Playing in Moscow, cancelled in London: the censorship of Exhibit B
Full discussion: http://voiceofrussia.com/uk/news/2014_10_11/Playing-in-Moscow-cancelled-in-London-the-censorship-of-Exhibit-B-9301/ "Both unbearable and ess...
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Playing in Moscow, cancelled in London: the censorship of Exhibit B - Video
Ebola, Censorship, Jesse Ventura w/Guest John B. Wells
John B. Well joins the guys at Into The Black Hole Podcast to dicuss Ebola, his departure from Coast to Coast AM, censorship, Jesse Ventura, and more. This i...
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Ebola, Censorship, Jesse Ventura w/Guest John B. Wells - Video
Seamus Dooley of the NUJ said the union had grave concerns about the implications for the possible costs for any media organisation faced with this type of bill.
The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) has said it is bitterly disappointed at the rejection by the European Court of Human Rights of a case taken by The Irish Times over the costs of its successful legal battle with the Mahon tribunal.
The Strasbourg court ruled against two Irish Times journalists this week in their claim that the Supreme Court had interfered with their right to protect their sources by making the newspaper pay the costs of its dispute with the planning tribunal.
The case followed the publication of a story in 2006 which revealed that the tribunal was investigating a number of payments to then taoiseach Bertie Ahern. The Supreme Court ruled that Irish Times journalist Colm Keena and the papers then editor, Geraldine Kennedy, should not be ordered to reveal their sources, but directed the paper to pay all costs of the court proceedings.
In a majority decision, the European court rejected the papers application and found the claims of interference with freedom of expression to be manifestly ill-founded.
Reacting to the decision, the NUJ said it was disappointed by the decision of the court and the tone of its judgment.
The case is recognised internationally as having significance for the protection of sources, and having the freedom to protect sources but having to incur punitive costs to protect that freedom seems to me to be contradictory, said Samus Dooley, the NUJs Irish secretary.
We would have grave concerns about the implications of the possible costs for The Irish Times and for any media organisation faced with this type of bill.
The tribunal served a bill of costs on The Irish Times in October 2010, claiming the sum of 393,055.42.
In its case to the European court, the newspaper claimed there was a strong chilling effect to the Supreme Courts decision, since it was clear to the press, to potential sources and to the public that journalists could be compelled, under the threat of an order of costs, to disclose the source of information given in confidence. The court rejected this, a conclusion Mr Dooley said showed a worrying naivete on the courts part. The difficulty will be now, for any editor, to take a decision which has potential financial implications. Thats where the chill effect comes in, he said.
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NUJ bitterly disappointed by Irish Times costs decision
Houston recently passed an ordinance through its city council that has sparked quite a bit of controversy among conservative evangelicals. The Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO), a broad-sweeping, left-leaning law trumpeted by Houston and its openly gay mayor, Annise Parker, is supposed to protect gay, lesbian and transgender people from discrimination. All well and good, but according to the Independent Journal Review, the ordinance to ensure nondiscrimination discriminates against those of faith who oppose it.
Five pastors, members of Houston's conservative, evangelical base, oppose HERO, and the pastors aren't being too quiet about it. They're circulating petitions and gathering signatures in an attempt to get the law repealed.
Houston then issued subpoenas for the pastors to turn over All speeches, presentations, or sermons related to HERO, the Petition, Mayor Annise Parker, homosexuality, or gender identity prepared by, delivered by, revised by, or approved by you or in your possession, so that it could, according to Time.com, determine how the preachers instructed their congregants in their push to get the law repealed.
No one was surprised when the pastors filed suit.
The blowback to the subpoenas was so intense that last Friday, Houston backpedaled and dropped the word sermon from the subpoena, as well as ...requests for pastors' teachings on sexuality and gender identity. The city still wants to see all the speeches, presentations, documents, text messages and emails that relate to the pastors' work to get HERO repealed, though.
Greg Abbott, the Texas attorney general and a Republican candidate for governor, sent a letter to Mayor Parker's office requesting she immediately drop the subpoena requests. As reported on Christianitytoday.com, he wrote: Government officials must exercise the utmost care when our work touches on religious matters. Your aggressive and invasive subpoenas show no regard for the very serious First Amendment considerations at stake.
The subpoenas are censorship, pure and simple, and they blur the line of demarcation that is supposed to separate church from state.
After the outcry, Mayor Parker broke out the politician's primer and issued a well-crafted statement that said the subpoenas were overly broad and would be amended. News flash, Mayor Parker. It's still censorship. Tossing a few deck chairs off the Titanic didn't stop the ship from sinking and deleting a few words from an overly broad subpoena won't make it anything other than what it is religious intimidation.
