Category Archives: Censorship

The EuropeanParliamentis often the stage for political and sometimes nationalist theater.

Beyond routine shouting matches, members occasionally wear T-shirts splashed with slogans or unfurl banners. Flags adorn some lawmakers' desks.

But some MEPs say nationalist rhetoric has recently crossed the line of what is acceptable.

"There have been a growing number of cases of politicians saying things that are beyond the pale of normal parliamentary discussion and debate," said Richard Corbett, a British MEP who backedthe new rule.

"What if this became not isolated incidents, but specific, where people could say: 'Hey, this is a fantastic platform. It's broad, it's live-streamed. It can be recorded and repeated. Let's use it for something more vociferous, more spectacular,'" he told The Associated Press.

Rule 165 of the parliament's rules of procedure allows the chair of debates to halt the live broadcast "in the case of defamatory, racist or xenophobic language or behavior by a member." The maximum fine for offenders would be around 9,000 euros ($9,500).

The new rule, which was not made public by the assemble until it was reported by Spain's La Vanguardia newspaper, offending material could be "deleted from the audiovisual record of proceedings," meaning citizens would never know it happened unless reporters were in the room.

Mr Weingaertner said the IPA was never consulted on that.

A technical note seen by the AP outlines a procedure for manually cutting off the video feed, stopping transmission on in-house TV monitors and breaking the satellite link to halt broadcast to the outside world.

A videotape in four languages would be kept running to serve as a legal record during the blackout. A more effective and permanent system was being sought.

It is also technically possible to introduce a safe-guard time delay so broadcasts appear a few seconds later. This means they could be interrupted before offending material is aired.

Critics say the system would be unwieldy and possibly ineffective.

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Censorship concerns as European Parliament introduces 'kill switch' to cut racist speeches - Telegraph.co.uk

On CNNs Reliable Sources this morning, Bret Stephens, the deputy editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal, suggested that the media should boycott the Trump White House in retaliation for Trumps censoring of the media.

Stephens also added that what Trump was doing was worse than Nixon.

Stephens comments came during a discussion of Trumps decision to ban the NYT, CNN, Los Angeles Times, BuzzFeed and Politico from a press gaggle, or informalbriefing, at the White House on Friday.

It is thought that Trumps censorship of these outlets was in response totheir reports a day earlier on the White Houses growing efforts to obstruct the Russia investigation.

It was particularly surprising to hear the notion of a boycott come from the editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal, a conservative publication. Heres Stephens:

I would call it Nixonian, except I think that would be unfair to the memory of President Nixon. This is an attempt to bully the press by using access as a weapon to manipulate coverage. The Wall Street Journal put out a statement that I thought was very clear, if we had known what was happening we wouldnt have participated in that meeting with Mr. Spicer. And I think thats the right attitude for the rest of the press to take. That if the administration is going to boycott certain news outlets, then perhaps we should as news organizations return the favor to this administration.

Add your name to the thousands who aredemandingthe Justice Department appointa special counselto investigate Trumps ties to Russia.

With the election of Donald Trump, AMERICAblogs independent journalism and activism is more needed than ever.

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John Aravosis Follow me on Twitter: @aravosis | @americablog | @americabloggay | Facebook | Instagram | Google+ | LinkedIn. John Aravosis is the Executive Editor of AMERICAblog, which he founded in 2004. He has a joint law degree (JD) and masters in Foreign Service from Georgetown; and has worked in the US Senate, World Bank, Children's Defense Fund, the United Nations Development Programme, and as a stringer for the Economist. He is a frequent TV pundit, having appeared on the O'Reilly Factor, Hardball, World News Tonight, Nightline, AM Joy & Reliable Sources, among others. John lives in New York City, and is the cofounder of TimeToResign.com. Bio, article archive.

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Wall Street Journal editor endorses boycott of Trump White House over media censorship - AMERICAblog (blog)

Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine and President Donald Trump are two peas in a pod.

While Trump blasts news organizations for "fake coverage," and closes off press to White House gaggles, Levine takes censorship a step further, tryingto gag the pressby blocking them off of social media. Mayor Levine's feelings are so fragile, in fact, that he's gone block-happyon Twitter, censoring reporters and members of the public who raise questions about his tenure as mayor or say, well, pretty much anything else he doesn't like.

