New England Muzzles – Page 2

NH newspaper publisher fined $620 for running unlabeled political ads

The saga of Deb Paul, the New Hampshire newspaper publisher who was threatened with six years in prison for running improperly labeled political ads, has finally come to an end, reports Damien Fisher of InDepthNH. On Wednesday, Derry District Court Judge Kerry Steckowych fined Paul $620, which adds up to $124 for each of the five counts the judge had convicted her of on Dec. 7. Paul had originally been charged with six counts, which carry a maximum sentence of a year in prison and a $2,000 fine for each violation.

Paul publishes the Londonderry Times and, at the time that the offenses took place, was also the publisher of the Nutfield News and the Tri-Town Times, which have since folded. Under New Hampshire law, it is a crime to publish political advertising without labeling it as such. The First Amendment allows for some regulation of paid political ads, but the law making such minor violations a crime rather than a civil offense strikes me as excessive, as does the zeal of the state attorney general, John Formella, who let the possibility of prison time hang over Paul’s head for nearly a year and a half.

It has to be said that Paul seems like a piece of work. Back in August 2022, shortly after the charges were filed, I published the results of some digging by friend of Media Nation Aaron Read, who discovered that Paul was not just the owner of the Londonderry Times — she was also a member of the town council. In February 2021, her fellow councilors complained about an editorial she published, saying she had engaged in “bullying” for writing, “Are you frustrated that nobody at town hall is listening to you? Do you feel that your town or school officials have an excuse for everything or justify decisions you don’t agree with?” In an interview with The Eagle-Tribune, Paul denied that was aimed specifically at her colleagues. Paul is apparently no longer a member of the council.

According to InDepthNH, the prosecution argued that draconian action was necessary because Paul was a serial offender who had failed to comply with the law despite earlier warnings. Paul, through her lawyer, said her violations were inadvertent. She also declined to speak with InDepthNH.

Judge Steckowych deserves credit for meting out a punishment that is more or less in line with a civil offense. And it’s time for the state legislature to intervene and reform the law so that other publishers are no longer in danger of being locked up for what amounts to a minor campaign finance violation.

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A Muzzle Award for the anonymous troll who reported ‘Gender Queer’ to the police

Photo (cc) 1928 by Blue Mountains Library, Local Studies

There’s an unidentified person somewhere out there who has richly earned a New England Muzzle Award, and I hope they’ll step forward to claim their trophy. Because this censorious busybody, hiding behind a cloak of anonymity, actually called the Great Barrington Police Department recently to complain that a middle school classroom had a copy of the notorious-though-it-shouldn’t-be book “Gender Queer,” by Maia Kobabe, on its shelves.

The oft-banned book, which includes graphic images, is used by a number of educators as a resource for young people who are questioning their sexuality. At the W.E.B. DuBois Middle School, though, a police officer actually showed up after school hours and, accompanied by the principal, paid a visit to the classroom so he could see for himself. According to Heather Bellow of The Berkshire Eagle, the officer actually turned on his body camera before beginning his search. “The officer then searched for the book and planned to remove the book as part of the investigation,” Bellow reports, but he couldn’t locate it and ended up leaving. (Bellow also wrote the initial story about the incident.)

Now, you may ask why the police department in this Western Massachusetts town isn’t being awarded a Muzzle. The reason is that it’s not clear they did anything wrong. The person who called the police department sent images that they claimed were from an obscene book. Obscenity, a tiny subset of indecent material, is actually illegal. It can be hard to define (the late Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart once memorably said, “I know it when I see it”), but you can imagine that it’s pretty bad given that nearly all indecency is protected by the First Amendment. To be clear: “Gender Queer” doesn’t come within a mile of violating any obscenity laws. But Great Barrington Police Chief Paul Storti told Adam Reilly of GBH News that his officers were obliged to respond to what may have been a legitimate complaint. Reilly quoted Storti as saying:

The interaction with the teacher was cordial. The officer didn’t touch anything. They didn’t search. They basically asked if the book was still there, to give the context of what we were dealing with dealing with. The teacher said the book wasn’t there, and the officer left.

I’ll grant you that Storti’s comments are at odds with the Eagle’s report that the officer “searched for the book,” but I’ll have to leave that unresolved for now. The larger issue is that a member of the community saw fit to mobilize law enforcement because of the possible presence of a much-praised book.

