Category Archives: Censorship

Bitcoin proponents often talk about the many benefits the decentralized currency can offer the world, and one of these attributes is bitcoins censorship resistance. This week news.Bitcoin.com chatted with, Firas Zahabi, a well known Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) grappling trainer from Canada who decided to use bitcoin as an incentive to promote online grappling events.

Also read: Markets Update: Bitcoin Cash Rallies for Three Solid Days

Firas Zahabi has trained many champion MMA fighters and is the founder of Tristar Gym, a grappling martial arts training center located in Quebec, Canada. The gym is well known as one of the worlds top MMA training camps, and grappling fights are very popular in the region. However, Zahabi tells us over a phone conversation that the local governments in Canada have deemed holding MMA events illegal. Grappling martial arts itself is legal in the region, but MMA events are not allowed, which gives young Canadian fighters less of an opportunity to compete and show their skills. So Zahabi decided to create online events on Youtube which he calls the Pure Victory Championship and fighters compete for bitcoin prizes. Zahabi believes the act of hosting events online decentralizes the playing field and bitcoin leaves the middle man out of the equation.

Bitcoin.com (BC): Can you tell our readers about the Pure Victory Championship?

Firas Zahabi (FZ): Recently they made grappling events illegal where Im from here in Quebec, and then they made events illegal in Ontario. Quebec is a hotbed for grappling talent, and the biggest MMA event in the world called the Abu Dhabi Combat Club (ADCC) is happening soon, and two of my students are attending this year. So grappling in Quebec is really popular, but the local governments made it illegal because there was bickering back and forth between event promoters that were calling the cops on each other. They were trying to cancel each others events and corner the market.

Law enforcement got tired of all these calls, and now we are not allowed to have grappling events. Grappling is perfectly legal still, but holding grappling events here is illegal. Alongside this, Canada recently declared bitcoin as a commodity, and to the government, its not money, not a currency. So Im not allowed to hold events and give out prize money, but we are allowed to film and upload ourselves fighting online. And now the fighters get bitcoin, and its kinda like them getting a free t-shirt or swag, because I am giving them a commodity as a prize for participation. We thought it was an excellent idea and the viewers can tip the fighters as well and our grapplers have been making money during an event. The grapplers are also enthusiastic about competing again in the future and the audience absolutely loves it.

Its been all positive feedback and people are following the events. We only have four episodes so far and the fifth episode should launch next week. Its really creating a great buzz with just four episodes.

BC: How much bitcoin have the fighters been getting?

FZ: Theyve been getting roughly $100-300 dollars in bitcoin between winnings and tips. Dont forget that theyre getting bitcoin and that could be worth a lot in the future. This is only after one match, and when you grapple you have to pay to compete, so it helps the fighters earn. Further, these episodes could still give fighters some earnings, and after twenty videos it will create a fishnet effect. I think the fighters havent finished collecting and once they get more and more popular they create a bigger following, and the prizes will get bigger.

BC: What gave you the idea to include bitcoin into these events?

FZ: The politics and the government. They need to let young fighters have a place to release their energy. If these kids cant find anything to do they will likely find some trouble and grappling is such an amazing outlet for the youth. Not only are they getting fit but they are exercising their minds, and they are building a whole community. We are a thriving community, and they just came and shut us down. Could you imagine if they made baseball events illegal? I dont understand it, these kids need an outlet rather than being in the pool halls and the streets. Martial arts is one of the most constructive things a human being can do, especially in their youth.

So I said lets decentralize jiu-jitsu. If we cant have grappling events how can we monetize our skills? The middleman is just such a problem, hes always sticking his hands in our pocket and always bullying us. So lets decentralize our jiu-jitsu, lets make it so the audience can see the competitors compete, pay them in cryptocurrency and remove the middleman.

So my next phase for Pure Victory Championship will be global and what Im going to do is let fighters film their match, and if your game is good enough I will air it, and the winner will get $300 in cryptocurrency. Which is a lot for fighters just starting off, and the internet is hard to stop.

BC: Did the government give a formal explanation to why they made grappling events illegal?