How do I know? I'm one of the reporters who'sfound herselfin the crosshairs of Levine's Twitter-block spree.

It all started three weeks ago when SSN published a column raising questions about Levine possibly using Miami Beach taxpayer dollars to fund a lawsuit against Florida and in turn, raise his profile for a gubernatorial bid.

I tweeted out the story theMonday after it was written, just ahead of his city commission meeting.From what I heard, Levine didn't take the it well, exploding at Miami Beach commissioners and threatening to sue.

By Saturday, I noticed Levine had been running a paid ad campaign promoting his "living wage" schtick. I tweeted it was ironicto run a paid campaign so close to what was undoubtedly critical coverage of Levine -- coverage that didnt make him look good. Can you say PR overhaul?

Levine fell off my radar until last Friday, when I heard he was speaking at the Central Florida Urban League conference in Orlando with other possible gubernatorial contenders. I went to tweet about it, but Levine's name turned up blank when I went to tag him.

I searched for him, clicked on his profile, and saw I had been blocked. I still have no idea why it happened, but suspicion leads me to believe Levine wasn't thrilled about my previous tweet.

Levine's adviser Christian Ulvert told me thepage was not an official Miami Beach social media account, but Levine does officially represent the city and often tweets what he's up to on a day-to-day basis, which seems pretty official to me.

Ulvert said Levine's accounts don't allow individuals to post "slanderous, false ...misinformation" and says anyone who uses social media for those purposes isblocked.He also told me I could look at how many people the mayor was following, which has zero indication of how many people Levine has actually blocked.

I can only imagine it's because the number is so high, Levine has lost count.

"His long-supported policy, utilized by many, is to allow constructive dialogue to take shape through social media," Ulvert told me, adding that I was "inadvertently" blocked, assuring me it would "be corrected."

Constructive? What's constructive about blocking people you don't agree with? By the way, at the time of thisarticle's publication, I am still blocked.

I'm not alone in being cut off from Levine, though. I recently found myself welcomed into the fold of dozens, possibly hundreds, who have also been given the "Closed for Business" sign on Levine's social media pages. A quick search on Twitter showed many other people had been axed from seeing what Levine was up to -- some of them merely replied to tweets criticizing him for failed projects and high crime rates.

Theirlistof grievances against Levine is long. At the end of the day, however, they all share a common thread: they got blockedfor speaking up.

The Levine Twitter outcastsinclude normal residents, businessmen, and yes, even members of the press.Click thelinks above and see for yourself.

Take Grant Stern, for example. Stern, a journalist and activist with Occupy Democrats, wrote a tweet criticizing Levine last year. Blocked. So, Stern took his comments to Levines official Facebook page. Blocked again.

Dozens of people came to Stern at the time and said they, too, had been closed out of Levines social media pages for criticizing him. Hundreds of comments from Levines official Facebook page have disappeared, presumably deleted by the miffed mayor.

Levine has a history of lashing out at critics. Last June, heaccused the Miami Herald of conspiring with scientists for a hit piece because they wrote the city was pumping human fecal matter into Biscayne Bay. TheHeraldstood by the story.

But wait, theres more. In 2015, the Miami New Times criticized Levine. They got blocked, too. Levine said it was a mistake (sound familiar?), but never unblocked the paper.

Stern filed a public records request to get the names of all the people Levine had shut out from his accounts, but the city deniesthat request was ever made. In the suit, Stern claims Levine uses the Twitter account, @MayorLevine, to communicate official city business, which would make his accounts subject to the Sunshine Law. That means the proceedings of Levines accounts would have to be public information.

Beyond communicating whats going on in the South Florida city, it appears Levine also uses the account to snuff out and censor comments he doesnt like.

Levines skin is so thin, he should be known as the naked mole rat of Miami Beach.

For someone with his political desires, hes got the impulse control and knowledge of a10-year-old, Stern said.

