Because of his questionable actions, his documented abuse at his jails, and his stereotyping of immigrants, both documented and undocumented, to self-servingly keep him in sync with Trump’s pronouncements on immigrants and stay in his sight, I have written a number of blog posts on the Sheriff of Bristol County Massachusetts, Thomas Hodgson, and along with self-produce political cartoons, published them on my personal blog site, and have then rewritten them without my personal asides, and submitted them as letters to the editor to the local newspaper, The Standard Times of New Bedford.

Recently, the editorial board has begun applying three new practices to any letters critical of the sheriff whose salaried spokesperson is also a contributing writer to that paper having once been a full time reporter before he was hired by the sheriff.

The three new policies and practices seem designed to protect the sheriff from public scrutiny, and usually anything negative that gets printed is swiftly followed by an article with no by-line presenting a warm fuzzy picture of the sheriff with information that obviously has been supplied, if not the whole article having been written from within the sheriff’s department.

Letters to the editor are usually the writers opinion on any given topic, and can be rational, well thought out, and logical, or they can be rambling, emotional, and provably wrong. Rebuttal of either the expressed opinions or information included comes through comments after the online version of the paper or through submitted responses published in the hard copy edition.

I submitted one of my pared down blogs to the newspaper, and included information I had found when researching the sheriff’s history among my sources being archived articles from the very paper to which I submitted my letters, previously printed letters, and a list of sources I knew a  friend of mine had included with his letter when submitted and subsequently printed.

I received an email from the editor in response to my submission similar to what others who had submitted letters critical of the sheriff received  in which I was informed.

“Standard-Times policy is that writers must provide documentation of all claims in their letters. This applies even if the documentation is from this newspaper. Especially in the current political environment”

This was not the case in earlier letters I submitted.

Along with this the email contained a copy of my letter with certain things highlighted for which the editor wanted documentation, and the suggestion,

“If you like, we can eliminate the items for which you cannot provide documentation and reconsider your essay for publication.”

As requested, I replied to each question with links to various newspaper articles including some from that paper, and other sources, but in spite of the original email stating,

“You can send the documentation in the form of email links, or you can send them by traditional mail. Documentation must be from a reputable source, e.g., a mainstream newspaper or magazine; a government, nonprofit or business study,”

the follow up response claimed,

“You’ve sent some citations but my having to track down every one of those is the same as me looking for your documentation for you,”

So I cut and pasted sections from the supplied links and sent them to the editor.

Whenever I send an email, the link to my blog site is automatically included after my name, and this is obviously a naked invite to check out the site, and, obviously, having that at the bottom of the letter to the editor is somewhat subtle way to get the newspaper’s attention to my work as a political cartoonist.

Although people may be members of political or social groups, they remain individuals and speak only for themselves unless they present themselves as speaking for any group to which that person belongs, and then only with the permission of that groups, or there could be legal consequences if the person misrepresents their personal opinions as that of the group.

The only requirement regarding a signature on a letter is supplying a name, address, and contact phone number. Anything else can be added by the letter writer.

When the sheriff had pledged he would send inmates in his jails to help build the wall on the Southern border 2,000 miles away and justified this with comments about immigrants and refugees that through my personal experience I knew to be patently false, I joined with like minded people and formed a community group whose purpose was to expose the questionable actions of the sheriff in his jails and the falsehoods about immigrants and refugees promoted by him.

My blog had existed for 5years prior to the inception of this group, and although I was asked to serve as the temporary spokesperson of this group, I was meticulous in separating my personal opinions and writings from official statements from the group, and to this end submitted letters to the editor accordingly.

At those times I might have spoken for the group, my letters or oral statements were first run by the group for their approval and my affiliation so noted in my writing or speech, such as the time when, after the group went to the State House to speak with the governor, I was asked by the group to be the person interviewed about that by a local radio station and I did so keeping as close to established talking points as possible.

However, I did not relinquish my being an individual, and when speaking for myself would only use my name and blog page link.

