Censorship, Inc.


Book Description

Soley shows how as corporate power has grown and come to influence the issues on which ordinary Americans should be able to speak out, so new strategies have developed to restrict free speech on issues in which corporations and property-owners have an interest.




Censorship and Selection


Book Description

Censorship! The word itself sparks debate, especially when the context is the public school. Since the publication of the second edition of this landmark book in 1993, wired classrooms, legal challenges, and societal shifts have changed the landscape for the free exchange of ideas. Completely revised and updated, this new edition remains the most comprehensive guide for protecting the freedom to read in schools: For school librarians and media specialists, teachers, and administrators, Reichman covers the different media (including books, school newspapers, and the Internet), the important court cases (including recent litigations involving Harry Potter, the Internet, and Huck Finn), the issues in dispute (including violence, religion, and profanity), and how the laws on the books can be incorporated into selection policies. An entire chapter is devoted to troubleshooting and answering the question of What do we do if...? Look no further for the best and most specific information on providing access and facing challenges to intellectual freedom. You'll find answers if you are asking questions like these: * What is the distinction between making selection decisions and censoring?




Censored


Book Description

A groundbreaking and surprising look at contemporary censorship in China As authoritarian governments around the world develop sophisticated technologies for controlling information, many observers have predicted that these controls would be easily evaded by savvy internet users. In Censored, Margaret Roberts demonstrates that even censorship that is easy to circumvent can still be enormously effective. Taking advantage of digital data harvested from the Chinese internet and leaks from China's Propaganda Department, Roberts sheds light on how censorship influences the Chinese public. Drawing parallels between censorship in China and the way information is manipulated in the United States and other democracies, she reveals how internet users are susceptible to control even in the most open societies. Censored gives an unprecedented view of how governments encroach on the media consumption of citizens.




HATE


Book Description

The updated paperback edition of HATE dispels misunderstandings plaguing our perennial debates about "hate speech vs. free speech," showing that the First Amendment approach promotes free speech and democracy, equality, and societal harmony. As "hate speech" has no generally accepted definition, we hear many incorrect assumptions that it is either absolutely unprotected or absolutely protected from censorship. Rather, U.S. law allows government to punish hateful or discriminatory speech in specific contexts when it directly causes imminent serious harm. Yet, government may not punish such speech solely because its message is disfavored, disturbing, or vaguely feared to possibly contribute to some future harm. "Hate speech" censorship proponents stress the potential harms such speech might further: discrimination, violence, and psychic injuries. However, there has been little analysis of whether censorship effectively counters the feared injuries. Citing evidence from many countries, this book shows that "hate speech" are at best ineffective and at worst counterproductive. Therefore, prominent social justice advocates worldwide maintain that the best way to resist hate and promote equality is not censorship, but rather, vigorous "counterspeech" and activism.