That, to me, is a huge red flag for someone who's thinking of running for governor next year. For all we know, Levine might censor the entire Tallahassee press corps once they dig -- and they will -- anywhere below the surface of Levine's corrupt career as mayor of Miami Beach.

Let me ask you: Do you really feel comfortable putting someone in the governor's mansion who can't even handle one critical tweet from a reporter?

Can you imagine? The entire Tallahassee press corps would be cast out with the click of a button should they "wrong" Levine.

Bye bye, free press. This circus only runs as long as Levine isthe one cracking the whip.

In a way, the timing of this story couldnt be better. Its like journalistic kismet. On Friday, President Donald Trump deliberately expelled CNN and scores of other news organizations from a White House press gaggle. Unsurprisingly, the entire press corps is now out behind CNN, screaming bloody murder.

Is this ringing a bell yet? Mayor Levine is Florida's very own Donald Trump, attacking outlets and squenching coverage he doesnt like. Except, unfortunately for Levine, he has no solid messageand no parade of hundreds of thousands of adoring fans to push him to the top like Trump did.

He's delusional, Miami filmmaker and Levine critic Billy Corben told me. He runs around everywhere with a Secret Service-looking security guard. But nobody even knows who he is.

But as Trump has realized, the funny thing about censorship is that, more often than not, it has the opposite of the intended effect.Censorship causes journalists to pursuestories they wouldn't otherwise write. It emboldens us to dig deeper. It compels us to push harder.

Mayor Levine can try tosilence members of the media from knowing what he's up to, and he can block us all he wants, but it's only at his own peril.

Levine,totally naivein underestimatingthe power of the reporter, has only shot himself in the foot.

Reach Allison Nielsen by email atallison@sunshinestatenews.comor follow her on Twitter:@AllisonNielsen.

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Block-Happy Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine 'Turns Trump' with Censorship - Sunshine State News

Prime Minister Andrew Holness says that his Government will not give in to any public urge for censorship as a response to controversial cultural activities, including dancehall music.

Holness told a breakfast meeting with members of the board and senior editorial staff of the Jamaica Observer at the newspapers Beechwood Avenue head office in Kingston on Friday that education would be a better response to public alarm regarding anything that may be considered offensive.

My point is, how do we create consumers who are more discerning of the products that are being produced. Because, once you start to censure you kill creativity, Holness said.

The prime minister was reacting to a question about his response to issues like the current controversy over comments made by Opposition spokesperson and former Minister of Youth and Culture Lisa Hanna, on radio about banning Vybz Kartels music and him recording from his prison cell.

Hanna, who was addressing issues of violence and culture at the time on local radio station, Nationwide News Network, noted that, despite being sentenced to life imprisonment for murder, Kartel seemed to have continued recording his music, which some Jamaicans consider unfit for public consumption, from behind bars, which music is played publicly

If you are convicted, until you are not convicted, perhaps it is that your music need not be played on the radio, Hanna said in the interview.

The issue is where Kartels music is coming out (more) than any other person, because I have not heard any new song from Buju (Banton) since he has been incarcerated. I think that we need to get to the root cause of that. We need to find out how the songs are being made, how they are getting out. Is there corruption in the prison system? And not only for Kartel, I am not singling out Kartel alone. I am singling out all persons across the spectrum who are having an imprint on our childrens value system, she said.

Holness responded:

We have a liberal democracy, we cant escape that. And the society is not one that brooks any argument about censorship. We are not a society that holds heavily to censorship.

The way to combat that, however, is that while we dont like censorship, that shouldnt mean that we allow everything to get in the public space. So the important thing that a society that is a liberal democracy must develop, if it is not going to censor, is to develop literacy and education.

In other words, you combat negative information with positive information.

So the challenge we have is that a lot of people are absorbing, within the public space, much of the artistic creativity but without the context as to how this creativity can lead to the realisation of a certain reality.

In other societies, you go and you watch the movies and it is not just dancehall, its just general. You have hip hop, you have rap music; we are just bombarded with things that have different moral perspectives. But, if you have a well-educated society that can place these things in context,and say this is art, this is from ones own belief, its not what I necessarily believe, or I know that what this person is saying is wrong, then your society can survive that.

