theintercept--2020-10-12--Far-Right Twitter Trolls Won't Admit They Were Wrong About Killing of a "Patriot" in Denver

in Denver on Saturday : Lee Keltner , a right-wing demonstrator , was shot and killed after he assaulted Matthew Dolloff , a reporter ’ s bodyguard , who retaliated for a blow to the head and a spray of mace by firing a single gunshot from point-blank range .
The skirmish , which escalated to deadly violence in less than 10 seconds , unfolded in broad daylight , directly in front of witnesses outside the Denver Art Museum .
One was a conservative demonstrator who caught the sound of the gunshot and the sight of the victim collapsing to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ second was a livestreamer who rushed to the scene with the police , capturing the gunman ’ s arrest .
A third was a staff photographer for The Denver Post , whose startling , close-up images of the whole incident were online by the end of the day .
But far-right Twitter personalities , who thrive by providing their followers with fresh reasons to be outraged around the clock , do not wait all day to leap to conclusions about unfolding events .
Within minutes of the shooting — which took place after @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ patriot muster ” against “ BLM , Antifa , and related Marxist associations ” by the organizer , a former military contractor who survived the Benghazi attack — influential conservatives with hundreds of thousands of followers began to speculate that the gunman must have been an antifascist activist .
Just over an hour later , those same trolls flooded social networks with misinformation , amplifying a mistaken report from the Denver Post that the gunman was “ a left-wing demonstrator.
” That report , which was corrected later in the day , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Helen Richardson , the newspaper photographer who watched the shooting unfold through her viewfinder and had no idea that Dolloff was , in fact , a bodyguard for the reporter standing behind him .
Before the Post corrected its report , popular far-right Twitter commentators with a combined audience in the millions treated it as all the proof they needed to inform their readers that the killing was the work of an antifascist activist .
The viral spread of those false claims apparently alarmed the Denver Police Department , which had taken Dolloff @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was guarding and quickly determined that they were not left-wing protesters .
Less than four hours after the shooting , the department tried to stem the tide of misinformation by tweeting an update on its investigation , in which it reported that detectives had determined that “ the suspect is a private security guard with no affiliation with Antifa.
” Even after the Denver police statement , one of the trolls , Ian Miles Cheong , a Malaysian blogger with a big following among American conservatives , continued to pretend that antifascists were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ invoking former Vice President Joe Biden ’ s description of antifa as an idea rather than a group in a caption for a video of the dead man at work in 2012 .
On Sunday , a leader of the pro-Trump youth movement Turning Point , Charlie Kirk , continued to make the false claim .
“ A conservative was just gunned down in the streets by ANTIFA and not a single ‘ mainstream ’ news outlet has asked Joe Biden to condemn the organization he called ‘ just an idea , ' @ @ @ @ @ @ @ followers .
“ We don ’ t have a media in this country anymore , ” Kirk added .
“ We have activists posing as journalists.
” What is remarkable about Kirk ’ s comment is the lack of awareness of how ironic it is , given that so many right-wing activists posing as journalists on Twitter have refused to retract their false claims that Dolloff was an antifascist gunman .
The Denver Post , by contrast , corrected and explained the error in its report as soon as it was contradicted by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their own false reports , however , several of the most influential Twitter conservatives , joined by 4chan trolls , began scouring the web for evidence that Dolloff was somehow secretly an antifa assassin .
Failing to find any such thing , they then moved the goalposts quite a distance by treating scraps of evidence , gleaned from Twitter and Facebook accounts that appeared to be his , of his past support for Sen. Bernie Sanders and the Occupy Denver movement as a good enough substitute .
None remarked on the fact that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ into politics of conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer .
Lauren Boebert , a far-right Republican candidate for Congress and QAnon fan , also ignored the police statement and tweeted on Sunday that the fatal shooting in Denver was an example of “ the violence perpetrated in the streets by ANTIFA , BLM & other radical leftist groups.
” In fact , the visual evidence makes it clear that Keltner initiated the violence that led to his death , perhaps because he also mistook Dolloff and the journalist he was guarding for counter-demonstrators .
Taken @ @ @ @ @ @ @ incident show that Keltner first got into a heated confrontation with a counter-demonstrator in a “ Black Guns Matter ” shirt as he left the rally .
After another conservative separated the two men , Keltner , a 49-year-old Navy veteran who made cowboy hats , appeared to take exception to two other men who were observing the argument at close range : the reporter for Denver ’ s NBC affiliate , 9 News , and Dolloff , the bodyguard provided to the station by Pinkerton security .
What led Keltner to strike @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his cap , remains unknown , but Helen Richardson , the photojournalist , wrote on Instagram early Sunday morning that “ the two exchanged heated words , the patriot hit the man in the face , then backed up to spray what looked like pepper spray at him .
Literally in that split second the man who had gotten hit by the patriot pulled out a gun from his waistband and shot the patriot.
” “ It isn ’ t clear who fired first , ” Richardson added .
However , the sound @ @ @ @ @ @ @ heard a split second before the gunshot rings out , and Keltner collapses to the pavement , in the final seconds of video posted on Twitter by another witness , a conservative who had just left the “ patriot muster ” in nearby Civic Center Park , which was jeered at by antifascist protesters from across the park .
Video shot by another reporter for 9 News , Marc Sallinger , appeared to show that same man , who provoked the initial argument with Keltner but was not involved in the shooting , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Following news reports on Sunday that Dolloff might have been operating as a security contractor without a license , conservative trolling moved on to accusing the news station , an NBC affiliate , of irresponsibly hiring an armed guard without proper screening .
However , Dolloff was apparently working for a subcontractor of Pinkerton , a long-established security firm .
Dolloff , who is being held without bond on suspicion of murder , made a virtual court appearance on Sunday , during which he reportedly strained to hear the judge .

Here’s what happened in Denver on Saturday: Lee Keltner, a right-wing demonstrator, was shot and killed after he assaulted Matthew Dolloff, a reporter’s bodyguard, who retaliated for a blow to the head and a squirt of pepper spray by firing a single gunshot from point-blank range.
Those details, and more evidence about the deadly encounter, gradually emerged in the hours and days after the shooting, but initial reports and reaction to the killing were shrouded in misinformation, much of it introduced by political partisans who jumped to conclusions about the gunman’s motives before all the facts were known.
The skirmish, which escalated to deadly violence in less than 10 seconds, unfolded in broad daylight, directly in front of witnesses outside the Denver Art Museum. One was a conservative demonstrator who caught the sound of the gunshot and the sight of the victim collapsing to the ground in distressing video. A second was a livestreamer who rushed to the scene with the police, capturing the gunman’s arrest. A third was a staff photographer for The Denver Post, whose startling, close-up images of the whole incident were online by the end of the day.
Photo: Helen H. Richardson/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images
The moments before the shooting were also recorded on video by the journalist the guard was protecting, but that footage was not released until more than 72 hours had passed.
But far-right Twitter personalities, who thrive by providing their followers with fresh reasons to be outraged around the clock, do not wait all day to leap to conclusions about unfolding events. Within minutes of the shocking act of violence — which took place after a sparsely attended rally described as a “patriot muster” against “BLM, Antifa, and related Marxist associations” by the organizer, a former military contractor who survived the Benghazi attack — influential conservatives with hundreds of thousands of followers began to speculate that the gunman must have been an antifascist activist.
Just over an hour later, those same trolls flooded social networks with misinformation, amplifying a mistaken report from the Denver Post that the gunman was “a left-wing demonstrator.” That report, which was corrected later in the day, was apparently based on the account of one of the witnesses: Helen Richardson, the newspaper photographer who watched the shooting unfold through her viewfinder and had no way of knowing, based on what she saw, that Dolloff, who was not wearing a uniform or any form of visible identification, was in the middle of this charged situation for a very unusual reason — as an armed bodyguard for the man standing behind him, a journalist for a local news station who was also not wearing anything that made his role clear.
Before The Post corrected its report, popular far-right Twitter commentators with a combined audience in the millions shared it with their readers as if it was definitive proof that the killing of Keltner was both politically motivated and the work of an antifascist activist.
The viral spread of those false claims apparently alarmed the Denver Police Department, which had taken Dolloff into custody along with the journalist he was guarding and quickly determined that they were not left-wing protesters. Less than four hours after the shooting, the department tried to stem the tide of misinformation by tweeting an update on its investigation, in which it reported that, “the suspect is a private security guard with no affiliation with Antifa.”
The police also released the journalist Dolloff had been guarding, a reporter for Denver’s NBC affiliate, 9 News, who had been recording right-wing rallygoers and left-wing counter-protesters all afternoon.
The local news channel confirmed that it had made the unusual and ethically questionable decision to hire a security guard to accompany one of its staff members, a producer for its investigative unit, to film demonstrations by both the right-wing “patriots” and the left-wing counter-protesters who had gathered nearby. “Dolloff was contracted through Pinkerton by 9NEWS,” the station reported as part of its coverage of the fatal shooting. “It has been the practice of 9NEWS for a number of months to contract private security to accompany staff at protests.”
