Censorship

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The neutrality of this article is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page.

This article does not cite its references or sources. Please help improve this article by introducing appropriate citations. (help, get involved!) This article has been tagged since October 2006.

For other uses, see Censor.

Censorship is the editing, removing, or otherwise changing speech and other forms of human expression. In some cases, it is exercised by governing bodies but it is always and continuously carried out by the mass media. The visible motive of censorship is often to stabilize, improve or persuade the society group that the censoring organization would have control over. It is most commonly applied to acts that occur in public circumstances, and most formally involves the suppression of ideas by criminalizing or regulating expression. Furthermore, discussion of censorship often includes less formal means of controlling perceptions by excluding various ideas from mass communication. What is censored may range from specific words to entire concepts and it may be influenced by value systems; but currently, the most common reasons for censoring ("omitting") information are the particular interests of the distribution companies of news and entertainment, their owners, and their commercial and political connections.

Sanitization (removal) and whitewashing are almost interchangeable terms that refer to a particular form of censorship via omission, which seeks to "clean up" the portrayal of particular issues and/or facts that are already known, but that may be in conflict with the point of view of the censor. Some may consider extreme political correctness to be related, as a socially-imposed (rather than governmentally imposed) type of restriction, which, if taken to extremes, may qualify as self-censorship.

[edit] Types

Most public speech depends on an organized forum such as a court or town meeting, or on technologies such as paper, the printing press, radio, television, or the Internet. In each case, only a minority of people have initially had free access to the medium of public communication. Most often, censorship does not seek to ban certain ideas "in a vacuum," but rather to restrict what may be said in particular media of communication.

In England, censorship began with the introduction of copyright laws, which gave the Crown the permission to license publishing. Without government approval, printing was not allowed. For a court or other governmental body to prevent a person from speaking or publishing before the act has taken place is sometimes called prior restraint, which may be viewed as worse than punishment received after someone speaks, as in libel suits.

Censorship can be explicit, as in laws passed to prevent select positions from being published or propagated (e.g., the People's Republic of China, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Australia, and The United States), or it can be implicit, taking the form of intimidation by government, where people are afraid to express or support certain opinions for fear of losing their jobs, their position in society, their credibility, or their lives. The latter form is similar to McCarthyism and is prevalent in a number of countries including the United States.

A National Geographic Magazine censored by Iranian authorities. The offending cover was about the subject of love, and the picture hidden beneath the white sticker is of an embracing couple^[1]. February 2006.

The Rhodesia Herald of September 21, 1966.

Wieczór Wrocławia" - Daily newspaper of Wrocław, People's Republic of Poland, March 20-21-21, 1981, with censor intervention on first and last pages --- under the headlines "Co zdarzyło się w Bydgoszczy?" (What happened in Bydgoszcz?) and "Pogotowie strajkowe w całym kraju" (Country-wide strike alert). The censor had removed a section regarding the strike alert; hence the workers in the printing house had decided to also blank out a second official propaganda section. The right-hand page also includes a hand-written confirmation of that decision by the local "Solidarność" Trade Union.

[edit] Subject matter

The rationale for censorship is different for various types of data censored. There are five main types:

• Moral censorship is the means by which any material that contains what the censor deems to be of questionable morality is removed. The censoring body disapproves of what it deems to be the values behind the material and limits access to it. Pornography, for example, is often censored under this rationale. In another example, graphic violence resulted in the censorship of the 1932 "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" movie entitled "Scarface" originally completed in 1930.
• 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. Additionally, military censorship may involve a restriction on information or media coverage that can be released to the public such as in Iraq, where the U.S. government restricts the photographing or filming of dead soldiers or their caskets and its subsequent broadcast in the U.S. This is done to avoid public reaction similar to that which occurred during the Vietnam War or the Iran Hostage Crisis.
• Political censorship occurs when governments conceal secrets from their citizens. The logic is to prevent the free expression needed to revolt. Democracies do not officially approve of political censorship but often endorse it privately. Any dissent against the government is thought to be a “weakness” for the enemy to exploit. Campaign tactics are also often kept secret: see the Watergate scandal.
• Religious censorship is the means by which any material objectionable to a certain faith is removed. This often involves a dominant religion forcing limitations on less dominant 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 halt the publishing of information that portrays their business or business partners in a negative light. Privately owned corporations in the business of reporting the news also sometimes refuse to distribute information due to the potential loss of advertiser revenue or shareholder value which adverse publicity may bring.

