Freedom of the Press

Subterms

    More stories

    • 75 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Pro-Putin Candidates Sweep Russia’s Local Elections

      by

      Against a backdrop of tightening press freedom and repression amid the war in Ukraine, Russians voted overwhelmingly for pro-Kremlin candidates in regional and municipal elections over the weekend, according to results published on Monday.Candidates nominated by the ruling United Russia Party or those loyal to the Kremlin won races for heads of all of the 14 Russian regions where elections were held, according to Russia’s Central Electoral Commission. United Russia, the party of President Vladimir V. Putin, also won a majority in six regional legislatures where voting occurred, the commission said.In the city of Moscow, where lawmakers were up for election in most municipalities, more than 77 percent of seats went to pro-Kremlin candidates, according to Tass, a Russian state news agency.Many anti-government politicians have fled the country. Some have been sentenced to prison terms for publicly criticizing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.Although Mr. Putin has dominated Russian politics for more than two decades, he has long used elections that carry a veneer of competitiveness to try to legitimize his rule. And while the elections are often rife with fraud, they typically offer an opening for the political opposition to express discontent.In some instances, especially at the relatively low level of municipal councils, candidates who have been critical of the Kremlin were able to get elected. And on Monday, already-serving municipal deputies from 18 councils in Moscow and St. Petersburg signed a petition calling on Mr. Putin to resign. The petition came after a municipal council in St. Petersburg last week called on the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, to investigate Mr. Putin for treason over his decision to invade Ukraine. Those deputies have been charged by police with discrediting the Russian army, an administrative offense.Mr. Putin’s grip on Russia’s political system has held largely because of his policymakers’ ability to maintain relative economic stability. The elections this weekend were an early test of whether the economic upheaval caused by Western sanctions stemming from Mr. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has had an effect on voters.They took place in the climate of almost total censorship of the mainstream press, making it hard to gauge people’s true attitudes toward the government. Following the invasion in February, Mr. Putin tightened media laws, forcing the few remaining liberal news outlets to shut down.The campaigning and voting periods were marred by multiple violations, according to a report by Golos, a Russian elections watchdog, which cited official intimidation of election observers and unequal access to state media for opposition candidates.The report called the elections “unfree and unequal,” saying that “it is impossible to determine the real will of the voters under these conditions.”The elections were held over three days, which made them more vulnerable to fraud because election observers could not ensure the security of ballots overnight. Critics also said that online voting made it easier to falsify the results.Still, some voters appeared to use their ballots to criticize the Kremlin or its war in Ukraine. Messages including “Russia without Putin!” or “For peace” were scrawled on some ballots, according to photographs posted on social media. The photos could not be independently verified. More

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Should Biden Run for Re-election in 2024?