Three days after the shooting, on Tuesday, the news station updated its statement to say that the management “had directed that security guards accompanying our personnel not be armed. None of 9NEWS’ crew accompanied by Mr. Dolloff on Saturday were aware that he was armed.”
Pinkerton, a private security company with a long, checkered history — including a period as, effectively, Andrew Carnegie’s personal militia used to break up strikes — said in a statement on Monday that Dolloff was not directly employed by the firm but was dispatched by a subcontractor.
Even after the Denver police statement, several of the trolls, including Ian Miles Cheong, a Malaysian blogger with a big following among American conservatives, continued to pretend that anti-fascists were behind the shooting of Keltner. On Sunday, Cheong sarcastically invoked former Vice President Joe Biden’s description of antifa as an idea rather than a group in a caption for a video that showed the dead man at work making hats in 2012.
This is Lee Keltner. He is the victim of the Denver shooting. He made cowboy hats. He was murdered by "just an idea." pic.twitter.com/vHXMDqv1PY — Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) October 11, 2020
On Sunday, a leader of the pro-Trump youth movement Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk, also made the false claim. “A conservative was just gunned down in the streets by ANTIFA and not a single ‘mainstream’ news outlet has asked Joe Biden to condemn the organization he called ‘just an idea,'” Kirk tweeted to his 1.8 million followers. “We don’t have a media in this country anymore,” Kirk added. “We have activists posing as journalists.”
Kirk’s comment on the difference between journalism and activism is unintentionally ironic, given that many prominent right-wing activists posing as journalists on Twitter refused to retract their false claims that Dolloff was an antifascist gunman even after The Denver Post had corrected and explained the error in its report.
On Sunday afternoon, the police tried again to quash the rumors that continued to spread online. “Further investigation has revealed that, at the time of the shooting, the suspect was acting in a professional capacity as an armed security guard for a local media outlet, not a protest participant,” the Denver Police Department wrote on Twitter.
Rather than correcting their own false reports, however, several of the most influential Twitter conservatives, joined by 4chan trolls, began scouring the web for evidence that Dolloff was somehow secretly an antifa assassin.
Failing to find any such thing, they then moved the goalposts quite some distance, by treating scraps of evidence, gleaned from Twitter and Facebook accounts that appeared to be Dolloff’s, of his past support for Sen. Bernie Sanders and the Occupy Denver movement, and then acting as if that somehow proved that the killing was politically motivated.
Complicating evidence about Dolloff’s views available on those social-media accounts, like words of praise for the conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer, were ignored in the effort to make the case that he was a left-wing radical.
Like President Donald Trump, many of his online supporters have sought to delegitimize protests for racial justice and against fascism by amplifying acts of violence by anyone on the left and pretending that there is no difference between fringe extremists and the mainstream of the movements against police brutality and white supremacy. The frenzied search for evidence of Dolloff’s politics was part of that effort.
Lauren Boebert, a far-right Republican candidate for Congress who has embraced the deranged QAnon conspiracy theory popular in parts of Colorado, also ignored the police statement that Dolloff was a security guard, not a protester, when she tweeted on Sunday that the fatal shooting in Denver was an example of “the violence perpetrated in the streets by ANTIFA, BLM & other radical leftist groups.”
In fact, the visual evidence of what happened on Saturday in Denver appears to show something different and more complex than an attack by a man with left-wing politics on a man with the opposite views. The images seem to show that Keltner, who was wearing a T-shirt with a slogan that mocked the Black Lives Matter movement, initiated the skirmish with Dolloff, who responded by wildly escalating the violence, replying to a slap in the head by taking out his gun and firing a single, deadly shot.
As the speculation over the gunman’s unknown motives spiraled out of control online, The Denver Post released all 71 of the photographs Helen Richardson shot before, during and after the killing, along with metadata from her camera that provides the exact second each frame was created.
Taken together, Richardson’s photographs and video recorded during the incident by another witness show that Keltner first got into a heated confrontation with a counter-demonstrator in a “Black Guns Matter” shirt as he left the “patriot muster” in nearby Civic Center Park. That man was seen aggressively harassing several of the right-wing demonstrators near the exit to the rally.
After another conservative stepped in to separate the two men, Keltner, a 49-year-old Navy veteran who made cowboy hats, appeared to take exception to two other men who were observing the argument at close range: the reporter for Denver’s NBC affiliate, 9 News, and Dolloff, his bodyguard.
One of Richardson’s images shows Keltner moving away from the initial argument and pointing in the direction of Dolloff and the journalist he was guarding. In another frame, captured six seconds later, Keltner and Dolloff appear together for the first time, as the guard appears to use his hands to block the demonstrator from approaching the journalist.
Photo: Helen H. Richardson/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images
One second later, according to the metadata, after Keltner had hit Dolloff, the guard reached for the gun in his waistband. He then raised it and fired at Keltner, who raised his arm and released a burst of pepper spray in the same second.
What led Keltner to strike Dolloff in the head, hard enough to knock off his cap and sunglasses, remained unknown in the days after the shooting, but Richardson, the photojournalist, wrote on Instagram early Sunday morning that Dolloff escalated the encounter to shocking, deadly violence incredibly quickly. Richardson wrote: “the two exchanged heated words, the patriot hit the man in the face, then backed up to spray what looked like pepper spray at him. Literally in that split second the man who had gotten hit by the patriot pulled out a gun from his waistband and shot the patriot.”
“It isn’t clear who fired first,” Richardson added.
In the final seconds of video that showed the initial argument that preceded the shooting, recorded by a conservative who had just left the rally, the sound of the spray being released can be heard just before the gunshot rings out, and Keltner is seen collapsing to the pavement.
https://twitter.com/rustyyyyy69/status/1315077057286533120
It was not until Tuesday evening that the video recorded by the News 9 journalist who was the closest witness to the incident was finally posted online by the station. That video, which starts with Keltner arguing with the man in the “Black Guns Matter” shirt, shows that he suddenly noticed that the confrontation was being filmed by the journalist on his phone. The video then shows that Keltner ordered the reporter to put his camera away, and when he did not comply, moved toward him. “Get the cameras out of here or I’m going to fuck you up,” Keltner can be heard saying.
Apparently responding to being blocked by Dolloff, Keltner then said, “Don’t fucking touch me, motherfucker,” and struck the bodyguard.
The 9 News video stops just before the shot is fired, but resumes during the arrest as the journalist tells the police that he has a press badge and Dolloff was protecting him.
The 9 News journalist who recorded the video did not respond to a request to discuss the incident.
Elijah Schaffer, a freelance producer for Glenn Beck’s Blaze TV who has distorted acts of violence at left-wing protests in the past, also ignored the Denver police statement to portray the entire incident as a politically motivated killing.
Just after the police statement was released, Schaffer drew attention to an excerpt from a video livestream from the scene which showed that, in the immediate aftermath of the killing, the man in the “Black Guns Matter” shirt, whose provocative behavior had initiated the conflict with Keltner, was loudly celebrating his death. Schaffer tried to fit the man’s appalling reaction into a simple political frame by falsely describing him as “an Antifa protester.”
DENVER: “It was a white supremist, right in the dome…f*ck yeah” An Antifa protester is heard celebrating the murder of a Trump supporter These people are evil. They want blood. And you better be ready #antifamurders
https://t.co/ixhDewMdvZ — E (@ElijahSchaffer) October 11, 2020
Video shot by another reporter for 9 News, Marc Sallinger, appeared to show that man, who had provoked the initial argument with Keltner but was not involved in the shooting, being arrested by the police a short time later.
When it was reported on Sunday that Dolloff might have been operating as a security contractor without a license, conservative trolls moved on from accusing him of being an antifa hit man to attacking the news station. Some of the trolls accused the NBC affiliate of being part of a left-wing plot; other blamed the station for irresponsibly hiring an armed guard who was not properly screened.
While Dolloff was contracted by the station from Pinkerton, the news organization’s decision to dispatch an armed man to accompany its reporters as they cover protests raises serious ethical questions that have yet to be answered.
Dolloff, who is being held without bond on suspicion of murder, made a virtual court appearance on Sunday, during which he reportedly strained to hear the judge.
Defendant Matthew Dolloff appears in virtual court this morning. He is accused in the Denver shooting and reportedly was acting as a private security guard for 9News. pic.twitter.com/2rJTCa0PyR — Andrew Kenney (@AndyKnny) October 11, 2020
A statement from the management of 9 News on Monday blamed Pinkerton for not ensuring that Dolloff was properly licensed. The firm said that the situation was under review and it is cooperating with the law enforcement investigation.
