Mediaboss Marketing

A controversial op-ed published in the New York Times earlier this month argued that it was reasonable for universities to ban lectures by speakers such as Milo Yiannopoulos on the grounds that certain speech can constitute violence. Author Lisa Feldman Barrett, a professor of psychology at Northeastern University, sought to provide substantive weight to a refrain used increasingly by liberal campus activists in their attempts to censor controversial speakers, most of whom happen to be right-of-center.

In that respect, her op-ed was a welcome contribution to the discussion, since these activists rarely appear capable of offering substantive defenses of this contention, which is key to their pleas for censorship.

But if Barrett's argument is the best their side has, and given her credentials I imagine that's the case, they're still in trouble.

In her op-ed, Barrett did concede that "offensiveness is not bad for your body and brain."

"In contrast," she asserted, "long stretches of simmering stress" can be "bad for your nervous system."

If you spend a lot of time in a harsh environment worrying about your safety, that's the kind of stress that brings on illness and remodels your brain. That's also true of a political climate in which groups of people endlessly hurl hateful words at one another, and of rampant bullying in school or on social media. A culture of constant, casual brutality is toxic to the body, and we suffer for it.

Barrett concluded, "That's why it's reasonable, scientifically speaking, not to allow a provocateur and hate monger like Milo Yiannopoulos to speak at your school." Yiannopoulos, per her assessment, "is part of something noxious, a campaign of abuse."

"There is nothing to be gained from debating him, for debate is not what he is offering," she wrote.

But isn't that a different argument? Is Yiannopoulos objectionable because he's not offering debate or because he creates "long stretches of simmering stress"? And how does one hour of Yiannopoulos' speech on one night of the school year reasonably create such a "long stretch of simmering stress"?

Barrett compares Yiannopoulos to Charles Murray writing, "On the other hand, when the political scientist Charles Murray argues that genetic factors help account for racial disparities in I.Q. scores, you might find his view to be repugnant and misguided, but it's only offensive. It is offered as a scholarly hypothesis to be debated, not thrown like a grenade."

But where is that line drawn, and who gets to draw it?

There are stark differences between the two men in question, but the same arguments about speech are made to block more scholarly speakers such as Ben Shapiro who don't shy from communicating with a bolder style, but do so with the intention of facilitating a productive conversation. (That, for the record, is why I've argued elevating Yiannopoulos, a non-conservative who is perceived as one, confounds the larger debate about campus censorship.)

Notably, Yiannopoulos claims to have the same intentions of "offering debate" as Murray and Shapiro. Barrett can argue that's insincere or inaccurate, but his allies, and some of his detractors, make reasonable arguments otherwise.

What is the "scientific" explanation as to why his speech is "part of a campaign of abuse"? Many would (wrongfully) argue the exact same is true of Murray's speech. Unless Barrett can supply convincing answers to these questions, proving exactly what words cross the line into psychologically-violent territory, her attempt to draw objective parameters is still just as subjective as the ones one made by protesters of Murray's lectures, with whom she disagrees.

If Barrett could objectively prove how one hour of speech creates "a culture of constant, casual brutality," and why we should trust the arbiters of that definition, her argument would be more persuasive. In the meantime, students should still consider themselves psychologically capable of tolerating hour-long intervals of offensive speech, "noxious" as it may be, and attend a few lectures when they return to school in the fall.

Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.

Read more from the original source:
Another failed argument for campus censorship - Washington Examiner

Jordanian police outside Israeli embassy in Amman . (photo credit:SOCIAL MEDIA)

The world knew about it, reported on it but in Israel there was nothing. For about 11 hours between Sunday night Monday morning, Israelis were forbidden from reporting on the events taking place in Jordan.

The fact that social media was full of the news about the anapparent attacknear the Israeli embassy in Amman and stories had been published by Reuters, Fox News, the Independent and elsewhere, meant nothing. In Israel, journalists could not send out a tweet or post a word on Facebook. Everything about the attack was banned for publication by the Military Censor's Office.

Shortly before the incident was placed under censorship, some information got through. Zionist Union MK Ksenia Svetlova managed to launch a tweet saying only that there was a dangerous security incident at the embassy in Jordan.

Initially, reports were unclear, but it was learned that at least one Israeli security officer at the embassy had been injured after he was stabbed by a Jordanian who was subsequently shot. Svetlova called on the Jordanian government to take all the necessary steps to ensure the security of the personnel at the embassy.

According to a Foreign Ministry statement, the Israeli had been stabbed in the stomach in Amman by a man with a screwdriver moving furniture in one of the residences in the embassy compound Sunday night. The guard shot the assailant identified as Mohammed Zakaria al-Jawawdeh, 17 in self defense. Al-Jawawdeh was killed, and another man at the scene the owner of the compound was injured and later succumbed to his wounds.

These details became available as the night progressed and foreign outlets, including news agencies, reported on the developments. But in Israel, complete radio silence.

Of course anybody with internet access and basic English or Arabic reading skills (or the ability to use online translation services) could learn all about it easily. News reports appeared throughout the entire international media - on Reuters, Fox News, the Independent and elsewhere. Everyone was reporting about the incident. The only ones who didn't know were Israelis.