The fallout has been significant. The ACLU is seeking the body-camera footage. More than 100 students and staff walked out of Monument Regional High School to protest the attempt at censorship, earning praise from Gov. Maura Healey, who said, “Book banning has no place in Massachusetts.” And the Eagle ran a letter to the editor today that said in part, “Let’s make the book recommended reading for all middle school parents and faculty, and then organize a public forum to discuss the book.”

Although the Great Barrington Police Department has avoided the ignominy of receiving a Muzzle Award, Chief Storti and Berkshire District Attorney Timothy Shugrue, whose office also got involved, need to engage in some discussion and training about what to do the next time something like this happens. Because we all know that it will.

Correction, May 17, 2024: This post originally said that the search took place in the school library. In fact, it was in a classroom.

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A NH publisher faces sentencing, while a small town in Mass. says no to drag

North Brookfield Town Hall. Photo (cc) 2009 by John Phelan.

A New Hampshire newspaper publisher has been found guilty of publishing political advertising that did not include legally required labeling. Debra Paul was convicted of five misdemeanor counts in a bench trial presided over by Derry District Court Judge Kerry Steckowych, according to Damien Fisher of the nonprofit news organization InDepthNH. Sentencing is scheduled to take place Dec. 20. The 64-year-old publisher faces a possible sentence of one year in prison and a $2,000 fine on each of the five counts.

I’ve been following this case for more than a year because of its absurdity. The state attorney general’s office says that Paul broke the law on several occasions by publishing ads for local candidates and warrant articles in two weekly newspapers that she owned, the Londonderry Times and the Nutfield News, the latter of which has stopped publishing. It seems to me that someone — maybe the state legislature, which could correct this travesty — deserves a New England Muzzle Award. Two reasons:

The first is that lawmakers in the Live Free or Die State have decided, for whatever reason, that minor violations of campaign laws should amount to crimes rather than civil offenses. I’d be very surprised if Paul does any time behind bars, but the threat is there, and she’s been living with it for more than a year, when the charges were initially filed.
The second is that even though the First Amendment allows for the regulation of political advertising, there was no intent to deceive. In my first post on this case, I reproduced a candidate ad that appeared in one of Paul’s papers. It’s properly labeled as a “Political Advertisement,” but if that was removed, would anyone think it’s anything other than an ad? Of course not. Enforcement ought to be reserved for deliberately deceptive political ads, such as those that could be confused with actual news articles.

We’ll see what Dec. 20 brings. I hope that Judge Steckowych hits Paul with, at worst, a token fine — and has something to say about governmental overreach into an arena where it can do the most damage: political speech.

***

The select board in North Brookfield, Massachusetts, and two of its members have been sued by the ACLU of Massachusetts because they refused to approve a 2024 Pride celebration on the grounds that the event is scheduled to include a drag performance. The lawsuit was filed in conjunction with the Rural Justice Network, which is headquartered in North Brookfield and whose Facebook page describes the organization as providing “education that informs an equitable and peaceful society in Rural America.” Carol Rose, the ACLU’s state executive director, said in a press release:

This is discrimination based on the viewpoint our clients seek to express: that all members of the community deserve to live and participate fully, openly, freely, and joyously. Let’s be clear: The government has no right to censor LGBTQ+ people or their right to assemble and express themselves.

The two individual members who were sued, chair Jason Petraitis and vice chair John Tripp, both voted against the permit, and are thus receiving New England Muzzle Awards. There are only three members of the board, which means they comprise a majority. It also seems pretty rich that a three-member body would have both a chair and a vice chair. The third member, Elizabeth Brooke Canada, has a title, too — she’s the clerk.

According to the ACLU, Petraitis and Tripp are recidivists, having also voted against allowing the Rural Justice Network to include a drag performance during a 2023 event, which was held anyway after the ACLU and the town’s lawyer intervened.

Jeff A. Chamer of Worcester’s Telegram & Gazette has quite a report on the board meeting at which the latest permit application was rejected. The highlight is Petraitis telling a representative from the Rural Justice Network, “You can get the approvals from other people, but the same thing’s gonna happen this year that happened last year: I’m not voting for it. If you’re not gonna have that stuff hidden from kids, I’m not voting for it.”

And when Canada suggested to Petraitis that failure to approve the permit would violate the town’s parks and recreation policy, Petraitis responded: “I really could care less.”

Canada then offered a motion to approve the permit, which was rejected on a 2-1 vote.