A lawyer for Dolloff’s family argued in an interview with The Denver Post on Monday that the security guard had acted in self-defense, claiming his client feared for his safety when he saw Keltner raise what turned out to be not a gun but a can of pepper spray. “I think it’s important to recognize that this is somebody who is at the protest working to protect First Amendment rights,” the lawyer, Doug Richards told the newspaper. “He was not there on behalf of any organization or to advance any political agenda,” he added.
Richards maintained that Dolloff was properly trained and had even worked, the night before the shooting, as an armed guard during a televised debate between Colorado’s Republican and Democratic U.S. Senate candidates, Sen. Cory Gardner and John Hickenlooper, at the studio of another local broadcaster, the ABC affiliate Denver 7.
That news channel confirmed that it also contracted with Pinkerton to provide security, but disputed that Dolloff had been armed, saying that it had asked that the guards for the debate be unarmed.
Prosecutors had not yet charged Dolloff for the fatal shooting as of Tuesday morning. In an affidavit made public on Tuesday, the police revealed that Dolloff was arrested on a charge of first degree murder and that the incident was also captured on the network of security cameras operated by the police force as part of its High Activity Location Observation program, also known as HALO. That video has not yet been made public.
The police account of the killing also states that Keltner struck Dolloff, who then took out a semiautomatic handgun and fired the fatal shot, as the victim sprayed the gunman with pepper spray. Keltner was pronounced dead at Denver Health Medical Center at 4:05 p.m. less than 30 minutes after the altercation began.
Updated: Tuesday, October 13, 12:20 p.m. PDT
This article was updated with new information — including more video of the fatal encounter, background on the Pinkerton security firm’s violent history — and to clarify the circumstances of a fatal shooting after a conservative rally on Saturday in Denver. Photographs and video from witnesses appear to show that the victim, Lee Keltner, a conservative demonstrator, struck Matthew Dolloff, a reporter’s bodyguard, as a dispute over an unknown issue turned physical. It was Dolloff who was solely responsible for the use of deadly force by reaching for his gun and firing the fatal shot at point-blank range.
Updated: Wednesday, October 14, 12:53 p.m. PDT
This article was updated again on Wednesday to report a new statement from Denver’s 9 News released on Tuesday, three days after the shooting, in which the station’s management said that it had asked Pinkerton that the security guard it hired not be armed. The station’s initial reports on the incident, on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, did not include that claim.


theintercept--2020-10-12--Locked in Tight Race, GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan Caught in Environmental Scandal

Those contributions could prove to be a political liability in a Senate race being prioritized by national Democrats as they seek to retake the upper chamber .
Democratic challenger Al Gross has been funding new radio , TV , and digital ads blasting Sullivan for his ties to Pebble Mine , prompted by a recent investigation that showed how mining executives envision the reach of the project growing larger than had been publicly stated .
Sullivan and Gross are locked in a tight race , according to a late September poll , conducted by a Super PAC aligned with Gross @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is registered as nonpartisan — would caucus with Democrats , like Sens .
Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine .
Gross is backed by national groups including Indivisible , the DSCC , and anti-Trump conservative group the Lincoln Project .
Sullivan ’ s political crisis centers around Pebble Mine — a yearslong contested project that would bring large-scale mining to the Bristol Bay watershed , a mineral-rich region that supports the largest sockeye salmon fishery in the world , and home to more than two dozen federally recognized tribal governments @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from lobbyists , executives , and employees involved with the project , according to a recent investigation by journalists Judd Legum and Tesnim Zekeria .
In the final month of his reelection campaign , Alaska ’ s one-term Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan is fighting to recover from a scandal that ties him more closely to a controversial mining project opposed by the majority of voters in his state .
In September , the Environmental Investigation Agency — an advocacy group focused on exposing environmental crimes — published @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who had pretended to be potential Pebble Mine investors , and Pebble Limited Partnership CEO Tom Collier and the head of its parent company , Northern Dynasty Minerals CEO Ronald Thiessen .
In those tapes , Thiessen made clear to the fake investors that the company would aim to expand Pebble farther than it has already applied to build , contradicting Collier ’ s written 2019 testimony submitted to the House Water Resources and Environment subcommittee , where he stated Pebble has “ no current plans , in this application or in any @ @ @ @ @ @ @ show that majorities of Alaskans have consistently opposed the mining project since at least 2012 , when Bristol Bay Native Corporation began conducting statewide annual surveys .
One fear is that the proposed Pebble Mine is only the beginning of even more harmful extraction ; more than 60 percent of Alaskans believe that if a smaller mine project moves forward , then plans for a larger mine will be later pursued and approved .
Another poll released this past summer by the Bristol Bay Defense Fund , a coalition of business , tribal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ found likely Alaska voters opposed construction of the mine by a 2-1 margin .
A three-year , peer-reviewed EPA assessment released in 2014 found that Pebble Mine — which would be one of the largest open pit copper mines in the world — could have devastating impacts on fish populations and surrounding streams .
When the EPA vetoed the Pebble proposal that year , Sullivan blasted the move , claiming the EPA “ short-circuited the permitting process ” and the project should have gone to the Army Corps of Engineers for review .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ administration , which fast-tracked the Army Corps of Engineers assessment .
This past summer , the Corps determined that “ as currently proposed , the project could have substantial environmental impacts within the unique Bristol Bay watershed and lacks adequate compensatory mitigation.
” Mining executives are hoping to get a modified plan approved by the end of the year .
Collier also said on the calls that Sullivan and Sen. Lisa Murkowski were not real impediments to their plans , despite the lawmakers ’ occasionally critical public statements , which Murkowski has couched @ @ @ @ @ @ @ over the project .
On Sullivan specifically , Collier said the senator , who has been notably vague on Pebble , was hoping to “ ride out the election ” and keep silent on the project .
“ I think that ’ s our plan to work with him .
Leave him alone and let him be quiet.
” Thiessen said they were “ trying to work ” with Sullivan by allowing him to say critical things that didn ’ t offer explicit opposition to the project .
Collier took the fall from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been replaced by former Pebble CEO John Shively .
Thiessen , meanwhile , has stayed in his position but apologized for his comments that were caught on tape .
Three days following the release of the explosive tapes , Sullivan tweeted his most firm opposition to Pebble Mine yet , writing , “ I oppose Pebble Mine .
No Pebble Mine.
” On a radio show last week , Sullivan went even further , claiming he would oppose the mine project even if the developers drafted a solid plan to mitigate environmental harm @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Sullivan ’ s Democratic challenger Gross pressed the senator on the mining issue .
In response , Sullivan said , “ The Pebble Mine is dead , and I ’ m going to keep it that way.
” Gross has also been running nonstop attack ads on the tapes ’ revelations and Sullivan ’ s ties to Pebble Mine .
The vulnerable Republican senator has been trying to distance himself from the political fallout and the project itself , but his financial entanglements keep getting in the way .
While the Anchorage @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more than $ 10,000 from Pebble Mine executives and employees since 2017 , Popular Information , the newsletter run by journalist Jedd Legum , found the tally is actually more than $ 34,000 in campaign contributions when including donations from Northern Dynasty and its lobbyists .
Sullivan ’ s campaign did not return a request for comment , but during the Saturday debate , he said he would give Collier ’ s campaign contributions to charity .
Collier has donated at least $ 7,400 to reelect Sullivan since 2017 , according to FEC @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in arms since the tapes were revealed .
Andy Moderow , the Alaska director at Alaska Wilderness League Action , said the whole scandal revealed Sullivan ’ s “ hand caught in the cookie jar ” in terms of doing corporations ’ bidding .
“ This is a story that ’ s going to be going all through October , ” Moderow predicted .
“ It ’ s a September and October surprise.
” Tim Bristol , director of SalmonState , told The Intercept that Sullivan ’ s comments were “ deeply disappointing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ [ ing ] action ” they have not gotten it from their senator .
“ Opposition to Pebble … is an issue that unites Alaskans across the political spectrum and has for 15 years now , ” he added .
“ The foot dragging from our leaders shows they are out of touch on the issue.
” Bob Shavelson , the advocacy director at Cook Inletkeeper , a nonprofit dedicated to protecting Alaska ’ s Cook Inlet watershed , called the Pebble Mine tapes “ an absolute bombshell ” which has “ blown @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Shavelson was also unimpressed by Sullivan ’ s recent statements of opposition to the project .
The senator is “ a corporate shill who will do whatever he has to get reelected , ” Shavelson said .
“ He ’ s had years and years to take a principled stand on Pebble and he ’ s never said anything close to definitive until these tapes came out and it looked like it was a close election .
He ’ s just embarrassed now because they treated him like a little lap dog to @ @ @ @ @ @ @

In the final month of his reelection campaign, Alaska’s one-term Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan is fighting to recover from a scandal that ties him more closely to a controversial mining project opposed by the majority of voters in his state.