      by

      More from our inbox:A Threat to Free SpeechG.O.P. Election DeniersRepublicans Against Birth ControlPresident Biden with Senators Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, center, and Jon Tester of Montana. Many Democratic officials and voters bear no ill will toward Mr. Biden, but would like a new face to lead the party.Doug Mills/The New York TimesTo the Editor:“Biden in 2024? Many in Party Whisper, ‘No’” (front page, June 12) raises the question of why so many Democrats seem to be down on President Biden. He is guiding the U.S. out of the pandemic, encouraged and signed major infrastructure legislation, galvanized the international coalition that has enabled Ukraine to resist Russia’s horrific invasion and appointed highly qualified judges who are diverse in terms of ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, ideology and experience, and who promise to counter the deleterious effects of Donald Trump appointees.These and many other accomplishments comprise an excellent record for a president’s first 17 months, especially when the Democrats possessed a razor-thin Senate majority.Carl TobiasRichmond, Va.The writer is a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law.To the Editor:A breathtakingly common theme, whether we read about gun massacres, the economy, climate legislation or crumbling infrastructure, is that our nation feels in crisis, rudderless, lacking a moral compass.I have great admiration for the decent, calm, highly experienced Joe Biden. But it is now clear to me that our nation needs a much more assertive, energetic leader who can move hearts, minds and legislation against a tsunami of Republican obstructionism, the selfish noncooperation of select Democratic senators, and the relentless lies and conspiracies masquerading as news.This is a herculean task. I’m not sure who is up to it. But I think Howard Dean is right. Go younger. And go bolder. We need someone with big ideas and the negotiating ability to move public opinion and legislation forward.Sally PeabodyPeabody, Mass.To the Editor:“Biden in 2024? Many in Party Whisper, ‘No’ ” is a thoughtful, interesting analysis of the many pros and cons of President Biden’s running again. But I think many of the points raised are irrelevant, because the controlling issue is the president’s age.The idea that a man in his 80s (he would be 82 when inaugurated for a second term and 86 by its end) would have the energy to do such a demanding job is simply wrong. I say this as a 90-year-old man who is able to cook, walk, drive, see friends and take part in public life.But it is clear that anyone’s energy in their 80s is greatly diminished. And as David Axelrod is quoted as saying, “The presidency is a monstrously taxing job.”Eric WolmanLittle Silver, N.J.To the Editor:President Biden may be down but it’s premature to count him out. In 1948 Harry Truman faced similar problems. Few people gave him any chance of winning the presidency. The economy was bad. The world was a mess. He was too blunt for most people. Many felt he was not up to the job. Support within his own party was disintegrating, just as Mr. Biden’s support is declining.What happened? Truman did not give up, and he won the election. Will Mr. Biden be the 21st-century Truman?Paul FeinerGreenburgh, N.Y.A Threat to Free Speech Pablo DelcanTo the Editor:The New York Times editorial board has said it plans to identify threats to free speech and offer solutions.One of the most dangerous threats to free speech is the tremendous growth over three to four decades of government agencies, businesses and others barring employees from speaking to journalists. Sometimes bans are total. Sometimes they prohibit contact unless authorities oversee it, often through public information offices.Legal analysis from the Brechner Center for Freedom of Information finds that such constraints in public agencies, although very common, are unconstitutional. Many courts have agreed.Despite our pride in some outstanding journalism, no news outlet overcomes all the blockages and intimidation of sources that this censorship creates. Quite enough information is successfully hidden to be corrosive.The press should not be taking the risk of assuming that what we get is all there is when so many people are silenced. We should be openly fighting these controls.Haisten WillisKathryn FoxhallTimothy WheelerMr. Willis and Ms. Foxhall are chair and vice chair, respectively, of the Freedom of Information Committee, Society of Professional Journalists. Mr. Wheeler is chair of the Freedom of Information Task Force, Society of Environmental Journalists.G.O.P. Election DeniersJim Marchant in Carson City, Nev., in March 2021. He is the Republican nominee for Nevada secretary of state and an organizer of a Trump-inspired coalition of candidates who falsely insist the 2020 election was stolen.Ricardo Torres-Cortez/Las Vegas Sun, via Associated PressTo the Editor:Re “Far-Right Election Deniers Pressing Closer to Controlling Votes” (news analysis, June 16):The alarming rise of far-right Republicans who could hold significant sway over the electoral systems of several swing states leaves me feeling incredibly worried.That we as citizens of the United States would ever have to even ponder whether or not the candidate who won the majority of votes would be certified as the victor in an election is nothing short of horrifying.Despite knowing better, far too many self-serving Republicans have allowed their party to become a den of showy snake oil salesmen and women who peddle conspiracies and mistruths. The dangerous state our democracy finds itself in now is their responsibility.Cody LyonBrooklynRepublicans Against Birth ControlHailey Kramer, the chief nurse practitioner at Tri-Rivers Family Planning, said her patients make clear that birth control is a deeply personal decision.Whitney Curtis for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Missouri Battle on Birth Control Gives Hint of a Post-Roe Nation” (front page, June 14):Those same Republican conservatives who advocate personal responsibility not only want to ban all abortions for women. Now they also want to deprive women of their ability to prevent pregnancy by taking away funding for methods of birth control.It’s illogical and unconscionable, but sadly no longer unthinkable.Merri RosenbergArdsley, N.Y. More

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in World Politics

      Thought Crimes: the Shameful Undemocratic Wilding of Contrary Opinion

      by

      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

    • 100 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      The Man Who Could Ruin the Philippines Forever

