert of Texas, who was known for fiery speeches delivered to an empty House chamber and unsuccessfully sued Vice President Mike Pence over his refusal to interfere in the election certification; and Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama, a lawyer who rode the Tea Party wave to Congress and was later sued by a Democratic congressman for inciting the Jan. 6 riot.

Mr. Perry, a former Army helicopter pilot who is close to Mr. Jordan and Mr. Meadows, acted as a de facto sergeant. He coordinated many of the efforts to keep Mr. Trump in office, including a plan to replace the acting attorney general with a more compliant official. His colleagues call him General Perry.

Mr. Meadows, a former congressman from North Carolina who co-founded the Freedom Caucus in 2015, knew the six lawmakers well. His role as Mr. Trumps right-hand man helped to remarkably empower the group in the presidents final, chaotic weeks in office.

In his book, The Chiefs Chief, Mr. Meadows insisted that he and Mr. Trump were simply trying to unfurl serious claims of election fraud. All he wanted was time to get to the bottom of what really happened and get a fair count, Mr. Meadows wrote.

Congressional Republicans have fought the Jan. 6 committees investigation at every turn, but it is increasingly clear that Mr. Trump relied on the lawmakers to help his attempts to retain power. When Justice Department officials said they could not find evidence of widespread fraud, Mr. Trump was unconcerned: Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen, he said, according to Mr. Donoghues notes of the call.

On Nov. 9, two days after The Associated Press called the race for Mr. Biden, crisis meetings were underway at Trump campaign headquarters in Arlington, Va.

Mr. Perry and Mr. Jordan huddled with senior White House officials, including Mr. Meadows; Stephen Miller, a top Trump adviser; Bill Stepien, the campaign manager; and Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary.

According to two people familiar with the meetings, which have not been previously reported, the group settled on a strategy that would become a blueprint for Mr. Trumps supporters in Congress: Hammer home the idea that the election was tainted, announce legal actions being taken by the campaign, and bolster the case with allegations of fraud.

At a news conference later that day, Ms. McEnany delivered the message.

This election is not over, she said. Far from it.

Mr. Jordans spokesman said that the meeting was to discuss media strategy, not to overturn the election.

On cable television and radio shows and at rallies, the lawmakers used unproved fraud claims to promote the idea that the election had been stolen. Mr. Brooks said he would never vote to certify Mr. Trumps loss. Mr. Jordan told Fox News that ballots were counted in Pennsylvania after the election, contrary to state law. Mr. Gohmert claimed in Philadelphia that there was rampant voter fraud and later said on YouTube that the U.S. military had seized computer servers in Germany used to flip American votes.

Mr. Gosar embraced the fraud claims so closely that his chief of staff, Tom Van Flein, rushed to an airplane hangar parking lot in Phoenix after a conspiracy theory began circulating that a suspicious jet carrying ballots from South Korea was about to land, perhaps in a bid to steal the election from Mr. Trump, according to court documents filed by one of the participants. The claim turned out to be baseless.

Mr. Van Flein did not respond to detailed questions about the episode.

Even as the fraud claims grew increasingly outlandish, Attorney General William P. Barr authorized federal prosecutors to look into substantial allegations of voting irregularities. Critics inside and outside the Justice Department slammed the move, saying it went against years of the departments norms and chipped away at its credibility. But Mr. Barr privately told advisers that ignoring the allegations no matter how implausible would undermine faith in the election, according to Mr. Donoghues testimony.

And in any event, administration officials and lawmakers believed the claims would have little effect on the peaceful transfer of power to Mr. Biden from Mr. Trump, according to multiple former officials.

Mainstream Republicans like Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, said on Nov. 9 that Mr. Trump had a right to investigate allegations of irregularities, A few legal inquiries from the president do not exactly spell the end of the Republic, Mr. McConnell said.

On Dec. 1, 2020, Mr. Barr said publicly what he knew to be true: The Justice Department had found no evidence of widespread election fraud. Mr. Biden was the lawful winner.

The attorney generals declaration seemed only to energize the six lawmakers. Mr. Gohmert suggested that the F.B.I. in Washington could not be trusted to investigate election fraud. Mr. Biggs said that Mr. Trumps allies needed the imprimatur, quite frankly of the D.O.J., to win their lawsuits claiming fraud.