FZ: No they told us if you have any more grappling events they will come and shut us down, and they have already. One major grappling event was canceled with hundreds of competitors. So what Im hoping to do is put the power back into the competitors hands.

BC: Have the fighters mentioned anything about receiving cryptocurrency as a prize?

FZ: They love it, every fighter loves it. Look at the price of bitcoin right now. The guy who recently got $100 worth of BTC is pumped as its worth about $300-400 right now.

The world loves MMA and its a very popular sport and grappling enthusiasts are going to hear an awful lot about cryptocurrency this year.

What do you think about FirasZahabis Pure Victory Championships? Let us know in the comments below.

Images via Pixabay, Bitcoin.com,FirasZahabis, and Pure Victory Championship

Need to calculate your bitcoin holdings? Check our tools section.

Read the original:
Grappling Championships Use Bitcoin To Circumvent Censorship ... - Bitcoin News (press release)

Wall Street Journal (subscription)

Tech Censorship of White Supremacists Draws Criticism From Within Industry Wall Street Journal (subscription) The debate intensified over whether the growing number of tech companies that blocked white supremacists and a neo-Nazi website on the internet have gone too far, as a prominent privacy group questioned the power a few corporations have to censor. and more »

View original post here:
Tech Censorship of White Supremacists Draws Criticism From Within Industry - Wall Street Journal (subscription)

A general view of Kings College Chapel, Cambridge. Photograph: Adam Davy/PA

The censorship row involving the worlds oldest publishing house and its most powerful one-party state has exposed the increasingly authoritarian turn China has taken under Xi Jinping, the editor of the journal at the centre of the controversy has said.

Criticism of Cambridge University Press intensified on Sunday over its controversial decision to comply with a Chinese request to block access to more than 300 articles from the China Quarterly, a leading China studies journal, so as to avoid having other publications targeted by Beijings censors.

Some vowed to boycott publications produced by CUP - which printed its first book in 1584 during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I - until the step was reversed.

Speaking to the Guardian, Tim Pringle, China Quarterlys editor, said he hoped Chinese authorities would scrap their instruction to block more than 300 articles they deemed objectionable. He also hoped CUP chiefs would use meetings at a Beijing book fair this week to tell the Chinese government that the move represented a significant step backwards in terms of academic freedom.

However, Pringle, who is a senior lecturer at Londons School of Oriental and African Studies, admitted he was pessimistic about the chances of a Chinese change of heart. I cant see this being rolled back anytime soon, although we will lobby for that to happen. I think this is more about the configuration of the current leadership. It is a reflection of the Xi Jinping era. Its a stronger shade of authoritarian government that is less pragmatic, or certainly appears to be less pragmatic [that the previous administration].

Pringle described Chinas previous leaders, president Hu Jintao and premier Wen Jiabao, as authoritarians who had nevertheless been willing to take on views from an emerging and at times buoyant civil society and to respond pragmatically to some of those views.

That changed dramatically after Xi became the Communist partys general secretary, almost five years ago, in November 2012, and instigated a dramatic clampdown on opposition voices. Targets have included academics and journalists who have been ordered to toe the party line; human rights lawyers and their supporters who have been disappeared or jailed; and, now, the worlds oldest publishing house.

Pringle said: If you look at the foreign NGO law, if you look at the measures taken against various sectors of civil society, the feminist five, labour activists being sentenced and detained starting in December 2015, if you look at the very serious clampdown on lawyers since July 2015, [and] also journalists - this is an excluding of external and critical voices.

Pringle said he believed China Quarterly had been targeted because it contained the kind of critical material that was no longer welcome under Xi. We are outside the system [and] outside party control ... If there is one thing worse than an external voice its an external voice talking about things you dont want to hear.

In a biting open letter Georgetown Universitys James Millward accused CUP of showing a repugnant disdain for Chinese readers who now only had access to a misleading, neutered simulacrum of its journal, shorn of articles about politically-sensitive topics such as Tibet, democracy and the Tiananmen Square massacre .

Cambridge University Presss current concession is akin to the New York Times or The Economist letting the Chinese Communist Party [CCP] determine what articles go into their publications something they have never done. It would be unimaginable for these media to instead collaborate with PRC party censors to excise selected content from their daily or weekly editions.