      by

      Ferdinand Marcos Jr., known as Bongbong, was convicted of tax evasion. He also lied about his academic degree, according to Oxford University. Victims of his father’s brutal regime — which lasted for 20 years until his ouster in 1986 — accuse the younger Mr. Marcos of whitewashing history.Yet Mr. Marcos, the unapologetic heir of the family that plundered billions of dollars from us Filipinos, is — absent a major upset — poised to win the presidential election on May 9.This is possible only because our democracy has long been ailing. Disinformation is rewriting our past and clouding our present. Filipinos are disillusioned with our system of government. And the impunity of family dynasties in politics has gutted its two essential functions: to allow us to fairly choose our leaders and to hold them accountable for how they fail us. The return to power of the Marcoses may deal it the final blow.It’s heartbreaking to remember what could have been. Thirty-six years ago, Ferdinand Marcos Sr.’s “constitutional authoritarianism,” as he described his government, came to an end when his family fled the country after millions of Filipinos united to support Corazon Aquino, the widow of an assassinated senator whose popularity had threatened the regime’s control. We flooded the streets and won back our freedom and, in 1987, wrote a new Constitution to guide our country. Democracy seemed to have repudiated autocracy.But over the years, our leaders’ broken promises accumulated and led to our disenchantment. Administration after administration was blighted by dysfunction, corruption and injustice. Year after year, our elected representatives refused to pass laws prohibiting political dynasties, despite the fact that our Constitution had tasked them with doing so.The new millennium eventually brought better governance and much-vaunted economic momentum, yet too many Filipinos remained marginalized. In 2011, for example, a mere 40 individuals reaped more than three-fourths of our country’s wealth increase. And a good part of our country’s economic growth came from the millions of Filipinos who were forced abroad to seek, and remit, their livelihood. All while crime, drugs and inequality persisted across our homeland.Throughout those three decades of our hard-won democracy, its most vital function — letting the people choose who will represent us — was perverted by entrenched politicians. Call it the dictatorship of dynasties. As of 2019, some 234 families, in a country of nearly 110 million people, held 67 percent of the legislature, 80 percent of governorships and 53 percent of mayoralties.Our democracy’s other main function — allowing us to hold our leaders accountable — has also been hijacked. When Rodrigo Duterte won the presidency in 2016 by promising to sacrifice democratic freedoms for bullet-fast results against crime and corruption, that came to include the dismantling of checks and balances that could prevent or punish his abuse of power.Institutions that could hold him to account for the thousands of deaths from his drug war were stacked with lackeys. The coequal branches of the legislature and judiciary were brought under the presidency’s heel. Laws were weaponized to control speech and dissent. The news media was both kicked and muzzled as the public’s watchdog, and orchestrated falsehoods and historical revisionism now inundate the 92 million Filipinos on social media, who get our news mostly online.In other ways, too, Mr. Duterte is responsible for normalizing authoritarianism, which may be yet another thing Mr. Marcos effortlessly inherits. One of Mr. Duterte’s first actions as president in 2016 was to transfer the elder Mr. Marcos’s preserved corpse from the family’s refrigerated mausoleum for burial in our national cemetery of heroes. And Mr. Duterte’s daughter, Sara, is now campaigning with the younger Mr. Marcos and is the leading candidate for vice president, who is elected separately from the president.Despite the incumbent’s apparent disdain for Mr. Marcos — Mr. Duterte has implied that he is a weak leader and a drug user — their shared affinities are undeniable as the younger pair promises to continue Mr. Duterte’s grim legacy.Their popularity indicates that our past fight for democratic freedom has been largely forgotten, with 56 percent of the Filipino voting population now between ages 18 and 41. A 2017 poll found that half of us Filipinos favor authoritarian governance, and an alarming number of us even approve of military rule. Yet the same poll showed that 82 percent of us say we believe in representative democracy. The contradiction seems to overlook what our history teaches about our giving leaders unchecked power.No wonder we elected Mr. Duterte, who has bragged about being a killer. No wonder we’re poised to re-elect a family of thieves. And no wonder Mr. Marcos thrives as a mythmaker — varnishing himself and his family as harmless underdogs, victims of theft by an untouchable elite who stole his vice presidency, his parents’ tenure over our country’s so-called golden age and his family’s right to control their own narrative against what he calls “propaganda” and “fake news.”Yet even as Mr. Marcos casts himself as the heir to his family’s dynasty, he refuses to acknowledge its many proven crimes, much less be held complicit for his role in defending the dictatorship. He has also pledged to protect Mr. Duterte from the International Criminal Court and has formed a political cartel with the Dutertes and two past presidents, who were both jailed for corruption. Worst of all, he has relentlessly shrugged off the facts of our nation’s history, telling everyone to “move on” from its long struggle against the authoritarianism he and his family led.But as the present hurtles forward on May 9, the truths of our past matter more than ever. From that history, a martyred writer and our national hero, José Rizal, reminds us: “There are no tyrants where there are no slaves.” Yet so many of us have been shackled before by so many of those we freely elected to entrust our future to — from Adolf Hitler to Vladimir Putin to another brazen liar also named Ferdinand Marcos.Miguel Syjuco, a former contributing Opinion writer, is the author, most recently, of “I Was the President’s Mistress!!: A Novel.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Project Veritas Says Justice Dept. Secretly Seized Its Emails