Sullivan’s political crisis centers around Pebble Mine — a yearslong contested project that would bring large-scale mining to the Bristol Bay watershed, a mineral-rich region that supports the largest sockeye salmon fishery in the world, and home to more than two dozen federally recognized tribal governments. The senator has received tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from lobbyists, executives, and employees involved with the project, according to a recent investigation by journalists Judd Legum and Tesnim Zekeria.
Those contributions could prove to be a political liability in a Senate race being prioritized by national Democrats as they seek to retake the upper chamber. Democratic challenger Al Gross has been funding new radio, TV, and digital ads blasting Sullivan for his ties to Pebble Mine, prompted by a recent investigation that showed how mining executives envision the reach of the project growing larger than had been publicly stated. Sullivan and Gross are locked in a tight race, according to a late September poll, conducted by a Super PAC aligned with Gross. If elected, Gross — who is registered as nonpartisan — would caucus with Democrats, like Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine. Gross is backed by national groups including Indivisible, the DSCC, and anti-Trump conservative group the Lincoln Project.
Al Gross campaign’s ads targeting Sen. Dan Sullivan on the homepage of the Anchorage Daily News. Screenshot: Anchorage Daily News
In September, the Environmental Investigation Agency — an advocacy group focused on exposing environmental crimes — published secretly recorded conversations between undercover actors, who had pretended to be potential Pebble Mine investors, and Pebble Limited Partnership CEO Tom Collier and the head of its parent company, Northern Dynasty Minerals CEO Ronald Thiessen. In those tapes, Thiessen made clear to the fake investors that the company would aim to expand Pebble farther than it has already applied to build, contradicting Collier’s written 2019 testimony submitted to the House Water Resources and Environment subcommittee, where he stated Pebble has “no current plans, in this application or in any other way, for expansion.”
Polls show that majorities of Alaskans have consistently opposed the mining project since at least 2012, when Bristol Bay Native Corporation began conducting statewide annual surveys. One fear is that the proposed Pebble Mine is only the beginning of even more harmful extraction; more than 60 percent of Alaskans believe that if a smaller mine project moves forward, then plans for a larger mine will be later pursued and approved. Another poll released this past summer by the Bristol Bay Defense Fund, a coalition of business, tribal, nonprofit, and community groups, found likely Alaska voters opposed construction of the mine by a 2-1 margin.
A three-year, peer-reviewed EPA assessment released in 2014 found that Pebble Mine — which would be one of the largest open pit copper mines in the world — could have devastating impacts on fish populations and surrounding streams. When the EPA vetoed the Pebble proposal that year, Sullivan blasted the move, claiming the EPA “short-circuited the permitting process” and the project should have gone to the Army Corps of Engineers for review. The veto was reversed under the Trump administration, which fast-tracked the Army Corps of Engineers assessment. This past summer, the Corps determined that “as currently proposed, the project could have substantial environmental impacts within the unique Bristol Bay watershed and lacks adequate compensatory mitigation.” Mining executives are hoping to get a modified plan approved by the end of the year.
Collier also said on the calls that Sullivan and Sen. Lisa Murkowski were not real impediments to their plans, despite the lawmakers’ occasionally critical public statements, which Murkowski has couched in claims that she has little influence over the project. On Sullivan specifically, Collier said the senator, who has been notably vague on Pebble, was hoping to “ride out the election” and keep silent on the project. “I think that’s our plan to work with him. Leave him alone and let him be quiet.” Thiessen said they were “trying to work” with Sullivan by allowing him to say critical things that didn’t offer explicit opposition to the project.
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Collier took the fall from the tapes and resigned, and has been replaced by former Pebble CEO John Shively. Thiessen, meanwhile, has stayed in his position but apologized for his comments that were caught on tape.
Three days following the release of the explosive tapes, Sullivan tweeted his most firm opposition to Pebble Mine yet, writing, “I oppose Pebble Mine. No Pebble Mine.” On a radio show last week, Sullivan went even further, claiming he would oppose the mine project even if the developers drafted a solid plan to mitigate environmental harm. During a Zoom debate on Saturday, Sullivan’s Democratic challenger Gross pressed the senator on the mining issue. In response, Sullivan said, “The Pebble Mine is dead, and I’m going to keep it that way.”
Gross has also been running nonstop attack ads on the tapes’ revelations and Sullivan’s ties to Pebble Mine.
The vulnerable Republican senator has been trying to distance himself from the political fallout and the project itself, but his financial entanglements keep getting in the way. While the Anchorage Daily News first reported that Sullivan received more than $10,000 from Pebble Mine executives and employees since 2017, Popular Information, the newsletter run by journalist Judd Legum, found the tally is actually more than $34,000 in campaign contributions when including donations from Northern Dynasty and its lobbyists.
Sullivan’s campaign did not return a request for comment, but during the Saturday debate, he said he would give Collier’s campaign contributions to charity. Collier has donated at least $7,400 to reelect Sullivan since 2017, according to FEC filings.
Environmental groups have been up in arms since the tapes were revealed.
Andy Moderow, the Alaska director at Alaska Wilderness League Action, said the whole scandal revealed Sullivan’s “hand caught in the cookie jar” in terms of doing corporations’ bidding. “This is a story that’s going to be going all through October,” Moderow predicted. “It’s a September and October surprise.”
Tim Bristol, director of SalmonState, told The Intercept that Sullivan’s comments were “deeply disappointing” and that despite “Alaskans want[ing] action” they have not gotten it from their senator. “Opposition to Pebble … is an issue that unites Alaskans across the political spectrum and has for 15 years now,” he added. “The foot dragging from our leaders shows they are out of touch on the issue.”
Bob Shavelson, the advocacy director at Cook Inletkeeper, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting Alaska’s Cook Inlet watershed, called the Pebble Mine tapes “an absolute bombshell” which has “blown shrapnel” through the whole project.
Shavelson was also unimpressed by Sullivan’s recent statements of opposition to the project. The senator is “a corporate shill who will do whatever he has to get reelected,” Shavelson said. “He’s had years and years to take a principled stand on Pebble and he’s never said anything close to definitive until these tapes came out and it looked like it was a close election. He’s just embarrassed now because they treated him like a little lap dog to go sit in the corner.”


theintercept--2020-10-11--The New York Times Guild Once Again Demands Censorship of Colleagues

Despite its Pulitzer , the “ 1619 Project ” has become a hotly contested political and academic controversy , with the Trump administration seeking to block attempts to integrate its assertions into school curriculums , while numerous scholars of history accuse it of radically distorting historical fact , with some , such as Brown University ’ s Glenn Loury , calling on the Pulitzer Board to revoke its award .
Scholars have also vocally criticized the Times for stealth edits of the article ’ s key claims long after publication , without even noting to readers that it made these @ @ @ @ @ @ @ made them .
What angered the union today was an op-ed by Stephens on Friday which voiced numerous criticisms of the Pulitzer Prize-winning “ 1619 Project , ” published last year by the New York Times Magazine and spearheaded by reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones .
One of the Project ’ s principal arguments was expressed by a now-silently-deleted sentence that introduced it : “ that the country ’ s true birth date ” is not 1776 , as has long been widely believed , but rather late 1619 , when , the article claims @ @ @ @ @ @ @ U.S. soil .
The New York Times Guild , the union of employees of the paper of record , tweeted a condemnation on Sunday of one of their own colleagues , op-ed columnist Bret Stephens .
Their denunciation was marred by humiliating typos and even more so by creepy and authoritarian censorship demands and petulant appeals to management for enforcement of company “ rules ” against other journalists .
To say that this is bizarre behavior from a union of journalists , of all people , is to woefully understate the case .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Times Guild evidently do not believe that he had any right to express his views on these debates .
Indeed , they are indignant that he did so .
In a barely-literate tweet that not once but twice misspelled the word “ its ” as “ it ’ s ” — not a trivial level of ignorance for writers with the world ’ s most influential newspaper — the union denounced Stephens and the paper itself on these grounds : Without weighing in on the merits of Stephens ’ s critiques , some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of which I do not , it is hardly debatable that his discussing this vibrant multi-pronged debate is squarely within his function as a political op-ed writer at a national newspaper .
Stephens himself explained that he took the unusual step of critiquing his own employer ’ s work because “ the 1619 Project has become , partly by its design and partly because of avoidable mistakes , a focal point of the kind of intense national debate that columnists are supposed to cover , ” contending that avoiding writing about it out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ derelict in our responsibility ” to participate in society ’ s significant disputes .
In sum , the still-raging political , historical , and journalistic debate over the 1619 Project has become a major controversy .
In his Friday column , Stephens addressed the controversy by first noting the Project ’ s positive contributions and accomplishments , then reviewed in detail the critiques of historians and other scholars of its central claims , and then sided with its critics by arguing that “ for all of its virtues , buzz , spinoffs and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has failed.
” It is a short tweet , as tweets go , but they impressively managed to pack it with multiple ironies , fallacies , and decrees typical of the petty tyrant .
