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Over the course of the semester, the Lanthorn will be conducting an editorial series titled News on News revolving around how news is consumed today, the concept of fake news and the fight journalists continue to fight to have their voices be heard.

Over doing this editorial series, I learned a lot about how journalists think and learned some helpful lessons as to how to react to institutional pressures.

I highlighted the importance of the #FreeIgnace movement, the beninese journalist who is sadly still incarcerated for simply doing his job. I talked to students who have experienced censorship, both in their time at GVSUand in the Ukraine.

I learned some important lessons from journalists who continue to fight the good fight, whether it be Matthew Kauffman leading the charge to free Ignace Sossou or Raymond Joseph continuing to investigate a corrupt South African lottery system.

These journalists and students speaking out against the powers that be has always been important, but is crucial now more than ever, as Americans everywhere are staying in their homes trying to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

While journalists are not doing the work of essential workers and nurses and doctors working the front lines to fight the virus, those spreading news to the public are in the next tier below. Now more than ever, citizens around the world are looking towards local and national news.

As journalists, we have a responsibility to give the public accurate news, especially in this time of crisis. One of my roles as a part-time assignment editor at Fox 17 is to answer the phone of nervous viewers. Here are what the majority of those calls have consisted of the past few weeks:

Hey, my boss is making us go in to work, but my wife and I are nervous about me getting infected. What do I do to report them?

How do I file for unemployment?

Im about to run out of rent money ever since I lost my job, where can I turn to if I end being homeless in the next few weeks?

My daughter needs her heart medicine to survive. Is it even safe to go into pharmacies right now?

The Walmart by me is not practicing social distancing. Is there anything you guys can do about that?

While it can be nice to provide people with certain resources to help them get what they need in this worldwide pandemic, its a lot of pressure to try to help these people, who appear to have nowhere else to go.

I am nowhere near a guidance counselor or a life coach or a motivational speaker, but I have had to play all of those roles in these phone calls. While I struggle to sleep at night thinking of the thousands of people struggling just in West Michigan alone, its through these phone calls that I have realized that journalists are more than writers, editors, reporters, broadcaster and anchors: we have a job to help people in this time of crisis.

Phone calls such as the ones above are the reason why I am confident I will stay in journalism. As Kauffman and Gamble and Joseph advised in our interviews, journalists need to have thick skin; not just in dealing with criticism and institutional censorship and threats, but also helping those in need, whether that be in providing accurate information, conducting an investigation, or simply giving news consumers a guiding light and someone to talk to.

Through this editorial series, it has been reiterated to me that thick skin and a refusal to back down is a crucial skill that every young journalist needs to develop.

We will face criticism. We will face threats. We will be called pigs and biased, and our writing will be deemed as fake news and thats on the tame end of the criticism. But for every negative message towards us, the positive support comes through tenfold, and knowing that we have a truly important role informing and helping people makes this job more worth it than I ever could have imagined.

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News on News: Reflecting on institutional censorship and the conversations with the experts - Grand Valley Lanthorn

If there is one positive thing that can be said about this terrible plague were enduring, it is that now and then, it gives the Trudeau government some really, really great ideas.

Sure it was only a couple of weeks ago that the Liberals came up with the idea that they a minority in Parliament, remember should give themselves the power to tax and spend for the next two years, without having to get parliamentary approval. It was a truly brilliant idea, except that it ignored the fact that approving government spending is one of the most important functions of Parliament. Take away its authority over spending and the House of Commons might just as well be any old bingo hall, or with a little imaginative renovation, a one-of-a-kind Costco store.

Now, compliments of Privy Council President Dominic LeBlanc, we learned that the Liberal government is contemplating legislation to make it an offence to, as a CBC report put it, knowingly spread misinformation that could harm people. In plain language, this government is openly thinking of making itself the official censor of what can and cannot be said about COVID-19. Pure brilliance again, dont you agree?

Well, actually, no. Dont even think of it. Better still, to borrow a phrase from Greta Thunberg: how dare you? There is already a government that has that power, and in some cases brutally exercises it. That is the government of the Communist Party of China.

And what has it done with that power? It barred telling the truth about COVID-19, and instead told lies about it. On the where it happened, when it happened, how it happened and how it spread, the Chinese government confounded, confused and lied about a plague that has now hobbled the whole planet. And China officially reprimanded the doctor who initially tried to warn people about the coronavirus, and who, with dread irony, actually died from it. (A postmortem apology followed from the government. That surely helped.) Admire the Chinese government if thats your thing, but on this subject, it is not an example to be followed.

So, lets tap this serpent of an idea on its little head before its fangs emerge and it develops a real appetite. The problem with government having control over what is said and written, completely aside from it being the utter contradiction of a liberal democracy, is that governments especially on a matter such as this pandemic are simply not competent enough to know what is right and what is wrong.

