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It was the Marcel production company, which has worked with the Palestinian Authoritys media for several years, which enabled the PBC to continue broadcasting in East Jerusalem despite an initial ban imposed by the Israeli authorities in November 2019. The order targeting Marcel could affect other media that benefit from its services.

Condemning the national security ministers closure order, the PBC said it exposed the falsehood that Israel is a democratic state and respects the work of the media [and] freedom of expression.

Marcels closure was made possible by a law adopted in 1995 as part of the implementation of the Oslo Accords that bans Palestinian Authority agencies from conducting activities within the city of Jerusalem. Dozens of events, press conferences and cultural gatherings have been banned over the years in East Jerusalem under this law.

This censorship of Palestine TV and Voice of Palestine has been preceded by constant attacks by Israel against Palestinian journalists and media. Since Shireen Abu Aklehs filmed murder in May 2022, RSF has compiled video and audio evidence of at least 11 other journalists being targeted or aggressed by Israeli security forces in the West Bank. Countless other attacks have taken place off camera.

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Indirect but effective censorship of two Palestinian Authority media ... - Reporters sans frontires

Bestselling author Anthony Horowitz has said he is against tampering with the works of dead writers, amid an ongoing row over sensitivity readers.

In recent months, texts by late authors such as Roald Dahl, Agatha Christie and James Bond creator Ian Fleming have been found to have been updated by their publishers and literary estates.

A number of prominent writers and public figures have spoken against the practice, with Sir Philip Pullman suggesting it would be better to let the books go out of print.

Appearing at Oxford Literary Festival, Horowitz, the bestselling author of books including the Alex Rider series as well as three Bond novels, reportedly said he believed it was better for children to read books that might be deemed offensive than none at all.

The Times also claimed he said Dahls publishers had shot themselves in the foot with the updates, which involved removing descriptions of characters as fat and ugly.

They really shot themselves in the foot with their attempts to bowdlerise it, he said, calling the changes sacrilege.

Im basically opposed to tampering with the work of dead writers, he said. They cant defend themselves. It seems to me that you should take the work, judge it and be aware of why we no longer share these opinions, or this view of the world. Rather than censor, cut and take out stuff.

He later added: Whatever your view of the book, even if it is something considered offensive or trivial or trite, it is better than not reading. As long as they read something.

(Getty Images)

Following a backlash, including unprecedented criticism from Queen Consort Camilla, Puffin said it would retain the new versions of Dahls books but also offer original editions.

An earlier statement had said the changes were made to ensure that the books could continue to be enjoyed by all today.

The Independent has contacted Horowitzs representatives and Puffin for comment.

Horowitz has previously complained about sensitivity readings of his own work.

Story continues

My publishers have been more nervous in the editing of my books, he claimed in an interview last year. Issues of levels of violence, language and attitudes do get more closely examined. Ive had some of my books read for sensitivity. But thats the 21st century. Peoples attitudes have changed and what didnt offend people 40 years ago does now.

Asked about how he approaches the character of 007, he remarked: When Im writing the books I always hear Sean Connery and see Daniel Craig. I am perfectly happy to defend Bond. My Bond is a man of the Fifties and Sixties, so he lives by a different moral code to the one we have now.

I refute the suggestion that he is chauvinistic or sexist or misogynistic. I think he treats women very well in the books and has great respect for them, yet I admit he has some of the attitudes that we now would not celebrate in the 21st century, but thats because the books were written in the 20th century. It was a different time.

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Anthony Horowitz says Roald Dahl publishers shot themselves in the foot over censorship row - Yahoo News

(Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune) Four of nine books that have been removed from schools in the Canyons School District and placed under review, Nov. 23, 2021. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe, Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov and Beyond Magenta by Susan Kuklin.

By Jody Plant | Special to The Tribune

| March 24, 2023, 12:00 p.m.

| Updated: March 25, 2023, 8:27 p.m.

The outmoded Davis School District has announced that it will remove the Nobel Prize-winning novel The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison.

Davis Country has a disturbing history of censorship, racism and homophobia. One example of many is in 1978 Jeanne Layton, director of the Davis County Library in Bountiful, lost her job for refusing to remove Don DeLillos Americana from the library shelves.