[edit] State secrets and unwanted attention

In wartime, explicit censorship is carried out with the intent of preventing the release of information that might be useful to an enemy. Typically it involves keeping times or locations secret, or delaying the release of information (e.g., an operational objective) until it is of no possible use to enemy forces. The moral issues here are often seen as somewhat different, as release of tactical information usually presents a greater risk of casualties among one's own forces and could possibly lead to loss of the overall conflict. 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.

A well-known example of sanitization policies comes from the USSR under Josef 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. More recently, the official exclusion of television crews from locales where coffins of military dead were in transit has been cited as a form of censorship. This particular example obviously represents an incomplete or failed form of censorship, as numerous photographs of these coffins are often printed in newspapers, magazines, and on the web.

[edit] School textbooks

The content of school textbooks is often the issue of debate, since their target audience is young people, and the term "whitewashing" is the one commonly used to refer to selective removal of critical or damaging evidence or comment. The reporting of military atrocities in history is extremely controversial, as in the case of the Nanking Massacre, the Holocaust (or Holocaust denial), and the Winter Soldier Investigation of the Vietnam War. The representation of every society's flaws or misconduct is typically downplayed in favor of a more nationalist, favorable or patriotic view.

Also, some religious groups have at times attempted to block the teaching of evolution in schools, as evolutionary theory appears to contradict their religious beliefs. The teaching of sexual education in school and the inclusion of information about sexual health and contraceptive practices in school textbooks is another area where suppression of information occurs.

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 can lead to a slippery slope enforcing wider and more politically-motivated censorship. Some artists such as Frank Zappa helped in the protest against censorship. Although they failed they did put up a good argument.

An example of such censorship is, ironically, Fahrenheit 451. The book was themed against censorship, but changed heavily.The version that appeared in school English textbooks did so with an estimated 75 separate edits, ommisions, or changes. ^[2]

[edit] Music

American musicians such as Frank Zappa have repeatadly protested against censorship in music and pushed for more freedom of expression. In 1986, Zappa appeared on CNN Crossfire to protest censorship of lyrics in rock songs.

[edit] See also

• Anthony Comstock
• Areopagitica: A speech of Mr John Milton for the liberty of unlicensed printing to the Parliament of England
• Autocensorship
• Bleep censor
• Book burning
• Book banning
• the Censored Eleven (banned Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons)
• Charles Schumer
• Censorware
• Chilling effect
• Cindy's Torment
• Communism
• Content-control software
• Death Whoop
• Edited movie
• Elsebeth Baumgartner
• Entertainment Software Rating Board
• Fahrenheit 451
• Freemuse
• Freedom of speech
• Gatekeeper (politics)
• Index Librorum Prohibitorum of The Roman Catholic Church
• International Freedom of Expression eXchange
• Jack Thompson
• Joe Lieberman
• John Stuart Mill
• Lady Chatterley's Lover
• Leland Yee
• Media content ratings system
• Media controversy
• Media transparency
• MPAA rating system
• NEA Four
• Network neutrality
• Nineteen Eighty-Four
• Police state
• Prior restraint
• Production Code
• Project Censored
• SourceWatch
• Standards & Practices
• Parents Television Council
• Super Bowl XXXVIII controversy
• Thomas Bowdler
• Tunisia Monitoring Group
• TV Parental Guidelines
• Tufty
• V-chip
• Mary Whitehouse
• Whitewashing
• Obscurantism

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

[edit] External links

The external links in this article may require cleanup to comply with Wikipedia's content policies. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links. Please remove this tag when this is done. (talk)

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of

Legal and Regulatory Issues in the Information Economy

[edit] World Wide Web links

• Olympic Watch (Committee for the 2008 Olympic Games in a Free and Democratic Country) on censorship in China
• irrepressible.info - Amnesty International's campaign against internet repression
• The 15 enemies of the Internet and other countries to watch
• www.beepworld.de/members/press-freedom Press Freedom International
• 1990 audio interview of William Noble, author of Book Banning. Interview by Don Swaim of CBS Radio. RealAudio
• Sexual Morality and the Law. The only online transcription of Foucault's text as of July 2006.
• Uncyclopedia's entry on freedom of expression
• Specific Sites Excluded from Google.fr and or Google.de.
• Numerous pictures of Iranian censorship in the western magazines The Economist, Wallpaper and National Geographic Magazine
• Castro and the ACLU v Miami's Book 'Ban', by Humberto Fontova, author of "Fidel: Hollywood’s Favorite Tyrant," 8 August 2006

[edit] Freenet links

• The Cleanex Experiment Program introducing censorship on Freenet.
• Choron Repository for banned French books and other documents.
• Choron Repository for banned English books and other documents.