Millward, a specialist in the far-western region of Xinjiang who has been repeatedly denied visas to visit China, noted that those news outlets had refused to produce incomplete, scissored-up, CCP versions because of pressure from Beijing. Cambridge University Press, on the other hand, is agreeably donning the hospital gown, untied in the back, baring itself to the Chinese scalpel, and crying cut away!

In an interview, Millward, whose name appears once on the list of censored China Quarterly articles, said he believed CUP had been far too quick to acquiesce to Chinas demands. They should have said, China Quarterly is a package deal: take it or leave it and not have worried that CUP products across the board would be banned from China.

I really doubt there was some sort of explicit threat that was delivered to them, Millward added. I rather think that they were leaping to that conclusion, that if they didnt comply then they would be retaliated against, and I think that conclusion is a false one.

Were we still in the paper-bound journal age, then there would be huge holes in these journals. And for Cambridge just to say, OK, we are just going to cut these out of the virtual version of the journal is really kind of appalling.

The Georgetown scholar said he did not believe Chinas leaders had issued a direct order to ban sensitive China Quarterly material. Rather, the instruction was likely to have been given by lower-level officials who were responding to the chilly political climate that has gripped China since Xi took power. Academic institutions and publishers around the world had been far too reticent about pushing back against such demands, he added.

Sebastian Veg, a Hong Kong specialist whose work was also on the list of blocked articles, admitted there was no ideal solution in a case like this, when you have to choose between doing the work of the censors for them or seeing your entire content blocked.

[However] I dont think its morally acceptable for a University Press to proactively censor its own content to gain access to any market.

Other foreign publishers and victims of Chinese censorship demands now needed to speak out. Resisting censorship requires naming and shaming.

CUP said last week that it would raise the issue with the agencies and the impending Beijing book fair. The issue of China and censorship is not a short-term issue and therefore requires a longer-term approach. There are many things we cant control, but we will take every opportunity to influence the agenda, CUP said.

The rest is here:
Cambridge University Press censorship 'exposes Xi Jinping's authoritarian shift' - The Guardian

A funny thing happened to me today. I had been waiting by the inbox for my invitation to the new crowd-funding site, Hatreon. After feeling the all-powerful hands of YouTube squeeze a little too tightly around my neck, I was seeking out a new home for my video content which, by all accounts, is mostly comedic with some political lecturing thrown in for fun. My YouTube channel also contains a historical record of all the rabble rousing I've done over the years in various suburbs in opposition to various elected bad actors. It's not as shocking or groundbreaking as I'd like to believe it is. It's pretty tame. But according to YouTube, it's becoming advertiser unfriendly. This is the death knell for any YouTube channel demonetization. And so I went looking for somewhere I could still get paid for the thousands of hours I put into creating content. I researched Patreon but realized that content creators to the right of Bernardine Dohrn are now getting booted off for "hate speech" as outlined in their draconian terms of service (TOS) which enforce speech codes. A few people suggested Hatreon, the so-called "alt-right" answer to Patreon. I immediately liked the name. If they're going to label us haters, we might as well laugh about it.

So my invitation to join Hatreon finally came (and why wouldn't it? After all, I am deplorable), but the joy quickly faded as I clicked the login link to find this waiting for me.

Are you freaking kidding me?

How is this happening? It's like the entire tech universe is conspiring together to keep us offline. Oh, wait. That's exactly what's happening. I confirmed on Twitter that this was a deliberate booting of Hatreon's account off DigitalOcean servers complete with self-serving virtue signaling from DigitalOcean crowing about what a good deed they did by denying service to a paying customer.

PJ Media reached out to Hatreon's founder Cody Wilson and interviewed the man Wired magazine once listed as one of "The 15 Most Dangerous People In the World 2012." He was the opposite of how I would expect someone to sound whose new project had just been tanked for no reason other than left-wing hysteria. Wilson's good mood and light tone made me feel a little bit better about being under the Big Tech Boot of Censorship. He seemed undisturbed. He cracked jokes. He made them seem ridiculous.

"What if I owned a bakery and someone asked me to make a transgendered, Islamic, gay-themed wedding cake and I said no?" He chuckled. "I think you know the answer."

