All posts tagged: censor

“Doesn’t feel like a coincidence”: John Oliver alarmed over right-wing efforts to censor libraries

“Doesn’t feel like a coincidence”: John Oliver alarmed over right-wing efforts to censor libraries

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] John Oliver during Sunday evening’s edition of  “Last Week Tonight” highlighted that libraries are “in trouble because they’ve become another front in the ongoing culture war.” “We’ve talked before about how conservatives have targeted school libraries, but those debates have now emphatically migrated over to public libraries as well,” he said. Oliver cited the growing number of community members and parents across the country who fear harmful and sexual books are available for their children to read at public libraries. “The American Library Association documented efforts to censor over 4,200 unique book titles last year in schools and libraries, the highest level they’ve ever recorded, with the number of titles targeted for censorship at public libraries, in particular, rising by 92% from the previous year,” he said. Even librarians themselves have been at the receiving end of “nasty abuse,” facing bomb threats on their workplace and accusations of pedophilia and grooming children. The show highlighted a librarian who stated: “I can say unequivocally we’re not pedophiles or groomers, and I can say that on behalf of our staff. …

How Israel continues to censor journalists covering the war in Gaza

How Israel continues to censor journalists covering the war in Gaza

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] Accusations about Israeli censorship of the media went mainstream in the US recently when the New York Times published an opinion piece headlined: The Israeli Censorship Regime is Growing. That Needs to Stop.. In the piece Jodie Ginsberg, the chief executive of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), wrote: “The high rate of journalists’ deaths and arrests, including a slew in the West Bank; laws allowing its government to shut down foreign news outlets deemed a security risk, which the prime minister has explicitly threatened to use against Al Jazeera; and its refusal to permit foreign journalists independent access to Gaza all speak to a leadership that is deliberately restricting press freedom. That is the hallmark of a dictatorship, not a democracy.” As well as restrictions on media access to Gaza, particular broadcasters face other restrictions. At the start of April Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had proclaimed he would “act immediately to stop” Qatar-based broadcaster Al Jazeera’s operations inside Israel. Israel’s parliament passed a bill allowing it to close Al Jazeera’s office in …

Censor those trousers! How Alan Titchmarsh’s legs became TV editors’ latest target | Television

Censor those trousers! How Alan Titchmarsh’s legs became TV editors’ latest target | Television

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] I wonder how Alan Titchmarsh feels today. On the one hand, footage has surfaced of him on North Korean state television, which has been rebroadcasting episodes of his BBC series Garden Secrets since at least 2022. On the other, the North Korean government seems to hate him. Well, part of him. Not only have the North Koreans hacked down each hour-long episode to just 15 minutes, drowning out his speaking voice with a mixture of voiceover and instrumental music in the process, but they have also shamed his legs. Thanks to a government ruling that decries denim jeans as a sign of evil American imperialism, Titchmarsh’s legs are blurred out whenever they are on screen. The effect is that Titchmarsh appears as a benign hovering wizard. Even this is radical. The website KCNA Watch runs a daily livestream of Korean Central TV. Last Friday’s programming, for instance, was largely devoted to factory tours, sparsely attended football matches and agricultural machinery shows. Compared to output like this, the sight of Titchmarsh gently tending to his …

Dictators Used Sandvine Tech to Censor the Internet. The US Finally Did Something About It

Dictators Used Sandvine Tech to Censor the Internet. The US Finally Did Something About It

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] When the Egyptian government shut down the internet in 2011 to give itself cover to crush a popular protest movement, it was Nora Younis who got the word out. Younis, then a journalist with daily newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm, found a working internet connection at the InterContinental Cairo Semiramis Hotel that overlooked Tahrir Square, the heart of the protests. From the balcony, she filmed as protesters were shot and run down with armored vehicles, posting the footage to the newspaper’s website, where it was picked up by global media. In 2016, with Egypt having slid back into the authoritarianism that prompted the uprising, Younis launched her own media platform, Al-Manassa, which combined citizen journalism with investigative reporting. The following year, Almanassa.com suddenly disappeared from the Egyptian internet, along with a handful of other independent publications. It was still available overseas, but domestic users couldn’t see it. Younis’ team moved their site to a new domain. That, too, was rapidly blocked, so they moved again and were blocked again. After three years and more than a …

