Al Giordano plays spot-the-difference with a real picture of a gunned-down teenager at a rally in Honduras, and that published by pro-coup newspaper, La Prensa. Hint: he looks suspiciously less dead.
Censorship
Criminalising the imagination
ast month, Christopher Handley, a collector of comic books, pled guilty to federal charges of importing and possessing obscene cartoon drawings of children; he faces a maximum prison sentence of 15 years.
Chipping away at the Great Firewall of China
The Chinese government has decided not to go ahead with plans to put internet censoring software on every new computer, following widespread criticism from the international community.
ABC forced out of Iran
The ABC’s Middle East correspondent Ben Knight reports on the censorship facing journalists in Iran, with the government revoking all press cards and refusing to let the press onto the streets.
Breaking the Tiananmen taboo
An official Beijing newspaper made a quiet but unprecented mention of the Tiananmen Square Massacre yesterday. Why did they do it and — more importantly — why were they allowed to?
Wikipedia clams up Scientologists
Wikipedia has banned the Church of Scientology from editing of Scientology-related articles after a four-year “editing war” between Scientologists and critics.
Britain’s war on football indecency
Duleep Allirajah defends his Democratic right to sing really offensive songs at the footy.
Media banned from Aung San Suu Kyi trial again
Burma’s military junta has again barred the media from the trial of the opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Protesting media censorship with Lego men
Flickr user Legofesto has created a pretty amazing gallery of Lego men being tortured to make a political point about how the media censor torture images.
Meet Facebook’s porn cops
To keep Facebook clean and friendly for advertisers, the site employs a team of “porn cops” who spend their days monitoring and censoring users’ content.
Banned in Beirut
Despite being named UNESCO’s 2009 World Book Capital City, a long list of books, films and music are banned in Beirut.
China employs “market-based” media censorship
Pressure from advertisers and executives with CCP ties have made China’s media industry effectively self-censoring.
Indian media in recession denial
Indian newspapers are banning the use of the word “recession” in connection with their country. Apparently a recession is only something that happens in America.
#amazonfail: the book giant begins to rebuild its image
Amazon have labelled their cataloguing cock-up on the weekend as “embarrassing and ham-fisted”. We look at what the pundits are saying. Crikey intern Eloise Keating writes.
#amazonfail: With book monopolies like these, no-one is safe
On Easter Sunday, weird things happened at uberbookseller Amazon, when the site suddenly reclassified certain titles as containing “adult” content.
Media briefs: Never mind the lesbian kiss, Home and Away gets violent
That kiss … Chicago Sun-Times collapses… New life for Life Magazine…
Razer: Conroy should not be surprised at blacklist leak
The emergence of the ACMA blacklist should have been as shocking to Stephen Conroy as, say, another tabloid sashay from Lindsay Lohan, writes Helen Razer.
Fake Stephen Conroy: we’re in trouble
We can’t allow these Mountain Dew-sucking deviants to keep running circles around us, writes Fake Stephen Conroy.
Blacklist leak: ACMA not cut out to play cyber-cop
The leaking of ACMA’s blacklist perfectly demonstrated the faulty logic behind the Government’s net filtering proposal, writes Bernard Keane.
ACMA’s blacklist just got read all over
The more you try to hide your controversial Internet blacklist, Senator Conroy, the bigger you make it, the bigger the incentive for someone to leak it, writes Stilgherrian.
ACMA issues threats, meets the Streisand Effect
Now ACMA is going after pages that merely link to blacklisted material, writes Stilgherrian.
SA Attorney General throws down the gauntlet to gamers
Last week, SA Attorney General Michael Atkinson laid down a challenge to Australian gamers: If you want R18+ video games, run against me at the next election, writes Ruth Brown.
Everything in moderation … even for Andrew Bolt
The launch of Pure Poison has clearly made Andrew Bolt uncomfortable as the reality of his biased comments policy comes in for more public scrutiny, writes Scott Bridges.
What is it about Bob Debus and Japanese p-rn?
It appears the dead hand of Phillip Ruddock still grips free speech in Australia — with some help from South Australia’s Attorney-General, writes Bernard Keane.
LA Times / Wednesday, 6 May 2009
Controvertial right-wing US radio host Michael Savage has been banned from entering Britain on the grounds that he is a “hate promoter”.