Wilson was sure Hatreon would be operational again later that day, and as of 10:15 p.m. the site appeared to be back online. Clearly not a beginner in the highly censorious tech world, Wilson didn't put all his eggs in one basket. He counted on DigitalOcean's small profile to keep them safe from public scrutiny. What he didn't know was that the alleged white supremacist Daily Stormer website housed some data on DigitalOcean's servers, which made them the target of SJW lynch mobs on Twitter. (I say "alleged" because Google deleted them from the internet before I ever had a chance to see what they are or aren't. Having never read Daily Stormer myself, I refuse to take CNN's word on the matter as truth. They might be a white power news source or they might be just a poorly written weather fan site. No one knows now because they've been disappeared by Google and its henchmen.) When the SJW outcry began to take down Daily Stormer after the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville that ended in inexcusable violence and mayhem, everyone raced to the control room to start flipping the switch to "off" on any bogeyman they could find (or invent). Hatreon got caught up in the mad dash to purge the Internet of "Nazis." DigitalOcean shut off their service overnight with no notice and later claimed Hatreon had violated their TOS, but offered no proof of the violation. The TOS they supposedly violated was 3.2 and is so overbroad it might be a good test case for an enterprising lawyer who wants to get it declared void for vagueness.

See more here:
Alt-Tech Bad Boy Cody Wilson Explains Hatreon, an Alternative to Online Censorship - PJ Media

PayPal this week banned at least 34 organizations for promoting hate, violence or racial intolerance, including Richard Spencers group and others apparently involved in the Charlottesville riot. PayPals announcement mentions KKK, white supremacist groups or Nazi groups that have violated its acceptable use policy.

Its a private company (thats not yet regulated as a utility) so it can do as it pleases, and the Nazi/Klan creeps certainly arent going to evoke any sympathy. But as someone whos been at the receiving end of hate group smears, it would be good to know how such decisions are made. PayPals announcement notes that our highly trained team of experts addresses each case individually highly trained in what? Sniffing out heresy? (No one expects the PayPal Inquisition!) When PayPal goes beyond the objective standard of banning activity prohibited by law to banning those it simply doesnt like (however loathsome they might be), all dissenters are vulnerable.

PayPals highly trained experts havent yet targeted my organization, but Twitter has, albeit in a small way so far. You can pay them to promote a tweet thats already been posted, as a form of advertising, and here are three that we submitted for promotion that were rejected:

All three were rejected on the grounds of Hate:

They contain nothing hateful, obviously, but the common thread appears to be that all three refer to the costs to society of illegal immigration, and all three contain the word illegal two refer to illegal immigrants and one to illegal aliens.

When you look at Twitters Hateful content in advertising page, it looks like the very word illegal is indeed prohibited with regard to immigrants (as opposed to the U.S. Code, where its common). It mentions Hate speech or advocacy against a protected group or an individual or organization based on, but not limited to, the following including Status as a refugee and Status as an immigrant.

This is merely a nuisance for me, so far, but it does point to the broader issue addressed by Jeremy Carl in his piece on the homepage this week about regulating the big internet firmsas public utilities. Carl writes What is needed is not regulation to restrict speech but regulation specifically to allow speech regulation put on monopolist and market-dominant companies that have abused their positions repeatedly.

One internet company this week abused its position but at the same time practically begged for the government to step in. Cloudflare is a sort of middleman facilitator between users and the web sites theyre visiting. Because of the companys position in the infrastructure of the internet, its CEO, Matthew Prince, was able to simply shut down the Daily Stormer neo-Nazi website: Literally, I woke up in a bad mood and decided someone shouldnt be allowed on the Internet. He explained his decision by noting that the people behind the Daily Stormer are assholes, which they no doubt are.

But to Princes credit, he continued: No one should have that power:

We need to have a discussion around this, with clear rules and clear frameworks. My whims and those of Jeff [Bezos] and Larry [Page] and Satya [Nadella] and Mark [Zuckerberg], that shouldnt be what determines what should be online, he said. I think the people who run The Daily Stormer are abhorrent. But again I dont think my political decisions should determine who should and shouldnt be on the internet.