Dr. Ed Young, pastor of the Second Baptist Church in Houston, jokingly tells me he is happy to send his sermons to the mayor and has done so voluntarily in the past as a form of what Baptists call witnessing to the Gospel of Christ. He says he did not receive a subpoena. The key word here is voluntarily.
For a government official to try to intimidate or censor speech from the pulpit, or any other form of communication, is clearly unconstitutional and this effort by Houston's mayor should not survive a single court challenge.
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Houstons censorship challenge
Censorship is suppression of speech or other communication which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient to the general body of people as determined by a government, media outlet, or other controlling body. Rationale The rationale for censorship is different for various types of information censored: Moral censorship is the removal of materials that are obscene or otherwise considered morally questionable. Pornography, for example, is often censored under this rationale, especially child pornography, which is illegal and censored in many jurisdictions in the world. Military censorship is the process of keeping military intelligence and tactics confidential and away from the enemy. This is used to counter espionage, which is the process of gleaning military information. Very often, militaries will also attempt to suppress politically inconvenient information even if that information has no actual intelligence or combat-tactical value. Political censorship occurs when governments hold back information from their citizens. This is often done to exert control over the populace and prevent free expression that might foment rebellion. Religious censorship is the means by which any material considered objectionable by a certain faith is removed. This often involves a dominant religion forcing limitations on less prevalent ones. Alternatively, one religion may shun the works of another when they believe the content is not appropriate for their faith. Corporate censorship is the process by which editors in corporate media outlets intervene to disrupt the publishing of information that portrays their business or business partners in a negative light, or intervene to prevent alternate offers from reaching public exposure. Political Strict censorship existed in the Eastern Bloc. Throughout the bloc, the various ministries of culture held a tight rein on their writers. Cultural products there reflected the propaganda needs of the state. Party-approved censors exercised strict control in the early years. In the Stalinist period, even the weather forecasts were changed if they had the temerity to suggest that the sun might not shine on May Day. Under Nicolae Ceauescu in Romania, weather reports were doctored so that the temperatures were not seen to rise above or fall below the levels which dictated that work must stop.
Independent journalism did not exist in the Soviet Union until Mikhail Gorbachev became its leader; all reporting was directed by the Communist Party or related organizations. Pravda, the predominant newspaper in the Soviet Union, had a monopoly. Foreign newspapers were available only if they were published by Communist Parties sympathetic to the Soviet Union.
Possession and use of copying machines was tightly controlled in order to hinder production and distribution of samizdat, illegal self-published books and magazines. Possession of even a single samizdat manuscript such as a book by Andrei Sinyavsky was a serious crime which might involve a visit from the KGB. Another outlet for works which did not find favor with the authorities was publishing abroad.
The People's Republic of China, which continues Communist rule in politics, if not in the controlled economy, employs some 30,000 'Internet police' to monitor the internet and popular search engines such as Google and Yahoo.
Iraq under Baathist Saddam Hussein had much the same techniques of press censorship as did Romania under Nicolae Ceauescu but with greater potential violence.
Critics of the Campaign finance reform in the United States claim that this reform imposes widespread restrictions on political speech.
During World War I letters written by British soldiers would have to go through censorship. This consisted of officers going through letters with a black marker and crossing out anything which might compromise operational secrecy before the letter was sent. The World War II catchphrase "Loose lips sink ships" was used as a common justification to exercise official wartime censorship and encourage individual restraint when sharing potentially sensitive information.
An example of "sanitization" policies comes from the USSR under Joseph Stalin, where publicly used photographs were often altered to remove people whom Stalin had condemned to execution. Though past photographs may have been remembered or kept, this deliberate and systematic alteration to all of history in the public mind is seen as one of the central themes of Stalinism and totalitarianism.
Censorship is occasionally carried out to aid authorities or to protect an individual, as with some kidnappings when attention and media coverage of the victim can sometimes be seen as unhelpful.
In the context of secondary school education, the way facts and history are presented greatly influences the interpretation of contemporary thought, opinion and socialization. One argument for censoring the type of information disseminated is based on the inappropriate quality of such material for the young. The use of the "inappropriate" distinction is in itself controversial, as it changed heavily. A Ballantine Books version of the book Fahrenheit 451 which is the version used by most school classes contained approximately 75 separate edits, omissions, and changes from the original Bradbury manuscript.
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Censorship in America: What is Censorship?