Censorship

Pages of the book Green IllusionsOzzie Zehner, where part of the text is censored.

Censorship, according to the Dictionary of the Spanish language of the Royal Spanish Academy, is the 'intervention practiced by the censor in the content or in the form of a work, attending to ideological, moral or political reasons'. In a broad sense, it is considered suppression of communication material that may be considered offensive, harmful, inconvenient, or unnecessary to the government or the media, as determined by a censor.

Etymology

The word “censorship” comes from the Latin word censor, the job of two Romans whose duty it was to monitor public behavior and morality, therefore they censored i> the way to act.^{[citation required]}

Justifications

The justification for censorship is different for different types of censored information:

Moral censure

Painting of the birth of Venus by William-Adolphe Bouguereau in which people's genitals are censored.

It is the removal of materials that are obscene or otherwise considered morally questionable. Pornography, for example, is often censored. In this logic, especially child pornography, which is illegal and is censored in many jurisdictions around the world.

Military censorship

The process of keeping military intelligence and tactics confidential and away from the enemy. This is used to counter espionage, which is the process of gathering military information. Quite often, the military also seeks the suppression of politically inconvenient information, even if that information lacks real intelligence or tactical combat value.^{[citation needed]}

Political censorship

It occurs when governments withhold information from their citizens. This is usually done to control the population, prevent free expression and a possible rebellion. Another version of censorship is the phenomenon of disinformation using "red herrings" to distract people from some issues.^{[citation needed]} Take for example Private Bradley Manning, who could eventually be sentenced to very severe sentences, if proven who was the one who supplied copies of thousands of documents to WikiLeaks.

Religious censorship

It is the means by which any material deemed offensive by a certain faith is removed. This often involves a dominant religion forcing the limitations of less frequent ones. On the other hand, a religion may reject the works of other people, when they believe that the content is not appropriate for their faith.

See also: Censorship from religion and Freedom of expression and blasphemy.

Corporate Censorship

The process by which corporate media publishers intervene to stop the publication of information that describes their business or business partners in a negative light.^{[citation needed]}

Self-censorship

It is the procedure according to which a communication medium censors the content to be published to avoid negative consequences, for example, it can censor negative opinions about a company if it puts part of its advertising in the medium. You can also censor to prevent the media from disappearing. Thus, in the US, television licenses are renewed, by law, according to a value judgment on their content, so that an editorial line opposed to the government risks that the license will not be renewed. A recent example was the event in which Janet Jackson inadvertently displayed a breast on television, the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) received letters asking that the license of the TV stations involved be cancelled.

Types

Mural in which a man is represented with his mouth covered, this as a protest.

Political censorship

Political censorship exists when a government tries to hide, distort or falsify the information that its citizens receive, by exclusion or repression of press policy, thus preventing the public from being informed through news agencies. In the absence of opposition and objective information, people will have less opportunity to disagree with the government or political party in charge.

It is also the suppression of opinions that are contrary to those of the government. The government often has the power of the military and secret police, to reinforce the loyalty of journalists with the government's willingness to exalt the story that the government wants people to believe. Some of their ways of acting are through bribery, ruining careers, imprisonment, and even murder.

In recent years, censorship has even attempted to encompass new technologies, censoring or limiting in some way what circulates on social networks and Google.

This type of censorship is sometimes attempted even in a democracy, for example, arguing that certain types of information are exaggerated and highly offensive, and that they contravene the law. See, for example, the efforts that are being carried out in India to partly censor content that circulates through Google, Yahoo, and Facebook.

Censorship of State secrets

During times of war, explicit censorship is carried out with the intention of preventing the delivery of information that could be useful to the enemy. This is usually about keeping times or places secret, or delaying the release of information (for example, an operational target), until it is of no use to the enemy. The moral issue here is often posed as something different, because the perpetrators of this form of censorship argue that the release of tactical information often carries a higher risk of casualties among one's own forces, and that this could lead to the loss of global conflict.

During World War I, letters written by British soldiers had to go through the censorship apparatus, which was made up of officers who used a black marker to cross out anything that might compromise any operational secret before the letter was sent.. Already in World War II, the phrase "loudmouths sink ships" it was used as a common justification for exercising official censorship in times of war, and encouraging individual restraint by avoiding the sharing of potentially sensitive information.

An example of "cleaning" of political information is that of the USSR under Stalin, where altered photographs were frequently used to remove from them people whom Stalin had sentenced to execution. Despite the altered photographs, which might have been remembered or otherwise forgotten, this deliberate and systematic alteration of history in public opinion is seen as one of the central themes of Stalinism and totalitarianism.

Censorship is sometimes carried out to assist authorities or to protect an individual, as is the case with some kidnappings when attention and media coverage of the victim can sometimes be seen as unhelpful and counterproductive.

Censorship in education

The content of textbooks is often the subject of debate, as their target audience is young people, and the term "whitewashing" It is commonly used to refer to the elimination of conflicts or critical situations. The denunciation of military atrocities in history are highly controversial, as in the case of the dresden bombing, the Nanjing Massacre (as found in Japanese textbooks), the Armenian Genocide, holocaust denial, the protests in Tiananmen Square, and The protest against the Vietnam War.