As Prince wrote in a blog post on the incident, Without a clear framework as a guide for content regulation, a small number of companies will largely determine what can and cannot be online.

The internet is now a utility more important than phones or cable TV. If people can be denied access to it based on the content of their ideas and speech (rather than specific, illegal acts), why not make phone service contingent on your political views? Or mail delivery? Garbage pickup? Electric power? Water and sewer? (I hope Im not giving the SPLCs brownshirts any ideas.)

Read more:
More Internet Censorship - National Review

Fox News senior judicial analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano said private industry has a right to censor opinions but its a very dangerous business.

The First Amendment restrains the government. It reads Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. Congress has now been interpreted [that] to mean no government shall abridge the freedom of speech, Napolitano said during a Fox and Friends interview Thursday. And Facebook and the other high tech companies are not owned by the government so they are free to censor. They can do whatever they want, but censorship is a very dangerous business.

They will lose market share, they will lose a lot of customers. They will lose their identity as a marketplace for ideas and then these hateful ideas will go somewhere else.

Napolitano argued that although hate speech is detestable and wrong, its better to suffer through it than to sacrifice the right of free expression.

Which is worse in the American icon of values? Hate speech or censorship? I would argue that censorship is worse, he said. The remedy for hate speech is not censorship. Its more speech. Its speech to challenge and expose it.

He added he doesnt believe it will be easy to change the minds of those who peddle hate speech, but its preferable to driving them into hiding and obscuring the threat.

I am not naive. I dont think that we could all stand on a street corner and talk to a bunch of haters and change their minds. Some of them, a legion of angels coming from heaven telling them theyre wrong would not change their minds, he said. But it is better we know who they are, where they are, and what they say, than they be driven underground.

Once we get into the censorship business it will just keep getting worse. So if they can censor something that I say because its hate to them, it might be music to your ears, he concluded.

You can Follow Nick on Twitter and Facebook

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact [emailprotected]

See the original post:
judge Nap: Censorship Worse Than Hate | The Daily Caller - The Daily Caller

Wanting to ban the haters is understandable.

It was inevitable that the fallout from violent protests in Virginia organized by white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups would extend to the virtual world of the web. The internet is our modern commons. But the past few days have shown how fast we can glide down the slippery slope to web censorship.

Facebook and Twitter were perfectly within their rights, legally and ethically, when they banned accounts of certain hate groups and their leaders. These are private companies enforcing their own rules about how their services and platforms can be used. Providers of web infrastructure, however, must be held to a stricter standard since they act as choke points that can prevent an individual or group from being able to express themselves online.

Soon after the Charlottesville events, domain name registrars GoDaddy and Google separately decided to no longer serve the Daily Stormer after the neo-Nazi site wrote a disparaging story about Heather Heyer, the woman who died after being struck by a car while protesting the Charlottesville rally. Registrars act as a sort of phone book for the internet by turning a raw IP address -- like 62.23.150.94 -- into a line of text, like "Bloomberg.com." Without GoDaddy or Google, it would be impossible for people to find the Daily Stormer online. Shortly afterwards, CloudFlare, which offers firewall services for websites to help them ward off attacks, kicked the Daily Stormer off its servers.

In a refreshingly candid email to his employees and blog post, CloudFlare CEO Matthew Prince admitted that his decision was "arbitrary" and "dangerous," and departed from years of maintaining strict neutrality about the content of the sites his company protected. As Prince told Gizmodo: I think the people who run The Daily Stormer are abhorrent. But again I dont think my political decisions should determine who should and shouldnt be on the internet.

It's hard not to cheer Prince's courage and his motives. But his decision and those of the registrars have big implications for the debate over how the internet should be regulated. To reach web users, publishers of content small and large rely on a complex machinery of web hosts, domain registrars, transit providers, platforms, proxy servers and search engines.

While the companies that provide the back-end services of the web are less well known than the Facebook and Snapchats of the world, they're indispensable to its smooth functioning; they are effectively the plumbing that allows the whole system to function. When they take sides, everyone loses.