As argued in a June 5, 2012, editorial in the Salt Lake Tribune, The Davis County School District is now targeting books for children that portray families headed by same-sex parents and a book with the message that bullying of homosexual teenagers is wrong. In Davis County, it seems, book banning based on intolerance is alive and well.

This recent decision to ban The Bluest Eye is outrageous, disturbing and tragic. The book is a masterpiece describing how racism and discrimination can ruin a childs life, any life, particularly a Black life. The book also addresses abuse against Black women and children, misconceived ideas of beauty, self loathing, harsh judgments and the lengths women will go to in order to fit with societal standards and how women continue the long fight for equality and respect.

Clearly, the Davis School Board is threatened by this Noble Prize strong work of fiction. We should all be alarmed by this action.

Toni Morrison is celebrated and censored, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the Noble Prize in Literature, the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Her books are vitally important, a clarion call for equality and humanity for all lives.

Morrisons rich storytelling gifts us clear narratives of the Black experience. She was an ebullient warrior against censorship, powerfully advocating for libraries and open access to literature for decades. She left the world a huge hole with her passing in 2019.

It seems Davis County would rather expose children to gun violence than allowing them the great experience of reading a Toni Morrison book.

Heres an idea, why not ban guns instead of books?

Firearms are the leading cause of death for children and teens (ages 1 to 19) in the United States. Every year, 19,000 children and teens are shot and killed or wounded and approximately 3 million are exposed to gun violence. This is far more dangerous than a book about racism.

Lets keep our children safe, informed of critical Black history and educated with access to great books and libraries.

Jody Plant, Salt Lake City, is a visual artist and retired librarian.

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Davis County has a history of censorship, racism and homophobia. - Salt Lake Tribune

ISTANBUL

Russia on Tuesday claimed that "censorship and manipulation" of the media in Germany was in "full bloom."

Pointing to a German government report on the state of independent media in the country, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Telegram that Berlin had transferred at least 1.5 million ($1.6 million) to outlets in recent years.

"The 'independent, separate-from-the-state-budget' media received more than 1.5 million euros in cash and bank transfers," Zakharova said, pointing to Berlin's 2022 decision to remove Russian state news agency RT from its broadcasting network and statements from German officials saying they had no influence on information processes.

According to the 30-page report requested by lawmakers asking the government about the state of German independent media, 200 journalists were involved in the services for which the payments were made, including moderation, lecturing, and media training.

Zakharova also suggested that the information in the report was incomplete. "This is not all the state money and not all the journalists that Berlin contracts for its information and propaganda activities. This is explicitly stated in the government's response."

"That is, the German security forces pay journalists for no reason at all, no matter how, no one knows how much, and no one should know and will not know about this, because we are talking about 'state security considerations'," Zakharova further claimed, adding: "Censorship and manipulation of the media in Germany is in full bloom."

Germany's media regulator banned Russia's German-language TV channel RT Deutsch in January 2022, claiming that it lacked a valid license to operate in the country.

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Media 'censorship, manipulation' in Germany in 'full bloom,' Russia ... - Anadolu Agency | English

Not many people know that 16 November 2022 was the day that freedom of speech died on the internet. This was the day the European Unions Digital Services Act (DSA) came into law. Under the DSA, very large online platforms (VLOPs) with more than 45million monthly active users like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram will have to swiftly remove illegal content, hate speech and so-called disinformation from their platforms. Or they will face fines of up to six per cent of their annual global revenue. Larger platforms must be DSA compliant by this summer, while smaller platforms will be obliged to tackle this content from 2024 onwards.

The ramifications of this are immense. Not only will the DSA now enforce the regulation of content on the internet for the first time, but it is also set to become a global standard, not just a European one.

In recent years, the EU has largely realised its ambition to become a global regulatory superpower. The EU can dictate how any company worldwide must behave if it wants to operate in Europe, the worlds second-largest market. As a result, its strict regulatory standards often end up being adopted worldwide by both firms and other regulators, in what is known as the Brussels effect. Take the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a privacy law which came into force in May 2018. Among many other things, it requires individuals to give explicit consent before their data can be processed. These EU regulations have since become the global standard, and the same could now happen for the DSA.

