{"id":87853,"date":"2021-11-24T17:12:45","date_gmt":"2021-11-24T17:12:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/?p=87853"},"modified":"2021-11-24T17:12:49","modified_gmt":"2021-11-24T17:12:49","slug":"were-a-small-arkansas-newspaper-why-is-the-state-making-us-sign-a-pledge-about-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/?p=87853","title":{"rendered":"“We\u2019re a Small Arkansas Newspaper. Why Is the State Making Us Sign a Pledge About Israel?”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

NY Times:<\/a> “At The Arkansas Times, a publication I founded 47 years ago, our pages focus on small-scale local issues, like protecting Medicaid expansion from the predations of our state legislature and other elements of Arkansas politics, history and culture. So I was surprised when in 2018 I received an ultimatum from the University of Arkansas\u2019s Pulaski Technical College, a longtime advertiser: To continue receiving its ad dollars, we would have to certify in writing that our company was not engaged in a boycott of Israel. It was puzzling. Our paper focuses on the virtues of Sims Bar-B-Que down on Broadway \u2014 why would we be required to sign a pledge regarding a country in the Middle East?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I understood the context of that email. In 2017, Arkansas pledged to enforce support for Israel by mandating that public agencies not do business with contractors unless those contractors affirm that they do not boycott Israel. The idea behind the bill goes back 16 years. In 2005, Palestinian civil society launched a campaign calling for \u201cboycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel until it complies with international law and universal principles of human rights.\u201d Around the world, Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, or B.D.S., as it became known, gained momentum. In response, Israel and lobbyists have used multiple strategies to quash the movement. In the United States, one such strategy took the form of anti-B.D.S. bills. Currently, more than 30 states have provisions on the books similar to Arkansas\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It soon became clear that The Arkansas Times had to answer our advertiser. Though boycotting Israel could not have been further from our minds and though state funding is a significant source of our income, our answer was no. We don\u2019t take political positions in return for advertising. If we signed the pledge, I believe, we\u2019d be signing away our right to freedom of conscience. And as journalists, we would be unworthy of the protections granted us under the First Amendment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so, instead of signing, we sued to overturn the law, represented by the\u00a0American Civil Liberties Union<\/a>, on the grounds that it violates the First and 14th Amendments. We are still fighting it.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NY Times: “At The Arkansas Times, a publication I founded 47 years ago, our pages focus on small-scale local issues, like protecting Medicaid expansion from the predations of our state legislature and other elements of Arkansas politics, history and culture. So I was surprised when in 2018 I received an ultimatum from the University of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newsstory"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=87853"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87854,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87853\/revisions\/87854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=87853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=87853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yellowdogwire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=87853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}