      by

      In a court filing, the conservative group assailed prosecutors for concealing the action in a proceeding from the investigation of how it acquired Ashley Biden’s diary.The conservative group Project Veritas said on Tuesday that the Justice Department began secretly seizing a trove of its internal communications in late 2020, just weeks after learning that the group had obtained a copy of President Biden’s daughter’s diary.In a court filing, a lawyer for Project Veritas assailed the Justice Department’s actions, which involved subpoenas, search warrants and court production orders that had not been previously disclosed and gag orders imposed on Microsoft, whose servers housed the group’s emails.The disclosure underscored the scope and intensity of the legal battle surrounding the Justice Department’s investigation into how Project Veritas, in the closing weeks of the 2020 presidential campaign, came into possession of a diary kept by Ashley Biden, the president’s daughter, and other possessions she had stored at a house in Florida.And it highlighted how the Justice Department has resisted demands by the conservative group — which regularly engages in sting operations and ambush interviews against news organizations and liberal groups and has targeted perceived political opponents — to be treated as a news organization entitled to First Amendment protections.It is highly unusual for the Justice Department to obtain the internal communications of journalists, as federal prosecutors are supposed to follow special guidelines to ensure they do not infringe on First Amendment rights.Since the investigation was disclosed last fall, federal prosecutors have repeatedly said that because they have evidence that the group may have committed a crime in obtaining Ms. Biden’s belongings, Project Veritas is not entitled to First Amendment protections.But Project Veritas, in its filing on Tuesday, said that prosecutors had failed to be forthcoming with a federal judge about the nature of their inquiry by choosing not to disclose the secret subpoenas and warrants.“This is a fundamental, intolerable abridgment of the First Amendment by the Department of Justice,” James O’Keefe, the group’s founder and leader, said in a video.In its court filing, Project Veritas asked a federal judge to intervene to stop the Justice Department from using the materials it had obtained from Microsoft in the investigation. The group said that federal prosecutors had obtained “voluminous materials” — which in many cases included the contents of emails — from Microsoft for eight of its employees, including Mr. O’Keefe.The group also disclosed that Uber had told two of its operatives who are under investigation — Spencer Meads and Eric Cochran — that it had handed over information from their accounts in March of last year in response to demands from the government.Microsoft said in response to questions about the matter that it had initially challenged the government’s demands for Project Veritas’s information, but the company declined to describe what that entailed.“We’ve believed for a long time that secrecy should be the exception and used only when truly necessary,” said Frank X. Shaw, a spokesman for Microsoft. “We always push back when the government is seeking the data of an enterprise customer under a secrecy order and always tell the customer as soon as we’re legally able.”According to a person with direct knowledge of the matter, Microsoft had pushed back on the Justice Department’s subpoenas and warrants when the company was served with them in late 2020 and early 2021. But the government refused to drop its demands and Microsoft handed over the information that prosecutors were seeking, the person said.Because of gag orders that had been imposed, Microsoft was barred from telling Project Veritas about the requests, the person said.Shortly after the existence of the investigation was revealed publicly last fall, Microsoft asked the Justice Department whether it could tell Project Veritas about the requests, the person said. The department refused to lift the gag orders, the person said.In response, Microsoft drafted a lawsuit against the Justice Department to try to get the gag orders lifted and told department officials that the company was prepared to file it. Soon afterward, the department went to court and had the gag orders lifted.A little more than a week ago, Microsoft told Project Veritas about the warrants and subpoenas, the person said.Project Veritas paid $40,000 for Ms. Biden’s diary to a man and a woman from Florida who said that it had been obtained from a home where Ms. Biden had been staying until a few months earlier. Project Veritas also had possession of other items left at the house by Ms. Biden, and at the heart of the investigation is whether the group played a role in the removal of those items from the home.Project Veritas has denied any wrongdoing and maintained that Ms. Biden’s belongings had been abandoned. The group never published the diary.Search warrants used in raids last fall on the homes of Mr. O’Keefe and two other Project Veritas operatives showed that the Justice Department was investigating conspiracy to transport stolen property and possession of stolen goods, among other crimes.In response to the searches, a federal judge, at the urging of Project Veritas, appointed a special master to oversee what evidence federal prosecutors could keep from the dozens of cellphones and electronic devices the authorities had obtained.Project Veritas said in its filing on Tuesday that at the time the special master was appointed the government should have revealed that it had conducted other searches that could have infringed on the group’s First Amendment rights or could have been protected by attorney-client privilege.In the final year of the Trump administration, prosecutors in Washington, who were investigating a leak of classified information, secretly obtained court orders demanding that Google, which houses The New York Times’s email accounts, hand over information from four Times reporters’ accounts. In response to requests from Google, the Justice Department allowed it to alert The Times to the demands so the newspaper could fight the orders. A lawyer for The Times, David McCraw, secretly fought the demands, which the government ultimately dropped. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      First Amendment Scholars Want to See the Media Lose These Cases

