Blanca Barrera & April Dash, "Uncensored and Censored Religion" Lizzie Boone, Kya Gibson, & Christian Serra, "Censor Yourself" Aaron Dunbar, "Hare Tactics: When Free Speech Goes Too Far" Evangeline Fachon & Lindsay Tomasetti, "Static" Aidee Guzman, "Freedom of Speech?" Moriah Love, Lauren Wirth, Jacob Waddle & Lauren Brunn, "The Censors-Bowl" Sarah Phan & Lyndi Low, "Malediction" Tate Phillip, "Society's Lack [...]
The First Amendment says that “Congress shall make no law …abridging the freedom of speech.” It doesn’t have an age restriction. Yet for the last 50 years, the Supreme Court has essentially written young people out of the First Amendment, holding that their rights to speech and access to information are limited and conditional. As a result, young people experience infringements on their rights in countless situations. Moreover, the exceptions that have been carved out for youth often affect the speech rights of adults as well.
Every lower federal court to consider state or local laws restricting minors’ access to violent content has found them unconstitutional. Here’s a brief rundown:
Many of you are familiar with our concerns about ratings. They’re highly subjective, they reflect value judgments about content, and they reduce complex material to a few letters and numbers.
In Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association, the Supreme Court will decide whether the state can impose criminal penalties for selling or renting violent video games to minors. It may seem inconsequential to nongamers, but it poses a critically important issue even for people who will never play a video game: whether representations of violence will continue to be protected by the First Amendment.
Issue 113, Winter 2010-11 An invitation to young adult novelist Ellen Hopkins to speak at Teen Lit Fest 2011 in Humble, Texas was revoked because some parents complained about the content of Hopkins' novels. Other scheduled authors dropped out in protest and the Festival was canceled. In response to one elementary school parent complaining about the book's content, the [...]
Alexander Nehamas is professor of philosophy at Princeton University. This is an excerpt from a longer article that appeared as an online opinion piece in The NY Times's philosophy series, The Stone, on August 29th, 2010
NCAC devotes the latest issue of Censorship News to video games and the latest in a series of efforts to “protect” minors by restricting their freedom of speech.
Issue 113, Winter 2010-11 Using the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the NEA “decency clause,” NCAC initiated a conversation about the arts and their place in society today. Two panels, organized in collaboration with the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, brought together survivors of the culture wars and culture workers who are coming to creative maturity [...]
We write to express concern about the cancellation of the Flagler Palm Coast High School production of a To Kill a Mockingbird and to urge you to review that decision and allow students to go ahead with the production.
On November 4, 2010, President Obama signed an executive order for controlled unclassified information that establishes a logical and productive process for getting control of the chaos of information categories.
Students and volunteer artists got together during the Starting Artists Afterschool Program to create this experimental music video public service announcement. First, we created a grid of nails using fabric and particleboard. We made a grid in order to spell out recognizable text messages using rubber bands that make up each letter. We brainstormed popular text message abbreviations and we [...]
NCAC Files Brief in Supreme Court Video Game Case; "Violent Video Games Are Protected Speech" Says National Free Speech Organization FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE November 1, 2010 MEDIA CONTACTS Teresa Koberstein, National Coalition Against Censorship, (212) 807-6222 ext. 19 or [email protected] NEW YORK -Tomorrow, the Supreme Court will decide whether the state of California can impose criminal penalties for selling [...]
My film is based upon censorship and my question to the people is whether you think sex, violence and profanity should be censored in the media. The reason why I choose that topic is because its an ongoing fact around the world among most teenagers. So i interviewed different individuals to get their opinion on the topic.
This film demonstrates our first amendment right. It is the story of a high school boy who went missing due to his demonstrations of free speech. It interviews people he knew about how he was before he went missing. This film shows that we are not really free to speak of whatever our minds please.
Our music video expresses this idea, “You can’t stop me.” It wants to tell others that as United States’ citizen, we are like an uncensored nation entitled to free speech. In the Constitution, the First Amendment states that the congress shall state no law abridging the freedom of speech. We intended on expressing our ideas freely, without censorship. We believe [...]
In this digital age, teenagers forget the importance of consideration for others around them. Online, people cannot directly see who they talk to, so people swear without thinking of consequences. This transfers into their daily lives. From just walking home after school to going out to the mall, everywhere teens disregard who is in their company. When someone is in [...]
There have been an increasing number of stories in the news about students turning to suicide because of being bullied. Ben Scharding was the most brilliant human I've ever met. He was a genius, but often his fellow classmates only saw him as "different." On the morning of December 2nd, 2008, Ben laid down on the train tracks behind his [...]
In my film, I talk about public speech, what it is, why it should be censored, and how.I chose the topic of public speech to be censored because I have found it very offending and uncomfortable to be out at the store or in a public area and hear some of the things people have said! Like I said in [...]
