With New Limits on Media, Putin Closes a Door on Russia’s ‘Openness’

THE NEW YORK TIMES: One of the paradoxical things about Vladimir V. Putin’s increasingly authoritarian rule of Russia was how relatively open society always remained.

For all the state’s control of media, people could read or watch what they wanted, including foreign newscasts like BBC and CNN. The internet was largely unfettered, a portal to the rest of the world. Unlike, say, China, you could criticize the president with some assurance that the police would not knock at the door.

Until now.

As the war in Ukraine grinds on, Mr. Putin has strangled the vestiges of a free press to justify an invasion that has been almost universally condemned — and with that moved closer to the stultifying orthodoxy of the Soviet Union. The result will be to isolate the country, as Mr. Putin has isolated himself, leaving it with a one-sided view of the world no longer subject to debate. » | Steven Lee Myers | Monday, March 7, 2022

Chinese Censors Cut Gay References from Friends

THE TIMES: Outcry over ‘defiled’ version of hit American sitcom

Chinese censors removed scenes that referred to Ross’s ex-wife being gay | PAUL DRINKWATER/NBCUNIVERSAL VIA GETTY
Chinese censors have removed lesbian scenes and sanitised references to sex in Friends as the show is re-released on streaming sites, to the anger of the sitcom’s many Chinese fans.

The cuts have been so comprehensive that fans have complained that plots and some jokes now no longer make sense. They have called for a boycott and slammed the censorship as “defiling” the first season of the show, originally broadcast in 1994.

On Friday when several entertainment platforms, including Tencent Video, reprised the show, some fans were quick to notice the absence of several scenes, including those relating to the character Ross explaining that his ex-wife, Carol, is gay. Viewers also reported cuts or mistranslations of lines by LGBT+ characters or scenes that included mildly … » | Didi Tang, Beijing | Monday, February 14, 2022

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I’ll Fight to Overturn US Ban on My ‘Queer Bible’, Says British Author

THE OBSERVER: Former model Jack Guinness caught up in furore over Mississippi mayor’s attempt to withhold funding for library until ‘homosexual materials’ are withdrawn

Jack Guinness said he was proud that the controversy had turned him into a campaigner. | Photograph: Pal Hansen/The Observer
A British writer, presenter and former model says he is shocked to find himself at the centre of an unprecedented wave of book banning in the US.

A Mississippi mayor has told the Madison County Library to remove LGBTQ+ books from its shelves or lose funding. One of the books singled out as an example was The Queer Bible, a collection of LGBTQ+ history essays edited by Jack Guinness. Ridgeland’s Republican mayor, Gene McGee, has refused to release funds to the library until “homosexual materials” are withdrawn.

Tonja Johnson, executive director of the Madison County Library System, said when she told McGee that the library served the whole community, he replied that he only served “the great Lord above”.

Guinness discovered his anthology had been caught up in the book ban on Twitter. “I couldn’t quite believe my eyes,” he told the Observer. “When you write a book, you kind of imagine people might read it, but you don’t imagine anyone will ban it. Referring to it as ‘homosexual material’ – that’s the sort of phrase my grandmother would have used to talk about my jeans.”

Guinness, once described by GQmagazine as “the coolest man in Britain”, worked as a model after university for fashion labels such as Dolce & Gabbana, Gucci and Dunhill and became a famous face on the capital’s social scene. He was friends with Pixie Geldof, DJ Nick Grimshaw and musician Florence Welch, and used to be Alexa Chung’s flatmate.

He soon segued from modelling into work as a presenter and as a writer for Vogue, GQ and the Guardian. Since starting the Queer Bible as a website in 2017, he has been included in Attitudemagazine’s trailblazers list of exceptional LGBTQ contributors to the arts. He is also now a member of London mayor Sadiq Khan’s diversity in the public realm commission. » | Alice Fisher | Sunday, February 13, 2022

Youtube Is Censoring Free Speech? | Dave Rubin On Tucker Carlson

European-style Media Censorship Looming in Canada

Ezra Levant predicts that the Trudeau government will punish TheRebel.media for allegedly posting "fake news" regarding the Québec mosque attack.

Inside Story - Should Social Media Companies Ban Certain Content?

Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Microsoft to join efforts to filter out content they consider "terrorist propaganda".