Slightly before midnight, the Jordanian General Security Administration released an official statement saying that the incident was being investigated. But Israeli media couldn't even report that.

Reporters couldn't even alert readers in Israel to the fact that the Foreign Ministry decided to evacuate all it staff from the Israeli embassy in Amman out of concern that the incident may cause riots outside the embassy, or that the move was stymied by Jordan.

It was that reason that the full censorship of the incident remained in place until Monday morning, hours after the incident. International and local Jordanian media, who began reporting the event shortly after it occurred continued to release details which Israeli media and foreign journalists with Israeli press cards were barred from reporting on.

Censorship was finally lifted early Monday morning. At this point Israel still has not fully evacuated embassy staff and the Jordanians have still refused to let the guard be transferred back to Israel. Jerusalem claims the guard enjoys diplomatic immunity and is exempt from investigation by Jordanian authorities.

The decision to leave Israelis in the dark was criticized by Israeli journalists and politicians. Unlike previous incidents in this case Israelis were also prohibited from citing foreign media sources for the story.

At a time when information flows freely on the internet, many questioned the need for the censorship, which journalists and pundits argued Monday morning, was out of touch.

More details to follow.... maybe.

Share on facebook

Link:
Censor keeps Israelis in the dark as world learns of Jordan embassy saga - The Jerusalem Post

Hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets of Moscow on July 23 to protest Internet censorship and demand the resignation of the head of Russia's state media regulator.

The protest came amid a broad crackdown on online speech in recent years that rights activists say is targeting legitimate dissent under the pretext of battling extremism.

Organizers of the rally, which received official permission from Moscow authorities, called for the rehabilitation of Internet users convicted for reposting material on social networks.

Protesters also called for the sacking of Aleksandr Zharov, the head of Roskomnadzor, the state agency that plays a central role in regulating online speech.

The protest came two days after Russia's lower house of parliament passed a bill that would prohibit the use of Internet proxy services, including virtual private networks, or VPNs.

The bill, approved in its third and final reading on July 21, would also ban the anonymous use of mobile messaging services.

It will face a single vote in the upper house before going to President Vladimir Putin, who rarely rejects bills adopted by the Kremlin-controlled legislature.

Russian officials have dismissed accusations by rights groups and Western governments that authorities are stepping up efforts to stifle online dissent.

The rest is here:
Russians Protesters Rally Against Internet Censorship - RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty

By Nancy Powell

If there was one takeaway from Thursdays CBLDF: She Changed Comics panel, it was the critical role that women play in advocating for the key social and cultural issues in todays world, and that these women as writers, artists and historians act as the collective voice to challenge the status quo.

Betsy Gomez (She Changed Comics) moderated a roundtable discussion of women who have created and continue to create some of the most important works in comics today. The panelists included Joyce Farmer (Special Exits, Tits & Clits), Caitlin McCabe (She Changed Comics contributor), Thi Bui (The Best We Could Do), and Newberry Honors and Eisner Award-winning writer Jennifer Holm (Babymouse series, Squish).

Gomez started off the hour-long discussion by asking each woman how she came into comics. Farmer read comics with her father and found comics to be an easier medium to communicate ideas than writing. Farmers $1 per week allowance allowed her to buy five candy bars and five comics.

McCabe had a more unconventional childhood; she grew up in a family that encouraged the reading controversial materials, including comics, and so enamored was McCable of the medium that she went on to earn a Masters degree in the subject matter. Bui discovered comics at an older age, concentrating mostly on women-written or women-centered comics.

Like Farmer, Holms father shared with her and her brothers his love of comic strips, such as Prince Valiant and Flash Gordon, from his youth. I wanted the girl version of Peter Parker, a teenage version that I could relate to,

Gomez then asked each of the panelists to share their experience of creating comics. Farmers Abortion Eve in 1973 as a way to distribute information about birth control birth control before Planned Parenthood took off. Her anti-Catholic stance on birth control made the comic unsaleable, and the comic was not well received because it did not fit into the underground comics genre. As history would play out, Abortion Eve is being reproduced in full by the University of Pennsylvania and has since increased in relevance as a result of the ongoing debate on womens reproductive rights.

But Farmers first comic, Tits & Clits, found itself on the banned books list after a Laguna Beach, California bookseller, Fahrenheit 451, got in trouble for selling it. Farmer was advised by the ACLU that she could potentially lose everything if she continued to publish the title, and while the suit was thrown out on account of its violating free speech, the effect of that experience was traumatizing. Censorship damages the creativeness of people who are working, Farmer said.

Buis call to creativity occurred in response to her anger about the incorrect stereotypes of the Vietnameses role in the Vietnam War. At the time, she was also trying to figure out her own origins, so The Best We Could Do became as much a project that was personal as it was a historical journey. Comics were my revenge against Hollywood. I didnt have a Hollywood budget, but I had pens, and I could draw, remarked Bui.

