Censorship discussion
Dear Fewer-than-Five Readers:
I'd like to start a discussion, in the comments under this posting, about where the U.S. is headed in terms of censorship. I'm just curious to see what you all think. You can be serious, facetious, satirical, angry, happy, nonsensical, logical, polite, vulgar, whatever, so long as it stays interesting.
Two things to chew over for starters: Frank Rich's column in today's NY Times; A Knight Foundation study of high school-students' attitudes about freedom of speech.
It's appropriate to begin our discussion at this Super Bowl anniversary—and maybe I'll post something about the halftime show—since in the past year government and media have scrambled to scrub all the crudeness out of entertainment, but of course haven't made it any better. Most of it is still crap. So here's what I'll be arguing: The "Decency" debate is not only dangerous to freedoms, it is also a distraction from the real problems of mainstream journalism and entertainment. But that's just me...
I'd like to start a discussion, in the comments under this posting, about where the U.S. is headed in terms of censorship. I'm just curious to see what you all think. You can be serious, facetious, satirical, angry, happy, nonsensical, logical, polite, vulgar, whatever, so long as it stays interesting.
Two things to chew over for starters: Frank Rich's column in today's NY Times; A Knight Foundation study of high school-students' attitudes about freedom of speech.
It's appropriate to begin our discussion at this Super Bowl anniversary—and maybe I'll post something about the halftime show—since in the past year government and media have scrambled to scrub all the crudeness out of entertainment, but of course haven't made it any better. Most of it is still crap. So here's what I'll be arguing: The "Decency" debate is not only dangerous to freedoms, it is also a distraction from the real problems of mainstream journalism and entertainment. But that's just me...
posted by Scott at 5:00 PM
2 Comments:
I'm not that worried about the high school poll... it seems pretty similar to ones I've seen before, and the First Amendment has survived those. The examples Rich provides are more disturbing. To me, the main problem we're facing right now isn't censorship exactly -- you'll always be able to print whatever you want on leaflets and hand them out in the streets. Bigger problems are the monoculture produced by consolidated media companies and government-funded propaganda: Armstrong Williams, those other columnists, and now the "Jeff Gannon" thing. Maybe PBS will eventually fall into that category... libertarians have said that for a long time.
Anyway, the end effect of propaganda is pretty similar to censorship, so I think it's just as bad. That's my take.
Andy—
I agree with that—at least for now, while the FCC refrains from actively seeking stuff out and remains complaint-driven. Speaking of the monoculture, I had to mangle a quote yesterday to get the word "hell" out of an obit I wrote for the Sentinel, a Tribune paper. A source had used the expression "go like hell," and we had to get clever with ellipses and whatnot to get rid of it. My editor and I agreed that this sucked. "Shit!" I said. "You can't say that either," he said.
Apart from the "chilling effect" upon exchange of ideas, this has a chilling effect on personality. I once knew a guy who very deliberately avoided swearing, talked around swear words or made up benign replacements for them, and, well, he was just a little less, I dunno, lively because of it.
Bill Maher has an LA Times column today about the high-school survey. I wouldn't say the survey surprised me, given the passive attitudes I encountered when I tried to talk about civil liberties with people at my high school. But if they're passive about that, won't they be passive about propaganda? This is a clumsy generalization, but I'll throw it out there: People are more likely to keep an assertive eye out for moral offense than to look out for lies. It's easier in the first place to spot nudity or a cartoon character visiting lesbians than it is to tell TV news propaganda from regular crappy TV news spots.
Post a Comment
<< Home