What is required for a government to pass a law against misinformation? To begin with, it presumes an infallible authority thats able to make judgments on what is, or is not, correct information. Even worse, it presumes the government has the ability to make judgments on a matter that, incontestably, is not yet fully understood by anybody.

This virus is new. The investigation of its nature, transmission, the best policies to confront it, the extent of the response to it, even the nature of the response all of these elements are, at best, in an incomplete and early stage of understanding.

Experts have varying degrees of skill and knowledge. If experts disagree, which happens often, will some of them be silenced? In actuality, a divergence of opinions can be seen as a path to the full truth emerging. But this cannot happen if the government gags those who may seem to be wrong at the present moment.

On the purely political front, there are equal objections to giving government censorship powers. Governments take to extensions of their power like bears to honey. The more power they get, the more they believe they alone should exercise it. Power swells the ego. Add more power, and if you follow the analogy, a little balloon soon thinks its the Hindenburg. And a government swollen with power does not like other voices.

It was only a couple of weeks ago that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau barred the leader of the Opposition from joining talks with other opposition leaders because, in Trudeaus own memorable words, Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer disqualified himself from constructive discussions with his unacceptable speech earlier today.

Yet it is not for Trudeau, or any other prime minister, to determine what is acceptable speech from his constitutionally positioned critic, the leader of the Opposition. Nor is it proper for this minority government, which has had enough struggles of its own over misinformation on masks, on screening at airports, on our relative security from the pandemic to decide what the rest of us can, and cannot, say or write about this unique crisis.

National Post

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Rex Murphy on COVID-19: The power to censor speech and other great ideas from our Liberal overlords - National Post

Pope Francis was caught on video proclaiming that Scotch whisky is the real holy water a good-spirited joke to a group of visiting Scottish student priests who presented him with a bottle.

But the Vatican sought to avoid a brew-haha by censoring the footage ahead of an upcoming documentary about seminarians at the Scot College in Rome, according to the Scottish Daily Record.

The video showed the 83-year-old pontiff accepting the bottle of Oban 14 malt from the students during an event at the Apostolic Palace last year, but Vatican media said the clip in question has been cut from the one-hour BBC documentary Priest School, which will air Sunday.

We filmed the students meeting with the pope in the Apostolic Palace. One of them was tasked with giving the pope a bottle of malt, because they know he likes whisky, said Tony Kearney, director of the film, which followed the seminarians for 18 months.

He was really down to earth with them all and when they handed him the bottle, instead of just handing it to his assistant as he normally would with a gift, he held it up and said, Questa e la vera acqua santa, which means This is the real holy water, Kearney told the outlet.

He guffawed with laughter and it was a real ice-breaker with the students and put everyone at ease, he continued.

But wed agreed that the Vaticans media office would be allowed to approve all of our footage before we broadcast it. So we sent them the files and when they sent it back, that bit of him saying that was cut out, Kearney added.

We were really annoyed at first, but they insisted they didnt want the pope to be seen to be endorsing whisky. I think its quite funny how guarded his image is, he said.

Francis is ripping up the rule book, hes ahead of the curve, and the flunkies around about him need to catch up, said Kearney, who called the seminarians ordinary blokes who like a drink, like the football and live ordinary lives.

It appears that Francis may indeed enjoy a drink every once in a while, according to a report in Forbes.

Last year, the Dundee Courier reported that Scottish priest Jim Wallis met the pope shortly after becoming the spiritual director at the Pontifical Scots College in 2018, according to Forbes.

Joined by a group of Scottish bishops, they presented Francis with a bottle of whisky.

It was a great honor to go into the Vatican and go to the chamber to meet the pope and he came out and shook all of our hands. Then we presented him with a bottle of whisky and he looked at it and said, Ha ha, thats holy water! Hes obviously been gifted some whisky before, Wallis said.

In fact, Queen Elizabeth II gave the pope a bottle of Scotch when they first met in 2014, the news outlet reported.

More here:
Vatican censors video of Pope Francis joking Scotch is 'the real holy water' - New York Post

According to the Motion Picture Association of America,Splash is rated PG. According to Disney+,Splashis rated PG-13. In almost every case, studios work hard to bringdown a movies ratings. Im not sure Ive ever seen a movie studio willfully (and seemingly unilaterally)slap a higher rating on a film that it has been given by the MPAA.

That doesnt mean that Disney has added more sexuality toSplash, the 1984 romantic comedy about a guy (Tom Hanks) who falls in love with an actual mermaid (Daryl Hannah). Quite the contrary. As observed by Allison Pregler on Twitter and confirmed by me with my own eyes on my own Disney+ account Disney has added extra CGI hair to Hannahs character in a key scene in order to remove any inkling that she might be naked onscreen.