But, if you have a high level of illiteracy or unreasonableness in the society, and people literally take what is being produced not just as artistic content, but take it literally as their theme or anthem then you begin to have a problem. So, the solution to Jamaica is not censorship, the solution is to increase our education; our teaching has to place things in context.

Jamaican dancehall star Vybz Kartel was sentenced to life in prison in 2014 for the murder of Clive Lizard Williams. Kartel received the harshest sentence of any of his co-defendants, as he is serving 35 years in prison before he will be eligible for parole. The sentencing of Kartel and three other co-accused followed a 65-day trial.

Kartel, whose real name is Adidja Palmer, was found guilty of killing Williams at his house in Havendale, a suburb north of Kingston, in August, 2011. Also found guilty were: Shawn Campbell and Kahira Jones, who were each sentenced to serve a minimum of 25 years, and Andre St John, who can apply for parole after serving 15 years of a life sentence. A fifth defendant, Shane Williams, was found not guilty.

More here:
Holness says no to censorship of the arts - News - JamaicaObserver ... - Jamaica Observer

Here in the United States, if the internet isnt working, or is working slowly, the solution is often as simple as calling tech support. In most cases, theyll have the user run a speedtest, and there are millions of sites and applications that provide this service. However, there arent so many sites that allow users to see who has access to their information, and for people in countries where the internet is censored or restricted, even the fastest internet connection wont grant them open access to information.

This is one issue the team working on the Open Observatory of Network Interference project hope to address with their new Ooniprobe app, which, as of Feb. 9, is available in a beta version for free on Google Play and in the App store. The app has three main features, a speed test, a web connectivity test and a test that detects the presence of components that could be responsible for censorship or surveillance.

Without a tool like Ooniprobe, governments have plausible deniability in terms of censorship events, and actually, people claiming that they can't access a website is not in itself proof of intentional, government-commissioned censorship, Arturo Filast the creator of the app said. Now, anyone around the world can run Ooniprobe and can inspect how their network is working and whether censorship is being implemented. The type of data collected by Ooniprobe cannot really be denied by governments since it provides a clear picture into what is happening in a user's network.

Filast believes access information is a fundamental human right, but in the current state of affairs, many countries either censor or severely restrict the internet; with countries such as China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and India showing thousands of blocked sites - including many messaging sites like WhatsApp and Telegram, according to OONI World Map Explorer.

While countries like the United States have considerably fewer reports of censorship and blocked sites, the country isnt entirely free of censorship. Even here at Western Michigan University types of censorship are in place, but according to Chief Technology Officer Tom Wolf, there is a fine line between censorship and internet security.

In my opinion preventing malicious cyber activities that are illegal in nature and/or intended to disrupt normal internet traffic would not be considered a form of censorship. I would view this as cyber security, Wolf said.

This begs the question of exactly where one should draw the line between security and censorship. Most firewalls, such as Merits Palo Alto - the firewall currently in place here at WMU - scan for evidence of malicious activities and dont otherwise censor content.

Filast addressed the very fine line between security and censorship, distinguishing that security measures should restrict themselves solely to universally bad content.

Internet censorship, in any form and of any type of content, is a slippery slope. We see this in countless occasions where it's implementation is passed as an excuse to restrict access to content that is universally bad, but then the same system gets used to implement censorship for content whose value is much debatable, Filast said.

However, Nathan Tabor, a visiting professor and historian focusing on South Asia, expressed concerns over this slippery slope mentality, pointing out that when someone knows their internet activity is being censored, theyre more likely to change their patterns of consumption in a form of implicit censorship.

A lot of my work is in Persian, so I often access sites from Iran, another place that has very restricted internet access. The things that I access have to do with history and literature, pretty innocuous subjects, but perhaps my internet history comes up on the radar of some overzealous homeland security official because Im accessing sites from Iran. With the data mining that happens with my search history, Id look like a terrorist, Tabor said. The sites that you read will fall into some kind of aggravated pattern decided by a security apparatus, regardless whether or not youre doing anything wrong.

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New app to bring awareness to internet censorship - Western Herald

The National Press Club has condemned Donald Trumps exclusion of select media outlets from a White House press conference, calling the unprecedented action deeply disturbing and likening it to censorship.