On my blog, I am sure some topics and my opinions of them may not be the same as the group or individuals within it.

I received a follow up email in which the editor stated,

“If you are a member of that group, it would seem fair for you to identify that in your letter to the editor”.

But, this would only be necessary if I were speaking for the group and not, as I was, speaking for myself.

I belong to a number of groups that are social, professional, and political, but unless I am speaking for them, those affiliations are irrelevant to my personal opinion, and so I wrote back to the editor explaining,

“Regardless of my membership or not in [group], as I am speaking only as myself, such a connection as this would be the same as with the Knights of Columbus, irrelevant to my personal opinions.”

I also responded to his claim that just because the sheriff was on the board of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), and speaks at various right wing and white supremacist gatherings,

“It is not sufficient for your saying Hodgson is “a white supremacist.” You will have to have more documentation than that he has associated with groups that have been called white supremacist by the Southern Poverty Law Center (and others) to label him personally a white supremacist”

that similarly

“I am and have always been a free thinker who acts on my own volition. If I write a letter, I write it. If I choose to do it, I do it. Certainly you are not applying a double standard as you wrote about the sheriff, “Hodgson may have associated with,,,,,”

When my letter was finally published, in spite of my not claiming to be speaking for any group and my insistence that I was speaking as an individual, the editor chose to include the name of that group after my name as if my letter was its opinion, not my own and that I was speaking officially for them rather than passing on my personal blog. When I found that the editor had done this to other member of the group who wrote a letter expressing their own opinion, it became clear that the editor was planting the seed that the opinion was not genuine as it was the product of an anti-sheriff organization and was, therefore, biased and more questionable than the opinion of one person.

The newspaper is not the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, or even the Boston Herald. It is a local paper with a small staff and a small readership, so it is possible that the letters to the editor are not submitted in great numbers and are often rather pieces dealing with local, noncontroversial topics, so any letter writer, or a number of people writing on a particular topic has a good chance of having their letters published.

But besides the new policy of requiring documentation which, when met, is subjected to additional requests, and the editor deciding whether or not a letter writer is expressing a personal opinion or speaking for a group, the Standard Times added a third filter that is applied when the editor has assigned a writer a role or membership in a group.

By assigning an affiliation or the position as a spokesperson for a group, the newspaper has instituted a policy that can control speech, a policy that has been used a number of times to prevent anything negative about the sheriff from appearing in the paper and suppressing information that the community should receive in a timely manner.

My most recent submission received this response:

“Thank you for your submission to the editorial page. The last letter from a member of the Bristol County for Correctional Justice group was Jan. 4. We have a three-week waiting policy between submissions of the same author or organizations. I can keep this on file for you.”

My last letter had been printed a month and a half ago, and my recent letter has been put on hold because someone else had independently written her own opinion piece in the meantime.

The three new and possibly selectively applied practices are:

• Demand documentation in letters to the editor while only accepting that which is in agreement with the newspaper’s positive opinion of the sheriff, and with each compliance  make additional demands,
• Ignore that a letter is the individual writer’s opinion, and present it as that of an organization when it clearly is not, even when the writer expressly tells you they are not speaking for a group.
• Claim that the group has already spoken, so the personal opinion of the person to whom you assigned an affiliation can be put on hold.

Examples are simeprevir (Olysio, Sovriad) and paritaprevir NS5B nucleoside polymerase inhibitors (NPIs) – They block the action of proteins that HCV uses for making new viruses. viagra generic After a physical examination, one can be sure about the quality and the efficiency at the time of purchasing online cialis prescriptions in form of cialis. Some websites go as far uk viagra online as giving free trials. The United cheapest generic levitra States, for instance, has a food and drug administration so they assure user for better outcomes and enhanced pleasure.
And one more little point. When in my blog/letter I introduced something the public may not know, but needs to, I was advised,

“You might think of writing a letter that sticks just to facts that are well known in the public domain”

Because, obviously, informing the public is not the job of a newspaper.