Watch the censoredSplash footage right here:

Heres the original version of the scene, albeit in a low-res version that makes comparing a little tougher than it would be otherwise. You will note that Hannahs character already has extremely long hair that masks some of her private areas. Its not like her posterior was just hanging out there for the whole world to see. The Disney+ version just addsmore hair until it looks like shes wearing hair underwear:

Even though its only (technically) rated PG,Splashwas actually Disneys first movie ever released through its Touchstone Pictures label, which was explicitlycreated for films from Disney that were deemed to adult for the traditional, family-friendly Walt Disney Studios banner. Why, then, is it on Disney+, which is specifically intended for that same family audience? Why not put it on Hulu, the Disney-controlled streaming site that has much more adult content? I dont know. All I know is that censoredSplash footage is wild. Really, really wild.

Gallery The Disney Movies Were Surprised Are Actually on Disney+

See the article here:
Disney Plus Censors 'Splash's Nudity In the Most Ridiculous Way - ScreenCrush

Comics involve wild cosmic beings and people who somehow get powers from radiation, rather than health problems. But comics get even weirder when you consider the characters who got their powers from actual religious figures. How do demonic bikers and spirits of divine vengeance coexist with Norse gods and Olympian warriors?

Comics history is full of simple events that made Marvel and DCs Heaven and Hell such a strangely convoluted place. A laissez-faire attitude towards using religious motifs ran headlong into a period of industry censorship, and writers and artists were left holding the pieces, with the job of fashioning them into the continuity we know today.

When the Golden Age of Comics started in 1938, using Heaven and Hell was totally fair game. The first character to use the name Black Widow was recruited by the actual devil after her murder, and assigned to return to Earth and take down sinners. When police officer Jim Corrigan died, his spirit encountered a brilliant light and a voice that told him he was to return to Earth as the vengeful Spectre. Elsewhere, a young boy died prematurely due to a clerical error by Mr. Keeper, who managed the passage of souls to Heaven. To rectify the error, St. Peter told Mr. Keeper to mentor the boy in his new career as a hero called Kid Eternity. Meanwhile, the wizard Shazam drew power from both the Jewish figure Solomon as well as deities from Pagan pantheons.

But the audiences taste for placing real beliefs alongside fantasy elements changed. After World War II, US society had an increasing belief that society was delicate and in danger of subversives, and that meant that narrative media was under deep scrutiny. In 1954, the Comics Code Authority was created to monitor comics before they were delivered to the public. There was nothing illegal about publishing a comic without the Codes seal, but most newsstands and many printers wouldnt risk getting involved, for fear of angry parents.

Under the Code, criminals werent to be sympathetic or glamorous, legitimate government authority was not to be put in a bad light, and deviant sexual behavior was prohibited. The Code also blocked the depiction of demon worship, witchcraft, and walking dead, torture, vampires and vampirism, ghouls, cannibalism, and werewolfism. Still, who got to decide what wasnt acceptable sometimes depended on who was working at the Comics Code Authority office that day, and some creators realized that as long as you didnt offend the beliefs of the Code employees specifically, you could get your story through.

Amazing Fantasy #15, the same anthology comic that introduced Spider-Man in 1962, featured The Bell-Ringer, a short story by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko in which a religious, elderly man was saved from painful death by a shaft of heavenly light. The next story, The Man in the Mummy Case, shows a mummy tricking a thief. The storys mummy couldve been an undead monster or simply a man, disguised. That ambiguity was key to getting past the Code.

That same year, Lee and Jack Kirby wrote the first Dr. Doom story, which shows the maniacal villain with two books: Demons and Science and Sorcery. Later, were told of his long fascination with black magic. But since Doom was clearly a bad guy, it was fine for him to be interested in such topics.

Kirby was fond of Arthur C. Clarkes idea that any sufficiently developed technology is indistinguishable from magic, and he enjoyed depicting gods as science fantasy rather than purely magic. Stan Lee agreed with this approach, preferring the Marvel Universe not validate any specific belief too strongly. In college lectures, Lee said he had no problem showing Thor encountering beings from Olympian and Egyptian mythology because the universe was large enough to hold many such entities and their respective pantheons. If some of those entities believed they had helped the creation of humanity, well, maybe they did and maybe they didnt.

And so Lee and his collaborators populated the Marvel universe with a wealth of Satanic stand-ins. Dr. Stranges early stories involved the beings Nightmare and Dormammu, who seemed to be demonic in nature, but inhabited other dimensions rather than the afterlife. And Lee and John Buscema created Marvels most famous devil in the pages of Silver Surfer in 1968. Mephisto was named after the demon dealmaker from Dr. Faustus, and his realm, where souls were tortured, was said to exist beyond the physical universe. Lee remarked that this helped to paint the Surfer as a science fiction version of a flawed Messiah resisting temptation. Mephisto was the New Testaments Satan in all but name.

