Jurist reports that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has held that a California ban on the sale of video games to minors is unconstitutional. According to Jurist: The bill, originally signed into law by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in October 2005, prohibited the sale or rental of violent video games to minors under the age of [...]
A survey of 1,280 teens and young adults conducted by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unwanted Pregnancy and CosmoGirl.com finds that 22% of girls and 18% of boys said they have electronically sent or posted nude or semi-nude images. The impulse to make a nude self-portrait is neither new, nor specific to kids. In the introduction to a [...]
CNN’s coverage of the NY Post’s controversial cartoon from a First Amendment perspective. Click here to watch the video. NCAC Executive Director Joan Bertin weighs in, noting NCAC’s response to the violence in Denmark resulting from a newspaper’s running cartoon portrayals of Mohammed. […]
Satellite television provider Direct TV’s recent decision to reject an advertisement produced by the advocacy group U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation raises serious questions about the responsibilities of corporate media to permit, if not promote, the free exchange of ideas on important questions of national policy. The advertisement, which asks viewers to contact President Obama and tell him [...]
In January, we reported on a Topeka, Kansas woman’s push to move books about sexuality to a restricted section. As Rebecca wrote then, “Restricting books may seem like a fine compromise, but it has a serious chilling effect on library patrons’ reading selection, and adopting such a policy would permit one person to enforce her views on everyone else.” Yesterday, [...]
In December we covered the depressing situation at Rowlett High School where a teacher pulled a performance of “RENT: School Edition” after controversy about the play’s content. “RENT: School Edition” is a “modified” version of Jonathan Larson’s Tony Award winning musical about “bohemian” life in New York. The play explores the lives of artists struggling to live out a romantic [...]
Facebook users now can send e-condoms to their online friends compliments of the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. In a world of abstinence only education, where many public health departments focus on suppressing information about safe sex, I applaud NYC’s bold move to provide accurate, lifesaving information to teenagers. While there are some flaws in the design – [...]
A short picture book for children ages 4-8 has been getting a lot of attention recently. Vamos a Cuba by Alta Schreier and its English counterpart, A Visit to Cuba, were banned from school libraries in 2006 by the Miami-Dade School Board. The book was removed based on complaints that it painted to favorable a picture of Cuba. The ACLU [...]
The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit against the School Board of Nassau County, Florida for denying students permission to open Gay-Straight Alliances in Jacksonville’s Yulee HS and Middle School. In prohibiting the GSA, school district’s superintendent, John L. Ruis, is quoted in the State saying, “A club highlighting sexual orientations will not be permitted as it would [...]
Science based policy had a rough time of it for the last eight years. More than any prior administration, Democratic or Republican, the Bush Administration censored, suppressed, distorted and ignored science. Government scientists were harassed and retaliated against and scientific research and even information gathering were de-funded. Censorship of science violates the values embodied in the First Amendment and the [...]
Two judges in Pennsylvania pleaded guilty last week to taking $2.6 million in exchange for sentencing juveniles to time in privately run detention centers. 5,000 juveniles have been sentenced since this kickback scheme started; many of them were first-time offenders. What if sentencing of those 5,0000 juveniles had been done by a judge seeking accountability and rehabilitation for the offender [...]
A new book, Closed Minds?: Politics and Ideology in American Universities (Brookings Institution Press, 2008), by Bruce L. R. Smith, Jeremy D. Mayer, and A. Lee Fritschler examines claims that America’s universities are dominated by faculty members who indoctrinate students in a leftist or liberal ideology and, instead found evidence of an “emerging risk-averse campus climate that threatens to impoverish [...]
Recently NCAC was contacted by a high school student who was having difficulty accessing particular LGBT websites from his school. Upon further investigation this student uncovered the likely culprit- an internet filtering policy that includes the blocking of “Sites that provide information, promote, or cater to gays, lesbians, swingers, other sexual orientations or practices, or a particular fetish.” The policy [...]
According to the Student Press Law Center, Josh Moore, a college sophomore in Kentucky, has collaborated with a state representative to introduce a bill into the Commonwealth’s House of Representatives that seeks to combat restrictions on student press. Moore believes that it is better for students to be given full responsibility as journalists and to suffer the consequences, than for [...]
Mark in the blog comments pointed out yesterday that he’d like to see more stories about students standing up for their rights. Student newspapers have great editorials supporting free speech, even in dicey cases like JuicyCampus (JuicyCampus itself is no longer running, but a replacement has already sprung up). NCAC’s film contest gives youth the chance to tell their story. [...]
The art work of four art students at Ceres’ Central Valley High School (Ceres, CA) was rejected from the annual Young Masters Art Show. The Art Show, hosted by the Mistlin Gallery in downtown Modesto, CA, features the work of young people ages 1 through 18. Art teachers are allowed to submit 20 pieces (two per student), with all entries [...]
This week, Blogging Censorship will look at student speech: the new technologies that create more spaces for free expression, and growing concerns about cyber-bullying, internet filtering, and student online speech off-campus. Today, we’ll look at cyber-bullying, peer-to-peer. That is, students harassing other students online. A recent report from the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University declared that [...]
A new book examines claims that America’s universities are dominated by faculty members who indoctrinate students in a leftist or liberal ideology and, instead found evidence of an “emerging risk-averse campus climate that threatens to impoverish the intellectual vitality of undergraduate education.”
It has been a busy week for book censorship. On Tuesday, MSNBC reported that The Bookseller of Kabul, a nonfiction account of life inside an Afghan household, was removed from a high school in Wyandotte, Michigan. The book had been assigned for an 11th grade honors English class at Roosevelt High School. MSNBC quotes a former teacher at the school: [...]
