Tag: censorship

Simply distasteful: censorship by mutual agreement

Since it looks like I’m on an anti-censorship kick, for better or worse, I offer the following story.

Glenn Greenwald writing for Salon reports on what was originally a New York Times story detailing a highly suspicious agreement between the corporate leadership of both GE and News Corporation, the parent companies of MSNBC and Fox News respectively.

In essence, the chairman of General Electric (which owns MSNBC), Jeffrey Immelt, and the chairman of News Corporation (which owns Fox News), Rupert Murdoch, were brought into a room at a “summit meeting” for CEOs in May, where Charlie Rose tried to engineer an end to the “feud” between MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and Fox’s Bill O’Reilly. According to the NYT, both CEOs agreed that the dispute was bad for the interests of the corporate parents, and thus agreed to order their news employees to cease attacking each other’s news organizations and employees.

Most notably, the deal wasn’t engineered because of a perception that it was hurting either Olbermann or O’Reilly’s show, or even that it was hurting MSNBC. To the contrary, as Olbermann himself has acknowledged, his battles with O’Reilly have substantially boosted his ratings. The agreement of the corporate CEOs to cease criticizing each other was motivated by the belief that such criticism was hurting the unrelated corporate interests of GE and News Corp:

Note that it is not about ratings. The two companies are engaging in censorious collusion, gagging their respective personalities based purely on corporate interests.

This is corporate sleaziness at its worst. We know damn well MSNBC and other GE-owned networks will be hesitant to report negatively against its corporate parent, and the same for Fox News reporting negatively against its corporate parent.

Most nauseating, would be this quote from Charlie Rose in 2003. The context of this quote is Rose interviewing Amy Goodman, the well-known host of the independent news program Democracy Now! which airs nationwide on Pacifica, a non-profit radio network, and as a TV show on several local cable networks. Rose is responding to Goodman’s explanation of independent news:

ROSE: My point in response to that would be that we do need you… Having said that, I promise you, CBS News and ABC News and NBC News are not influenced by the corporations that may own those companies. Since I know one of them very well and worked for one of them.

Shame on you, Charlie Rose. My outrage at your hypocrisy is only equalled by my disgust at the fact you make absolutely no attempt to hide it.

Glenn Greenwald goes into further detail about GE’s control of NBC and MSNBC. Most of it is more of the same but one highlight of this second article is a quote from Gary Sheffer:

“We all recognize that a certain level of civility needed to be introduced into the public discussion,” Gary Sheffer, a spokesman for G.E., said this week. “We’re happy that has happened.”

Civility? There’s nothing civil about censorship for greed, censorship to keep the stockholders happy. At the end of the day, news organizations exist to report news to the people, not to make money for the shareholders of their corporate parents.

For the benefit of some new readers of the blog I may have picked up in the last couple of weeks: censorship is one of my pet peeves, and the archives speak for themselves. If you have not already, please take a look.

It starts with Usenet: squashing free speech

Zeropaid reports on yet another ISP censoring its Usenet access. AT&T will cease offering access to alt.bin* and alt.bain* newsgroups as part of its package later this week, due to pressure from New York Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo exerted under the guise of reducing the flow of child pornography.

The sheer idiocy of this logic is demonstrated by the following quote from the AT&T notice:

While we will continue to provide access to newsgroups as part of our Internet Service Offerings, we will no longer include alt.bin* nor alt.bain* hierarchies because of the possibility of child pornography in those particular groups and the difficulty in ensuring that no child porn reappears in them. You can still access newsgroups content through unaffiliated third party providers.

In light of that last sentence, Cuomo is an idiot if he thinks this move will have any real net effect on the child pornography problem. It’s a very thinly veiled attempt at censorship; Cuomo may as well fight to make it illegal to sell Internet access in the state of New York.

I, personally, haven’t been on Usenet in quite a while, and had no need for binaries groups when I did. However, for those who wish to use them, the option should be there. As a common carrier, AT&T–and for that matter, any Internet service provider–should be shielded from liability for what is posted via and to their Usenet servers.

Am I arguing for the right to post child porn? No. But I do believe the action against AT&T is just the top of the slippery slope.

Did the ADL go out of bounds?

An article from SocialistWorker.org reports on the case of William Robinson, a professor of sociology at the University of California-Santa Barbara (UCSB). This controversy centers around Robinson’s condemnation of the Israeli invasion of Gaza that began in 2008 December.

As stated in the second paragraph of the article:

This campaign against academic freedom is not just an attempt to punish me. Much more importantly, it aims to create an environment of fear and intimidation in which any criticism on Israeli policy is subject to sanctions and censorship.

Robinson’s article goes on to detail the course material he chose for his class on 2009-01-19, the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. Suffice it to say, he does not mince words in his condemnation of the atrocities.

Two students out of a class of 80, who Robinson does not know personally, were offended by the images that they withdrew from the class. If only that were the end of it. Fast forward to 2009-02-09, when Robinson receives a letter from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), courtesy copied to the president of the University of California, the chancellor of the Santa Barbara Campus, and other universiy staff not specifically named in the article.