Senior figures from the world's leading professional organisation for journalistsjoined a host of other industry leadersin protesting the decision announced by White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer to block news outlets including CNN, TheNew York Times, BBC, TheGuardian and BuzzFeed from the off-camera gaggle.

I find it deeply disturbing and completely unacceptable that the White House is actively running a campaign against a constitutionally enshrined free and independent press, the club's president, Jeffrey Ballou, saidin a statement.

The action harkens back to the darkest chapters of US history and reeks of undemocratic, un-American and unconstitutional censorship. The National Press Club supports our colleagues in the White House Correspondents Association in its protest and calls on the White House to reverse course.Mr Spicer did not give any justification as to why the news outlets had been excluded, however far-right organisations Breitbart News, One America News Network and The Washington Times were all granted access.

Othermajor outlets approved included ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News, Reuters and Bloomberg, with Associated Press and Time both boycotting the gaggle after the exclusions emerged.

It came just two months after the press secretary promisedthe Trump administration would never ban press access regardless of the political leaning of the publication.

We have a respect for the press when it comes to the government, that that is something you cant ban an entity from, he said. You know conservative, liberal, otherwise I think that is what makes a democracy a democracy versus a dictatorship.

Donald Trump: We are fighting the phoney, fake news

National Press Club Journalism Institute President, Barbara Cochran, also accused Mr Trump of hypocrisy for claiming he loves the First Amendment, which defends the freedom of the press.

The president said, No one loves the First Amendment more than me. We call on the president and his staff to prove that and stop interfering with the ability of all news organisations to do their job of covering the White House, she wrote.

TheNew York Times and Buzzfeed both issued written statements protesting their exclusion from the briefing.

Fox News anchor Bret Baier discouraged conservative news outlets who celebrated the gaggle, citing organisations who defended his network when former President Obama tried to freeze out Fox News in 2009.

Some at CNN and New York Times stood with Fox News when the Obama admin attacked us and tried to exclude us, he wrote on Twitter, a White House gaggle should be open to all credentialed orgs.

It came as the US President renewed his attack on the mainstream media at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

I want you all to know that we are fighting the fake news. Its phony, fake, he said.I called the fake news the enemy of the people. They are the enemy of the people, because they have no sources. They just make them up when there are none.

Read more here:
White House media ban is 'unconstitutional censorship', America's National Press Club warns - The Independent

Raymond Ahner, Loudwire

When bands perform in China, it is no secret that they must submit their song lyrics to the government, who then return to the band with a list of songs they can and cant play as well as allowing certain songs as long as the lyrics are altered to something permissible. Metallicas recent trek to the country was no different, though James Hetfield seemed nonplussed by being forbidden from playing classics like Master of Puppets.

In an interview with South Morning China Post, the frontman was more than understanding about the censorship, stating,Why shouldnt you respect their culture when youre there as a guest and youve been invited to play? We want to be respectful and just because we do things differently, it doesnt mean it should be forced upon [others].

Hetfield is optimistic about returning to China and having the ability to play not just Master of Puppets, but other exclusions like One (in Shanghai) and Hardwired. But hopefully well keep coming back and theyll realize were not a threat politically and we have no agenda except to cross boundaries with music and let people enjoy the songs, he continued. Were not trying to bring a secret message to anybody.

During Iron Maidens performances in China last year, Bruce Dickinson toed the line with the censors, mouthing curse words and instructing the crowd to take a picture despite cameras not being allowed at the concert.

Metallica will embark on a North American stadium tour this summer, bringing along Avenged Sevenfold, Volbeat and Gojira on select dates. For more info and a list of all stops, check our 2017 Guide to Rock + Metal Tours.

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Metallica's James Hetfield on Chinese Censorship: Hopefully One Day They'll Realize We're Not a Political Threat - Loudwire

Personal Liberty Poll

Exercise your right to vote.

In an effort to make websites more advertiser friendly some media outlets have taken to eliminating comment sections where, without considerable effort from moderators, they are unable to control the direction of reader conversations. But a Google-funded algorithm could change that via censorship.