They turned their attention to Jan. 6, when Mr. Pence was to officially certify Mr. Bidens victory. Mr. Jordan, asked if the president should concede, replied, No way.

The lawmakers started drumming up support to derail the transfer of power.

Mr. Gohmert sued Mr. Pence in an attempt to force him to nullify the results of the election. Mr. Perry circulated a letter written by Pennsylvania state legislators to Mr. McConnell and Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House Republican leader, asking Congress to delay certification. Im obliged to concur, Mr. Perry wrote.

Mr. Meadows remained the key leader. When disputes broke out among organizers of the pro-Trump Stop the Steal rallies, he stepped in to mediate, according to two organizers, Dustin Stockton and Jennifer Lynn Lawrence.

In one case, Mr. Meadows helped settle a feud about whether to have one or two rallies on Jan. 6. The organizers decided that Mr. Trump would make what amounted to an opening statement about election fraud during his speech at the Ellipse, then the lawmakers would rise in succession during the congressional proceeding and present evidence they had gathered of purported fraud.

(That plan was ultimately derailed by the attack on Congress, Mr. Stockton said.)

On Dec. 21, Mr. Trump met with members of the Freedom Caucus to discuss their plans. Mr. Jordan, Mr. Gosar, Mr. Biggs, Mr. Brooks and Mr. Meadows were there.

This sedition will be stopped, Mr. Gosar wrote on Twitter.

Asked about such meetings, Mr. Gosars chief of staff said the congressman and his colleagues have and had every right to attend rallies and speeches.

None of the members could have anticipated what occurred (on Jan. 6), Mr. Van Flein added.

Mr. Perry was finding ways to exert pressure on the Justice Department. He introduced Mr. Trump to Mr. Clark, the acting head of the departments civil division who became one of the Stop the Steal movements most ardent supporters.

Then, after Christmas, Mr. Perry called Mr. Donoghue to share his voter fraud dossier, which focused on unfounded election fraud claims in Pennsylvania.

I had never heard of him before that day, Mr. Donoghue would later testify to Senate investigators. He assumed that Mr. Trump had given Mr. Perry his personal cellphone number, as the president had done with others who were eager to pressure Justice Department officials to support the false idea of a rigged election.

Mark Meadows. Mr. Trumps chief of staff, who initially provided the panel with a trove of documents that showed the extent of his rolein the efforts to overturn the election, is now refusing to cooperate. The House voted to recommend holding Mr. Meadows in criminal contempt of Congress.

Republican congressmen. Scott Perry, Jim Jordan, Andy Biggs, Paul Gosar, Louie Gohmert and Mo Brooks, working closely with Mr. Meadows, becamekey in the effort to overturn the election. The panel has signaled that it will investigate the role of members of Congress.

Fox News anchors. Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and Brian Kilmeade texted Mr. Meadowsduring the Jan. 6 riot urging him to persuade Mr. Trump to makean effort to stop it. The texts were part of the material that Mr. Meadows had turned over to the panel.

Mr. Donoghue passed the dossier on to Scott Brady, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, with a note saying for whatever it may be worth.

Mr. Brady determined the allegations were not well founded, like so much of the flimsy evidence that the Trump campaign had dug up.

On Jan. 5, Mr. Jordan was still pushing.

That day, he forwarded Mr. Meadows a text message he had received from a lawyer and former Pentagon inspector general outlining a legal strategy to overturn the election.

On January 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence, as President of the Senate, should call out all the electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all in accordance with guidance from founding father Alexander Hamilton and judicial precedence, the text read.

On Jan. 6, Washington was overcast and breezy as thousands of people gathered at the Ellipse to hear Mr. Trump and his allies spread a lie that has become a rallying cry in the months since: that the election was stolen from them in plain view.

Mr. Brooks, wearing body armor, took the stage in the morning, saying he was speaking at the behest of the White House. The crowd began to swell.

Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass, Mr. Brooks said. Are you willing to do what it takes to fight for America?

Just before noon, Mr. Pence released a letter that said he would not block certification. The power to choose the president, he said, belonged to the American people, and to them alone.

Mr. Trump approached the dais soon after and said the vice president did not have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our Constitution.

We will never give up, Mr. Trump said. We will never concede.

Roaring their approval, many in the crowd began the walk down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Capitol, where the certification proceeding was underway. Amped up by the speakers at the rally, the crowd taunted the officers who guarded the Capitol and pushed toward the buildings staircases and entry points, eventually breaching security along the perimeter just after 1 p.m.