Above all else , this statement , and the mentality it reflects , is profoundly unjournalistic .
To start with , this is a case of journalists using their union not to demand greater editorial freedom or journalistic independence — something one would reasonably expect from a journalists ’ union — but demanding its opposite : that writers at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ management from expressing their views and perspectives about the controversies surrounding the 1619 Project .
In other words : They are demanding that their own journalistic colleagues be silenced and censored .
What kind of journalists plead with management for greater restrictions on journalistic expression rather than fewer ?
Apparently , the answer is New York Times journalists .
Indeed , this is not the first time they have publicly implored corporate management to restrict the freedom of expression and editorial freedom of their journalistic colleagues .
At the end of July , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , one of which was that “ sensitivity reads should happen at the beginning of the publication process , with compensation for those who do them.
” For those not familiar with “ sensitivity reads ” : consider yourself fortunate .
As the New York Times itself reported in 2017 , “ sensitivity readers ” have been used by book publishers to gut books that have been criticized , in order to “ vet the narrative for harmful stereotypes and suggested changes.
” The Guardian explained in 2018 that “ sensitivity readers ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ book publishing world to weed out any implicit bias or potentially objectionable material — not just in storylines but even in characters .
It quoted the author Lionel Shriver about the obvious dangers : there is , she said , “ a thin line between combing through manuscripts for anything potentially objectionable to particular subgroups and overt political censorship.
” As creepy as “ sensitivity readers ” are for fiction writing and other publishing fields , it is indescribably toxic for journalism , which necessarily questions or pokes at rather than bows to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ For it to be worthwhile , it must publish material — reporting and opinion pieces — that might be “ potentially objectionable ” to all sorts of powerful factions , including culturally hegemonic liberals .
But this is a function which the New York Times Union wants not merely to avoid fulfilling themselves but , far worse , to deny their fellow journalists .
They crave a whole new layer of editorial hoop-jumping in order to get published , a cumbersome , repressive new protocol for drawing even more constraining lines around what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the restrictions already imposed by the standard orthodoxies of the Times and their tone-flattening editorial restrictions .
When journalists exploit their unions not to demand better pay , improved benefits , enhanced job security or greater journalistic independence but instead as an instrument for censoring their own journalistic colleagues , then the concept of unions — and journalism — is wildly perverted .
Then there is the tattletale petulance embedded in the Union ’ s complaint .
In demanding enforcement of workplace “ rules ” by management against a fellow journalist — they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Stephens allegedly violated — these union members sound more like human resources assistant managers or workplace informants than they do intrepid journalists .
Since when do unions of any kind , but especially unions of journalists , unite to complain that corporate managers and their editorial bosses have been too lax in the enforcement of rules governing what their underlings can and can not say ?
The hypocrisy of the Union ’ s grievance is almost too glaring to even bother highlighting , and is the least of its sins .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for “ going after one of it ’ s [ sic ] own ” and then , in the next breath , publicly vilify their colleague ’ s column because , in their erudite view , it “ reeks.
” This is the same union whose members , just a few months ago , quite flamboyantly staged a multi-day social media protest — a quite public one — in a fit of rage because the paper ’ s Opinion Editor , James Bennet , published an op-ed by U.S .
Senator Tom Cotton @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to repress protests and riots in U.S. cities ; Bennet lost his job in the fallout .
And many of these same union members — now posturing as solemn , righteous opponents of publicly “ going after ” one ’ s colleagues — notoriously mocked , scorned , ridiculed , and condemned , first privately and then publicly , another colleague , Bari Weiss , until she left the paper , citing these incessant attacks .
Clearly this is not a union that dislikes public condemnations of colleagues .
Whatever “ principle ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not it .
a harsh critic of Stephens ’ s ( and Weiss ’ s ) journalism and opinion writing .
But it would never occur to me to take steps to try to silence them .
If they were my colleagues and published an article I disliked or expressed views I found pernicious , I certainly would not whine to management that they broke the “ rules ” and insist that they should not have been allowed to have expressed what they believe .
That ’ s because I ’ m a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can have value only if it fosters divergent views and seeks to expand rather than reduce the freedom of discourse and expression permitted by society and by employers .
And whatever one wants to say about Stephens ’ s career and record of writing — and I ’ ve had a lot of negative things to say about it — harshly critiquing your own employer ’ s Pulitzer-winning series , one beloved by powerful media , political and cultural figures , is the type of “ challenge to power ” that many journalists @ @ @ @ @ @ @ popular pieties love to preen as embodying .
There has never been a media outlet where I have worked or where I have been published that did not frequently also publish opinions with which I disagree and articles I dislike , including the one in which I am currently writing .
I would readily use my platforms to critique what was published , but it would never even occur to me take steps to try to prevent publication or , worse , issue pitiful public entreaties to management that Something Be Done™ .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ boundaries of expression , why would you choose journalism of all lines of work ?
It ’ d be like someone who believes space travel to be an immoral waste of resources opting to become an astronaut for NASA .
Perhaps these tawdry episodes should be unsurprising .
After all , one major reason that social media companies — which never wanted the obligation to censor but instead sought to be content-neutral platforms for the transmission of communications in the mold of AT & T — turned into active speech regulators was because @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , began demanding that they censor more .
Some journalists even devote significant chunks of their career to publicly complaining that Facebook and Twitter are failing to enforce their “ rules ” by not censoring robustly enough .
A belief in the virtues of free expression was once a cornerstone of the journalistic spirit .
Guilds and unions fought against editorial control , not demanded greater amounts be imposed by management .
They defended colleagues when they were accused by editorial or corporate bosses of “ rules ” violations , not publicly tattled @ @ @ @ @ @ @ workplace disciplinary measures .
But a belief in free expression is being rapidly eclipsed in many societal sectors by a belief in the virtues of top-down managerial censorship , silencing , and enhanced workplace punishment for thought and speech transgressions .
As this imperious but whiny New York Times Guild condemnation reflects , this trend can be seen most vividly , and most destructively , in mainstream American journalism .
Nothing guts the core function of journalism more than this mindset .
Update : Oct. 11 , 2020 , 8:40 p.m .
ET @ @ @ @ @ @ @ deleted its tweet denouncing Stephens and the paper , and then posted this :

The New York Times Guild, the union of employees of the paper of record, tweeted a condemnation on Sunday of one of their own colleagues, op-ed columnist Bret Stephens. Their denunciation was marred by humiliating typos and even more so by creepy and authoritarian censorship demands and petulant appeals to management for enforcement of company “rules” against other journalists. To say that this is bizarre behavior from a union of journalists, of all people, is to woefully understate the case.
What angered the union today was an op-ed by Stephens on Friday which voiced numerous criticisms of the Pulitzer Prize-winning “1619 Project,” published last year by the New York Times Magazine and spearheaded by reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones. One of the Project’s principal arguments was expressed by a now-silently-deleted sentence that introduced it: “that the country’s true birth date” is not 1776, as has long been widely believed, but rather late 1619, when, the article claims, the first African slaves arrived on U.S. soil.
Despite its Pulitzer, the “1619 Project” has become a hotly contested political and academic controversy, with the Trump administration seeking to block attempts to integrate its assertions into school curriculums, while numerous scholars of history accuse it of radically distorting historical fact, with some, such as Brown University’s Glenn Loury, calling on the Pulitzer Board to revoke its award. Scholars have also vocally criticized the Times for stealth edits of the article’s key claims long after publication, without even noting to readers that it made these substantive changes let alone explaining why it made them.
In sum, the still-raging political, historical, and journalistic debate over the 1619 Project has become a major controversy. In his Friday column, Stephens addressed the controversy by first noting the Project’s positive contributions and accomplishments, then reviewed in detail the critiques of historians and other scholars of its central claims, and then sided with its critics by arguing that “for all of its virtues, buzz, spinoffs and a Pulitzer Prize — the 1619 Project has failed.”
Without weighing in on the merits of Stephens’s critiques, some of which I agree with and some of which I do not, it is hardly debatable that his discussing this vibrant multi-pronged debate is squarely within his function as a political op-ed writer at a national newspaper. Stephens himself explained that he took the unusual step of critiquing his own employer’s work because “the 1619 Project has become, partly by its design and partly because of avoidable mistakes, a focal point of the kind of intense national debate that columnists are supposed to cover,” contending that avoiding writing about it out of collegial deference “is to be derelict in our responsibility” to participate in society’s significant disputes.
But his colleagues in the New York Times Guild evidently do not believe that he had any right to express his views on these debates. Indeed, they are indignant that he did so. In a barely-literate tweet that not once but twice misspelled the word “its” as “it’s” — not a trivial level of ignorance for writers with the world’s most influential newspaper — the union denounced Stephens and the paper itself on these grounds:
It is a short tweet, as tweets go, but they impressively managed to pack it with multiple ironies, fallacies, and decrees typical of the petty tyrant. Above all else, this statement, and the mentality it reflects, is profoundly unjournalistic.