Deadly Censorship


Book Description

The definitive story of a South Carolina newspaper editor’s murder at the hands of a 1902 gubernatorial candidate, and the dramatic trial that ensued. On January 15, 1903, South Carolina lieutenant governor James H. Tillman shot and killed Narciso G. Gonzales, editor of South Carolina’s most powerful newspaper, the State. Blaming Gonzales’s stinging editorials for his loss of the 1902 gubernatorial race, Tillman shot Gonzales to avenge the defeat and redeem his “honor” and his reputation as a man who took bold, masculine action in the face of an insult. James Lowell Underwood investigates the epic murder trial of Tillman to test whether biting editorials were a legitimate exercise of freedom of the press or an abuse that justified killing when camouflaged as self-defense. This clash—between the revered values of respect for human life and freedom of expression on the one hand and deeply engrained ideas about honor on the other—took place amid legal maneuvering and political posturing worthy of a major motion picture. One of the most innovative elements of Deadly Censorship is Underwood’s examination of homicide as a deterrent to public censure. He asks the question, “Can a man get away with murdering a political opponent?” Deadly Censorship is courtroom drama and a true story. Underwood offers a painstaking re-creation of an act of violence in front of the State House, the subsequent trial, and Tillman’s acquittal, which sent shock waves across the United States. A specialist on constitutional law, Underwood has written the definitive examination of the court proceedings, the state’s complicated homicide laws, and the violent cult of personal honor that had undergirded South Carolina society since the colonial era. “Since the 1920s, the United States has had dozens of sensational trials—all of which have been labeled “the trial of the century.” There is no question had the trial of Lieutenant Governor James Tillman for the murder of N. G. Gonzales, the editor of the State newspaper, occurred in our time that it would have had the same appellation. . . . Riveting . . . as gripping as any contemporary courtroom drama.” —Walter Edgar, author of South Carolina: A History “An insightful and in-depth look at the assassination of Columbia newspaper editor N.G. Gonzales by South Carolina Lt. Gov. James H. Tillman in 1903. Jim Underwood’s carefully researched work not only reports on the killing and ensuing trial, it explains the forces that created a society where it was acceptable to kill a man to silence his pen.” —Jay Bender, Reid H. Montgomery Freedom of Information Chair, University of South Carolina “Finally, Jim Underwood has unraveled the killing, the murder trial, and the aftermath, and through his narrative tells a story of unfettered freedom of the press versus hot-bloodied Southern manhood honor. Without question, Deadly Censorship is a remarkable, eloquent, and important book.” —W. Lewis Burke, Director of Clinical Legal Studies, School of Law, University of South Carolina




Censorship Now!!


Book Description

"While putting a copy of this book on your nightstand would be a sign of good taste, who cares about good taste? Are you willing to be seen reading a book titled Censorship Now!! in public? If so, your skin might burn with funny glances from squares, scolds and looky-loos. But on the inside, you'll feel your brain throbbing as it swells to accommodate some hilarious, absurd and radical new strategies on how to live in our ridiculous world." --Washington Post "Svenonius' new book is Censorship Now!!, and the title alone shows just how provocative the author can be. A collection of essays previously published by Vice, Jacobin, and others, it sets up numerous enemies--both real and straw--for Svenonius to knock down....It's all couched in a style that's part anarchist tirade, part postmodern critique, and part punk-rock snottiness--yet it's addictively ridiculous." --NPR "Censor it all. Film, TV, music, politics, books, news, art--censor all of it. That's the guiding principle of local radical punk Ian Svenonius' latest essay collection, Censorship Now!!" --Washington City Paper, Critics' Pick Named a Favorite Book of 2015 by Jason Diamond at Vol. 1 Brooklyn "Gonzo ecstasy for those who have come to know Svenonius's self-aware political meditations....And though the essays Svenonius writes are not themselves unclear, the process of talking about what he's written involves discussions that some might find uncomfortable. His books make more sense the more you dissect them. So keep them in your back pocket and read them, one word at a time." --Los Angeles Review of Books "A new collection of essays by everyone's favorite supercilious rock theorist...Svenonius has always been the smartest kid in the room....In print, Svenonius is like that curmudgeonly pal that you adore because, even while his insight quivers between humor, paranoia, and antisocial ire, he never dispels your fascination in how he gets there." --SF Weekly "Ian Svenonius is best known as the frontman of bands like the Make-Up and Nation of Ulysses, but he's also a brilliant cultural critic with a talent for coming up with the hottest takes you'll ever read. In this collection, Svenonius makes compelling arguments in favor of censorship and hoarding books and records, amid polemics against Apple and Ikea, the yuppification of indie rock, and the shaving of pubic hair." --Buzzfeed "The essays in Censorship Now!! are equally packed with modest proposals and mock-revolutionary rhetoric, but there are grains of truth in pieces like 'The Historic Role Of Sugar In Empire Building' and 'Heathers Revisited: The Nerd's Fight For Niceness'--they're just buried somewhere between tongue and cheek." --The A.V. Club "Censorship Now!! simultaneously deals in the heated rhetoric of insurgent calls to action, the seductive broad strokes of propaganda, and the clever winking of surrealist humor. Often when I'm really convinced Svenonius has gone off a paranoid deep end, the next sentence hits back with knowingly-hilarious exaggeration or profoundly spot-on analysis, realigning my perspective and making me wonder again....It's fitting that a book whose intentions are ambiguous begins with a call to censor art and ends by letting art do the talking." --Pitchfork Ian F. Svenonius's new collection of sixteen essays and stories, entitled Censorship Now!!, is reorganizing people's ideas about censorship, Ikea, documentary filmmaking, the Berlin Wall, the film Heathers, the twist, the frug, the mashed potato, shaving one's body, Apple, Inc., Nordic functionalism, the supposed benevolence of the Wikipedia, hoarding, college rock, the origins of the Internet, and more. It's an underground smash which has been met with a horrified gasp in all respectable quarters and gog-eyed enthusiasm in artist garrets the world over.