The EUs enforcement of GDPR has been somewhat tentative. It has issued only about 1.7 billion in penalties since 2018, according to The Economist, which is peanuts in an industry that generates more than a trillion euros in revenue annually. But the EU seems to have learnt from this: the DSA has enormous enforcement capabilities built into it. The European Commission expects its internal industry watchdog to have over 100 full-time staff by 2024. Plus, contract workers and national experts will be expected to supervise Big Techs operations, too. It amounts to what EU internal-markets commissioner Thierry Breton calls a historic moment in digital regulation. The VLOPS are expected to fund this enforcement operation themselves, paying up to 0.05 per cent of their global annual turnover each year to the Commission.

This gives the EU an extraordinary amount of power. The regulation of the DSA will be overseen by the Commission itself, not an independent regulator. Whats more, the DSA includes a crisis-management mechanism, added last year in a last-minute amendment. The Commission argued it needs to be able to direct how platforms respond to events like the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Apparently, in a crisis, the anticipatory or voluntary nature of obligations on tech companies to tackle disinformation would be insufficient. Under the DSA, the Commission has given itself the power to determine whether such a crisis exists, defined as an objective risk of serious prejudice to public security or public health in the Union. Given the EUs willingness to weaponise the rule of law against its ideological opponents, such as Poland and Hungary, the potential this gives the EU to abuse this mechanism is worrying indeed.

Not only does this give the EU immense powers for censorship, it also represents a profound technocratic evasion of democratic accountability. The unelected European Commission is forcing Big Tech to police the internet to rein in what the EU deems to be unacceptable speech or disinformation. In so doing, the Commission has empowered itself to impose its values on the rest of us. If this draconian censorship were being enforced by a national government, we would at least be able to vote it out. But this is an altogether different scenario.

Under the new law, the undemocratic European Commission has empowered itself to regulate content on the internet without any hint of accountability to the millions of ordinary European citizens who use these services. By placing the onus on Big Tech to carry this out, the EU can censor at arms length, which lowers the risk of mass opposition from within Europe. It is cunning but cowardly. The EUs technocratic, anti-democratic impulse to censor is being outsourced to Big Tech. And all the leading Big Tech firms have agreed to operate under these regulations, even to the point of funding the EU regulatory body that will supervise their operations.

Big Tech has little choice but to comply. It is, after all, the price firms will pay to remain operational in Europe. Even Elon Musk has fallen in line, despite his promises last year to make Twitter a common digital town square with minimal censorship and maximal free expression. Good meeting with Thierry Breton regarding EU DSA, Musk tweeted in January. The goals of transparency, accountability and accuracy of information are aligned with ours, he said. Emboldened, the EU is now instructing Twitter to employ more content-moderation staff instead of relying on algorithmic moderation.

Perhaps we shouldnt be surprised that Big Tech is motivated by profit rather than principle. What is most shocking is how unaccountable and anti-democratic all this is. Every player in this sorry saga is unaccountable to ordinary people. Each hides behind the other to deflect criticism: the Commission claims its censorship laws are necessary to protect European citizens from the harm of unregulated social-media companies; Big Tech then complies with that law in order to serve its millions of users. While both sides claim to be doing this for the public, neither is remotely accountable to the public.

Worst of all, the EUs censorship regime is now going global. Last year, the EU opened a new office in Silicon Valley to forge closer relationships between EU regulators and Big Tech. Without Big Tech companies of its own, it is only through its regulatory muscle that the EU can claim to be a player on the world stage. Indeed, Washington now appears set to follow suit, with President Biden calling for bi-partisan measures to regulate Big Tech earlier this year.

The DSA has set a precedent that online content should be regulated, and this has now been accepted on principle. As a result, freedom of speech on the internet is effectively dead killed by the EUs undemocratic and authoritarian Digital Services Act.

Dr Norman Lewis is managing director of Futures Diagnosis and a visiting research fellow of MCC Brussels.

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The EUs censorship regime is about to go global - Spiked