By this point, the six lawmakers were inside the Capitol, ready to protest the certification. Mr. Gosar was speaking at 2:16 p.m. when security forces entered the chamber because rioters were in the building.

As the melee erupted, Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, yelled to his colleagues who were planning to challenge the election: This is what youve gotten, guys.

When Mr. Jordan tried to help Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, move to safety, she smacked his hand away, according to a congressional aide briefed on the exchange.

Get away from me, she told him. You fucking did this.

A spokesman for Mr. Jordan disputed parts of the account, saying that Ms. Cheney did not curse at the congressman or slap him.

The back-and-forth was reported earlier by the Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker in their book I Alone Can Fix It.

Of the six lawmakers, only Mr. Gosar and Mr. Jordan responded to requests for comment for this article, through their spokespeople.

Mr. Perry was recently elected leader of the Freedom Caucus, elevating him to an influential leadership post as Republicans could regain control of the House in 2022. The stolen election claim is now a litmus test for the party, with Mr. Trump and his allies working to oust those who refuse to back it.

All six lawmakers are poised to be key supporters should Mr. Trump maintain his political clout before the midterm and general elections. Mr. Brooks is running for Senate in Alabama, and Mr. Gohmert is running for Texas attorney general.

Some, like Mr. Jordan, are in line to become committee chairs if Republicans take back the House. After Jan. 6, Mr. Jordan has claimed that he never said the election was stolen.

In many ways, they have tried to rewrite history. Several of the men have argued that the Jan. 6 attack was akin to a tourist visit to the Capitol. Mr. Gosar cast the attackers as peaceful patriots across the country who were harassed by federal prosecutors. A Pew research poll found that nearly two-thirds of Republicans said their party should not accept elected officials who criticize Mr. Trump.

Still, the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack appears to be picking up steam, voting this week to recommend that Mr. Meadows be charged with criminal contempt of Congress after he shifted from partly participating in the inquiry to waging a full-blown legal fight against the committee.

His fight is in line with Mr. Trumps directive to stonewall the inquiry.

But the committee has signaled that it will investigate the role of members of Congress.

According to one prominent witness who was interviewed by the committee, investigators are interested in the relationship between Freedom Caucus members and political activists who organized Stop the Steal rallies before and after the election.

Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, said the panel would follow the facts wherever they led, including to members of Congress.

Nobody, he said, is off-limits.

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Meadows and the Band of Loyalists: How They Fought to Keep Trump in Power - The New York Times

People are stupid.

That subject line, in an email Wednesday from Donald Trump, grabbed my attention more than other fundraising messages I get several times a day from the ever-grifting former president.

Stupid people, the email said, are those who dont believe there was massive Election Fraud in 2020. To solve that fraud, Trump needed $45 from patriots like me desperately.

The man is desperate all right.

Opinion Columnist

Jackie Calmes

Jackie Calmes brings a critical eye to the national political scene. She has decades of experience covering the White House and Congress.

And yet, this losers 13-month-old delusion that he won reelection is fully embraced by millions of Americans and one of our two major parties. In fealty to his Big Lie, Republicans in 19 states have passed laws making it harder to vote and solidifying their partys control over elections, and now theyre putting partisans in local offices charged with certifying results. The prospect of chaos in the 2022 and 2024 elections is real.

Every week brings fresh evidence of Trumps danger to democracy and this week was no different. Newly disclosed text messages from yet-to-be-named House Republicans to Mark Meadows, Trumps final White House chief of staff, documented their real-time terror about the Jan. 6 insurrection they now downplay and of their collusion in schemes to overturn Joe Bidens election.

For the mainstream media, the challenge has been to convey the seriousness of this crisis to a public exhausted by politics and polarization. Covering the lie of the year like politics as normal wont cut it.

Yet as the weeks developments underscored, the far-right media ecosystem Fox News and its imitators propelled Trumps con from the start and continues to drive it. Its audience, full of the election deniers most in need of truth, gets the alternative news it wants. For them, any reporting from the mainstream media is discredited after years of Trumps anti-press rants.

