Category Archives: Censorship

Backgrounder Media Censorship in China Author: Beina Xu Updated: February 12, 2014

China's central government has cracked down on press freedom as the country expands its international influence, but in the Internet age, many of its citizens hunger for a free flow of information.

See more in China; Censorship and Freedom of Speech; Internet Policy

Mark Lagon and Ryan Kaminski examine the relationship between freedom of speech, Huntington's Clash of Civilizations, and the infamous Innocence of Muslims YouTube video.

See more in Global; Censorship and Freedom of Speech; Religion

Arch Puddington presents Freedom House's "Freedom in the World 2013" report, followed by a discussion between Tamara Wittes and Larry Diamond. They discuss the text of the report, as well as the differences between democratic indicators within nations, regional trends, and the normative importance of the "Arab Spring."

See more in Human Rights; Censorship and Freedom of Speech; Global

Arch Puddington presents Freedom House's "Freedom in the World 2013" report, followed by a discussion between Tamara Wittes and Larry Diamond. They discuss the text of the report, as well as the differences between democratic indicators within nations, regional trends, and the normative importance of the "Arab Spring."

See more in Human Rights; Censorship and Freedom of Speech; Global

The debate over freedom of expression in new Arab and Muslim democracies should be seen as part of a larger historical transition, says Duke University's Timur Kuran.

Visit link:
Media Censorship in China

Microsoft has been accused of censoring Bings Chinese-language search results for people in the US, in the same way that it does for those based in China, according to activists.

The claims were made by The Guardian newspaper, which said that several activist blogs had reported seeing very different results on Bing for queries made in Chinese, as opposed to those made in English. Searching for controversial terms such as Dalai Lama, June 4 protests and Falun Gong, among others, throws up pages for organizations and groups that are allied with the Chinese government, whilst similar searches in English are very different, and much less pro-China.

The Guardian reports:

Searches first conducted by anti-censorship campaigners at FreeWeibo, a tool that allows uncensored search of Chinese blogs, found that Bing returns radically different results in the US for English and Chinese language searches on a series of controversial terms.

A Chinese language search for the Dalai Lama () on Bing is lead by a link to information on a documentary compiled by CCTV, Chinas state-owned broadcaster. This is followed by two entries from Baidu Baike, Chinas heavily censored Wikipedia rival run by the search engine Baidu. The results are similar on Yahoo, whose search is powered by Bing.

The Guardian carried out a similar experiment on Google Search, and found that controversial terms returned similar results in both languages.

Not surprisingly, Microsoft was quick to deny that Bings been censoring its search results, saying that the discrepancies were due to an error in its system:

Weve conducted an investigation of the claims raised by Greatfire.org., said Stefan Weitz, Senior Director Bing, in a statement to Business Insider:

First, Bing does not apply Chinas legal requirements to searches conducted outside of China. Due to an error in our system, we triggered an incorrect results removal notification for some searches noted in the report but the results themselves are and were unaltered outside of China.

Microsoft is a signatory to the Global Network Initiative, which is an effort by a multi-stakeholder group of companies, civil society organizations (including human rights and press freedom groups), investors and academics to protect and advance freedom of expression and privacy on the Internet. As part of our commitment to GNI, Microsoft follows a strict set of internal procedures for how we respond to specific demands from governments requiring us to block access to content. We apply these principles carefully and thoughtfully to our Bing version for the Peoples Republic of China.

View original post here:
Bings Chinese-language censorship balls-up is huge PR disaster

Microsoft's search engine Bing appears to be heavily censoring its Chinese-language search results across the globe as well as inside China, a cyber-monitoring group said Wednesday.

According to the group Greatfire.org, international Chinese-language Bing searches for topics deemed politically sensitive by Beijing return a drastically different set of results than English-language searches.

Censored search terms include the name of jailed 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, the exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama and the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, it said.

"This is the kind of story that begets a Congressional hearing," the group, which tracks the vast Chinese online censorship apparatus known as the Great Firewall, said in a statement releasing its findings.

"We are 100% sure our findings indicate that Microsoft is cleansing search results in the United States to remove negative news and information about China," it added. "And they are doing this in every market in which they operate in the world."

A Microsoft spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment by AFP.

Bing is the second-most-popular Internet search engine in the US, with an 18.2 percent market share to Google's 67.3 percent in December 2013, according to Microsoft.

Tests conducted by AFP confirmed several of Greatfire.org's findings.