Don’t cover Imran Khan’s PTI: Pakistan’s media told to censor popular ex-PM | Freedom of the Press

Don’t cover Imran Khan’s PTI: Pakistan’s media told to censor popular ex-PM | Freedom of the Press

Published by Sam

[ad_1] Islamabad, Pakistan – Journalist Amir Mehmood* was getting ready for work when his phone buzzed with a WhatsApp message. As a member of the top management at a private news channel in Pakistan’s second-largest city, Lahore, Mehmood was used to getting non-stop calls and messages, even at odd hours. But the name of the sender of that message on Tuesday morning caught his attention and he immediately picked up his phone. It was an official who belonged to the country’s powerful military, which has directly ruled over Pakistan for more than three decades of its 75-year existence as a constitutional republic and has controlled most levers of power, from behind the scenes, even when civilian governments have been in office. “Basically, the person pointed out some of our election coverage and said we must not use the flags of PTI or mention their affiliation with candidates backed by the party. It instructed us to clearly identify the candidates only as ‘independent’ and not show which party they were related to,” Mehmood told Al Jazeera. …

Young Audiences Question Climate Alarmism, Prompting Calls To Censor Content

Young Audiences Question Climate Alarmism, Prompting Calls To Censor Content

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[ad_1] Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), A recent study has revealed significant skepticism among young audiences regarding climate alarmism, a development that poses a challenge to advocates of urgent climate action but is likely to be welcomed by those who see stoking fear about the supposed ills of global warming as exaggerated. Swedish teen climate activist Greta Thunberg (C) takes part in protest over climate change, in Hamburg, Germany, on Feb. 21, 2020. (Morris Mac Matzen/AFP/Getty Images) The study was released on Jan. 16 by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a left-leaning organization that was sued by Elon Musk for allegedly engaging in a “scare campaign” to drive away advertisers. The study reveals a significant increase between 2018 and 2023 in YouTube content that expresses one of the following three viewpoints: “climate solutions won’t work,” “climate science and the climate movement are unreliable,” or “the impacts of global warming are beneficial or harmless.” Researchers also found that roughly one-third of teenagers (the predominant YouTube audience) hold views such …

Jeffrey Wright was dubbed by another actor after refusing to censor n-word

Jeffrey Wright was dubbed by another actor after refusing to censor n-word

Published by Sam

[ad_1] Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse Loughrey Get our The Life Cinematic email for free Jeffrey Wright has revealed that another actor was brought in to overdub him after he refused to censor his own use of the n-word in Ang Lee’s revisionist Civil War western Ride with the Devil. Wright was reminded of the incident from 1999 while reading the opening scene of his new literature satire American Fiction. “I’ll tell you something related specifically to that first scene [in American Fiction] and understanding the meaning, or meanings, of the n-word,” Wright told his co-stars Tracee Ellis Ross, Sterling K Brown, and Erika Alexander as part of an Entertainment Weekly roundtable discussion. “I did a movie called Ride with the Devil, and it was a film about the Civil War where I was playing a freedman, or actually a former slave working to free himself, but doing that on the side of the Confederacy, based on historical figures,” explained Wright. “This took place …

Russell Brand posts new video claiming government wants to censor him | Russell Brand

Published by Sam

[ad_1] Russell Brand has posted a new video online describing the allegations of rape and sexual assault against him in the past week as “extraordinary and distressing” while accusing the government of seeking to censor him. The 48-year-old comedian and actor thanked his supporters for “questioning the information you are being presented with”, in his first public appearance since the allegations were published. He has denied accusations made by four women in an investigation by the Sunday Times, the Times and Channel 4’s Dispatches last weekend. Brand said he would return to his regular show on Rumble, an online video platform that refused to follow YouTube in demonetising his content on its site. In a three-minute video posted on Rumble and X, formerly Twitter, he claimed that moves to block him from receiving advertising revenue for his videos on social media platforms after sexual assault allegations have occurred “in the context of the online safety bill”. He said: “By now you’re probably aware that the British government have asked big tech platforms to censor our …