Not surprising that Fox News, Newsmax and One America News didnt broadcast the public hearing Monday night of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol. Their viewers didnt see Rep. Liz Cheney and other members read aloud some text messages Meadows received amid the siege from frightened Republican lawmakers and Donald Trump Jr., begging Meadows to get the commander in chief to stop the attack. The pleaders included Fox celebrities Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Brian Kilmeade.

Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of Burbank read what he aptly called a particularly chilling text to Meadows from a House Republican, lamenting the failure of the scheme to throw out millions of Biden votes: Yesterday was a terrible day. We tried everything we could in our objection to the 6 states. Im sorry nothing worked.

When Fox News finally did address the hearing on Tuesday, its hosts dismissed the texts and attacked the messengers, chiefly Cheney, a popular target for its anchors because shes stood up to Trump, which got her bounced from the House Republican leadership team in May and the Wyoming Republican Party last month.

Real journalists would have noted that the Republicans plaintive texts contradicted their efforts since Jan. 6 to play down the violence and oppose a bipartisan investigation. A real news network would have been embarrassed to have its stars exposed as such hypocrites, pleading with the White House based on the fact that the rioters were Trump loyalists and then suggesting otherwise to viewers.

Ingraham texted Meadows during the insurrection, Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy. Hours later, she was on air suggesting a discredited theory that the siege was the work of people who can only be described as antithetical to the MAGA movement, including perhaps antifa sympathizers.

The disclosure of the text messages came just a day after Chris Wallace, a respected longtime Fox News anchor, announced he was leaving. It was regrettable that he left without offering any criticism of the network, unlike two longtime conservative contributors, including my colleague Jonah Goldberg, when they recently resigned in protest.

Fox News is not the same place it was when Wallace joined it 18 years ago. Even then, its fair and balanced slogan was easily mocked. But in recent years, Fox News has become a truth-defying partisan propaganda operation led by Tucker Carlson. It is unabashedly in league with the first president ever to reject the peaceful transfer of power a former president who, Cheney suggests, could be criminally liable for his role in disrupting Congress constitutionally required count of the electoral college votes.

Cheney gets the last word, from her speech to the House Tuesday night:

Whether we tell the truth, get to the truth, and defend ourselves against it ever happening again, is the moral test of our time.

Her estranged Republican colleagues, and their enablers in conservative media, seem determined to fail that test.

@jackiekcalmes

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Calmes: Bigger holes keep appearing in the 'big lie' - Los Angeles Times

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If you care about book challenges and censorship, one Supreme Court case you should familiarize yourself with which hasnt been cited nearly during this flux of challenges is Board of Education, Island Trees School District vs. Pico (Island Trees). This landmark 1982 case was the first to address the removal of books from school libraries across the country. Though it was a 5-4 split within the court, the ruling in favor of Pico meant that no school board could remove books from a library once itd been added, simply because they disagreed with the content within it.

Justice Brennan, in announcing the judgement which did not have a majority opinion to it, stated:

The Island Trees case came from an incident in the school district located in Levittown, New York, in 1975. A group which called themselves Parents of New York United submitted a list of 11 books they considered inappropriate to the school board, which then removed the books from the library and proceeded to send them through the review committee. Even though the committee said five of nine titles should be returned to shelves, the school board overruled the decision, returning only two (the other two books in question were a book in the junior high school that contained the satirical essay A Modest Proposal, and a book in the 12th grade curriculum, and both were removed).

The school board made this decision because they were anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Sem[i]tic, and just plain filthy, according to the case syllabus.

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High school senior Steven Pico, in the case, helped bring the voices of four fellow high school students and one junior high school student into the story. All of them pushed back against the boards decision. They believed thanks, in part, to the precedent set with the Tinker vs. Des Moines case that their First Amendment rights were being violated.

One possible reason why this case hasnt been cited is that it wasnt legally binding because there wasnt a majority opinion. But because it also hasnt been challenged, it stands as a powerful reminder of a few things: this isnt and never has been the first time books in school libraries have been challenged, let alone that books by authors of color have been at the center of the discussion (the 11 titles included books by Piri Thomas, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Alice Childress, and Eldridge Cleaver); its not the first time that students have been forced to speak up for their First Amendment Rights; its noteworthy that the ruling stated this means books cannot be removed from school libraries because of disagreement with what they present (i.e., stories of those from the global majority and queer stories); that school boards have exerted more power than granted to them; and more.

