“Censorship is the policy that limits the public expression of ideas, opinions, views and views that may have a corrosive effect on the existing government or the social or moral code of conduct that that government believes should be protected,” Harold said. Laswell, a twentieth-century American reporter. Below you can read how the press is being silenced…
What is censorship?
Censorship takes many forms: books can be banned or shortened, articles can be omitted from newspapers, plays are not licensed and therefore cannot be performed. In some countries where people are persecuted, censorship occurs through a ban on speaking publicly or publishing writings. Someone who is entitled to censor is called a censor. This term is also used to describe someone who controls or prohibits the behavior of others, but often this does not involve formal censorship. When the term censor is used in this chapter, I refer to a person who carries out formal censorship.
Throughout history, people in positions of power have continually tried to stop unacceptable material. When Gutenberg invented the printing press in the mid- fifteenth century, the Pope in Rome presented a list of books that should be banned. When the film became popular at the beginning of the twentieth century, the producers realized that they had to impose censorship on themselves otherwise they could expect this measure from the government. In some cases it is difficult to determine whether there is censorship, in other cases it is very clear. The governments of more than enough countries recognize property rights. This means that the government controls almost all types of media.
May God forbid that any book should be banned. Censorship is as indefensible as infanticide. This quote from Dame Rebecca West, an English author, compares censorship to infanticide. Many censorship measures cannot be justified, but on the other hand, the censors themselves always manage to justify their measures. It is difficult to determine what the censors’ reasoning behind this is. Is it acting in the interest of national security or is newspaper editors feeding lies?
Censorship in wartime
Over the course of the century, governments at war have learned how important it is to control the information available and to win over journalists, or at least their editors. As communications technology has continued to develop, it has been designated by censors for propaganda purposes. It is important for the authorities that the enemy cannot use certain information, but above all the sympathy of the home front must be won. For most of the twentieth century, journalists covering war were expected to be part of the propaganda apparatus, rather than independent witnesses.
In 1856 the English invented military censorship. This was a result of a number of critical reports in The Times about the war against Russia in Crimea. The then government was brought down by the negative publicity. At the beginning of World War I, England, France and Russia were the opponents of Germany and Austria-Hungary. The English government decided to monitor the reporting. Only six correspondents were allowed to report from the front. The journalists wore officer uniforms and were treated as members of the military. They were obliged to sign a deed of confidentiality. The journalists were remarkably loyal to the government. They provided the audience with colorful hero stories almost without any problems. Because soldiers’ letters were also heavily censored, all news from the front was good at first. This changed when the soldiers went home on leave. The press had initially lost its voice, now also its credibility.
In 1982, Argentina attacked the British-controlled Falkland Islands. England sent war ships to recapture the islands. By the time war was declared on Argentina, it turned out that the Minister of Defense had learned a few things from Vietnam: he decided to put all journalists under surveillance. Every journalist was obliged to travel with the military units, with the result that they immediately lost their independence. All correspondents had to agree to censorship and military control before they would be allowed to travel. Giving live reports was already common at this time. Yet most of the war journalists’ messages were held back for one to four days before being released. In the daily press releases, the Minister of Defense managed to present himself as the only source of current information about the events. The journalists were able to express their views when they returned home. But by then England had already fought the battle.
Iraqi forces had invaded Kuwait. The United States and Great Britain had declared war on Iraq. The Gulf War broke out on January 17, 1991. The censors tried to convince the public that the new technology had removed the horrors of battle. They painted a picture of a war without casualties with ‘surgical’ air strikes, bombs of ‘pinpoint accuracy’ and ‘removals’ of ‘military targets’ with little or no ‘collateral damage’. It took weeks before the first images of this collateral damage were visible. It may remain strange, but most journalists were loyal to the army, which determined how they should do their work. Only CNN, the American news service, had a correspondent in Iraq. Many American and British reporters feared that his independence would cause him to spread enemy propaganda.
Censorship was reasonably successful in both world wars. Many journalists had been willing to sacrifice their objectivity for the greater good: defeating the enemy. The war in Vietnam showed that things could be done differently; what would happen if journalists were not on the government’s side. Because a national emergency had never been declared in Vietnam, there could be no censorship. Correspondents were free to travel wherever they wanted and to write whatever they wanted. Although the military tried to convince them to support the war and journalists on the home front were influenced by Washington, the government ultimately lost control of the media. From the moment journalists turned against government policy, vivid images of the violence and suffering of the Vietnamese appeared on citizens’ TV screens. News reports about young soldiers being brought home in body bags caused the government to lose the support of the American people and they had to withdraw.