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A Muzzle for the officers who removed a teenage journalist from a GOP event

Quinn Mitchell, right, with Chris Christie and his wife, Mary Pat Christie. Photo (cc) 2023 by NHpolitico.

It’s hardly a surprise that Republican officials in New Hampshire would throw a 15-year-old out of a political event for doing nothing other than shooting video. But there is no excuse for police officers going along with their outrageous demand.

According to Samantha J. Gross of The Boston Globe, Quinn Mitchell, an aspiring journalist who’s become something of a celebrity for asking tough questions of presidential candidates, was escorted out of a political event at the behest of party officials in Nashua, New Hampshire, on Friday — apparently because someone didn’t like his recording videos of a longshot presidential candidate.

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“They told me I was being a disruption,” Mitchell was quoted as saying. “I was taking a video like anybody else.” He added that five officers were involved in removing him from the Sheraton Nashua hotel.

Quinn said that a party official told him he was being kicked out because he had a reputation for disrupting events. No doubt that official was referring to Mitchell’s journalism, which can indeed be disruptive because he does it the right way. Earlier this summer Quinn asked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, “Do you believe that Trump violated the peaceful transfer of power, a key principle of American democracy that we must uphold?” He also asked former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a born-again Never Trumper, whether Hillary Clinton would have been a better choice than Donald Trump in 2016.

Although Mitchell was reportedly back in the hall Friday an hour after his removal, the incident led to a story in The New York Times. It also leads to an important question: Should police officers who work for the public go along with a demand to remove a teenager — or anyone — from an event simply because he was exercising his First Amendment rights? The answer, quite obviously, is no, and it really doesn’t matter whether the officers were on the taxpayers’ dime or if they were being paid as part of a private detail. (The Times reported that it tried and failed to get a comment from the Nashua police department.)

For that, police officers who removed Mitchell from the hotel have earned a New England Muzzle Award.

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A Muzzle Award goes to an R.I. city councilor who threw a critic out of the chambers

The Providence Journal’s Antonia Noori Farzan reported last month that a land transfer to Donna Travis, a member of the city council in Warwick, Rhode Island, had come under scrutiny, with the new leaders of a group that gave Travis the land raising questions about possible improprieties. Travis denied any wrongdoing.

It wasn’t the first time that Travis’ behavior had come under scrutiny. Back in 2017, she admitted she’d violated the state’s ethics code and paid a $1,200 fine. According to the Journal’s Carol Kozma, Travis’ case stemmed from her mixing her roles as a city official and as an executive at local nonprofit organizations. (I was able to access Farzan’s story through my USA Today subscription, but the process is convoluted and I don’t have a working link.)

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What brought this to my attention is what happened next. At a July 17 city council meeting, a Warwick resident named Rob Cote — identified by Rob Borkowski of the Warwick Post as a “frequent city critic” — was escorted out of the council chambers by a uniformed police officer after he had the temerity to wave a copy of the Journal at the council members and say, “First, I’d like to congratulate Councilwoman Donna Travis. Another front page of The Providence Journal.”

According to the Post and to a video of the proceedings rebroadcast on WPRI-TV (Channel 12), Travis immediately interjected that Cote would be thrown out if he failed to restrict his comments to matters involving city government.

Cote: “This is about city government.”

Travis: “Stick to a topic about city government or else you’ll be escorted out.”

Cote: “This is about city government. It’s actually mentioned about the Warwick City Council.”

Travis: “Did you hear what I just said?”

After telling Travis that the ACLU would hear about her attempts to squelch him, Cote was led out of the building. And sure enough, the ACLU of Rhode Island has gotten involved, writing a letter in conjunction with the New England First Amendment Coalition in which they “call upon the Council to reassure the public that this type of response will not be repeated and that residents will be free to speak at future meetings on matters involving city government without fear of being silenced.”

For her censorious efforts to shut down public discussion of an issue involving city government, Donna Travis has earned a New England Muzzle Award.

Now, let me tease out a few of the nuances here. As noted in the ACLU-NEFAC letter, signed by Steven Brown, executive editor of the ACLU of Rhode Island, and Justin Silverman, executive director of NEFAC, the city of Warwick imposes certain restrictions on members of the public who wish to speak at governmental meetings. One is that their comments pertain to issues “directly affecting city government.” But as the letter notes, Cote was shut down barely before he could get a word out, and, in any case, the property dispute involving Travis was “clearly a topic of public concern.”