When and if we begin to see lawsuits arising from todays censorship landscape, watch for Island Trees to be cited and revisited. The Supreme Court isnt stacked in favor of intellectual freedom right now, given the appointments made by the treasonous former administration, but prior rulings give weight to the reality that book censorship denies rights granted to young people in the First Amendment.

Onto this weeks book censorship news, with a toolkit for how to fight book bans and challenges, as well as how to spot fake news sites many of which are fueling these censorship attempts. Note: This will be the final roundup of 2021. Roundups will continue beginning the first full week of 2022.

Heres this weeks intellectual freedom hero:

And a couple more must-reads from authors experiencing challenges or outright censorship: author Jo Knowles talks about two of her queer-positive books being challenged in Texas and Derf Backderf talks about why his graphic memoir My Friend Dahmer has been banned.

See the article here:
Can The 1982 Island Trees Case Impact Todays Book Censorship? This Weeks Book Censorship News... - Book Riot

Author and journalist Jemimah Steinfeld said in an interview with the Stockholm Center for Freedom that the jailing of journalists in Turkey is worrying and that Index on Censorship has been closely following the country for 10 years and will continue to do so in the future. What is happening in Turkey has obviously been very upsetting. In countries like Turkey there is, of course, a lack of plurality of the press, and the circumstances are very challenging. We will continue to monitor Turkey and highlight problems associated with press freedom in the future, she said.

As part of SCFs interview series Freedom Talks, our research director Dr. Merve R. Kaykc talked to Jemimah Steinfeld about freedom of press and the suppression of journalists in Turkey.

Steinfeld is the head of content at Index on Censorship, a nonprofit that campaigns for freedom expression worldwide and publish work by censored writers and artists. She has lived and worked in both Shanghai and Beijing, where she has written on a wide range of topics, with a particular focus on youth culture, gender and censorship. She is the author of Little Emperors and Material Girls: Sex and Youth in Modern China, which was described by Financial Times as meticulously researched and highly readable. Steinfeld has freelanced for a variety of publications, including The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, Vice, CNN, Time Out and the Huffington Post. She has a degree in history from Bristol University and went on to earn an MA in Chinese studies at SOAS University of London.

You work at Index on Censorship. How are organizations like yours important in monitoring media freedom and advocating for improvement?

The first issue of our magazine came out in 1972. The organization was founded in 1971, and right from the start it has been about addressing censorship in all forms, while some of the early foundations of Index and the idea behind Index was to smuggle writings from and work with writers from Iron Curtain countries. We look at censorship in its entirety. Censorship is not a right problem or a left problem. We look at it globally and from the top down, for instance, an autocrat imprisoning a writer. But also, from the bottom up, for instance, weve had cases with LGBT people from China who dont feel like they can come out to their parents because there is too much pressure on them to have kids. Freedom of speech is probably the most important human right because without free speech you cannot talk about other human rights. Media freedom really sits at the center of free speech because journalists really are the people who hold power to account in the most visible, open way they are the ones who investigate whats going on. Journalists are so crucial to free speech that they are quite often the first people to be punished when there is a dictatorship. They are the first people to be arrested and to be told that their words need to be changed. Therefore, media freedom fits in the broader structures of power and coercion.

We have a magazine, where in each issue we work with up to 40 journalists and we pay everyone because we see that as really, really important to media freedom. I mean, one of the things thats happened in the last few decades, especially with the increasing use of the Internet, is that journalists often dont get paid for their work. And that in and of itself is a way of silencing journalists and making it incredibly hard to be a journalist. Paying journalists is really key to treating them with respect.

Do you think media freedom is at the point it should be in liberal countries, or are there still steps that can be taken for improvement?

It would really depend on the different countries. Even in liberal countries there are laws that can be very punishing to journalists. For instance, at the moment we are leading an initiative called SLAPP, which is short for Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation.

One of the most important cases is that of Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was killed on October 17, 2017. She got into her car outside her home, and it exploded. Killing her basically silenced her because she was a very daring, courageous and brilliant journalist who had been exposing a lot of corruption. Around the time she died there were 40 lawsuits against her.

Powerful individuals and organizations resort to these lawsuits with the aim of physically and financially exhausting journalists even if there isnt really a case against them. They want to intimidate journalists into silence, and other journalists who witness such lawsuits may self-censor to avoid them. Such lawsuits are currently perfectly legal in many countries.