Then, a month later on 2009-03-09, Abraham Foxman, the director of the ADL, flew all the way from Washington to Santa Barbara to meet with about a dozen university officials, including two deans. Most thought the meeting was about a Jewish studies program; it instead was a thorough indictment of Robinson, discussed for an hour.

A short while later on 2009-03-25, UCSB begins investigating Robinson for violations of the faculty code of conduct.

Robinson reports that he is accused of two things: anti-Semitism, and introduction of course material “substantially unrelated” to the course. From what is mentioned in the article, I believe neither hold water.

First, anti-Semitism. I fail to see how condemnation of Israeli state conduct, particularly the scoffing of international law, can be anti-Semitic. Israel is subject to the same international law as any other country, and when that law is violated, they are subject to the same sanctions and criticism.

Second, this is a global affairs course that Robinson is teaching. The assertion that the conduct of Israel, especially within the context of complaince with international law, is irrelevant to a global affairs course is absolutely, positively, galactically stupid and absurd.

I believe the Holocaust was a tragedy and condemn true anti-Semitism, just as I condemn hate based on criteria such as race, gender, and sexual orientation. But at the same time I’m not going to give the modern-day Israeli government a free pass when they thumb their collective nose at international law.

Robinson concludes the article with a stirring condemnation of those responsible, implying the Israel lobby are “anti-democratic, authoritarian, or totalitarian” and also highlighting the suppression of academic freedom in apartheid South Africa, dictatorships in Latin America, the now-collapsed USSR, in the US under McCarthyism, and, oh yeah, Nazi Germany.

I believe my thoughts on the matter are summed up quite nicely by this quote from a reader of the Los Angeles Times, whom I wholeheartedly agree with:

[I]f you do not like Nazi comparisons then urge Israel not to commit Nazi-like atrocities rather than condemn and ostracize those who make the comparison.

AP sticks their nose in reporters’ Facebook profiles

Wired.com’s Threat Level reports on a new Associated Press policy aimed at reporters. The intent of the policy is “to make sure material posted by others doesn’t violate AP standards.”

That would be all well and good. Except this is for employees’ personal Facebook profiles–and that is where I think this policy goes over the line. The policy is also vague, quoting from further down in the article:

It’s a good idea to monitor your profile page to make sure material posted by others doesn’t violate AP standards: any such material should be deleted.

This is in addition to these ominous and censorious directives:

[E]mployees also should avoid including political affiliations in their profiles and steer clear of making any postings that express political views or take stands on contentious issues.

Further down, in the Twitter-specific section:

Also, when tweeting, remember that’s there a big difference between providing an observation (“I nearly bumped into Chris Matthews outside Penn Station”) and an opinion (“I nearly bumped into the loudmouthed and obnoxious Chris Matthews”).

And it gets even worse:

Do these guidelines apply just to AP employees who are journalists?

They apply to all employees, just as the Statement of News Values and Principles does. We cannot expect people outside the AP to know whether a posting on Facebook was made by someone who takes pictures, processes payroll checks or fixes satellite dishes. We all represent the AP, and we all must protect its reputation.

This edict is most troubling when combined with the fact that the Facebook terms of service only allow one account per user. If you maintain two identities, you run the risk of losing both of them. So it’s not like AP employees can make a “work account” and a “non-work account.” Facebook has this as a term of service for several reasons, the first being that it provides one easy way to clamp down on flagrant dishonesty.

I can see an issue if one heavily advertises that one works for the AP right before launching into a heavily political tirade, but this is different than expressing one’s political views outside of working hours under one’s own name.

To draw an analog, I avoid wearing my work uniform outside of work; I made it a point to bring a change of clothes when I played in my bar poker league after work, and would change out long before the game began. (I will concede that comfort was a contributing factor, but I probably would still have changed clothes even if it were not.)

It’s the same with the AP. There’s a difference between “on the clock” and “off the clock.” Within reason, “off the clock” conduct should be “off-limits” for company policies.

China gives Google the boot

The Financial Times reports on China’s latest censorship move: telling Google to shutdown its google.cn site for Chinese residents.

With the rise of technologies like Tor, Freenet, GNUnet, Mixmaster, and OpenPGP (including GNU Privacy Guard), censorship as a whole is unsustainable in the personal computing realm.

China is trying to hang onto a fasicst-communist regime similar to the USSR’s. The USSR broke up 20 years ago. How dumb can you be to not know this, unless you are intentionally ignoring all references to it?

Censorship, the way China is doing it, is doomed, and in fact, has already been circumvented. As John Gilmore said: “The Net interpets censorship as damage and routes around it.”

The Internet is about a lot more than the physical wires and the computers across the world. The Internet is about the people that use it. The Internet is about freedom of speech. More importantly, not just free speech for those in Western countries, not just free speech in the US where we damn near take the First Amendment right of free speech for granted–the Internet is about free speech everywhere.

The sooner they figure that out in China, the better.