The technology, called Perspective, uses machine-learning to ferret out toxic comments. Its designers reportedly based the technologys moderation standards on those used by the team of human moderators tasked with keeping discourse civil on The New York Times website. The Times is also reportedly now using Perspective to expand the number of articles it allows comments to appear on without overtaxing its moderation team.

Developers explain how the tool works thusly:

Perspective is an API that makes it easier to host better conversations. The API uses machine learning models to score the perceived impact a comment might have on a conversation. Developers and publishers can use this score to give realtime feedback to commenters or help moderators do their job, or allow readers to more easily find relevant information, as illustrated in two experiments below. Well be releasing more machine learning models later in the year, but our first model identifies whether a comment could be perceived as toxic to a discussion.

The level of potential toxicity appears largely based on the use of vulgarity or insulting language in comments.

Here are a few examples of comments the technology would deem highly toxic in comments:

And here are a few that are considered the least toxic:

Personal insults and name calling cheapen any pointand theres certainly no shortage of uncomfortable language on the internet. But is the top-down sanitation of comment sections really the answer?

How long before the machine decides whole topics are too uncomfortable for discussion and are likely to cause readers to leave?

And if the problem is online harassment, are we really going to pretend that simply silencing the true assholes among us will make them disappear? Theyll still be out there Ever been in a big city traffic jam?

Civility is important. But pretending that life isnt uncomfortable, and partially so because of the personalities of people we have to deal with, isnt the answer.

Besides, sometimes you just have to call a spade a spade or a f*cking moron.

. Bookmark the

.

See the article here:
Behold the censorship machine! - Personal Liberty Digest

Google has released to developers the source code to Perspective, a new machine tool designed to flag toxic comments online. Its creators hope the AI will clean up internet debate, but critics fear it will lead to censorship instead.

Perspective was created by Jigsaw and Googles Counter Abuse Technology team both subsidiaries of Googles parent company Alphabet in a collaborative research project called Conversation-AI. Its mission is to build technology to deal with problems ranging from online censorship to countering violent extremism to protecting people from online harassment.

Jigsaw has partnered with online communities and publishers to measure the toxicity of comments, including the New York Times, Wikipedia, Guardian and the Economist.

This gives them (news sites and social media) a new option: Take a bunch of collective intelligence that will keep getting better over time about what toxic comments people have said would make them leave, and use that information to help your community discussions, said CJ Adams, product manager of Googles Conversation AI,according to WIRED.

Until now, for news sites and social media trying to rein in comments the options have been upvotes, downvotes, turning off comments altogether or manually moderating, Adams said.

Twitter and Facebook also have recently announced anti-trolling moves.

On a demonstration website launched Thursday, anyone could type a phrase into Perspectives interface to instantaneously see how it rates on the toxicity scale.

RT America tested the AI with some comments from our own website. Type he is a Communist with a Jew nose into its text field, and Perspective will tell you it has a 77 percent similarity to phases people consider toxic. Write I piss on Confederate graves; I wholly agree with your views of these fellows and Perspective will flag it as 42 percent toxic, while Please RT no more Libtards gets a 33 percent rating.

Jigsaw developed the troll detector by taking millions of comments from Wikipedia editorial discussions, The New York Times and other unnamed partners. The comments were shared with ten people recruited online to state whether they found the comments toxic. The resulting judgements provided a large data set of training examples to teach the AI.

Ultimately we want the AI to surface the toxic stuff to us faster, Denise Law, the Economists community editor, told WIRED. If we can remove that, what wed have left is all the really nice comments. Wed create a safe space where everyone can have intelligent debates.

Jared Cohen, Jigsaws founder and president, said the tool is just one step toward better conversations, and he hopes it will be created in other languages to counter state-sponsored use of abusive trolling as a censorship tactic.

"Each time Perspective finds new examples of potentially toxic comments, or is provided with corrections from users, it can get better at scoring future comments," Cohen wrote in a blog post.

Not everyone thinks Perspective is wonderful, however. Libertarian journalist Virgil Vaduva ran his own experiment on Perspective, and concluded that the AI can easily be used to censor controversial speech, whether that speech comes from the left or the right of the American political spectrum.

