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ENTERTAINMENT

December 19, 2013 | By Hector Tobar

This week, the Kids' Right to Read Project, a group that monitors book censorship, said the number of challenges to books reported to the group increased by 53% in 2013. Project coordinator Acacia O'Connor told Shelf Awareness that she could not explain the increase, but that many involved writers of color, including Sherman Alexie, Toni Morrison and Alice Walker. (All three also appear regularly on American Booksellers Assn. lists of challenged books.) Whether or not patterns like this are the result of coordination between would-be censors across the country is impossible to say, O'Connor told Shelf Awareness.

ENTERTAINMENT

July 17, 2013 | By Julie Makinen

BEIJING -- Chinese authorities said Wednesday they would relax some restrictions on film, TV and radio productions, though the immediate impact of the changes was unclear and several prominent movie directors said they did not believe the reforms were game-changers. Chinese filmmakers will now be allowed to shoot ordinary content movies after only submitting a synopsis to censors rather than a full script, according to an announcement from the State Council, China's cabinet. But the finished products will still have to be screened for censors before they are approved to be played in theaters.

ENTERTAINMENT

June 26, 2013 | By Alexander Nazaryan

Eight years ago, a New York journalist named Peter Braunstein, then 41, forced his way into the apartment of a 34-year-old Manhattan woman by pretending to be a firefighter. He proceeded to drug the woman, a former colleague, and sexually assault her for more than 12 hours. Now, as he serves a lengthy prison sentence in upstate New York, Braunstein is apparently upset that corrections officials there are not allowing him to read Jaycee Dugard's A Stolen Life, the 2011 memoir of a young woman's kidnapping and 18-year imprisonment by a California couple, Phillip and Nancy Garrido, which ended in 2009.

WORLD

April 12, 2013 | By Janet Stobart, This post has been corrected. See note below.

LONDON -- The British Broadcasting Corp. faced a dilemma Friday: Would it play "Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead" when everyone knows the song has become a biting reference to the late Margaret Thatcher? The network's solution: turn the song into a sound bite. Amid divisive reactions to the death of the former prime minister on Monday, anti-Thatcher protesters have campaigned to bring the song from the 1939 film "The Wizard of Oz" to the top of the charts in time for a BBC program Sunday night that counts down the current top hits.

WORLD

January 9, 2013 | By Barbara Demick and David Pierson, Los Angeles Times

GUANGZHOU, China - Like wedding guests separated across the aisle, the protesters assembled on either side of a gated driveway at the headquarters of the embattled Southern Weekly newspaper. To the right, several dozen supporters of the newspaper staff waved banners calling for an end to censorship of the Chinese press. "Freedom!" they chanted. "Democracy!" "Constitutional rights!" To the left, beneath fluttering red Chinese flags and hoisted portraits of Mao Tse-tung, a battalion of mostly older men shouted into a microphone, trying to drown out their ideological rivals.

WORLD

January 8, 2013 | By Barbara Demick

GUANGZHOU, China -- Communist Party officials appear to have defused a potential crisis over media censorship in Guangzhou with a compromise that persuaded journalists at a maverick newspaper to publish Thursday as planned. The journalists at Southern Weekly, one of China's boldest and most popular publications, had threatened to strike in protest over a New Year's editorial on political reform that was watered down by propaganda officials. The exact terms of the deal were not released, but it appears that the journalists agreed to refrain from airing their grievances in public about Tuo Zhen, the propaganda chief for Guangdong province accused of the heavy-handed censorship that sparked the standoff.

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Articles about Censorship - latimes

In August, 1942 a newspaper columnist received a "very stern letter" from the U.S. government because she had described the weather during a trip with her husband. Eleanor Roosevelt promised not to do it again.

That the First Lady would be so reprimanded demonstrates the scope and power of American censoring authorities during WW2. As part of the 1941 War Powers Act, the Lady's husband created the Office of Censorship, and appointed Byron Price, a respected Associated Press editor, to run it. Price convinced the President to let the media censor itself. He issued guidelines, but they came down to one pre-publication question for reporters: Is this information I would to like to have if I were the enemy? 14,462 employees of the Office of Censorship asked the same question, while monitoring all U.S. media.

Voluntary self-censorship worked well, even if it meant battlefront reportage that ran heavily to human-interest stories. As requested, newspapers didn't publish photographs of dead American troops until 1944, when the government wanted to motivate home front support. Reporters knew the war's biggest storythe coming atom bombtwo years in advance, and kept the secret. They knew the war's longest story tooPresident Roosevelt's failing healthand kept that secret. In fact, Price contended that of the thousands of stories filed, only once did a U.S. journalist intentionally break the rules.