To start with, this is a case of journalists using their union not to demand greater editorial freedom or journalistic independence — something one would reasonably expect from a journalists’ union — but demanding its opposite: that writers at the New York Times be prohibited by management from expressing their views and perspectives about the controversies surrounding the 1619 Project. In other words: They are demanding that their own journalistic colleagues be silenced and censored. What kind of journalists plead with management for greater restrictions on journalistic expression rather than fewer?
Apparently, the answer is New York Times journalists. Indeed, this is not the first time they have publicly implored corporate management to restrict the freedom of expression and editorial freedom of their journalistic colleagues. At the end of July, the Guild issued a series of demands, one of which was that “sensitivity reads should happen at the beginning of the publication process, with compensation for those who do them.”
For those not familiar with “sensitivity reads”: consider yourself fortunate. As the New York Times itself reported in 2017, “sensitivity readers” have been used by book publishers to gut books that have been criticized, in order to “vet the narrative for harmful stereotypes and suggested changes.” The Guardian explained in 2018 that “sensitivity readers” are a rapidly growing industry in the book publishing world to weed out any implicit bias or potentially objectionable material — not just in storylines but even in characters. It quoted the author Lionel Shriver about the obvious dangers: there is, she said, “a thin line between combing through manuscripts for anything potentially objectionable to particular subgroups and overt political censorship.”
As creepy as “sensitivity readers” are for fiction writing and other publishing fields, it is indescribably toxic for journalism, which necessarily questions or pokes at rather than bows to the most cherished, sacred pieties. For it to be worthwhile, it must publish material — reporting and opinion pieces — that might be “potentially objectionable” to all sorts of powerful factions, including culturally hegemonic liberals.
But this is a function which the New York Times Union wants not merely to avoid fulfilling themselves but, far worse, to deny their fellow journalists. They crave a whole new layer of editorial hoop-jumping in order to get published, a cumbersome, repressive new protocol for drawing even more constraining lines around what can and cannot be said beyond the restrictions already imposed by the standard orthodoxies of the Times and their tone-flattening editorial restrictions.
When journalists exploit their unions not to demand better pay, improved benefits, enhanced job security or greater journalistic independence but instead as an instrument for censoring their own journalistic colleagues, then the concept of unions — and journalism — is wildly perverted.
Then there is the tattletale petulance embedded in the Union’s complaint. In demanding enforcement of workplace “rules” by management against a fellow journalist — they do not specify which sacred “rule” Stephens allegedly violated — these union members sound more like human resources assistant managers or workplace informants than they do intrepid journalists. Since when do unions of any kind, but especially unions of journalists, unite to complain that corporate managers and their editorial bosses have been too lax in the enforcement of rules governing what their underlings can and cannot say?
The hypocrisy of the Union’s grievance is almost too glaring to even bother highlighting, and is the least of its sins. The union members denounce Stephens and the paper for “going after one of it’s [sic] own” and then, in the next breath, publicly vilify their colleague’s column because, in their erudite view, it “reeks.” This is the same union whose members, just a few months ago, quite flamboyantly staged a multi-day social media protest — a quite public one — in a fit of rage because the paper’s Opinion Editor, James Bennet, published an op-ed by U.S. Senator Tom Cotton advocating the deployment of the U.S. military to repress protests and riots in U.S. cities; Bennet lost his job in the fallout. And many of these same union members — now posturing as solemn, righteous opponents of publicly “going after” one’s colleagues — notoriously mocked, scorned, ridiculed, and condemned, first privately and then publicly, another colleague, Bari Weiss, until she left the paper, citing these incessant attacks.
Clearly this is not a union that dislikes public condemnations of colleagues. Whatever “principle” is motivating them, that is plainly not it.
I’ve long been a harsh critic of Stephens’s (and Weiss’s) journalism and opinion writing. But it would never occur to me to take steps to try to silence them. If they were my colleagues and published an article I disliked or expressed views I found pernicious, I certainly would not whine to management that they broke the “rules” and insist that they should not have been allowed to have expressed what they believe.
That’s because I’m a journalist, and I know that journalism can have value only if it fosters divergent views and seeks to expand rather than reduce the freedom of discourse and expression permitted by society and by employers. And whatever one wants to say about Stephens’s career and record of writing — and I’ve had a lot of negative things to say about it — harshly critiquing your own employer’s Pulitzer-winning series, one beloved by powerful media, political and cultural figures, is the type of “challenge to power” that many journalists who do nothing but spout pleasing, popular pieties love to preen as embodying.
There has never been a media outlet where I have worked or where I have been published that did not frequently also publish opinions with which I disagree and articles I dislike, including the one in which I am currently writing. I would readily use my platforms to critique what was published, but it would never even occur to me take steps to try to prevent publication or, worse, issue pitiful public entreaties to management that Something Be Done™. If you are eager to constrict the boundaries of expression, why would you choose journalism of all lines of work? It’d be like someone who believes space travel to be an immoral waste of resources opting to become an astronaut for NASA.
Perhaps these tawdry episodes should be unsurprising. After all, one major reason that social media companies — which never wanted the obligation to censor but instead sought to be content-neutral platforms for the transmission of communications in the mold of AT&T — turned into active speech regulators was because the public, often led by journalists, began demanding that they censor more. Some journalists even devote significant chunks of their career to publicly complaining that Facebook and Twitter are failing to enforce their “rules” by not censoring robustly enough.
A belief in the virtues of free expression was once a cornerstone of the journalistic spirit. Guilds and unions fought against editorial control, not demanded greater amounts be imposed by management. They defended colleagues when they were accused by editorial or corporate bosses of “rules” violations, not publicly tattled and invited, even advocated for, workplace disciplinary measures.
But a belief in free expression is being rapidly eclipsed in many societal sectors by a belief in the virtues of top-down managerial censorship, silencing, and enhanced workplace punishment for thought and speech transgressions. As this imperious but whiny New York Times Guild condemnation reflects, this trend can be seen most vividly, and most destructively, in mainstream American journalism. Nothing guts the core function of journalism more than this mindset.
Update: Oct. 11, 2020, 8:40 p.m. ET
The New York Times Guild moments ago deleted its tweet denouncing Stephens and the paper, and then posted this:
Though the Guild did not specify what “error” caused them to issue this denunciation, the paper’s media reporter, Ben Smith, said: “Someone else active in the Times Union tells me that a leader of the chapter, who runs the account, tweeted about the Stephens column without any internal discussion, causing a furor in Slack and drawing heated objections from others in the Guild, leading to this” deletion and apology.


theintercept--2020-10-13--Stop-and-Frisk Never Really Ended. Now It’s Gone Digital.

walking home from an upper Manhattan subway station one evening , three years ago , when an unmarked police car pulled up behind him .
Four officers in plainclothes surrounded him on the sidewalk , ordering him to turn around against a gate so they could search him .
Belle complied , and the officers found nothing on him , but they then demanded his ID , telling him that they were looking for guns and doing a “ warrant check.
” “ I didn ’ t have any warrants , ” Belle told The Intercept .
“ I was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were they searching me for a warrant ?
” Still , he complied .
“ I wasn ’ t going to argue , ” he said , fearing that if he had , the encounter would have quickly turned dangerous for him .
“ It could have gone different , it was night time , there was nobody around us.
” When they found no warrant for Belle officers returned his ID and let him go without so much as an apology .
Police did the same to Edison Quito , a few @ @ @ @ @ @ @ front of his building , waiting for his wife , when a group of officers walked into the building .
Two different officers approached him to ask him what he was doing .
“ I ’ m standing in front of my building , nothing else , ” he said he told them .
The officers demanded Quito ’ s ID .
“ And I ’ m like , what ’ s the reason for you asking for my ID , I ’ m not doing anything wrong , ” he said he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ him that if he didn ’ t comply , he would be arrested , so Quito pulled out his New York State learner permit , which confirmed he lived in the building in front of which he was standing .
Officers ran the ID but found no warrants .
They handed it back and drove away .
“ They always go around stopping random people , but around that area they mostly always go target Spanish people , ” Quito told The Intercept .
“ Whenever they see a Hispanic , they ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Plainclothes officers also jumped out of an unmarked car to surround Richmond Appiah , in the South Bronx , while he was walking to a corner store .
They pushed his hands against their car and searched his pockets .
As he grew agitated , Appiah said police told him that if he knew he hadn ’ t committed any crimes , there would be no reason for him to panic .
“ I ’ m panicking because of what you guys are doing to me right now , ” he said he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rushed out as if I was a suspect or a drug dealer .
… You guys are holding me hostage as if I just hit somebody or did something wrong.
” When the officers demanded his ID , Appiah asked them why .
They told him to obey their orders , he said , and if he didn ’ t like them , to file a complaint .