Many may be happy to see the Daily Stormer pushed into web oblivion, myself included, but we probably wouldn't feel the same way for publishers of content we agreed with. What if a dissident politician or a corporate whistle-blower got similar treatment?

Currently there are no U.S. laws or regulations to prevent web infrastructure providers from taking such actions. Under federal law, private corporations can deny service to groups or individuals, as long as it's not because of their race, religion or sexuality. Nor does the principle of "net neutrality" really apply since that just calls for broadband providers like Verizon or Comcast to treat all data equally.

We may need new rules in the U.S. that specifically bar web infrastructure providers from cutting off services to publishers based on their content. This would limit firms like GoDaddy's ability to use their terms of service to silence people with controversial views.

Clear thinking from leading voices in business, economics, politics, foreign affairs, culture, and more.

Share the View

It would be preferable to keep efforts to eradicate hate speech at the platform level and not among the providers of internet infrastructure services. After long resisting, platforms like Facebook and Twitter now acknowledge that they bear some responsibility for what people post.Since they are governed by local laws where they operate, they fall under the jurisdiction of elected officials with the legitimacy to regulate. Just look at Germany's tough new law that levies fines up to 50 million euro ($58.5 million) if social networks don't remove hate speech promptly.

Regulators will make mistakes and may even overreach. But they have more standing to make tough calls on free speech than the internet's plumbers.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story: Leila Abboud at labboud@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Therese Raphael at traphael4@bloomberg.net

View original post here:
Keep the Internet's Backbone Free From Censorship - Bloomberg

The Vegas Golden Knights announced in April that Lotus Broadcasting would be the official radio broadcast partner and radio home of the NHL expansion team for the next few seasons.

This meant they opted not to go with CBS Radio Las Vegas, home to six highly-rated stations including CBS Sports 1140am. Which did not set well with Tony Perlongo, senior vice president and market manager for CBS Radio in Vegas, who instructed everyone on air not to ever mention the hockey team, going forward.

From Perlongo, in an email published by Ron Futrell:

A decision has been made that effective immediately, there are to be no further mentions of the Las Vegas Golden Knights hockey team on any CBS/LV radio stations or any of our social media platforms. This includes, but not limited to, on sale ticket mentions, player/coaches interviews, plugging locals to sing national anthem, TV broadcast schedule, etc. It is now the responsibility of the Golden Knights chosen radio partner to help accomplish their goals, not ours.

Now, you may ask yourself how a Las Vegas sports radio station intended to ignore the inaugural season of the first major professional team to play in the city, and honestly we dont have a clue. Other than that its hockey, which means its probably not being discussed on an American sports talk radio station to begin with.

Anyway, Futrell reached out to Perlongo to find out if this giant crybaby act-as-professional guidelines thing was in fact accurate, and he confirmed that it was.

We have a lot of other things to cover, the Knights dont work into our coverage, said Perlongo. We support their (the Golden Knights) success in the marketplace, but that will depend on their partnership that theyve already developed.

This censorship lets call it what it is went more viral than an off-the-strip motel pool, and the backlash was harsh.So Perlongo informed the Washington Post on Wednesday evening that the Golden Knights will in fact be mentioned and discussed on his sacred airwaves:

With six radio stations in Las Vegas we have always prided ourselves on informing, educating and entertaining listeners and supporting the local communities we serve. However, we missed the mark in an internal email that instructed our stations to no longer report on certain aspects of the Golden Knights, the citys first and only major league sports team, Tony Perlongo, CBS Radio Las Vegas senior vice president and market manager, said in a statement provided to The Post. This was an error in judgement on our part and we deeply regret it. We will of course cover the team, first and foremost on Sports Radio 1140 and on our music and news/talk stations as it makes sense for those formats and audiences. We apologize to the Golden Knights, their fans and our listeners and look forward to rooting the team on when the puck drops in a few weeks.

And an apology to boot!

Look, this idiotic decision was bound to be short-lived, but we didnt expect it to have the lifespan of your average White House Communications Director.

The swift reversal of policy speaks to three things: That ignoring a local team, especially one with that new car smell, is bad business; that public shaming for said idiocy is a handy way to affect change; and that we wish hockey fans would take a lesson from this and realize that if you arent happy with the amount of coverage your sport gets from a given station in a given market, let your voices be heard.