An English-language search using servers outside China for "Liu Xiaobo" returned a list of results from overseas sources including the Norwegian Nobel Committee, the New York Times, Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia.

In a Chinese-language search of Liu's name, by contrast, six of the top ten search results were links to Chinese government and state-run media pages containing the same text -- a lengthy disparagement of Liu that compiles some of his more-controversial statements.

Read the original post:
Microsoft's Bing accused of Chinese-language censorship

Google #39;s Censorship Data Shows Alarming Results809

By: Barbara Poplits

Read this article:
Google's Censorship Data Shows Alarming Results809 - Video

By Charles Recknagel, RFE/RL

When Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini took power in Iran 35 years ago on February 11, Iran's filmmakers had good reason to worry. The strict code of censorship ushered in by the Islamic Revolution convinced many that creativity and film were no longer compatible in Iran.

Yet today, despite the continuing strict censorship rules governing them, Iran's artistic films -- as opposed to the country's commercial-release films -- are universally acclaimed as among the most innovative and important participants in international film festivals.

The filmmakers' ability to overcome the suffocation of censorship, while still working under it, is one of the rare successes in the daily struggle ordinary Iranians wage to have greater personal freedom under an authoritarian regime. At the same time, the battle against censorship has had a great influence in forging the look and style of Iranian art films, which have earned a place of distinction in the eyes of film lovers worldwide.

Many authoritarian governments impose strict political restrictions on artists. But the Islamic republic's censorship code is unusually strict because it includes social restrictions as well. The social restrictions particularly limit how relationships between men and women -- one of the most fundamental subjects of the arts -- can be depicted.

The red lines forbid almost all physical gestures of romantic love, limit the kinds of issues that can be discussed, and bar women from singing or dancing on screen. They also require actresses to wear the hijab -- clothing that masks the figure and covers the hair -- for indoor as well as outdoor scenes, even though in reality Iranian women generally dress at home as they wish and don't cover their hair.

Jamsheed Akrami, a professor of film at William Paterson University in New Jersey, says that the censorship code is so burdensome that the first talent any serious filmmaker must possess is the ability to get around it.

"Whenever you are under strict restrictions, you try to find out ways of getting around them to still communicate your messages. To the credit of the Iranian filmmakers, they have become very adept at skirting the censorship codes," Akrami says. "In fact, as an Iranian filmmaker your most prized possession is your ability to undermine the censorship codes and find ways of getting around them. Your artistic gift is like a secondary requirement."

The Art Of Allusion

One way to get around censorship is to allude to subjects rather than address them directly. Akrami -- whose own recent documentary "A Cinema of Discontent" explores how Iranian directors such as Jafar Panahi (maker of "The Circle," an independent film banned from public screening in Iran ), Bahman Ghobadi (maker of "No One Knows About Persian Cats," an underground film never screened in Iran ), and the Oscar-winning Asghar Farhadi operate under censorship -- says the art of allusion has become the hallmark of Iran's art cinema.

See the original post here:
Islamic Revolution Can't Upstage Iranian Cinema

Dil Debate on Censorship
Debate on the censorship of the word homophobia and the controversial pay out of compensation to members of the IONA institute.

By: Clare Daly

Read the original here:
Dil Debate on Censorship - Video

Censorship Assignment Ethics
Me and my crew members just got the Highest marks for doing this video assignment!~!! So i #39;m guessing why not just share it to the public 🙂 I #39;m the host, th...

By: Arif Yusof

Original post:
Censorship Assignment Ethics - Video

Keith F. Shirey, Entrepreneur, Political Activist and Artist talks about censorship on EBay
Keith F. Shirey, Entrepreneur, Political Activist and Artist Education: BA, MA Political Science U.S.C., grad work at Claremont Graduate University. Married ...

By: MAYO PR

See the original post:
Keith F. Shirey, Entrepreneur, Political Activist and Artist talks about censorship on EBay - Video

WWE - Right To Censor (Censorship)
WORLD WIDE FILTH -uploaded in HD at http://www.TunesToTube.com.

By: Jerichoholic Justin

See the article here:
WWE - Right To Censor (Censorship) - Video

Chinese media censorship on Hong Kong #39;s TV
As a foreigner living in China the censorship here doesn #39;t affect your daily life much and it isn #39;t noticeable at all, except that websites you are used to v...

By: Suedwester

View original post here:
Chinese media censorship on Hong Kong's TV - Video