      by

      Some legal experts say it is time to draw a sharp line between protected speech and harmful disinformation.The lawyers and First Amendment scholars who have made it their life’s work to defend the well-established but newly threatened constitutional protections for journalists don’t usually root for the media to lose in court.But that’s what is happening with a series of recent defamation lawsuits against right-wing outlets that legal experts say could be the most significant libel litigation in recent memory.The suits, which are being argued in several state and federal courts, accuse Project Veritas, Fox News, The Gateway Pundit, One America News and others of intentionally promoting and profiting from false claims of voter fraud during the 2020 election, and of smearing innocent civil servants and businesses in the process.If the outlets prevail, these experts say, the results will call into question more than a half-century of precedent that created a clear legal framework for establishing when news organizations can be held liable for publishing something that’s not true.Libel cases are difficult to prove in the United States. Among other things, public figures have to show that someone has published what the Supreme Court has called a “calculated falsehood” or acted with reckless disregard for the truth.But numerous First Amendment lawyers said they thought the odds were strong that at least one of these outlets would suffer a rare loss at trial, given the extensive and well-documented evidence against them.That “may well turn out to be a good thing,” said Lee Levine, a veteran First Amendment lawyer who has defended some of the biggest media outlets in the country in libel cases.The high legal bar to prove defamation had become an increasingly sore subject well before the 2020 election, mainly but not exclusively among conservatives, prompting calls to reconsider the broad legal immunity that has shielded journalists since the landmark 1964 Supreme Court decision New York Times v. Sullivan. Critics include politicians like former President Donald J. Trump and Sarah Palin, who lost a defamation suit against The Times last month and has asked for a new trial, as well as two Supreme Court justices, Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch.Mr. Levine said a finding of liability in the cases making their way through the courts could demonstrate that the bar set by the Sullivan case did what it was supposed to: make it possible to punish the intentional or extremely reckless dissemination of false information while protecting the press from lawsuits over inadvertent errors.“If nothing else,” Mr. Levine added, “it would effectively rebut the recent contentions that the Sullivan regime doesn’t work as intended.”The Sullivan case, which legal scholars consider as seminal to the First Amendment as Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was to civil rights, established the “actual malice” standard for defamation. It requires that a suing public figure prove a person or media outlet knew what it said was false or acted with “reckless disregard” for the high probability that it was wrong.Calls to weaken that precedent drew considerable resistance from advocates for press freedom. But many of them have come to see the threat of a defamation suit — a tactic often used by the powerful to retaliate against and mute unwelcome criticism — as an essential tool in the battle against disinformation.Increasingly, many First Amendment lawyers see the courts as one of the last viable paths to deter the spread of political disinformation and help prevent repeats of dangerous situations — from another Jan. 6-style riot to the more isolated threats against local officials that grew out of Mr. Trump’s false insistence that the election was stolen from him.“I think we are at a time in U.S. history and world history of losing any ability as a civilization to distinguish between truth and falsity,” said Rodney Smolla, a lawyer representing Dominion Voting Systems, a technology company suing Fox News and several individuals who promoted conspiracy theories about the last election, including Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sidney Powell.“And one of the few legal avenues in which civilized countries have attempted to distinguish between truth and falsity is defamation law,” said Mr. Smolla, who believes the Sullivan decision is sound law. A judge in Delaware, where the Dominion suit was filed, denied Fox’s motion to dismiss the case in December, and it is now in the discovery phase.As a defense, Fox and others invoke the First Amendment and Sullivan, arguing that their reporting on the 2020 election and its aftermath is legally indistinguishable from the kind of basic, just-the-facts journalism that news organizations have always produced. Fox has portrayed itself as a neutral observer, saying it did not endorse claims about hacked voting machines and systemic voter fraud but instead offered a platform for others to make statements that were unquestionably newsworthy.As Fox News mounts its defense in the Dominion case and in a lawsuit by another voting systems company, Smartmatic, the network’s lawyers have argued that core to the First Amendment is the ability to report on all newsworthy statements — even false ones — without having to assume responsibility for them.“The public had a right to know, and Fox had a right to cover,” its lawyers wrote. As for inviting guests who made fallacious claims and spun wild stories, the network — quoting the Sullivan decision — argued that “giving them a forum to make even groundless claims is part and parcel of the ‘uninhibited, robust and wide-open’ debate on matters of public concern.’”Last week, a federal judge ruled that the Smartmatic case against Fox could go forward, writing that at this point, “plaintiffs have pleaded facts sufficient to allow a jury to infer that Fox News acted with actual malice.”The broadness of the First Amendment has produced strange bedfellows in free speech cases. Typically, across the political spectrum there is a recognition that the cost of allowing unrestrained discourse in a free society includes getting things wrong sometimes. When a public interest group in Washington State sued Fox in 2020, alleging it “willfully and maliciously engaged in a campaign of deception and omission” about the coronavirus, many First Amendment scholars were critical on the grounds that being irresponsible is not the same as acting with actual malice. That lawsuit was dismissed.But many aren’t on Fox’s side this time. If the network prevails, some said, the argument that the actual malice standard is too onerous and needs to be reconsidered could be bolstered.“If Fox wins on these grounds, then really they will have moved the needle too far,” said George Freeman, executive director of the Media Law Resource Center and a former lawyer for The New York Times. News organizations, he added, have a responsibility when they publish something that they suspect could be false to do so neutrally and not appear to be endorsing it.Fox is arguing that its anchors did query and rebut the most outrageous allegations.Paul Clement, a lawyer defending Fox in the Smartmatic case, said one of the issues was whether requiring news outlets to treat their subjects in a skeptical way, even if their journalists doubt that someone is being truthful, was consistent with the First Amendment.“If you’re superskeptical, you’re covered, but if you express sympathy, then somehow you’re not?” Mr. Clement said. “To me, that seems fundamentally problematic and antithetical to First Amendment values.”One America News also faces a lawsuit accusing it of deliberately promoting and profiting from false claims of voter fraud. It has not yet responded to the suit.The New York TimesPerhaps the boldest in claiming that they were merely reporting on important events and so are protected by the First Amendment are Project Veritas and its founder, James O’Keefe. They are being sued for publishing and amplifying the claims of a postal worker in Erie, Pa., who implicated his boss in a plot to backdate mail-in ballots and help elect President Biden. An investigation found no evidence to support those claims.In legal briefs, lawyers for Mr. O’Keefe and Project Veritas have called their work “the stuff responsible journalism is made of” and claimed that the case would put “news-gathering itself on trial.” To bolster their argument, they cite examples of how Project Veritas worked in ways that would seem consistent with professional news reporting, including reaching out to the accused postal supervisor for comment twice. A lawyer representing Mr. O’Keefe had no comment.The lawsuit, however, paints a different picture from the “scrupulous” reporting that Project Veritas lawyers described. It recounts how, after the election, the outlet published multiple articles about someone it identified as a whistle-blower, Richard Hopkins, who came forward with accusations that the local postmaster, Robert Weisenbach, was a “Trump hater” and had ordered employees to backdate mail-in ballots to help Mr. Biden.But the lawsuit claims that Mr. Hopkins changed his recollection of events when postal inspectors questioned him, admitting that he did not know whether Mr. Weisenbach had directed anyone to backdate ballots. As for whether Mr. Weisenbach was really the “Trump hater” Mr. Hopkins made him out to be, Mr. Weisenbach said he had voted for Mr. Trump.In the complaint, Mr. Weisenbach’s lawyers argued that what Project Veritas had done “was not investigative journalism.” Rather, they said, “it was targeted character assassination” aimed at undermining public faith in democracy.“It has no place in our country,” the complaint added.Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan advocacy group representing Mr. Weisenbach, is also assisting two public employees in Georgia who were falsely accused of orchestrating voter fraud. The pair, a mother and daughter, are suing The Gateway Pundit and One America News over articles that accused them of helping fake a water main break at a Fulton County ballot counting center and then telling everyone to go home so they could add suitcases full of illegal ballots to Mr. Biden’s totals.OAN has not yet responded to the suit. Lawyers for The Gateway Pundit have denied the claims in court filings.Rachel Goodman, counsel for Protect Democracy, said this kind of litigation “makes clear that there are steep costs to recklessly or intentionally spreading fiction for political or personal profit.”“It reminds them that the speech standards that have governed the marketplace of ideas for decades apply to them, too,” Ms. Goodman added. More