It may not forceJimbo and The Goofball to stop talking about LaVar Ball or whatever long enough to preview the Stanley Cup Playoffs, but it could annoy the program director just enough to carve out a little time for our beloved sport here and there. And thats a start.

Greg Wyshynskiis a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him atpuckdaddyblog@yahoo.comorfind him on Twitter.His book,TAKE YOUR EYE OFF THE PUCK,isavailable on Amazonand wherever books are sold.

MORE FROM YAHOO SPORTS

See the original post here:
Vegas radio station apologizes to Golden Knights for censorship - Yahoo Sports

The Trump campaign accused CNN Tuesday of censorship for refusing to broadcast a paid advertisement highlighting President Trumps achievements.

Today, CNN provided further proof that the network earns this mistrust every day by censoring President Trumps message to the American people by blocking our paid campaign ad, said Michael Glassner, executive director of Donald J. Trump for President Inc. Clearly, the only viewpoint CNN allows on air is CNNs.

The commercial says Democrats are obstructing the presidents agenda, and the media are attacking him.

The presidents enemies dont want him to succeed, the ad states. But Americans are saying Let President Trump do his job.

CNN refused to air a previous Trump campaign ad in May after the campaign declined to change a reference in the commercial to fake news. Mr. Trump again called the network fake news Monday in a showdown with a CNN reporter at the White House.

Mr. Glassner said one reason so many Americans support Mr. Trump is because of their complete mistrust of the mainstream news media, and the presidents refusal to allow their biased filter to interfere with his messages.

While CNNs censorship is predictable, this will not stop or deny our message that President Trumps plan is working for the American people, he said.

Go here to read the rest:
Team Trump accuses CNN of censorship - Washington Times

Its about halfway through the fifth season of Orange Is the New Black when Elizabeth Rodriguezs recently un-incarcerated, always opinionated Aleida sums up the plight of female-forward broadcast television writers everywhere with one simple, well-crafted exchange.

Can I say bitches? she asks a local newscaster and then, when she gets the green light, immediately and involuntarily exclaims, s. The journalist, played by Thea McCartan, responds she cant say that, to which Aleida replies, What kind of fing bulls rule is that?

Although the writers may have simply been trying to show that Aleida was not as media savvy as she was street smart in this episode, which was written by co-exec producer Lauren Morelli, in a lot of ways, were all like Aleida, says writer-producer Carolina Paiz.

After years of working on broadcast TV, Paiz understands Aleidas frustrations. On network shows, she notes, Were constantly censoring or told to self-censor. Even before the FCC has a way to weigh in, Standards and Practices is all over us.

Paiz recounts her frustration from working on one unidentified show that had plenty of violence, but required the writers to go back and forth and come up with 20 different racial slurs to see which one was more acceptable than the other. She was also on ABCs Greys Anatomy earlier in its run when writers were told that they couldnt say vagina on a medical show but penis was OK thus resulting in terms like vajayjay entering our lexicon. (A representative for ABC confirmed to Variety that vagina is now acceptable language.)

Ron Simon, curator of TV and radio at the Paley Center for Media, notes that since 1934 over-the-air television and radio has been regulated, including a safe harbor period between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. Although the First Amendment prohibits outright censorship or interference with broadcasters right to free speech, during these hours content the FCC deems indecent material may not be broadcast because kids are arguably most likely to hear it.

Simon says most of the recent viewer complaints have come from live events, such as CNNs decision to air the audio of Donald Trumps Access Hollywood hot mic interview during the election or Stephen Colberts late-night monologue where he claimed to know the only thing the president is good for. Neither were within the FCCs jurisdiction.

It seems very arbitrary, if you look at the complaints, Simon says. Hes not sure how much the average viewer has made a distinction between what is and isnt regulated by the FCC.