The short film "Censorship" symbolizes censorship today. There are two "artists" symbolizing the various artists in our society, including: Filmmakers, Authors, Musicians, etc. "Artist One" is creating a controversial piece, while "Artist Two" is creating a vulgar piece. The two "Men in Black" symbolize the government, book banning communities, and other censorship groups. In the video they walk past "Artist [...]
My Free Speech video has gone through a lot of permutations to get to its final form. Originally, it was going to be about people protesting against a Muslim Mosque being built in my local area. The idea was hard to illustrate with film, though, so I used an animation software to create three brightly colored characters to illustrate my [...]
We brought in around 6-10 kids who had no idea what we were doing, and we gave them a lesson on banned books and tried to explain to them about why books should not be banned.
My film asks three questions to three people of different professional backgrounds: Why do you like free speech? Should some speech be censored? and What is your opinion on the evolution of speech via new media-related mediums? I set the video to the song "Raining Again" by Moby to set a mood of reflection to the video because I feel [...]
I am making this film for two reasons one is because I want to get the scholarship for the community college I will be attending. The second reason is that I want to express why some parts of religion should be censored. It is also a way in which I can learn how to improve in using the computer because [...]
This animated short from teen filmmaker Aaron Dunbar won NCAC's 2010 Youth Free Expression Project Film Contest. The year's theme was "I'm All For Free Speech, But..." Statement from the filmmaker: As free speech is designed to protect truth and freedom, the widespread distribution of ideas that are either objectively false or presented as truth without substantiation is clearly unacceptable. In [...]
This film is just my very own self centered view of censorship. It’s personal; I even mentioned that in the film itself. It shows my own perspective about censorship to make people think about their own opinion because they do have their own. The purpose of this film is just to make people think about themselves and about others by [...]
My brother and I made this film in order to show the negative aspects of our society and what it leads young teenagers to do. We played football with these kids and also went to school with them. As my brother and I enrolled in private schools, these kids were left behind to make theire own decisions which often times [...]
In my video, I wanted to portray my thoughts on free speech and the current status of free speech. I do this by explaining how I have been an underdog my whole life so no matter how obscene I can be, it is worthless because no one ever listens to me. This reflects my thoughts on free speech because I [...]
Speech is a gift but it is a curse at the same time. Speech allows us to express our ideas in forms of riddles, song, poems, novels, short stories, other forms of literature and by talking. While speech does so much for us, at the same time, speech can be looked at as a curse. Speech works by connecting words [...]
It didn't take me long to decide upon the subject of my film. Censorship, I believe, is a direct attack on creativity. That's why I chose to turn my film into a satire, to parody the ignorance that comes with censorship. I wanted to focus on television because even in my house, my parents censor what I can and can't [...]
We're all for free speech, but we believe that its each citizens civic responsibility to make sure that their words have power. Our video is meant to illustrate the dangers of what can happen when the government begins to censor content. To do this, we combined various images of media being censored (eg. cd's broken, books taken, chalkboards erased) loosely [...]
My short film is mainly about the "N word". As you know the N word stands for nigger or the current version on the word nigga. I choose to do a documentary and I interviewed people from my school because my school is predominantly black. The reason I choose this topic is because this is still a issue in our [...]
The reason why we chose to make our video about this topic is because we believe in freedom of speech and expression, and that nothing should be censored. In the video we demonstrate that teachers and schools don’t allow students to listen to what they want or read what they want and that they want students to behave a certain [...]
Our video is made to seem like a funny advertising show. We chose this topic of making fun of censorship because we don’t believe that it is right. The salespeople in the film are trying to sell censorship through a helmet and glasses. To show how it works we have characters in different situations using the products. Then at the [...]
It is a mock news report on what we think about speech and what we do not like about it. At first, I had a different idea (which was about a month before the deadline), but by the time I actually had time to work on it, it was nearly the deadline, so I winged-it and did what I had [...]
Desiree Puller I’m All for Free Speech But… I think that freedom of speech is one of the best freedoms we have here in the USA, however when people choose to abuse this freedom is when I regret having it. I wanted to make this short film because sometimes we as teenagers say things without thinking about the affect it [...]
My rendition of “I’m all for free speech, BUT…” is based upon a teen girl who is bullied into suicide. Everyone she encounters has nothing good to say to her. All she hears are insults and derogatory statements. It becomes so intense she is haunted by the laughs of her antagonists which brings her to the point of suicide. The [...]
My film “freedom of speech, does it exist? can it ever?” was my chance to experience a filmmakers role, in this film I went around my high school and my community to interview various people and get their honest opinions on what they believe about their first amendment right, which is freedom of speech. For me originality was key in [...]
"I'm All For Free Speech, BUT Taking Your Own Picture for Facebook in Your Bathroom Mirror is Just Stupid!" I am making fun of all the friends I have whose Facebook profile picture is taken by themselves in their bathroom. I chose this topic because my friends and I always joke around about how stupid they look. The credits say [...]