The same scene , plainclothes officers rushing out of unmarked cars to stop mostly Black and Latino New Yorkers and demand their IDs , has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to a federal class-action lawsuit currently before the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York .
In each case documented in the lawsuit , officers stopped and searched people in mostly poor communities , then , even after finding no unlawful items on them , they demanded to see identification .
Officers sometimes told the suspects that they were looking for guns — and ran their IDs to search for arrest warrants or possibly matches in other law enforcement databases , including ones tracking alleged gang affiliation or connections to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ checks without any basis or reasonable suspicion , making the temporary detentions and digital searches unconstitutional , the lawsuit claims .
“ By exploiting surveillance technology , the NYPD has replaced traditional — and largely discredited — police practices such as stop-and-frisk with invasive digital searches that rely on surveillance systems , ” the complaint says .
“ The NYPD ’ s policy and practice of detaining people without individualized lawful justification in order to search NYPD databases violates the United States Constitution and is the latest tactic in a long history of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ They have nothing besides the fact that these are young men in certain neighborhoods , ” said Cyrus Joubin , an attorney for the plaintiffs , arguing that the practice violated the Fourth Amendment , which protects against unreasonable searches , and the 14th , which prohibits racial discrimination .
“ They have at most a baseless hunch and they ’ re just going on a fishing expedition.
” The practice appears to be sanctioned by the NYPD itself , the lawsuit notes , with officers sometimes telling the individuals they stopped that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The lawsuit accuses department officials of failing to properly train and supervise officers on the legality of these searches .
“ We have reason to believe that it ’ s just common practice for them to run warrant checks on the vast majority of people whom they stop , ” said Molly Griffard , an attorney with the Legal Aid Society ’ s Cop Accountability Project who is also representing plaintiffs in the case .
“ The NYPD ’ s own data confirms that the vast majority of people who they stop each @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , when they run warrant checks and record searches on the majority of people who they stop , it is a continuation of their racist stop-and-frisk practices , but with an invasive digital component.
” The stops and physical searches described in the lawsuit are reminiscent of the widespread stop-and-frisk practice of the Bloomberg era in New York City , at the height of which , in 2011 , officers stopped and searched more than 685,000 people : almost all Black and Latino men .
A federal judge ruled the practice unconstitutional in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rights that led to a series of police reforms in the city , including the appointment of an independent monitor and the use of body cameras .
But despite both Mayors Michael Bloomberg and Bill de Blasio claiming credit for ending stop-and-frisk , the practice has continued .
In particular , while stops are down overall , racial disparities remain rampant : During de Blasio ’ s first term in office , Black and Latino New Yorkers accounted for more than 90 percent of reported stops in at least 30 precincts , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mostly white neighborhoods .
In 2019 , the number of reported stops was up by more than 20 percent over the previous year .
And the number of stops , critics warn , is underreported .
But while stop-and-frisk is nothing new , the lawsuit argues that not only are police still stopping and searching New Yorkers with no basis , but that they are doing so in order to run searches on their IDs that do not meet legal standards .
Attorneys believe officers are motivated at least in part by arrest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in place despite significant evidence to the contrary .
Warrants for an arrest can be issued whenever someone fails to show up in court — often over low-level summonses for things like littering or carrying an open container .
That kind of low-level , “ broken windows ” policing has left New Yorkers with hundreds of thousands of outstanding warrants — up to 1.6 million in 2018 — despite city efforts to clear the backlog .
“ It has created this incentive structure , where police feel that if they just detain and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the street , they feel that because of these huge numbers of outstanding warrants there ’ s a good chance they might just through luck capture somebody who has an outstanding warrant , ” said Joubin , noting that even if police did get a hit , the search itself , when conducted with no reasonable suspicion , would remain unconstitutional .
The widespread practice of stopping people in order to check their IDs against digital databases reveals police ’ s growing reliance on data-driven , so-called predictive technology over the last several @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to allow officers to conduct comprehensive searches of City databases from remote locations , including patrol cars , ” the lawsuit alleges .
But these “ digital frisks , ” as attorneys have dubbed them , raise questions about the accuracy and due process by which officers feed a number of law enforcement databases that remain shrouded in secrecy , despite repeated calls for transparency .
Officers demanding the IDs of the individuals they stopped usually told them they were looking for warrants , before taking the IDs with them back to their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ long as 10 minutes at a time .
Officers likely ran the IDs against the Domain Awareness System , or DAS , a searchable citywide database police can access from their smartphones , which contains details of at least two million warrants , 11 million arrest records , and 100 million summonses .
Or they could be calling the department ’ s Administrative Impact Office or Central Dispatch to run names against the “ NYPD Z FINEST ” system , which also includes warrant and summons records .
But attorneys believe officers are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for investigation cards , or “ I-cards , ” which are records of individuals who may be subjects or even simply witnesses in an investigation .
And they believe officers may be checking IDs against a sprawling and controversial database which includes the names of tens of thousands of New Yorkers whom police claim are associated with gangs , usually on the basis of broad and arbitrary criteria and in the absence of criminality .
Whatever officers may be looking for , checking the IDs of individuals who are not committing crimes or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to criminal activity is unconstitutional , the attorneys maintain .
And yet the practice has continued , even after the NYPD announced on the heels of the George Floyd protests this summer that it was disbanding its notorious plainclothes “ anti-crime ” unit .
“ It ’ s really these plainclothes officers who feel empowered to do this , ” said Joubin .
“ Somehow they feel like they can get away with it .
And they often have.
” “ They Are Not Supposed to Do That ” Much like more severe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and humiliation of the sort doled out by officers against the plaintiffs in the lawsuit has long shaped tensions between Black and Latino New Yorkers and the police , tensions that once again blew up this past summer following the police killing of Floyd in Minneapolis .
The plaintiffs said that they were breaking no laws when police stopped them .
They knew that officers had no reason to search them , but they did not want to put themselves at risk by arguing .
“ I just go to work , I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” Belle told The Intercept .
When officers mentioned they were looking for guns , he added , “ That ’ s all I needed to hear .
I just complied after that.
” Plaintiffs said these encounters with police left them scared and humiliated , even though they led to no arrests or further police action .
And they feared they could have turned violent .
Appiah , the plaintiff from the South Bronx , was confused when an unmarked car abruptly braked as he walked across a public housing project @ @ @ @ @ @ @ surrounded him .
He was scared , but he knew he had done nothing wrong and felt that he had to defend himself .
“ As the young black man that I am , what options do I really have besides to speak up ?
” he told The Intercept .
“ And that ’ s all I was doing basically , speaking up , saying , What are you doing ?
” The encounter was turning tense when a bystander pulled out his phone to record it .
The officers had violated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said .
“ They are not supposed to do that to you , ” he told him .
The man , who spoke to The Intercept but asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation , tried to record the incident but ended up taking a photo instead , which he later shared with Appiah .
“ They are not supposed to stop you for no reason , ” added the man , who had once worked with the Bronx Defenders on a campaign to pass the Right To Know Act , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ explain the reason for a stop .
“ And they are supposed to give you their information.
” The man , in his 40s , added that he had also been stopped “ countless times ” and felt the need to intervene .
“ I know what it looks like , they ’ ve been doing that my whole life , ” he said .
“ If I wasn ’ t there , they would have harassed him even longer than they did.
” Appiah , who lost many friends to gun violence @ @ @ @ @ @ @ anything but made me scared for my life.
” “ They have labeled all the young men in this community as either violent or in some type of gang , ” said Appiah .
“ So if you ’ re outside minding your business , there ’ s a high chance that the police will pull you over .
It ’ s sad .
”

Terron Belle was walking home from an upper Manhattan subway station one evening, three years ago, when an unmarked police car pulled up behind him. Four officers in plainclothes surrounded him on the sidewalk, ordering him to turn around against a gate so they could search him. Belle complied, and the officers found nothing on him, but they then demanded his ID, telling him that they were looking for guns and doing a “warrant check.”
“I didn’t have any warrants,” Belle told The Intercept. “I was a bit confused, like, why were they searching me for a warrant?”
Still, he complied. “I wasn’t going to argue,” he said, fearing that if he had, the encounter would have quickly turned dangerous for him. “It could have gone different, it was night time, there was nobody around us.”
When they found no warrant for Belle officers returned his ID and let him go without so much as an apology.
Police did the same to Edison Quito, a few blocks away. He was standing in front of his building, waiting for his wife, when a group of officers walked into the building. Two different officers approached him to ask him what he was doing. “I’m standing in front of my building, nothing else,” he said he told them. The officers demanded Quito’s ID. “And I’m like, what’s the reason for you asking for my ID, I’m not doing anything wrong,” he said he replied. One of the officers warned him that if he didn’t comply, he would be arrested, so Quito pulled out his New York State learner permit, which confirmed he lived in the building in front of which he was standing. Officers ran the ID but found no warrants. They handed it back and drove away.