In addition, the letter notes that Travis told the Warwick Beacon “it was the unwritten practice of the City Council not to allow ‘personal attacks’ during the public comment period.” Brown and Silverman respond that, “leaving aside the impropriety of relying on an ‘unwritten’ policy to censor the speech of a member of the public, any such policy itself is just as problematic from a First Amendment standpoint. In fact, courts have often struck down such restrictions as a violation of the public’s free speech rights.”

The other nuance I want to bring up is that the lack civility at local public meetings has become a real problem, making it difficult for elected officials to conduct business and driving some of them out of government. We’ve all seen televised school committee meetings at which out-of-control members of the public start screaming about critical race theory, transgender issues, vaccines or whatever. It can be difficult to know where to draw the line. Earlier this year, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that local officials had gone too far in silencing a woman who twice called a select board chair “a Hitler.”

In the Warwick case, though, Cote comes across as polite, if sarcastic, and ready to talk about a matter of considerable public concern.

Travis might also consider the Streisand effect. Few people would know about the property dispute if she hadn’t tried to silence Cote. All around, it was a pretty sad performance by someone who was elected to act in the public’s best interest.

Correction: This post originally said that Travis was “led out of the building.” It was, of course, Cote.

The Mystic Valley Charter School, winner of a 2017 Muzzle, is back to its old tricks

Attorney General Andrea Campbell. Photo (cc) 2022 by Dan Kennedy.

The Mystic Valley Regional Charter School — recipient of one of the all-time most outrageous New England Muzzle Awards back in 2017 — is in trouble once again, this time for its insistence on conducting the public’s business behind closed doors. Adam Gaffin of Universal Hub reports that state Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s office has asked a judge to order that the taxpayer-funded school produce public documents it has refused to hand over despite requests at the local level as well as repeated demands by Secretary of State Bill Galvin.

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School officials claim they do not have to comply because Mystic Valley, based in Malden, doesn’t meet the definition of a “public school,” even though state law specifically describes charter schools as such. In any case, they say they won’t produce the records until a judge orders them to do so, notwithstanding the fact that the state public records law empowers the secretary of state to enforce the law.

The records, sought by Malden News Network, a local journalism outlet; Commonwealth Transparency, an advocacy group; and Malden mayoral candidate Lissette Alvarado cover a wide range of issues, including payroll, contracts, conflicts of interest, accountings of school income, copies of emails, and documents regarding Boston Globe stories about the school.

Now, to get back to that 2017 Muzzle Award from GBH News. During the 2016-’17 school year, Mystic Valley administrators began enforcing a dress-code prohibition against hair extensions, worn most often by Black female students. After parents complained about the clearly racist policy, school officials doubled down, leading to reporting by The Boston Globe and other news organizations. Yet the school refused to back down until then-Attorney General Maura Healey intervened.

That stiff-necked refusal to acknowledge its own wrongdoing obviously hasn’t changed over the years. When a judge finally orders the school to produce public documents, it will be interesting to see whether Mystic Valley complies — or if, instead, its administrators decide the judge somehow improperly claimed jurisdiction, or was wearing the wrong-colored robe or something.

If you want to read the full complaint, Adam’s posted it at the link above. The Boston Globe reports on Campbell’s lawsuit here. And Malden News Network has posted an item on its Facebook page.

Muzzle follow-up: RFK Jr. loses his appeal over Warren’s criticism of his COVID book

Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Photo (cc) 2019 by Gage Skidmore.

A federal appeals court has sided with U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren in her battle with Amazon over a book that promoted falsehoods about COVID-19. Presidential candidate and noted conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who contributed to the book, sued Warren on First Amendment grounds, but Adam Gaffin of Universal Hub — who keeps an eye on the courts so that I don’t have to — reports that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit recently ruled that Warren has the same right to criticize Amazon as anyone else.

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Last July, I gave Warren a New England Muzzle Award, arguing that though she did indeed have the right to criticize Amazon, a statement she issued targeting Amazon’s algorithmic promotion of books such as “The Truth about COVID-19,” for which Kennedy wrote the introduction, suggested that she was threatening to use her position as a prominent elected official to seek regulation of Amazon’s business practices. In a press release issued in 2021, Warren criticized a “pattern and practice of misbehavior” that “suggests that Amazon is either unwilling or unable to modify its business practices to prevent the spread of falsehoods or the sale of inappropriate products — an unethical, unacceptable, and potentially unlawful course of action from one of the nation’s largest retailers.”