Special Report: UN Censor Admits Real Reason He Banned Rebel Reporters from COP22

Ezra Levant lets UN censor Nick Nuttall explain, in his own words, why he refused press accreditation to TheRebel.media, to cover the climate conference in Marrakech.

Angela Merkel Confronts Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg on Hate-Post Policy

Revealed: Facebook's New Plan to Censor "Right Wing Speech"

Ezra Levant of TheRebel.media reports on Facebook's new Online Civil Courage Initiative, designed to censor "right wing hate speech" online after the mass Muslim migrant rapes in Cologne, Germany. Why doesn't Facebook target Muslim radicalism online, too?

Morocco Says Exodus Film 'Represents God' and Is Forbidden in Islam

THE GUARDIAN: Film’s distributor receives written notice to ban Hollywood import because scene depicts God in the form of a ‘child who gives a revelation to the prophet Moses’

Morocco banned the Hollywood biblical epic Exodus: Gods and Kings because it “represents God” which is forbidden under Islam, its distributor said on Saturday.

The distributor said it had received written notice that Ridley Scott’s blockbuster contained a scene that represents God in the form of a “child who gives a revelation to the prophet Moses”. Initially, cinema owners were informed verbally that the film had been banned, media reports had said.

“I deplore this censorship,” distributor Mounia Layadi Benkirane said in a statement.

Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous country, has also banned the movie, citing “historical inaccuracies”. » | Agence France-Presse in Rabat | Saturday, December 27, 2014

Killing the Messenger

As censorship increases worldwide, journalists are being attacked, kidnapped and even killed for exposing the truth.

Exclusive: BBC ‘Free Speech’ Show Censors Gay Muslim After ‘Conerns’ from Mosque

BREITBART LONDON: BBC Three's Free Speech programme was broadcast from Birmingham Central Mosque last night, and one of the topics set to be debated was homosexuality and Islam.

But after the "BBC snake ate its own tail" (host Rick Edwards words, not mine) by discussing the necessity of BBC Three for 20 minutes, we were treated to an excellent example of how and why the BBC fails to do its job properly. Sort of like the snake eating its own tail, vomiting it back up, then eating it again.

A short clip was broadcast, featuring Asifa Lahore, Britain's "first and only" gay Muslim drag queen. The topic had "the most comments on the audience questions page", but this was still not enough for the BBC 'Free Speech' programme to force the issue with its venue hosts, the Birmingham Central Mosque.

As the clip ended, host Rick Edwards announced, "We were going to debate that question but today after speaking to the mosque they have expressed deep concerns with having this discussion here... so we'll move on to our next question". Read on and comment » | Raheem Kassam | Thursday, March 13, 2014

Muslim Censors Move to Ban 'Noah'

Mar. 07, 2014 - 2:04 - Egypt's top Islamic body angered by biblical film's portrayal of the prophet

YNET NEWS: Hollywood blockbuster 'Noah' faces ban in Arab world: Censors in Qatar, Bahrain and the UAE banned film as Islam objects to depictions of holy figures in art. Similar bans expected in Egypt, Jordan and Kuwait.‬‬ » | Reuters | Saturday, March 08, 2014

Dubai Censors Cut Quarter of The Wolf of Wall Street

Margot Robbie stars opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in 'The Wolf of Wall Street'

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Moviegoers said all profanities were bleeped out from the Martin Scorsese movie featuring Leonardo DiCaprio

About 45 minutes have been cut from the nearly 3-hour high-finance extravaganza "The Wolf of Wall Street" for Dubai audiences, or a quarter of the film, leaving many viewers disappointed and confused about the sequence of events.

The cuts come as the movie has drawn criticism even from film critics in more liberal countries for its portrayal of drugs, sex and money. Detractors say the film glorifies unchecked greed, includes full nudity and is loaded with a reported record for F- bombs in a movie - more than 500.

Moviegoers said all profanities were bleeped out from the Martin Scorsese movie featuring Leonardo DiCaprio. One woman wrote on the Facebook page for Reel Cinemas, which operates two theaters in Dubai, that she and her friend walked out after about 40 minutes because they felt the movie was simply incoherent and unwatchable. » | AP | Tuesday, January 14, 2014

BBC Accused of 'Extraordinary' Censorship after Cutting Honour-killing References from Radio Drama for Fear of Offending Muslims

MAIL ONLINE: Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti's episode of DCI Stone is to be broadcast on Radio 4 / Dialogue linked to honour killing removed in 'betrayal' because of 'fear-ridden culture', she says / BBC admit cutting words 'potentially misrepresenting majority British Muslim attitudes to honour killing' / She received death threats after her 2004 play Behzti offended Sikhs

The BBC has been accused of 'extraordinary' censorship by a leading playwright after she had dialogue cut from her hard-hitting drama because it could have offended Muslims.

Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, whose 2004 production Behzti was pulled from a Birmingham theatre after it sparked Sikh protests, has accused the Corporation of tampering with her work because it involved an honour killing.

Ms Bhatti's drama The Heart of Darkness will be played on Radio 4 this Friday as part of its popular DCI Stone series, but she says the BBC has caused an 'awful situation' which has led to a 'betrayal' of her work.

At the centre of her story is the honour killing of a 16-year-old Asian girl, and DCI Stone is told by his bosses to treat the case 'sensitively' because she is Muslim.

Although they have admitted removing dialogue from its afternoon drama, the BBC claims they did it to avoid 'potentially misrepresenting majority British Muslim attitudes to honour killing'.

Describing the play's final line, Ms Bhatti told The Independent: 'At the end, a character says: "There is so much pressure in our community, to look right and to behave right." The compliance department came back and said, "we don’t want to suggest the entire Muslim community condones honour killings". Read on and comment » | Martin Robinson | Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Burma Abolishes Media Censorship

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Burma said it had abolished media censorship on Monday in the latest in a series of rapid democratic reforms, delighting journalists who lived for decades under the shadow of the censors' marker pen.

Draconian pre-publication checks - applied in the past to everything from newspapers to song lyrics and even fairy tales - were a hallmark of life under the generals who ran the country for almost half a century until last year.

"This is a great day for all journalists in Myanmar, who have laboured under these odious restrictions for far too many years," said a senior editor at a Yangon weekly publication who preferred not to be named.

"It is also another encouraging example of the progress that the country is making under [President] Thein Sein's government," he added.

Media reforms have already brought a lighter touch from the once ubiquitous censors, with less controversial publications freed from scrutiny last year.

Political and religious journals were the last to be allowed to go to press without pre-approval from the censors starting from Monday. » | AFP | Monday, August 20, 2012

Intimate Scenes to Be Banned from Egyptian Public TV
AGI.it: Cairo - A group of Islamic supervisors of the Egyptian Public Broadcaster will be in charge of removing 'immoral ' footage from films the network has in its archives. The ban will apply to scenes featuring hugging, kissing and belly dancing. As reported by the daily Kuwait al-Anba, which quotes sources from inside the Network, such a decision could bring about either the removal of important scenes from movies that are an integral part of Egypt's cinema or their complete ban from any TV programming. » | AGI | Tuesday, April 03, 2012

HT: Robert Spencer @ Jihad Watch »

Arizona Legislature Passes Sweeping Electronic Speech Censorship Bill
CBLDF: Yesterday [Thursday, March 29, 2012], the Arizona legislature passed Arizona House Bill 2549, which would update the state’s telephone harassment law to apply to the Internet and other electronic communications. The bill is sweepingly broad, and would make it a crime to communicate via electronic means speech that is intended to “annoy,” “offend,” “harass” or “terrify,” as well as certain sexual speech. Because the bill is not limited to one-to-one communications, H.B. 2549 would apply to the Internet as a whole, thus criminalizing all manner of writing, cartoons, and other protected material the state finds offensive or annoying. The Bill is currently on Governor Jan Brewer’s desk awaiting her decision on whether to veto or sign the bill. » | Charles Brownstein | Friday, March 30, 2012

HT: Always On Watch »

O'Reilly: The Far Left Demanding Censorship

Wanted: Censor for Pakistan's Internet
STUFF.CO.NZ: Pakistan is advertising for companies to install an Internet filtering system that could block up to 50 million Web addresses, alarming free speech activists who fear current censorship could become much more widespread.

Internet access for Pakistan's some 20 million Web users is less restricted than in many countries in Asia and the Arab world, though some pornographic sites and those seen as insulting to Islam are blocked. Others related to separatist activities or army criticism have also been, or continue to be, censored.

Few nations have so publicly revealed their plans to censor the Web as Pakistan is doing, however. Last month, the government took out newspaper and Web advertisements asking for companies or institutions to develop the national filtering and blocking system. » | Chris Brummitt | Saturday, March 10, 2012