Category Archives: Censorship

New Censorship Free Website! Let #39;s make it happen.
A new site that is censorship free can easily replace this one if we all come together to make it happen! I will be posting videos here and there and hope we...

By: Professor Doom1

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New Censorship Free Website! Let's make it happen. - Video

Stream Leads 30/09/2014: Chinese social media censorship spikes, calling foul on Muslim-American foo
Follow The Stream and join Al Jazeera #39;s social media community: FACEBOOK: http://www.facebook.com/AJStream TWITTER: https://twitter.com/AJStream GOOGLE+: htt...

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Stream Leads 30/09/2014: Chinese social media censorship spikes, calling foul on Muslim-American foo - Video

China Appears To Attack Yahoo In Latest Censorship Of Hong Kong Protests
As thousands of people swarm the streets of Hong Kong asking the Chinese government to fulfill its promise of real democracy in the autonomous region, Chinese censors seems to be tightening...

By: WochitGeneralNews

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China Appears To Attack Yahoo In Latest Censorship Of Hong Kong Protests - Video

POCAHONTAS | Unnecessary Censorship | Censored Disney Parody Bleep Video
This week in unnecessary censorship, Pocahontas: Journey to a New World! WOH! hold up! where have you guys been?! Well! to answer your question, we have a second channel! https://www.youtube.com...

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POCAHONTAS | Unnecessary Censorship | Censored Disney Parody Bleep Video - Video

After Censorship of History Course, Colorado Students Teachers Give a Lesson in Civil Disobedience
http://democracynow.org - After a county school board in Colorado proposed to rewrite the district #39;s high school history curriculum to stop teaching about civil disobedience, students and teachers...

By: democracynow

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After Censorship of History Course, Colorado Students & Teachers Give a Lesson in Civil Disobedience - Video

Gun Censorship
Kristi and Jonathan.

By: SAS Media Literacy

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Gun Censorship - Video

Open Letter on Censorship and Google
Open Letter on Censorship and Google.

By: Io911

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Open Letter on Censorship and Google - Video

We have rating systems for movies, television shows, and video gamesso why not rating systems for books? That's the thought behind services that rate books with the aim of helping parents and protecting children. But these services are contributing to censorship in schoolsand harming public education in the process.

When many of us think of books being banned or challenged in schools, we may think of evangelical Christian objections to Harry Potter or parental panic over nudity in Maurice Sendak's In the Night Kitchen. But there is a small industry that feeds parents' anxiety over the content of their children's reading material: book ratings.

Now, when we talk about book ratings, we're not talking about reviews of books or qualitative discussions of their content. We're talking about rating systems like that of Common Sense Media, which scores books based on things like educational value, role models, violence, sex, and profanity and then assigns them an age rating.

While Common Sense Media touts on its website that, "We believe in sanity, not censorship," the National Coalition Against Censorship has found that such rating systems do, in fact, contribute to censorship in public schools. "I think [book rating]'s commonly written about as the 'helicopter parenting' phenomenon and that's fairly well recognized," NCAC Executive Director Joan E. Bertin told us. "I think the piece that people have missed is the way in which it's playing itself out in kids' educational experiences, with parents second-guessing teachers and taking the position that kids should be sheltered from everything, including the content of books that might be disturbing."

NCAC is opposed to broad rating systems for all media, calling for more qualitative review systems. "What Common Sense Media and these other sites have done is flag these as problematic areas and therefore create the message that if you're a good parent, you really shouldn't let your kids see this stuff. It's like a scarlet letter," says Bertin. Different parents may have different views on whether and in what context their kids should be reading about sex, profanity, and the human capacity for violence, but rating services tend to boil content down into overly simplified categories, with bullet points that can at times read less as thoughtful dissection of the texts than as a warning to parents.

NCAC is hardly alone in their criticism of these rating systems. They've joined with other organizations, including but not limited to the American Library Association Office for Intellectual Freedom, National Council of Teachers of English, Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators, and the Authors Guild to protest the way Common Sense Media rates books.

While the goals of sites like Common Sense Media (it's hardly the only rating site out there, but it's large, well funded, and even has an endorsement from President Obama) may be noble onesmaking parents' and children's lives easierthese rating systems can and do contribute to censorship in schools. "We know that people check these sites and refer to them as authoritative when they complain about books," explains Bertin. "I think there are probably some teachers and librarians who check them to see whether, if they assign a particular book, it's going to be problematic, whether they're going to get complaints, because they know parents will be checking them. It is definitely playing a role, and I think the most insidious element of it is the decontextualization and the stigmatizing of certain types of content."

When you look at the organizations backing Common Sense Media, it's hard to imagine they actually want to see books censored in schools. According to its 2011 annual report, the non-profit received 38 percent of its revenue in 2010 from grants, and its list of foundation supporters is a veritable who's who of do-gooding charitable organizations. So why do they put their money into a media rating service?

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The Thriving Industry That Helps Encourage Book Censorship

CAIRO, Oct. 2 (UPI) -- The Egyptian government confiscated all copies of a major Cairo newspaper to censor an article.

The independent newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm published a serialized interview with former Egyptian intelligence officer Refaat Jibril, who said in Wednesday's installment Egypt traded Israeli spies back to Israel, instead of executing them. Records indicate Egypt executed defendants convicted of spying for Israel as late as the 1980s, and the revelations may have compromised the Egyptian intelligence agencies' image of hardliners.

The confiscation of the newspapers came days after Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi told the American television interviewer Charlie Rose that Egyptian censorship is a thing of the past, saying, "There is no limitation and this is final. Anybody can be criticized in the media, from the president to any state institution. We are very keen on ensuring that."

Al-Masry Al-Youm is typically supportive of Sisi's administration, and its management had no explanation for the sudden act of censorship.

"They just said, 'Remove this article,'" editor Ahmed Ragab, said. "The regime tries to protect its story about history, and we journalists try to search out new facts. It is the normal fight."

The newspaper published its Wednesday edition with the article omitted, although it could be found on a website of world news stories.

2014 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Any reproduction, republication, redistribution and/or modification of any UPI content is expressly prohibited without UPI's prior written consent.

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Egypt confiscates newspapers in censorship attempt

Mass Awakening! Hundreds of Denver Students Stage Walk-Out Over History #39;Censorship #39;
http://www.undergroundworldnews.com Hundreds of Denver-area high school students walked out their classrooms in a mass protest against what they call an atte...

By: Dahboo777

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Mass Awakening! Hundreds of Denver Students Stage Walk-Out Over History 'Censorship' - Video