Prominent civil rights lawyer Harvey Silverglate told The Boston Globe that Kennedy and his fellow plaintiffs had a strong case, saying, “You’d think that a former Harvard law professor would know better.”

But a federal district court disagreed, and now the appeals court has disagreed as well. From the appeals court’s decision:

Elizabeth Warren, as a single Senator, has no unilateral power to penalize Amazon for promoting “The Truth About COVID-19.” This absence of authority influences how a reasonable person would read her letter. A similar letter might be inherently coercive if sent by a prosecutor with the power to bring charges against the recipient…. The letter could be viewed as more threatening if it were penned by an executive official with unilateral power that could be wielded in an unfair way if the recipient did not acquiesce…. But as one member of a legislature who is removed from the relevant levers of power, Senator Warren would more naturally be viewed as relying on her persuasive authority rather than on the coercive power of the government to take action against Amazon.

Although it was admittedly a stretch to argue that Warren’s statement amounted to a threat rather than mere criticism of Amazon’s business practices, she could have followed up by holding hearings and filing legislation that would, for instance, ban the use of algorithmic promotion of books that indulge in falsehoods. We have enough book-banning going on in the country, thanks to Ron DeSantis and his ilk, without having one of our leading progressive senators taking part. Given that Warren did not actually seek to follow up her words with actions, though, I’ll concede that the courts got it right.

How our weak public records law is enabling a cover-up of school sports harassment

Sports builds character, we are told over and over again. And yet Massachusetts has been hit with multiple cases of racist, homophobic harassment aimed at high school athletes.

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The leading journalist tracking those cases is Bob Hohler of The Boston Globe, who’s reported on horrifying cases in Danvers, Woburn, Duxbury and elsewhere. Yet his efforts to dig deeper have been improperly thwarted by the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association. According to Hohler, the MIAA has refused to turn over incident reports in response to a public records request even though the secretary of state’s office has ruled that those records are, indeed, public. Hohler writes:

Details of the alleged misconduct remain untold because the MIAA denied the Globe’s request for copies of the incident reports. The denial follows a ruling by the Secretary of State’s office in November that the MIAA, despite the organization’s objections, is a public entity subject to the state’s public records law.

MIAA executive director Bob Baldwin told Hohler that his organization has chosen to ignore the public’s right to know because officials don’t want to discourage schools from reporting incidents of harassment. Yet the lesson of past incidents is that reforms often don’t occur without exposure. For instance, it was only after Hohler reported that Danvers officials had failed to respond to a “toxic team culture” on the boys’ varsity hockey team that the attorney general’s office investigated and local leaders agreed to a series of reforms centered around policies and training. Hohler’s reporting was also followed by several departures, including the retirement of School Supt. Lisa Dana.

More than anything, Hohler’s report on the MIAA this week underscores the inadequacies of the Massachusetts public records law. There are few consequences for officials who refuse to comply with the law, even when they ignore a direct ruling to turn over public documents, as the MIAA is reportedly doing with Hohler and the Globe.

According to Hohler, the MIAA “has received 50 reports involving discrimination, harassment, or bullying — nearly one a week on average while school has been in session — since the organization began requiring its 380 member schools to file discriminatory incident reports starting with the winter season in late 2021.” The public deserves to know more about those reports.

The future of the New England Muzzle Awards

This is the time of year when I would be putting the finishing touches on the New England Muzzle Awards, an annual Fourth of July feature that highlights outrages against freedom of speech in the six New England states. From 1998 through 2012, the Muzzles were published in The Boston Phoenix. After the Phoenix closed in 2013, they were hosted at GBH News.

The one constant over all those years had been my friend Peter Kadzis’ role as editor at both the Phoenix and GBH. Following Peter’s well-earned retirement, I’ve decided that last year’s 25th anniversary edition will be the last. I’ll still track the kinds of stories that I used to highlight in the Muzzles, and the MIAA story would have been a natural. But rather than an annual round-up, I’m going to write them up in real time for Media Nation. You’ll notice a weak attempt at a logo near the top of this post. I’ll try to come up with something better.

I also want to express my appreciation to GBH News for hosting the Muzzles during the final 10 years of their existence, and to civil-liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate, my friend and occasional collaborator, for coming up with the idea all those years ago.