Of course, the situation is still better than in places like China. Ive worked in a newsroom in China that was censored, and I have worked in newsrooms in the UK. I have seen what happens, and it is not the same thing. However, that does not mean we are at a perfect place in the UK.

A final thing is lots of journalists and particularly female journalists in places like the UK and the US are subjected to online harassment. Such harassment is vicious, and its particularly vicious to women. Journalism is a more high-profile profession, and lots of journalists are putting their names and faces out there in the public.

They are uncovering things that people dont always want to read and hear. Therefore, the online world has made it easier for journalists to be harassed. I have heard of journalists in the UK who have quit their jobs because of this. I think the harassment women face is quite often more problematic than what men face because it can be particularly vicious for the women.

If a journalist is working on exposing corruption and taking a very critical lens to aspects of society, I would not say this is an easy job even in places like the UK. However, it is still a lot easier than in authoritarian countries.

A worrying trend especially in Turkey is broadcasting bans, particularly when it comes to sensitive topics like femicide or child abuse. Almost every time there is an incident concerning women or children, the media is not allowed to broadcast details of the news. Why is it that authorities issue such bans? Doesnt the public have a right to know, especially when it comes to the most vulnerable members of society?

They [the authorities] often make out that theres some moral reason behind broadcasting bans, but its often quite convenient for them. They dont want such news to be shown because maybe it reflects badly on the government in some way, or because theyre trying to control, and police, society.

Index on Censorship condones broadcast bans. We dont think that just anything should be broadcast at any time. I wouldnt want my three-year-old son to be watching certain things. So Im absolutely fine for certain things to come on at an hour when kids will probably be in bed so that theyre not exposed.

But I think that broadcasting bans need to go through a rigorous, open, transparent decision-making process. There should be external regulators as part of the decision-making process as well. One of the biggest problems with many countries where there are broadcast bans is that the broadcasters are often tied to the state. So the decisions are directly linked to the government.

Essentially, if the decision is made in a transparent way from an external regulator that has no vested political interest, then that is less problematic than the reverse, which is what quite often happens with these bans.

Turkey is currently one of the worlds biggest jailers of professional journalists and is ranked 153rd among 180 countries in terms of press freedom, according to Reporters Without Borders. Would you like to reflect on the current state of journalism in Turkey?

Turkey has been one of our focus countries for several years at Index on Censorship. By several years, I mean at least 10 years. We have a wonderful contributing editor to the magazine called Kaya Gen, who writes in every issue. What is happening in Turkey has obviously been very upsetting.

As you rightly point out Turkey is one of the main jailers of journalists. Its not the most dangerous country in the world to be a journalist. Such places usually include Mexico, for instance, where a journalist is more likely to get killed.

But in countries like Turkey there is of course a lack of plurality of the press, and the circumstances are very challenging. We will continue to monitor Turkey and highlight problems associated with press freedom in the future.

Many journalists critical of the Turkish government and its regime are being imprisoned for terrorism. When we look at the accusations, they usually include aspects of their journalistic work. What can the international community, civil society and journalists outside of Turkey do to protect their colleagues and make their plight heard?

People can sign petitions and raise their voices. We also publish work from Turkish journalists on our website. We try to offer them outlets for their stories, because sometimes writing for non-Turkish outlets may be easier and less dangerous. We also want to make sure they can still find work through these outlets and their stories are heard.

One of the worrying things in such countries where media freedom is in peril is that people stop hearing about the countries and the terrible things that are going on. As people hear less about it, the situation gets worse, and we see a vicious cycle.

How important are social media platforms and online news sitesin ensuring that the public stays informed? Do Twitter, Facebook and other platforms really have a positive impact on peoples access to news and also their access a variety of coverage of the news?

I think social media is one hundred percent important in ensuring the public stays informed. Especially with Twitter, we cannot underestimate its news sourcing. Also, young people are increasingly using social media.

Twitter and Facebook have been instrumental in changing the proliferation and the access to news. And that puts them in such a difficult place because they are both serving the public and acting as a publishing platform. So they have to straddle being both private and public. While this is quite troublesome, its also exciting as we try and figure out what role they have and how we should work with them to ensure that all the brilliant stuff can stay and be celebrated, whereas the more challenging aspects are improved.

How has feminism reshaped media, or has it? Is feminist journalism possible and what would it look like?