    • 138 Shares139 Views

      in Elections

      Much of Smartmatic Case Against Fox News Can Proceed, Judge Rules

      by

      The $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News by the election technology company Smartmatic can move forward, a New York judge ruled on Tuesday. But the judge tossed out Smartmatic’s defamation claims against the Fox News host Jeanine Pirro and a network guest, Sidney Powell.Smartmatic sued Rupert Murdoch’s cable news networks last year, along with several Fox hosts and guests. The lawsuit accused them of damaging the company by promoting a false narrative about the 2020 election: that Smartmatic and other voting systems companies tried to rig the race against President Donald J. Trump. Smartmatic later expanded its legal battle against disinformation to the right-wing media outlets Newsmax and One America News Network.On Tuesday, Justice David B. Cohen of State Supreme Court in Manhattan said in a 61-page ruling that, “at a minimum, Fox News turned a blind eye to a litany of outrageous claims about plaintiffs, unprecedented in the history of American elections, so inherently improbable that it evinced a reckless disregard for the truth.”He added, “At this nascent stage of the litigation, this court finds that plaintiffs have pleaded facts sufficient to allow a jury to infer that Fox News acted with actual malice.”He also declined to dismiss Smartmatic claims against Maria Bartiromo, the Fox Business star, and Lou Dobbs, whose Fox Business show was a frequent clearinghouse for baseless theories of electoral fraud in the weeks after Mr. Trump’s defeat. Fox canceled Mr. Dobbs’s program last year, one day after Smartmatic sued.Citing a legal technicality, Justice Cohen dismissed most of Smartmatic’s defamation claims against Rudolph W. Giuliani, who, appearing on Fox News as a legal representative for Mr. Trump, said the technology company had “tried-and-true methods for fixing elections,” among other false assertions. Even so, Justice Cohen said there was “substantial” evidence that Mr. Giuliani “acted with actual malice insofar as he evinced a reckless disregard for the truth” and ruled that Smartmatic could try again. The judge allowed another part of Smartmatic’s defamation case against Mr. Giuliani to go forward.Fox News vowed a swift appeal.“While we are gratified that Judge Cohen dismissed Smartmatic’s claims against Jeanine Pirro at this early stage, we still plan to appeal the ruling immediately,” the network said in a statement. The network added that it would “continue to litigate these baseless claims by filing a counterclaim for fees and costs” under New York’s anti-SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation) statute, which is meant to quickly set aside lawsuits that may be intended to chill free speech.Fox News said it would do so “to prevent the full-blown assault on the First Amendment which stands in stark contrast to the highest tradition of American journalism.”In dismissing the claim against Ms. Pirro, Justice Cohen said that while she had asserted on her show that Democrats “stole votes,” she had not specifically blamed Smartmatic’s software.A spokesman for Smartmatic did not reply to a request for comment.Fox News is also battling a related $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems, which has accused the channel of advancing lies that devastated its reputation and business. A Delaware judge rejected an attempt by Fox News to dismiss Dominion’s lawsuit in December. More