Of course networks have their own rights to self-censor and Paizs experience with broadcast Standards and Practices is not unique. Museum of Broadcast Communications television curator Walter J. Podrazik says he has seen a desire not to offend from the business side since the days of Lucy and Ricky Ricardo, and Rob and Laura Petrie, sleeping in separate beds. He points to a scene in a televised production of the play No Time for Sergeants that aired in 1955 during The United States Steel Hour as an example. In the play, Andy Griffiths character, Will Stockdale, is on latrine duty and decides to make all the toilet seat covers stand at attention and flush when his superior walks though. But the gag was deemed inappropriate for television audiences, so an orchestra played instead. Even by 1971, Podrazik says, it was a big deal when audiences heard a toilet flush in one of the first scenes of All in the Family.

What is offensive or what is an imposition has sort of changed over the years, Podrazik says. But he adds that writers and directors are crafty enough to get around it and convey it without having to say the words.

Foxs Empire only used the most derogatory word for a gay man in the pilot (in 2015), since becoming more creative when reaching for terms an old-school music mogul might use to hurt his gay son. ABCs Modern Family made light of an emotional situation in 2012 by bleeping the tirade of f-bombs that the young Lily (Aubrey Anderson-Emmons) unleashes during a wedding ceremony. But this year NBCs The Carmichael Show aired the n-word unedited during primetime albeit with a parental advisory notice appearing ahead of the broadcast. These examples all serve the argument that words can be hurtful, but hearing them can add to the authenticity of characters, diminish their shock potential and reclaim their ownership.

ABCs anthology drama American Crime, which ended with its third season this year, was never gratuitous with foul language, but it did incorporate it into the show to capture the reality of its characters vocabulary. Its work-around for the FCC? A short cut to black.

Michael J. McDonald, one of American Crimes executive producers, says early viewers thought something might be wrong with their screens, but now, people are used to it, and when you watch it, you just fill in the word. McDonald appreciates that ABC allowed these cutaways because it implies theyre not shying away from the language being spoken. Theyre almost saying, Were censoring this because we have to.

American Crime still had to fight battles for certain terms, though. Lollipop is not an acceptable euphemism for oral sex, according to the ABC S&P, and dick is banned as well, which McDonald says is innately misogynistic, considering you can say bitch as many times as you want in an episode. It is interesting to note, too, that when licensed on Netflix and airing in other countries, American Crime plays its scenes with the words intact.

Cable networks that are not as beholden to advertisers have slightly fewer censorship rules to which to adhere, but most are still selective with their language. Although shows on FX have used the f-word for years, and The People v. OJ: American Crime Story ran the gamut of racist and sexist commentary when depicting the infamous Mark Fuhrman tapes, its 2017 anthology Feud was the first to use the c-word.

Id like to get to the point where theres virtually no censorship, and were pretty close, FX chief John Landgraf told journalists during his executive session at the summer 2015 Television Critics Assn. press tour. Landgrafs policy is to use as few offensive epithets toward women and minorities as possible.

When they are used, they tend to be used in a context where you see theyre used by a character that is doing something wrong, and its pretty clear theyre doing something wrong, he says.

Oddly, this issue is compounded by something for which many networks have been commended: a push for diversity. As series push to include more characters speaking foreign languages, there comes the problem of what is inflammatory in one country isnt in another even if those countries speak the same language, as McDonald found on American Crime. Similarly, Paiz says she once worked on show that had a character named Jesus. S&P was fine with his name if it was used with the Latino pronunciation, but she says they dug in their heels that his friends were not refer to him with the Anglicized one.

I come from Latin America and they censor words that we say in Spanish in ways that make no sense, says Paiz. She was also told that under no circumstances could she use the Latino insult pendejo, which literally translates to pubic hair but can also be used pejoratively to call someone a stupid or contemptible person, because they had gotten complaints about it before.

Paiz understands the reasoning behind these rules, even if they do feel arbitrary, but McDonald points out that an hour on social media on which children spend a great portion of their day can bring up more scathing language than anything available on scripted television. He believes cursing and strong language definitely have their places on television, just not on all shows.

I dont think people are going to be watching American Crime and think, Oh, dear lord. They said the f-word!, McDonald says. You already have chosen to watch our show and know what the subject matter is. I think if you dropped the f-word and the n-word into an episode of The Middle, that might be a little more shocking to a family.

Read the original here:
FCC Censorship Rules Vary for Broadcast, Cable, and Streaming - Variety