Censorship, Or Freedom of Expression?


Book Description

Examines the First Amendment, the issue of censorship in publishing, schools, the arts and entertainment, and the Internet, and government involvement.




Censored Books


Book Description

A collection of essays confronting the censorship issue, including six authors' views and defenses of individual books.




The New Censorship


Book Description

An examination of how the media is under fire and how to safeguard journalists and the information they seek to share with the public. Journalists are being imprisoned and killed in record numbers. Online surveillance is annihilating privacy, and the Internet can be brought under government control at any time. Joel Simon, the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, warns that we can no longer assume that our global information ecosystem is stable, protected, and robust. Journalists are increasingly vulnerable to attack by authoritarian governments, militants, criminals, and terrorists, who all seek to use technology, political pressure, and violence to set the global information agenda. Reporting from Pakistan, Russia, Turkey, Egypt, and Mexico, among other hotspots, Simon finds journalists under threat from all sides. The result is a growing crisis in information—a shortage of the news we need to make sense of our globalized world and fight human rights abuses, manage conflict, and promote accountability. Drawing on his experience defending journalists on the front lines, he calls on “global citizens,” U.S. policy makers, international law advocates, and human rights groups to create a global freedom-of-expression agenda tied to trade, climate, and other major negotiations. He proposes ten key priorities, including combating the murder of journalists, ending censorship, and developing a global free-expression charter to challenge the criminal and corrupt forces that seek to manipulate the world's news. “Wise and insightful. [Simon] offers hope to all who care about maintaining the free flow of information in a world full of would-be censors.”—Ann Cooper, Columbia Journalism School




Suspended License


Book Description

Suspended License offers a wide-ranging approach to censorship of the visual arts over recent centuries and in a variety of cultural contexts, seeking to elucidate the range of political, social, and artistic circumstances in which censorship has occurred. Using examples from 16th-century Germany and Italy, late 18th-century Spain, 19th-century France, and 20-century Germany, China, and America, leading art historians examine what these various experiences reveal historically and what light they shed on current dilemmas and controversies. Essays explore the censure of artworks by famous masters -- Michelangelo, Veronese, Goya, Daumier, Manet -- as well as the censored art of less familiar figures, such as contemporary artists in China. The rejection of modernism as an allegedly corrupt and dangerous style is considered both in Nazi Germany in the 1930s and in McCarthy era Texas in the 1950s. The recent debates in America over government sponsorship for the arts are also discussed, as well as the claims raised about the allegedly pornographic content of work by contemporary artists Wojnarowicz and Mapplethorpe. Suspended License demonstrates that recent controversies over sponsorship, pornography, sacrilege, and aesthetic integrity in modern art are not without historical precedent, and also shows that many of the works now universally regarded as masterpieces have been the objects of censorious action in the past. Numerous illustrations contribute greatly to the reader's understanding of this important subject.