    • 100 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Eastern Europe Tests New Forms of Media Censorship

      by

      With new, less repressive tactics, countries like Serbia, Poland and Hungary are deploying highly effective tools to skew public opinion.BELGRADE, Serbia — When Covid-19 reached Eastern Europe in the spring of 2020, a Serbian journalist reported a severe shortage of masks and other protective equipment. She was swiftly arrested, thrown in a windowless cell and charged with inciting panic.The journalist, Ana Lalic, was quickly released and even got a public apology from the government in what seemed like a small victory against old-style repression by Serbia’s authoritarian president, Aleksandar Vucic.But Ms. Lalic was then vilified for weeks as a traitor by much of the country’s news media, which has come increasingly under the control of Mr. Vucic and his allies as Serbia adopts tactics favored by Hungary and other states now in retreat from democracy across Europe’s formerly communist eastern fringe.“For the whole nation, I became a public enemy,” she recalled.Serbia no longer jails or kills critical journalists, as happened under the rule of Slobodan Milosevic in the 1990s. It now seeks to destroy their credibility and ensure few people see their reports.The muting of critical voices has greatly helped Mr. Vucic — and also the country’s most well-known athlete, the tennis star Novak Djokovic, whose visa travails in Australia have been portrayed as an intolerable affront to the Serb nation. The few remaining outlets of the independent news media mostly support him but take a more balanced approach.Ana Lalic, a Serbian journalist, last month in Belgrade. She was arrested in 2020 after reporting on a severe shortage of masks and other protective equipment that could be used against the coronavirus.Marko Risovic for The New York TimesAcross the region, from Poland in the north to Serbia in the south, Eastern Europe has become a fertile ground for new forms of censorship that mostly eschew brute force but deploy gentler yet effective tools to constrict access to critical voices and tilt public opinion — and therefore elections — in favor of those in power.Television has become so biased in support of Mr. Vucic, according to Zoran Gavrilovic, the executive director of Birodi, an independent monitoring group, that Serbia has “become a big sociological experiment to see just how far media determines opinion and elections.”Serbia and Hungary — countries in the vanguard of what V-Dem Institute, a Swedish research group, described last year as a “global wave of autocratization” — both hold general elections in April, votes that will test whether media control works.A recent Birodi survey of news reports on Serbian television found that over a three-month period from September, Mr. Vucic was given more than 44 hours of coverage, 87 percent of it positive, compared with three hours for the main opposition party, 83 percent of which was negative.A billboard depicting President Aleksandar Vucic of Serbia was displayed on a building in Nis in December, ahead of his visit to the city.Sasa Djordjevic/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesNearly all of the negative coverage of Mr. Vucic appeared on N1, an independent news channel that broadcast Ms. Lalic’s Covid-19 reports. But a bitter war for market share is playing out between the cable provider that hosts N1 — Serbian Broadband, or SBB — and the state-controlled telecommunications company, Telekom Srbija.Telekom Srbija recently made a move that many saw as an unfair effort to make SBB less attractive to consumers when it snagged from SBB the rights to broadcast English soccer by offering to pay 700 percent more for them.Telekom Srbija’s offer, nearly $700 million for six seasons, is an astronomical amount for a country with only seven million people — and nearly four times what a media company in Russia, a far bigger market, has agreed to pay the Premier League each season for broadcast rights.“It is very difficult to compete if you have a competitor that does not really care about profit,” SBB’s chief executive, Milija Zekovic, said in an interview. The offices of the N1 cable news channel in Belgrade. N1 and a smaller station, Nova S, are the only TV outlets in Serbia that give regular airtime to opposition politicians.Marko Risovic for The New York TimesTelekom Srbija declined to make its executives available for comment, but in public statements, the company has described its investments in English soccer and elsewhere as driven by commercial concerns, not politics.“Their goal is to kill SBB,” Dragan Solak, the chairman of SBB’s parent company, United Group, said in an interview in London. “In the Balkans,” he added, “you do not want to be a bleeding shark.”Eager to stay in the game, Mr. Solak announced this month that a private investment company he controls had bought Southampton FC, an English Premier League soccer team. Broadcast rights for the league will stay with his state-controlled rival, but part of the huge sum it agreed to pay for them will now pass to Mr. Solak.Government loyalists run Serbia’s five main free-to-air television channels, including the supposedly neutral public broadcaster, RTS. The only television outlets in Serbia that give airtime to the opposition and avoid hagiographic coverage of Mr. Vucic are Mr. Solak’s cable news channel N1, which is affiliated with CNN, and his TV Nova.Without them, Mr. Solak said, Serbia “will be heading into the dark ages like North