Censorship in oppressive regimes
In our West, a newspaper that is annoying day in and day out makes its own mess: its subscribers cancel and take another, if necessary, a third. On the other hand, there are countries where this is (or was not) possible. There, the news supply is in the hands of the State and the Party and the newspapers work according to the recipe: ‘Father knows best.’ In totalitarian regimes, newspapers and other media exist primarily to educate the masses. Over the last hundred years, many countries have been ruled by dictators or totalitarian regimes. In Europe there have been dictatorships in Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece, among others. In 1917, Russia’s oppressive monarch, the Tsar, was ousted to make way for the suppression of communism; and Eastern Europe was ruled by Russia from the end of World War II until the collapse of communism in 1989. A lesson we can learn from history is this: the greater the oppression, the greater the censorship.
In totalitarian regimes, the fight against censorship, literary or political, is a fight against oppression. There is a huge fear of the written word because it is the most effective way to spread criticism and ideas. The typewriter and copier have been used worldwide to spread dissent. Under communism, Eastern European dissenters typed their stories and articles, made carbon copies of them and passed them on personally. In 1972, anyone who bought a typewriter in Czechoslovakia had to register their name and address with the secret police. A permit was also required to buy a typewriter in Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Although censorship is a leading means of maintaining a totalitarian system, it is often claimed that censorship is in the interest of the safety of the population. Dissent is portrayed as an attempt to undermine the state. For example, in Argentina under the dictator Juan Perón, publications were banned because they were considered immoral or pro-communist. In 1949, Perón’s officials seized the leading La Prensa. This newspaper was not returned to its owners until 1955. In 1976, a period of censorship of books began and scientists were persecuted for their ideas.
At the beginning of the last century, Russia was ruled by Tsar Nicholas II. This employed a large network of secret police to ensure that dissidents made their voices heard. In 1907, 175 journalists were imprisoned and 413 magazines were banned for violating censorship rules. In 1917 the revolutionaries overthrew Nicholas from the throne. Censorship was temporarily out of the picture until the ruling Bolsheviks realized that their enemies were now able to say and publish anything they wanted. The Main Office for Literary Affairs and Publication, known as GLAVITT, was created. GLAVITT employed 70,000 people and monitored censorship throughout the country. One of the first writers to be banned was Yergeny Zamyatin, who wrote the book W, a precursor to George Orwell’s Animal Farm. As the Bolsheviks established their power in what was then the Soviet Union, they used institutions such as the press, radio, cinema, theater, libraries, museums, and schools to spread their ideological message. Under Josef Stalin, press freedom declined even more. He saw Russia as a besieged country surrounded on all sides by evil capitalism. Therefore, he established state control over every aspect of the spoken and written media. Under Stalin, a number of writers who refused to adapt committed suicide, while many others died in prison camps.
Nobel Prize winner Alexander Solshenitsyn was the first internationally known Soviet figure to coin the term GLAVITT: A censorship not provided for in our Constitution and which is therefore illegal imposes a yoke on our literature under the vague name GLAVITT and gives people who have no understanding of literature a completely arbitrary power over writers. The vast majority employed by the censorship body had higher education. One could find all kinds of things there: doctors of philosophy, anxious journalists applying for a safer job, former KGB officials and even idealists, who disappeared from the organization after a certain time. Naturally, everyone had to be a member of the Party. Every newspaper, every publishing house and large printing house, according to its size, had their resident censors. The journalist and the censor were expected to sit around the table, put up a tree, and argue about all publications. This happened before they were to be made public. Discussions between censors and journalists rarely get out of hand: the journalist is aware that the censor ultimately has the upper hand. The conversation would start with the question where the editor involved got his data from. The idea that a journalist had the right to conceal his sources of information was completely unthinkable in the Soviet Union, let alone that he would dare to claim that he was obliged to do so. according to a professional code of ethics. When an article was rejected, which could often happen, an archive was reached that the journalists called the sheepfold. This fold contained a number of approved spare articles of a harmless nature. This article could replace the offending article in the next edition.