Applying the AI to censor comments will create an environment empty of value where everyone agrees with everyone, or so it may appear, Vaduva wrote.

Read more here:
Perspective or censorship? Google shares AI designed to fight online trolling - RT

Here's an excerpt from Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451:

Now let's take up the minorities in our civilization, shall we? Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don't step on the toes of the dog-lovers, the cat-lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did.

There you have it, Montag. It didn't come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no!

Farhrenheit 451 was published in 1953.

Here's an excerpt from a Washington Post news story:

Before a book is published and released to the public, it's passed through the hands (and eyes) of many people: an author's friends and family, an agent and, of course, an editor.

These days, though, a book may get an additional check from an unusual source: a sensitivity reader, a person who, for a nominal fee, will scan the book for racist, sexist or otherwise offensive content. These readers give feedback based on self-ascribed areas of expertise such as "dealing with terminal illness," "racial dynamics in Muslim communities within families" or "transgender issues."

Sensitivity readers have emerged in a climatefueled in part by social mediain which writers are under increased scrutiny for their portrayals of people from marginalized groups, especially when the author is not a part of that group.

The Washington Post article was published in 2017.

As Post reporter Everdeen Mason points out, if you're an author of best-selling renown whose published works include Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone just for starters, you might think you don't need to be screened by a sensitivity reader. You'd be wrong:

Last year, for instance, J.K. Rowling was strongly criticized by Native American readers and scholars for her portrayal of Navajo traditions in the 2016 story "History of Magic in North America." Young-adult author Keira Drake was forced to revise her fantasy novel "The Continent" after an online uproar over its portrayal of people of color and Native backgrounds. More recently, author Veronica Rothof "Divergent" famecame under fire for her new novel, "Carve the Mark." In addition to being called racist, the book was criticized for its portrayal of chronic pain in its main character.

Furthermore, sensitivity readers aren't even controversial in the eyes of a surprising number of the media. "What's not to like?" asks Claire Fallon of the Huffington Post:

There's really no meaningful difference between the content editing any reputable publisher would offer and sensitivity readingexcept that most agents and editors, to this day, are white, straight, cisgender, able-bodied women. The average editor at a publishing house isn't personally familiar with the experiences of an American bisexual child of Chinese immigrants, or a black teenager, or a deaf woman. An editor can and will alert their author that an odd coincidence reads as ridiculously contrived, or that a character's dialogue seems stiff and unrealistic; that's part of helping a writer hone their craft and polish their book. What, then, if the book's flaw lies in a cultural detail misrepresented, or a glaringly dated stereotype of a person of color? Unless the editor has more fluency in a given culture than the author, the editing process could skip right over that weakness.

And Slate's Katy Waldman, although not quite so enthusiastic about the sensitivity industry as Fallon, still thinks it's a generally good industry to have around:

As a push for diversity in fiction reshapes the publishing landscape, the emergence of sensitivity readers seems almost inevitable. A flowering sense of social conscience, not to mention a strong market incentive, is elevating stories that richly reflect the variety of human experience. Americaspecifically young Americais currently more diverse than ever. As writers attempt to reflect these realities in their fiction, they often must step outside of their intimate knowledge. And in a cultural climate newly attuned to the complexities of representation, many authors face anxiety at the prospect of backlash, especially when social media leaves both book sales and literary reputations more vulnerable than ever to criticism. Enter the sensitivity reader: one more line of defense against writers' tone-deaf, unthinking mistakes.

Even authors these days seem to see no problem in having to rewrite their books to fit the exquisite sensitivities of sensitivity readers. Waldman mentions one author "who totaled 12 sensitivity reads for her second novel on LGBTQ, black, Korean American, anxiety, obesity, and Jewish representation issues, among others."

There's another name for sensitivity screening, of course. It's called self-censorship. In Fahrenheit 451 some 64 years ago, Ray Bradbury prophesied that ever-increasing authorial sensitivity to the demands of an ever-increasing group of aggrieved minorities would result in books so blandly inoffensive that no one would care about books anymore. And then you'd have actual censorship.

See the rest here:
'Sensitivity' or Self-Censorship? - The Weekly Standard