NCAC's director Joan Bertin responds to Ian Buruma's op-ed on the Dutch legislator Geert Wilders in a recent letter to the editor in The New York Times. According to Bertin: Ian Buruma is right to note how ironic it is that the Dutch legislator Geert Wilders is becoming a free speech martyr while seeking to ban the Koran. But Mr. Buruma [...]
Obama and his team pledged to work on overturning the 1993 “don’t ask, don’t tell” law, which only allows gays and lesbians to serve in the U.S. military if they keep secret their sexual orientation. According to the Boston Globe, although getting rid of this law is on Obama’s agenda, he “does not want to ask lawmakers to do so [...]
JuicyCampus CEO Matt Ivester says it’s because of global economic downturn and not enough revenue. Seems likely. It also seems likely that the mounting debate on colleges whether or not to ban JuicyCampus from the college networks, and attorney general investigations into consumer fraud may have tipped the balance, so that a 2009 filled with litigation and banning on colleges didn’t [...]
School Library Journal this month takes a look at self-censorship. After interviewing 655 media specialists across the county this fall, they found that 70% of librarians who responded to the survey chose not to purchase some books because they fear backlash from parents. The article also covers the problems with labeling books for objectionable content, and the ways [...]
The scene: Flickr permanently deletes accounts There are three Flickr* censorship stories floating around the internet at the moment (there are ongoing Flickr censorship stories). *Flickr – which let’s users upload photos and videos – is owned by Yahoo. One story is about photos taken down from a Flickr account (on threat of closing the account) for “offensive content.” That [...]
We were disappointed to hear that the school board in Newman-Crows Landing Unified School District voted last night to ban Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya from English classes at Orestimba High School. The 4-1 vote in favor of censorship upholds the superintendent’s decision to pull the book. In January, the Kids’ Right to Read Project was joined by PEN [...]
Time Magazine’s cover story this week is on the promise of stem cell research, and the scientists who persisted developing this field despite obstacles mounted by President George W. Bush. In 2001, without formal rulemaking or even an Executive Order, President Bush announced a policy that effectively put an end to federally funded embryonic stem cell research. He based his [...]
It’s censorship projection day today. Leslie Harris, President and CEO of the Center for Democracy & Technology weighs in on the political landscape for internet censorship post-COPA at the Huffington Post: So what happens next? Will Congress once again beat against the tide and enact yet another Internet censorship law? … Will the Obama administration slam the coffin on Internet [...]
Russell Bradburn writes at examiner.com: All politicians, left or right, engage in this sort of media scapegoating, and games are a particularly soft target for it. … What has our new president to say on the issue? Not much, apparently. The Obama campaign went as far as to place ads in the Xbox 360 game Burnout paradise, so Obama clearly [...]
The Daily Collegian reports that charges of failure to disperse and disorderly conduct have been refiled against Michael Felletter, the student photographer who was accused of "taking photographs that would excite the crowd and encourage destructive behavior" after taking photographs on assignment at a riot following an Ohio State football game. The charges were dropped last week only to be [...]
A woman in Topeka, Kansas, has requested that the library board restrict other adults' access to four books in the adult section of the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library. The sexual content in The Joy of Sex, Sex for Busy People, The Lesbian Kama Sutra, and The Joy of Gay Sex is fully protected under the First Amendment. The [...]
On Friday, January 23rd, President Obama lifted the “global gag rule” by executive order. The policy prohibited international organizations receiving federal funding to talk about abortion as an option. In the Winter 2008 issue of Censorship News, in our “issues to watch” with the upcoming Obama Administration, we wrote: The “global gag rule,” created by executive order, prohibits federally-funded international [...]
We're happy to report that MSU has removed it's charge of "spamming" against student government leader Kara Spencer. Electronic Frontier Foundation's Legal Director Cindy Cohn said, We're pleased that MSU has reversed course and will not only drop the charge against Ms. Spencer, but will reconsider its flawed policies. When a school's anti-spam policy requires students to get approval before [...]
On his first day in office, Barack Obama issued a memo reviving The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The memo states: “The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails.” This is a clear change from the policy of the Bush administration. As Slate puts it: Under Bush-Ashcroft, the presumption [...]
According to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, charges against the student photographer Michael Felletter are likely to be refiled. Michael Felletter, a photographer for Penn State’s newspaper The Daily Collegian, was charged with disorderly conduct and failure to disperse after taking photographs during a post-Ohio State football game riot and disobeying orders from policemen to leave the [...]
According to The Bismarck Tribune, author John Berendt has a new respect for North Dakota, after his book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil was first pulled, then reinstated in the Beulah High School library. While he was initially shocked at the book's removal after parent's complained about "pornographic" content, he followed the news and comments and was [...]
Rachel Vail is the author of over 30 books and short stories for children and young adults, including her most recent, critically-acclaimed, picture book, Jibberwillies at Night (2008). A strong proponent of the freedom to read, Ms. Vail spoke with the Kids’ Right to Read Project about censorship and her experiences and responses to it as a writer.
The New York Times reported yesterday on the fight in Texas over science standards. The standards for 20 years have required that science be taught in a way that show the “strengths and weaknesses” of Darwin’s theory of evolution. The third draft, passed in December 2008 didn’t include this phrase, but this year 7 of the 15 members of the [...]
The new president is giving every mildly liberal person reason to hope their pet cause might be advaced in the next four years. So what about my pet cause: creative freedom? Things appear optimistic. After all Barack Obama enters office with the first-ever presidential arts platform drafted during the campaign. Among other things the platform promises increased funds for the [...]
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that, under President Obama’s nominee for attorney general, Eric Holder, what you read could still be held against you. Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act allows federal agents to demand bookstore and library records when investigating terrorism or espionage. Section 215 also places a gag order on the bookseller or librarian. The provision is [...]