Korea.”Telekom Srbija recently snagged from SBB the rights to broadcast English soccer by offering to pay 700 percent more than what SBB had previously paid.Marko Risovic for The New York TimesSpace for critical media has been shrinking across the region, with V-Dem Institute, the Swedish research group, now ranking Serbia, Poland and Hungary among its “top 10 autocratizing countries,” citing “assaults on the judiciary and restrictions on the media and civil society.” Freedom House now classifies Serbia as “partly free.”In each country, security forces — the primary tools for muzzling critical voices during the communist era — have been replaced in this role by state-controlled and state-dependent companies that exert often irresistible pressure on the news media.Poland’s governing party, Law and Justice, has turned the country’s public broadcaster, TVP, into a propaganda bullhorn, while a state-run oil company has taken over a string of regional newspapers, though some national print outlets still regularly assail the government.In December, Law and Justice pushed through legislation that would have squeezed out the only independent television news channel, the American-owned TVN24, but the Polish president, worried about alienating Washington, vetoed the bill.Hungary has gone further, gathering hundreds of news outlets into a holding company controlled by allies of Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Only one television station with national reach is critical of Mr. Orban and financially independent from his government.Mr. Orban’s previously divided political rivals have formed a united front to fight elections in April but have been unsuccessful in shaking his stranglehold on the news media.“It is very difficult to compete if you have a competitor that does not really care about profit,” said Milija Zekovic, the chief executive of SBB.Marko Risovic for The New York TimesIn Serbia, the media space for critical voices has shrunk so far, said Zoran Sekulic, the founder and editor of FoNet, an independent news agency, that “the level of control, direct and indirect, is like in the 1990s” under Mr. Milosevic, whom Mr. Vucic served as information minister.Journalists, Mr. Sekulic added, do not get killed anymore, but the system of control endures, only “upgraded and improved” to ensure fawning coverage without brute force.When United Group started a relatively opposition-friendly newspaper last year, it could not find a printer in Serbia willing to touch it. The newspaper is printed in neighboring Croatia and sent into Serbia.Dragan Djilas, the leader of Serbia’s main opposition party and formerly a media executive, complained that while Mr. Vucic could talk for hours without interruption on Serbia’s main television channels, opposition politicians appeared mostly only as targets for attack. “I am like an actor in a silent movie,” he said.N1, the only channel that sometimes lets him talk, is widely watched in Belgrade, the capital, but is blocked in many towns and cities where mayors are members of Mr. Vucic’s party. Even in Belgrade, the cable company that hosts the channel has faced trouble entering new housing projects built by property developers with close ties to the government. A huge new housing area under construction for security officials near Belgrade, for example, has refused to install SBB’s cable, the company said.Viewers of pro-government channels “live in a parallel universe,” said Zeljko Bodrozic, the president of the Independent Journalists Association of Serbia. Channels like TV Pink, the most popular national station, which features sexually explicit reality shows and long statements by Mr. Vucic, he said, “don’t just indoctrinate, but make people stupid.”A new housing area under construction for security officials near Belgrade has refused to install SBB’s cable, the company said.Marko Risovic for The New York TimesThe European Union and the United States have repeatedly rebuked Mr. Vucic over the lack of media pluralism, but, eager to keep Serbia from embracing Russia or stoking unrest in neighboring Bosnia, have not pushed hard.This has given Mr. Vucic a largely free hand to expand the media control that Rasa Nedeljkov, the program director in Belgrade for the Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability, described as “the skeleton of his whole system.” In some ways, he added, Serbia’s space for critical media is now smaller than it was under Mr. Milosevic, who “didn’t really care about having total control” and left various regional outlets untouched.“Vucic is now learning from this mistake by Milosevic,” Mr. Nedeljkov said. Mr. Vucic and his allies, Mr. Nedeljkov added, “are not tolerating anything that is different.”Belgrade this month.Marko Risovic for The New York TimesOnce powerful independent voices have gradually been co-opted. The radio station B92, which regularly criticized Mr. Milosevic during the Balkan Wars of the 1990s, for example, is now owned by a supporter of Mr. Vucic and mostly parrots the government line.Journalists and others who upset Mr. Vucic face venomous attacks by tabloid newspapers loyal to the authorities. Mr. Solak, the United Group chairman, for example, has been denounced as “Serbia’s biggest scammer,” a crook gnawing at the country “like scabies” and a traitor working for Serbia’s foreign foes.Mr. Solak, who lives outside Serbia because of safety concerns, said he had become such a regular target for abuse that when he does not get attacked, “my friends call me and ask: What happened? Are you OK?” More