Thanks to the Me Too movement there has been quite an awakening. Also, 40 to 50 years ago there werent many female journalists in the UK. The entire feminist awakening has helped women get into journalism. But there are still important problems. For instance, some aspects of journalism, such as political and foreign correspondence is very punishing on family life. This creates quite a pressure on female journalists because unfortunately we do not live in an equal world, and women still do more of the housework. This means that they might not always be in a position to take those jobs.

We work with lots of countries where its still very hard to work in media as a woman. We are doing quite a lot on Afghanistan at the moment. Since the Taliban takeover in August, the number of women in the workforce has dwindled. Change is not always linear. So although Me Too and feminism have improved some conditions for women, there is still a lot of work to do.

Finally, it is important that we are holding conversations about [online] harassment against female journalists and other forms of pressure.

In a previous article you say that we need to increase awareness around the world about the current state of press freedom during the coronavirus crisis, as well as to raise awareness more broadly about the importance of media freedom and the challenges that journalists face.But how can we do this? How can we mobilize to protect freedom of the media, especially in contexts where violence against journalists is commonplace and journalists face serious risks of being prosecuted for their journalistic activities?

Well, thats the million-dollar question, isnt it? As I said earlier journalists are often first in the firing line. This is usually because someone very powerful, high up, is worried what they will expose, such as corruption and inconsistencies. What happened, especially at the beginning of COVID-19, was that people were being told things they didnt want to hear.

As a result, it was very easy to target the media. The government obviously doesnt want journalists in the room because if they are mishandling the situation, then journalists can expose them. There were plenty of countries that were claiming they had no COVID-19 cases. There were journalists who proved this to be wrong. Of course, governments were furious about this. However, ordinary people, too, blamed the media and accused them of blowing the issue out of proportion. They said that the media was stirring this up and it was the media to blame for the crises.

I think as a solution one of the main things to do is to educate people in media literacy. Ideally, it should be something thats taught at a young age in school. I hate it when people use the term, the media is one monolithic group, because there is a huge difference between all the different newspapers and magazines that are out there. And they have very different editorial processes, although the majority of them are brilliant. So even if you just assume all media is great, people need to see the rich diversity within the media. Some media has a less rigorous editorial process than others. There is a tendency that if there is one bad news story amongst millions, then all the media gets dragged down by that one news story.

And this is again where it comes back to media literacy. If people were trained even for a short period to know what to trust or not trust and to know what to be looking for in a news source, that would really be helpful.

We should also keep praising media organizations and stressing the importance of media freedom. We clapped for healthcare workers during the pandemic. In a similar way we could clap for journalists who are out there day in and day out reporting stories and putting themselves on the line. I think people dont necessarily see this. They dont associate what theyre reading with these challenging situations.

The Nobel Peace Prize this year went to journalists, which shows that what journalists are doing is amazing.

How can ordinary people support organizations like Index on Censorship?

People can support organizations like ours in two main ways. They can donate to our organization. We are a not-for-profit and nongovernmental organization, and we therefore rely on charitable donations, grants and the goodwill of people.

So we encourage people to give as little or as much as they can. These donations go to keeping Index in business.

The other way is to subscribe to our magazine, and you will be supporting the magazine and also getting a really good read. Apart from its importance in human rights advocacy, the magazine also includes some of the worlds best writers, such as Margaret Atwood. There are other less famous but equally good writers who also contribute to the magazine.

Finally, people can support our causes by following us on Twitter or Facebook, and sharing our content. People can sign our petitions when we mention a petition.

Do you think press freedom can rebound after an authoritarian rule is over?

I said earlier that change is not always linear so it can go backwards but it can also go forward. One of the ironies of Index on Censorship is that were all a generally cheerful bunch. We, work with these really depressing stories, but we work with the most brilliant people all around the world in really hard situations.

But whilst there are brilliant people, we can always dream there will be progress. Weve seen plenty of places that have come out of authoritarianism to have more freedoms. For instance, ever since Donald Trump left office, have we heard a story about a journalist being kicked out of the press room?

This is not to say that everything is perfect. There were problems in the US with press freedoms prior to Donald Trump. And there are problems still today. But we can go into dark times and can come out. So we shouldnt give up hope.

Hope is what moves us forward, its the human condition.

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[Interview] Index on Censorship will continue to monitor government suppression of the media in Turkey: Jemimah Steinfeld - Stockholm Center for...