Censorship

The Trump administration has instructed it's DHS personnel to build a database of journalists and “media influencers.” Presumably since the President equates “fake news” with “said bad stuff about the me” this database will be used to retaliate either through direct punishment or denial of access or both. The Free Speech and Freedom of the Press implications are obvious and are being discussed, but not with the details of implementation. Those details do not make the implications more palatable to anyone who lacks a totalitarian heart.

On Wednesday November 22, Jason Lee Van Dyke contacted Mockingbird Publishing to drop his lawsuit against us and myself personally. On Friday we agreed to his stipulation to dismiss with prejudice. That means he can not sue for the same article again. The order was filed and the judge agreed yesterday.

I'm honored to be in such august company as Talib Kweli.  I have never met him but he has done a great deal to raise the level of political discourse in this country, indeed in the world.  He has used words as art to bring justice to the forefront of our national conversation.  I have in the past covered his former writing partner Mos Def's activism against the force feeding of hunger strikers in America's gulag.

Nothing confirms journalistic integrity and investigative effectiveness like push back and spin. There is no better push back the threat of a frivolous lawsuit. A frivolous lawsuit has no purpose other than to intimidate, and to drain resources when it is used in an attempt to silence the press. Facing such a prospect head on, regardless of the cost in hourglass sand and treasure, is the proper thing for a news source to do. It is what is expected of us if we are to defend the public trust that is placed in us to find and report the truth.

Day Two of reign of Orange Frankenstein brought us a double down on Kelleyanne Conway's alternative facts and Spicer's reality splice. The Trump Administration will now select who attends press briefings rather than the White House press corps being selected from prime media outlets based essentially on audience size. Overlooking the problematic issues in the prior arrangement, the Trump administration has taken another step down the road to an authoritarian and government controlled media.

Still reeling rightward from their unexpected electoral college defeat, the Democratic Party leadership still struggles to find some force to blame other than their own candidates, positions and tepid token defense of the status quo. After searching the internet for the worst clickbait ever to call fake news (The fifth thing on their list will amaze you) they first enlisted the tech titans of Menlo Park to aid them in the first phase of their broad censorship initiative.

There has been a lot of talk about fascism since the electoral college victory of Donald Trump. More specifically there has been talk of Fascism, the so-called “alt-right”, a new authoritarian nationalism, and the specter of Putin's Russia. This electoral college victory, unexpected even by Trump, has caused a massive re-configuration of the political landscape.

A very small sector of the media seems concerned about “fake news.” There seems to be little unified definition of it. The center right wing of the Democratic Party has taken up the banner of “fake news” as somehow being responsible for their narrow loss an election with the lowest voter turnout in two decades. A couple of days before Thanksgiving, while most of America was cooking and preparing to shop the Tech Titans of Silicon Valley began to implement their drive for outright censorship with Facebook leading the way.