Everything that was unacceptable was laid down in a 300-page tome, known in journalistic circles as the Talmud. The official title was: Index of information that may not be published in the press. This book left nothing to chance, while the Dutch newspaper reader has no idea which very important state secrets he simply reads uncensored day in and day out without this meaning the end of the State of the Netherlands. First of all, without special permission from the Soviet government, it was forbidden to publish information about earthquakes, avalanches, landslides and other natural disasters, as well as about fires, explosions, ship disasters, mine disasters, railway and aircraft accidents. In the Soviet Union, planes fell two days later than in our country. As far as figures are concerned, nothing could be published without permission about the salaries of civil servants in the service of the State and the Party, about price increases of goods and about the rise in living standards outside the socialist countries and comparisons between wages and prices within the SU. No names of members of the KGB except the supreme chief, nor disgraced politicians, could be mentioned without permission. It was not allowed to mention that some foreign radio broadcasts were disrupted and that there were bodies involved in censorship. There seems to be no end to the Talmud list: livestock diseases, crop failures, food shortages, production figures, murders, thefts and churchgoers could not simply find a place in the newspapers.
This raises the question of what the newspapers were filled with! The last sentence in Article 125 of the Soviet Constitution most likely formed the basis for it. This law guaranteed citizens freedom of expression, assembly, parades and demonstrations and freedom of the press. But, the law ends, in accordance with the interests of the working people and with the aim of strengthening the socialist system. What the interests of the working people are should apparently not be determined by the working people themselves, but by the Party, because according to Article 129 it is the vanguard and leading core of the working people in their struggle to strengthen and strengthen the socialist system. to develop. After Stalin’s death, some things changed. For example, an end was put to a way of administering justice in which torture, bullets and barbed wire were the only arguments. However, the new Criminal Code of 1960/1962 contained two articles, numbers 70 and 190, which virtually abolished freedom of expression and the press through formulations that severely punished any criticism of the regime, oral or written. as anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.
In Portugal the dictator Dr. Antonio de Oliveira Salazar from 1932 to 1968. He used censorship to isolate Portugal from the rest of the world. In the 1940s, all photos of barefoot children were banned, so that no one could consider Portugal a poor or underdeveloped country. There was strict censorship on the press, theater and advertising. Nothing was published without careful research. Incorrect news items were removed and replaced with approved material. In neighboring Spain, dictator General Miguel Primo de Rivera ruled from 1923 to 1930. He enforced strict censorship of the press. His successor, General Franco, established complete control over the press, law and government; all dissent was censored. Article 12 of a Spanish constitutional declaration stated: All Spaniards may express their opinions freely if they do not attack the fundamental principle of the state. In practice it turned out that this combination of freedom and a clear condition was not just a paradox.
The most infamous dictator of the twentieth century was Adolf Hitler, party leader of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party, who became Chancellor of Germany in 1933. The time in which he ruled was called the Third Reich. Within a year of coming to power, he had banned all other political parties and many newspapers. The English ambassador at the time noted that the German daily press contained a list of articles that had been omitted or temporarily postponed. The establishment of a Reich Chamber of Culture was the final blow to freedom. All journalistic products, plays, musicals and radio broadcasts were supervised by Josef Goebbels. You have done well to burn these non-spiritual relics of the past. It is a powerful, important and symbolic manifestation. was Goebbels’s congratulations when German students had burned unpatriotic books. Attempts to express political criticism ended in a concentration camp. Daily government news bulletins informed newspapers about what to write, which stories to highlight, and which to edit or ignore. All editors, reporters and other people involved had to be members of the National Press Chamber and approved by the government. Writers, artists and composers were similarly monitored. About 250 writers, including the famous writer Thomas Mann, went into exile.
As a final example I will cite South Africa. At the turn of the last century, South Africa was a British colony. I n 1910, the country gained independence, but remained part of the British Commonwealth and was ruled by a white minority government. In 1948, the South African government introduced a series of Apartheid measures. The government was concerned that education for the black population would breed troublemakers. I quote Hendrick Verwoerd, South African Prime Minister: What’s the point of teaching a black child math if he can’t use it in practice? Education should teach people something according to their chances in life. For example, in 1953 the educational program was changed to include the study of black children. In 1960, the African National Congress, ANC, and the Pan African Congress, two anti-apartheid organizations, were banned. In 1962, more than a hundred people were banned from attending a political meeting. During the 1960s and 1970s, the secret police suppressed resistance to the regime. An increasing number of people, including Winnie Mandela, wife of ANC leader Nelson Mandela, were placed under house arrest; meaning they were not allowed to leave their home. Books were banned and many South African writers only published abroad. In 1973, Steve Biko, founder of a student organization that advocated black independence, was given a publication ban that severely limited his movement and freedoms. He was beaten to death while in custody four years later, at the age of thirty-one.