Some book publishers seemed eager to censor themselves. Existing manuscripts critical of some allies, for instance, weren't released until after the war. Publisher Bennett Cerf even suggested to his colleagues that they "check their backlists carefully," and eliminate any books that suggested Russia, "our (new) friend in need," was a less-than-splendid operation.

By 1942, 10,000 civil servants were reading and censoring a million pieces of mail weekly, especially those to or from POW's and other internees. (At the same time, they watched for potentially valuable information. Loose lips could also sink the other guy's ships.) GI's writing home-all subject to censorship by officers-were prohibited from mentioning anything about the military situation around them. Their families were encouraged to write back frequently, sending light, happy letters that were non-specific about life and especially work at home. Allegedly, that's what combat soldiers wanted to read, even if, as in one case, a D-Day veteran learned all about how difficult Pledge Week had been at Kappa Kappa Gamma.

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The Perilous Fight . Censorship | PBS

Censorship blocks something from being read, heard, or seen. If you've ever heard the sound of bleeping when someone is speaking on television, that's censorship.

To "censor" is to review something and to choose to remove or hide parts of it that are considered unacceptable. Censorship is the name for the process or idea of keeping things like obscene word or graphic images from an audience. There is also such a thing as self-censorship, which is when you refrain from saying certain things or possibly re-wording them depending on who is listening.

Definitions of censorship

1

censorship in the form of prudish expurgation

censorship because of perceived obscenity or immorality

the act of deleting something written or printed

all types of censorship conducted by personnel of the armed forces

censorship under civil authority of communications entering or leaving of crossing the borders of the United States or its territories or possessions

military censorship of civilian communications (correspondence or printed matter of films) entering or leaving of circulating within territories controlled by armed forces

security review of news (including all information or material intended for dissemination to the public) subject to the jurisdiction of the armed forces

military censorship of communication to and from prisoners of war and civilian internees held by the armed forces

military censorship of personal communications to or from persons in the armed forces

intelligence activities concerned with identifying and counteracting the threat to security posed by hostile intelligence organizations or by individuals engaged in espionage or sabotage or subversion or terrorism

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censorship - Dictionary Definition : Vocabulary.com

One of the early nicknames for the Internet was the "information superhighway" because it was supposed to provide the average person with fast access to a practically limitless amount of data. For many users, that's exactly what accessing the Internet is like. For others, it's as if the information superhighway has some major roadblocks in the form of Internet censorship.

The motivations for censorship range from well-intentioned desires to protect children from unsuitable content to authoritarian attempts to control a nation's access to information. No matter what the censors' reasons are, the end result is the same: They block access to the Web pages they identify as undesirable.

Internet censorship isn't just a parental or governmental tool. There are several software products on the consumer market that can limit or block access to specific Web sites. Most people know these programs as Web filters. Censorship opponents have another name for them: Censorware.

While there are some outspoken supporters and opponents of Internet censorship, it's not always easy to divide everyone into one camp or another. Not everyone uses the same tactics to accomplish goals. Some opponentsof censorship challenge government policies in court. Others take the role of information freedom fighters, providing people with clandestine ways to access information.

In this article, we'll look at the different levels of Internet censorship, from off-the-shelf Web filters to national policy. We'll also learn about the ways some people are trying to fight censorship.

We'll start off by looking at Internet censorship on the domestic level.

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How Internet Censorship Works - HowStuffWorks

In unprecedented criticism of the White House, 38 journalism groups have assailed the president's team for censoring media coverage, limiting access to top officials and overall politically-driven suppression of the news.

In a letter to President Obama, the 38, led by the Society of Professional Journalists, said efforts by government officials to stifle or block coverage has grown for years and reached a high-point under his administration despite Obama's 2008 campaign promise to provide transparency.

Worse, they said: As access for reporters has been cut off, the administration has opened the door to lobbyists, special interests and people with money.

And as a result, they wrote, Obama only has himself to blame for the current cynicism of his administration. You need look no further than your own administration for a major source of that frustration politically driven suppression of news and information about federal agencies. We call on you to take a stand to stop the spin and let the sunshine in, wrote David Cuillier, president of SPJ.

More from the Washington Examiner

Nearly three-quarters of Republicans approve of the criteria that have been put in place.

08/04/15 12:08 PM

The administration has dismissed similar charges from other journalism groups, notably the White House Correspondents Association, but the new letter sent Tuesday provided several examples of censorship and efforts to block reporter access. Among them:

Officials blocking reporters requests to talk to specific staff people.

Excessive delays in answering interview requests that stretch past reporters deadlines.

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Censorship: 38 journalism groups slam Obama's 'politically ...