Comic book superheroes had their devils, but also their angels, and even god. The Marvel universes cosmic entity, the Living Tribunal, was introduced in 1967. This three-faced being served as a judge over various dimensions and realities, possibly all, and would later refer to his creator and boss as the One Above All. The same year the Living Tribunal showed up in Marvel, DC brought forth a new ghostly hero simply called Deadman. Boston Brand was a murdered acrobat who was given a chance to return to Earth and fight evil. In his case, it wasnt a voice but a goddess called Rama Kushna (similar to the actual Hindu goddess Krishna). As Kushna was an original creation and her nature ambiguous, and since Boston was a ghost acting almost as an angel rather than a zombie or vampire, the Code had no problem with this. In later years, Boston said he believed Kushna was one of the many faces of God.

In 1971, the Comics Code finally relaxed their rule on certain demonic and undead characters with the following run-on sentence: vampires, ghouls and werewolves shall be permitted to be used when handled in the classic tradition such as Frankenstein, Dracula, and other high calibre literary works written by Edgar Allan Poe, Saki, Conan Doyle and other respected authors whose works are read in schools around the world.

Along with allowing vampires and others to return, this opened the door for DC Comics to directly reference Judeo-Christian ideas again. The demon Etrigan, created in 1972, was not from a realm that resembled Hell, he simply came from Hell. But DC was more nervous about putting Jesus Christ in a comic. A major Swamp Thing story arc was meant to end with the titular character meeting the Nazarene carpenter, but editorial decided later the issue would be too controversial, so it wasnt printed.

The Marvel universe continued to sidestep the issue, however. Originally, Ghost Rider like Etrigan, created in 1972 was a man whod made a deal with Satan, but readers were later told it was Mephisto in disguise. Later still, Satan and Mephisto were said to be rivals in different realms, with possibly neither being the Devil of Christian lore. But the House of Ideas felt similarly to DC in one respect: When Tony Isabella wrote a Ghost Rider story featuring an appearance by Jesus, it was rewritten by editor Jim Shooter at the last minute to say it was only an illusion.

By the 1990s, things were changing yet again. The Comics Code Authority had lost most of its teeth, and its seal now only meant a story wasnt any more adult than a PG-13 movie. The Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover had rebooted much of DC Comics continuity, and creators were still debating what rules and canon still applied, which allowed for many new and contradictory ideas to emerge. Series such as Swamp Thing, Hellblazer and Sandman in which the dead were sent the different realms according to personal belief rather than universal law and all gods owed a portion of their existence to the series protagonist, the Lord of Dreams showed that readers could handle modern religious topics in stories without necessarily being offended. On the other end of the tonal spectrum, in 1991s The Lobo Paramilitary Christmas Special the titular bounty hunter was hired by the Easter Bunny to kill Santa Claus. In 1997, an angel joined the Justice League.

And one of comics oldest divinely-connected heroes was linked up to Christian religious figures more than ever. John Ostrander and Tom Mandrakes 1990s run on The Spectre delved deeply into morality and religious mythology. Their Spectre was the wrath of the god of the Old Testament, bonded to a human soul, and they implied that Jesus was Gods forgiveness given form. Angels like Michael would show up, and change their forms, names, and personalities when appearing to people of different beliefs.

Marvel still flirted with science fantasy to explain its demons, even having Mephisto claim his origin was due to the creator of the cosmic Infinite Gems. But as TV shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Charmed, and later Supernatural consistently showed audiences were willing to accept fiction mixed with religious symbolism, Marvel finally followed suit. Spider-Man saved a Christmas Angel from Mephisto, who later made direct reference to the Anti-Christ in a Daredevil story. Angels, Hell, Satan, and God were directly referenced and presented at face value in various comics. In 2004, the Fantastic Four even journeyed to Heaven and met God he looked a lot like Jack Kirby.

But dont get it twisted: The Marvel and DC comics universes may include angels and demons, but if you ask who created those universes, the answer isnt the god of Abraham. Marvels setting is full of shaggy god stories, where technologically advanced aliens and cosmic beings indirectly inspire human mythology. Over in the DC Universe, we know that existence didnt begin with light on the first day but with a giant blue hand cradling a speck that would become the entire cosmos in part because an alien scientist made a machine that let him observe the very first moment of time.

The cosmology of superhero universes is a patchwork quilt made by the contributions of many people over many years. But ask a historian about how a major world religion came to be, and they might tell you exactly the same thing.

The rest is here:
Hell, Heaven, and Jesus exist in DC and Marvel comics in a strange way - Polygon