In the context of secondary education, the way facts and history are presented greatly influence the interpretation of contemporary thought, opinion, and socialization. An argument to censor the type of information disseminated is based on the quality of said material unsuitable for young people. The use of the term "inappropriate" is itself controversial, as it has changed greatly throughout history.

Censorship and freedom in art

David's plaster mould at the Victoria and Albert Museum has a detachable plastering sheet that is shown close. Legend states that the blade of parra was created in response to the shock of Queen Victoria by seeing for the first time the nakedness of the statue and hung from the figure before the actual visits, using two hooks strategically placed.

Although the academic Víctor J. Vázquez Alonso writes about the American case, specifically about the First Amendment, it is worth adding some of his arguments regarding the limitations of artistic freedom and what kind of consequences censoring artistic works has. The problem with the censorship of art and artistic censorship in general is that, as Alonso says:

”Its meaning ceases to be the property of the author from the moment the society takes over it, and can make it a symbol of something completely alien to the original will of its creator.”

As soon as the author or painter has created his work, it ceases to belong to him; Therefore, even if he had an intention with her, society may understand the work in a completely different way than expected. Thus, it is not possible for the artist to control how his recipients understand his creation. ^{[citation needed ]}

The work can be a reflection of the artist:

“What seems clear is that in the work of art the artist turns his self in a unique way, to the point that if we took into consideration the distinction of Ortega between ideas and beliefs, we could say that the artist believes in the work, is somehow in it.”

And, if this is true, then it is not only about censoring an artistic work, but about restricting a way of being, and, as Alonso mentions in his article “Freedom of artistic expression. A first approximation", quoting Waldron: "It is one thing to defend through the law what people are and another what people think or believe".

Alonso also highlights that the artistic is a concept that changes over time:

“Obviously, the first in some way serve us as a historical sign of alert, and that that which one day was considered immoral, with the passage of time, not much, can become canon not only aesthetic, but to some extent also cultural of a certain society.”

In other words, over time our vision of the artistic changes, and following this reasoning, the idea of what we are going to censor or what we want to censor also changes.^{[citation required]}

Another problem with censorship would be the fact that many times creators or artists make use of hyperrealism or detail violent scenes with the intention of arousing strong emotions in the recipient, but specific groups in society find it offensive:

“…nobody understands that the crime novelist who recreates in great detail a series of murders that have gone unpunished is inciting murder or singing of impunity, rather it is normal to think that this story is written like that because in this way its author has found a vehicle to provoke a certain emotion in the reader”.

Alonso ends with the conclusion that the definition of what is obscene will not only limit the freedom of artistic creation, but it will delimit in a way that, if there are works that are obscene, "... they remain outside the protected scope for the right”. For this reason, it is important for the author to insist on the legal categories:

“I think it is important to insist that legal categories such as the obscene cannot, in any case, not limit, but delimit the right to freedom of artistic creation, in such a way that the manifestations capable of being considered as such, that is, obscene, are outside the scope of the law."

Censorship in music and popular culture

In music, censorship has been applied by states, religions, educational systems, families, retailers and pressure groups - and in most cases in violation of international human rights conventions.

Censorship in the cinema

Aside from the usual justifications of pornography, language, and violence, some films are censored due to changing racial attitudes or political correctness in order to avoid ethnic stereotyping despite their art-historical value.

Censorship on maps

Censorship of maps is often used for military purposes. For example, the technique was used in the former East Germany, especially for areas close to the West German border in order to make defection attempts more difficult.^{[citation needed ]}Censorship of maps is also applied by Google maps, where some areas are grayed out or areas that are deliberately outdated.

Censorship applied

The Soviet Union maintained an extensive special program of state censorship. The main organ of official censorship in the Soviet Union was the head of the "Agency for the Protection of Military State Secrets" and generally known as the Glavlit, its acronym in Russian. The Glavlit handled issues arising from censorship on national writings and of almost any kind, including beer and vodka labels. The Glavlit staff were present at every Soviet publishing house and in the press, the agency employed some 70,000 censors to review information before it was disseminated through publishing houses, editorial offices, and broadcast studios. No means of communication escaped the control of Glavlit. In all press agencies and radio and television stations there was a representative of the Glavlit on their staff.

Sometimes, specific and unique information, the existence of which is barely known to the public, is kept secret, close to subtle censorship as "subversive" or "drawbacks". Michel Foucault's 1978 text 'Sexual Morality in Law', later republished as 'The Danger of Infantile Sexuality', for example, was originally published as 'La loi of pudeur" [literally, "the law of decency"], defends the decriminalization of child rape and the suppression of the age of consent in the laws.^{[citation required ]}

When a publisher is under pressure to suppress a book, but has already entered into a contract with the author, it can sometimes deliberately run small and minimize publicity efforts. This practice became known in the 2000s as privishing.

Prior censorship