Edison Quito is photographed on the steps of Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem, New York City, on Oct. 11, 2020. Photo: Kendall Bessent for The Intercept
“They always go around stopping random people, but around that area they mostly always go target Spanish people,” Quito told The Intercept. “Whenever they see a Hispanic, they’ll go ahead and stop him.”
Plainclothes officers also jumped out of an unmarked car to surround Richmond Appiah, in the South Bronx, while he was walking to a corner store. They pushed his hands against their car and searched his pockets. As he grew agitated, Appiah said police told him that if he knew he hadn’t committed any crimes, there would be no reason for him to panic. “I’m panicking because of what you guys are doing to me right now,” he said he responded. “You guys just automatically rushed out as if I was a suspect or a drug dealer. … You guys are holding me hostage as if I just hit somebody or did something wrong.”
When the officers demanded his ID, Appiah asked them why. They told him to obey their orders, he said, and if he didn’t like them, to file a complaint.
The same scene, plainclothes officers rushing out of unmarked cars to stop mostly Black and Latino New Yorkers and demand their IDs, has played out thousands of times, according to a federal class-action lawsuit currently before the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. In each case documented in the lawsuit, officers stopped and searched people in mostly poor communities, then, even after finding no unlawful items on them, they demanded to see identification. Officers sometimes told the suspects that they were looking for guns — and ran their IDs to search for arrest warrants or possibly matches in other law enforcement databases, including ones tracking alleged gang affiliation or connections to open cases. But police ran those checks without any basis or reasonable suspicion, making the temporary detentions and digital searches unconstitutional, the lawsuit claims. “By exploiting surveillance technology, the NYPD has replaced traditional — and largely discredited — police practices such as stop-and-frisk with invasive digital searches that rely on surveillance systems,” the complaint says. “The NYPD’s policy and practice of detaining people without individualized lawful justification in order to search NYPD databases violates the United States Constitution and is the latest tactic in a long history of unwarranted search and seizure practices.”
“They have nothing besides the fact that these are young men in certain neighborhoods,” said Cyrus Joubin, an attorney for the plaintiffs, arguing that the practice violated the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches, and the 14th, which prohibits racial discrimination. “They have at most a baseless hunch and they’re just going on a fishing expedition.”
The practice appears to be sanctioned by the NYPD itself, the lawsuit notes, with officers sometimes telling the individuals they stopped that they were just “following procedure.” The lawsuit accuses department officials of failing to properly train and supervise officers on the legality of these searches.
“We have reason to believe that it’s just common practice for them to run warrant checks on the vast majority of people whom they stop,” said Molly Griffard, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society’s Cop Accountability Project who is also representing plaintiffs in the case. “The NYPD’s own data confirms that the vast majority of people who they stop each year are Black and Latinx. So, when they run warrant checks and record searches on the majority of people who they stop, it is a continuation of their racist stop-and-frisk practices, but with an invasive digital component.”
The NYPD declined to comment.
NYPD surveillance is seen at the cross section of Courtlandt Ave. and East 155 St. in the Bronx, N.Y., on Oct. 11, 2020. Photo: Kendall Bessent for The Intercept
Digital Frisks
The stops and physical searches described in the lawsuit are reminiscent of the widespread stop-and-frisk practice of the Bloomberg era in New York City, at the height of which, in 2011, officers stopped and searched more than 685,000 people: almost all Black and Latino men. A federal judge ruled the practice unconstitutional in 2012 — a landmark victory for civil rights that led to a series of police reforms in the city, including the appointment of an independent monitor and the use of body cameras. But despite both Mayors Michael Bloomberg and Bill de Blasio claiming credit for ending stop-and-frisk, the practice has continued. In particular, while stops are down overall, racial disparities remain rampant: During de Blasio’s first term in office, Black and Latino New Yorkers accounted for more than 90 percent of reported stops in at least 30 precincts, and for a majority of stops even in mostly white neighborhoods. In 2019, the number of reported stops was up by more than 20 percent over the previous year. And the number of stops, critics warn, is underreported.
But while stop-and-frisk is nothing new, the lawsuit argues that not only are police still stopping and searching New Yorkers with no basis, but that they are doing so in order to run searches on their IDs that do not meet legal standards. Attorneys believe officers are motivated at least in part by arrest quotas the NYPD has consistently denied are in place despite significant evidence to the contrary.
Warrants for an arrest can be issued whenever someone fails to show up in court — often over low-level summonses for things like littering or carrying an open container. That kind of low-level, “broken windows” policing has left New Yorkers with hundreds of thousands of outstanding warrants — up to 1.6 million in 2018 — despite city efforts to clear the backlog.
“It has created this incentive structure, where police feel that if they just detain and do warrant checks on random people on the street, they feel that because of these huge numbers of outstanding warrants there’s a good chance they might just through luck capture somebody who has an outstanding warrant,” said Joubin, noting that even if police did get a hit, the search itself, when conducted with no reasonable suspicion, would remain unconstitutional.
The widespread practice of stopping people in order to check their IDs against digital databases reveals police’s growing reliance on data-driven, so-called predictive technology over the last several years. “Agency practice has adapted to allow officers to conduct comprehensive searches of City databases from remote locations, including patrol cars,” the lawsuit alleges. But these “digital frisks,” as attorneys have dubbed them, raise questions about the accuracy and due process by which officers feed a number of law enforcement databases that remain shrouded in secrecy, despite repeated calls for transparency.
Officers demanding the IDs of the individuals they stopped usually told them they were looking for warrants, before taking the IDs with them back to their cars, effectively detaining people for as long as 10 minutes at a time. Officers likely ran the IDs against the Domain Awareness System, or DAS, a searchable citywide database police can access from their smartphones, which contains details of at least two million warrants, 11 million arrest records, and 100 million summonses. Or they could be calling the department’s Administrative Impact Office or Central Dispatch to run names against the “NYPD Z FINEST” system, which also includes warrant and summons records. But attorneys believe officers are not just checking for warrants but also for investigation cards, or “I-cards,” which are records of individuals who may be subjects or even simply witnesses in an investigation. And they believe officers may be checking IDs against a sprawling and controversial database which includes the names of tens of thousands of New Yorkers whom police claim are associated with gangs, usually on the basis of broad and arbitrary criteria and in the absence of criminality.
Whatever officers may be looking for, checking the IDs of individuals who are not committing crimes or are not reasonably believed to be connected to criminal activity is unconstitutional, the attorneys maintain. And yet the practice has continued, even after the NYPD announced on the heels of the George Floyd protests this summer that it was disbanding its notorious plainclothes “anti-crime” unit.
“It’s really these plainclothes officers who feel empowered to do this,” said Joubin. “Somehow they feel like they can get away with it. And they often have.”
Richmond Appiah photographed in the Bronx, NY, on October 11, 2020. Photo: Kendall Bessent for The Intercept
“They Are Not Supposed to Do That”
Much like more severe incidents of officer brutality, daily harassment and humiliation of the sort doled out by officers against the plaintiffs in the lawsuit has long shaped tensions between Black and Latino New Yorkers and the police, tensions that once again blew up this past summer following the police killing of Floyd in Minneapolis.
The plaintiffs said that they were breaking no laws when police stopped them. They knew that officers had no reason to search them, but they did not want to put themselves at risk by arguing. “I just go to work, I come home, that’s it,” Belle told The Intercept. When officers mentioned they were looking for guns, he added, “That’s all I needed to hear. I just complied after that.”
Plaintiffs said these encounters with police left them scared and humiliated, even though they led to no arrests or further police action. And they feared they could have turned violent.
Appiah, the plaintiff from the South Bronx, was confused when an unmarked car abruptly braked as he walked across a public housing project, and as a group of officers surrounded him. He was scared, but he knew he had done nothing wrong and felt that he had to defend himself. “As the young black man that I am, what options do I really have besides to speak up?” he told The Intercept. “And that’s all I was doing basically, speaking up, saying, What are you doing?”
The encounter was turning tense when a bystander pulled out his phone to record it. The officers had violated Appiah’s rights, the man said. “They are not supposed to do that to you,” he told him. The man, who spoke to The Intercept but asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation, tried to record the incident but ended up taking a photo instead, which he later shared with Appiah. “They are not supposed to stop you for no reason,” added the man, who had once worked with the Bronx Defenders on a campaign to pass the Right To Know Act, which requires officers to identify themselves and explain the reason for a stop. “And they are supposed to give you their information.”
The man, in his 40s, added that he had also been stopped “countless times” and felt the need to intervene. “I know what it looks like, they’ve been doing that my whole life,” he said. “If I wasn’t there, they would have harassed him even longer than they did.”
Appiah, who lost many friends to gun violence, said police “have never done anything but made me scared for my life.”
“They have labeled all the young men in this community as either violent or in some type of gang,” said Appiah. “So if you’re outside minding your business, there’s a high chance that the police will pull you over. It’s sad.”