On the other end of the spectrum, Holms involvement with comics was family business; her brother Matt was an illustrator, which made collaboration easy. The comics you read as a kid stay with you forever, recalled Holm, who found plenty of opportunity to become involved in a medium she loved by writing kids comics. They [publishers] are open to taking risks on graphic novelist and women. It may not be Marvel material, but Scholastic snapped it up. Childrens publishers are willing to take risks, and they really helped the whole movement start.

McCabe used her scholarship in the genre to advocate for notable, but lesser known, female comic book writers as a contributor to She Changed Comics. Comics scholarship is really importanthow it impacts our lives, how it makes us feel, and how it makes us represent ourselves.

Gomez final question revolved around the issue of censorship, specifically regarding the overrepresentation of women on the censorship lists. Bui felt that people used censorship as a weapon to shut down important voices. McCabe went further to highlight the point that women comic book creators do not represent the status quo, and any challenges to the status quo could scare people. Holm punctuated the point by citing the popularity and performance of bestselling, questionable titles co-authored by women, such as This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki, Drama by Raina Telgemeier, and Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi.

Farmer ended the discussion by pointing out an obvious fact; that these five women were sitting in a panel and discussing the success of their own careers, a defiant contradiction to naysayers questioning womens impact on the medium. And each of the panelists confirmed, through personal experience and in their discussion of upcoming projects, that they continue to push the boundaries on important cultural and social issues.

See more here:
Women Comics Creators Talk Censorship, History and Social Relevance at CBLDF: She Changed Comics SDCC '17 - Comics Beat

Sina and Tencent, which own Weibo and WeChat respectively, did not respond to requests for comment.

While Liu's case is an outlier in terms of the intense efforts to wipe out all mention of the deceased activist, it is in keeping with trends in Chinese online censorship that have been building since Xi assumed power in 2012.

China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Industry and Information Technology did not respond to faxed requests for comment.

This month saw new bricks added to the wall, as Beijing went after two means of bypassing its controls.

That would be an extreme step, as VPNs are also used by many companies to enable secure networking and file sharing between offices.

Previously Beijing has tolerated commercial services offered to foreigners to allow them to access banned sites like Facebook and Twitter while they're in China --international hotels in major Chinese cities have also been known to offer this service.

Lokman Tsui, an expert on censorship at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said it was "possible that some of the newer developments we have seen are experimental in nature, e.g. let's try and float this to see how well it works ... and see what public reaction we get."

Even if the VPN ban does not pan out, Tsui said, the direction things are going in is clear, and it's not positive.

It was one startlingly at odds with the free and open network expounded by the internet's inventors. In Xi's view, sovereignty, not freedom or communication or sharing, was the most important factor in online policy.

"Cyberspace is not a domain beyond the rule of law," Xi said. "Greater efforts should be made to strengthen ethical standards and promote civilized behavior."

Instead of the world wide web as we know it, countries would each maintain their own national internet, by force if necessary, with the border controls and immigration standards they see fit.

Peter Micek, general counsel for Access Now, which lobbies in favor of an open internet, said Chinese officials and technicians are increasingly working to water down protections for online freedoms at the United Nations and other bodies which oversee internet standards and governance.

"More and more Chinese engineers and engineers from Chinese companies are proposing and developing and adopting standards," he added.

Technical bodies like the International Telecommunication Union, the World Wide Web Consortium and others have huge influence on how the global internet operates, but sometimes with little transparency and limited democratic input.

"That's one place where quietly there is a more concerted effort (by China) to take control of what the internet actually is," Micek said.

China's efforts to influence global internet policy are largely designed to legitimize -- and prevent other countries from complaining about -- Beijing's existing controls on expression online, but they could have far-reaching consequences.

"A lot of governments would like to follow China's lead, and exercise if not complete control then effective control over the boundaries of what people can say and do online," Micek said.

Nor is the situation likely to improve anytime soon in China, said CUHK's Tsui.

"Other governments have definitely gotten worse at pushing back at Chinese censorship," he said, pointing to a push by the UK, US and others to water down encryption protections in the name of fighting terrorism.

"This allows China to say 'what we are doing is not so different'," he said. "Overall the trend is towards more censorship .. so the bar is getting lower, meaning it is easier for China to go even lower."

Back in China, controls are expected to ramp up even further as the country nears the all-important Communist Party Congress, the once every five years handover of power, at which the next Politburo Standing Committee, which runs the country, will be chosen. Some have suggested there may be a corresponding relaxation following the meeting, but experts CNN spoke to were skeptical.

Charlie Smith, co-founder of censorship watchdog GreatFire.org, said it was a mistake "to tie any crackdown on internet freedom in China to specific events or characters."

"Things started trending in the wrong direction when Xi Jinping took power," he said. "Regardless of what meetings are on the horizon, the authorities have been instructed to entirely control what people say, read, watch and hear on the internet."

Tsui said new trends like the WhatsApp block and crackdown on VPNs will either continue "or they are filing this knowledge away for future reference, to try again at some later date."

"The (Party Congress) is not the cure for the situation, it's not even a pain killer" Badiucao said. "I see no hope or willingness for the CCP to make a positive change."

More here:
China internet censorship: WhatsApp crackdown only scratches the ... - CNN