From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Part of the series on
Censorship
By region
Algeria Australia Bhutan Canada P. R. China Cuba East Germany France Germany India Iran Republic of Ireland Myanmar Pakistan Portugal Samoa Saudi Arabia Singapore South Asia Soviet Union Taiwan (R.O.C.) Thailand Tunisia Turkey United Kingdom United States
By media
Advertisements Anime Books Banned films Re-edited films Internet Music Video games
Other
Book burning Bleep censor Content-control software Corporate censorship Under fascist regimes Pixelization Postal censorship Prior restraint In religion Self-censorship Tape delay Whitewashing This box: view • talk • edit

The US Bill of Rights guarantees the rights of citizens to speak and publish freely. Nevertheless, certain forms of speech, such as obscenity and libel, are restricted by the government in the majority of media outlets.

Contents 1 Broadcast media censorship 2 Censorship of Pornography 3 Libel 4 Documents sealed by court order 5 Censorship in the past 6 References 7 See also 7.1 Rating systems and industry self-regulation 7.2 Related techniques of suppression 7.3 Free speech advocates 8 External links

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulates "indecent" free-to-air broadcasting. It can issue fines if, for example, the broadcaster employs certain swear words. Radio personality Billy Creghead has been a frequent target of fines. This led to his leaving broadcast radio and signing on with Sirius Satellite Radio in 2004. The Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show controversy increased the political pressure on the FCC to vigorously police the airwaves. In addition, Congress increased the maximum fine the FCC may levy from US $268,500 to US $375,000 per incident.

Critics of Television Broadcast Media throughout the latter half of the 20th century on into the 21st have expressed their concerns regarding the filtration of content being offered to citizens of the United States through the modern-day journalism platform. They argue that media conglomerates within the U.S. are responsible for painting a very limited/pointed picture of U.S. government involvement throughout the world, and further argue that this causes uninformed political support by U.S. citizens.

The Office of Censorship, an emergency wartime agency, heavily censored reporting during World War II. On December 19, 1941 Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8985, which established the Office of Censorship and conferred on its director the power to censor international communications in "his absolute discretion." Byron Price was selected as the Director of Censorship. However, the censorship was not limited to reporting. "Every letter that crossed international or U.S. territorial borders from December 1941 to August 1945 was subject to being opened and scoured for details."^[1] Since that time war censorship had been relatively light until the advent of the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars. In January of 1991, a few weeks before the U.S.-led UN invasion of Iraq during the presidency of George H. W. Bush, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney had the Pentagon issue a ban on media coverage of returning war casualties.^{[citation needed]}

Several past controversies were the failed attempt to prevent the publication of the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War and the daily televising of the Iran Hostage Crisis by the national broadcast media, that is believed to have led to the re-election loss of Jimmy Carter in 1980.

In 1979, the magazine The Progressive was sued by the U.S. government (United States v. The Progressive, Inc.) and temporarily blocked from publishing an article that purported to reveal the "secret" of the hydrogen bomb. The article was eventually published.

Under the Invention Secrecy Act of 1951 and the Atomic Energy Act of 1956, patents may be withheld and kept secret on grounds of national security.

On September 11, 2005 the American Civil Liberty Union reports:

30,000 National Security Letters Issued Annually Demanding Information about Americans: Patriot Act Removed Need for FBI to Connect Records to Suspected Terrorists

[...] According to the Washington Post, universities and casinos have received these letters and been forced to comply with the demands to turn over private student and customer information. Anyone who receives an NSL is gagged - forever - from telling anyone that the FBI demanded records, even if their identity has already been made public.

In New York and Connecticut, the ACLU has challenged the NSL provision that was dramatically expanded by Section 505 of the Patriot Act. The legislation amended the existing NSL power by permitting the FBI to demand records of people who are not connected to terrorism and who are not suspected of any wrongdoing. [...]

In February of 2004, a study was released by the national media watchdog group FAIR. According to the study, which took place during October of 2003, current or former government or military officials accounted for 76 percent of all 319 sources for news stories about Iraq which aired on network news channels.

In 1997, Congress voted unanimously to add an amendment to a Department of Defense spending bill forbidding the distribution of instructions that teach "the making or use of an explosive, a destructive device, or a weapon of mass destruction" if those instructions are intended to assist in the actual building and use of such a device. This was known as Feinstein Amendment SP 419.

US courts have ruled that the First Amendment protects "indecent" pornography from regulation, but not "obscene" pornography. Enforcement of federal obscenity laws has increased under the Bush administration. People convicted of distributing obscene pornography face long prison terms and asset forfeiture.

In 1996, Congress passed Communications Decency Act, with the aim of restricting Internet pornography. Court rulings have struck down much of the law, however.

A widely publicized case of prosecuting alleged obscenity occurred in 1990, when the Cincinnati Arts Center agreed to hold an art show featuring the work of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. His work included several artistic nude photographs of males and was deemed offensive by some people for this reason. This resulted in the prosecution of the center and its director, who were later acquitted.

In the early 1990s, Mike Diana became the first American artist to be convicted for obscenity for drawing cartoons that were judged legally obscene.

The export of cryptography software is regulated as a munition under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, although in recent years the regulations have relaxed, due in part to industry lobbying.

Daniel J. Bernstein challenged the regulations (see Bernstein v. United States) on First Amendment grounds and won his case, but some regulations remain. See also export of cryptography.

Main article: Slander and libel, United States law

In the Internet era, libel laws are increasingly being used against individuals expressing their views in public forums. Although it is difficult to win a libel case in the U.S., it can still be an effective means of intimidation and deterrence, since defending oneself against a lawsuit is expensive and time consuming. See also SLAPP.

Public figures like entertainers and politicians will often have their cases thrown out of court if they file a libel lawsuit. For instance, public officials cannot file a lawsuit if someone makes a caricature of them or insults them.

On January 4, 2007, U.S. District Court Judge Jack Weinstein issued a temporary restraining order forbidding a number of activists and their organizations in the psychiatric survivors movement, including MindFreedom International and the Alliance for Human Research Protection from disseminating ostensibly leaked documents purporting to show that Eli Lilly and Company knowingly concealed information on potentially lethal side-effects of Zyprexa for years [1]. The "Zyprexa documents" had been sealed by an earlier court order in a mass tort case; they were widely disseminated after Alaska attorney James Gottstein issued a subpoena for them in an unrelated case. The Electronic Frontier Foundation came to the defense of one of the parties silenced by the restraining order to defend the First Amendment right of internet journalists to post links to relevant documents on wikis, blogs, and other web pages [2]. While Eli Lilly maintains that the documents were illegally obtained and should not be part of the public domain, critics cite the leaked Pentagon Papers as precedent for the right of individuals to report on the existence and contents of such documents, and in this particular case, maintain that court sealing of documents should never be allowed to protect individuals or corporations from criminal liability [3].

• Alien and Sedition Acts
• Production Code
• Comics Code Authority

1. ^ Fiset, Louis. Return to Sender: U.S. Censorship of Enemy Alien Mail in World War II, Prologue Magazine Spring 2001, Vol. 33, No. 1. Retrieved from U.S. Government National Archives.

• Civil liberties of the United States
• Corporate media
• First Amendment to the United States Constitution
• Freedom of speech in the United States
• Freedom of the press
• List of prominent cases argued by Floyd Abrams
• United States obscenity law
• Prior restraint

• MPAA film rating system
• Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB)
• Comics Code Authority
• TV Parental Guidelines
• Parental Advisory (music)

• Slander and libel
• Propaganda
• Media manipulation

• American Civil Liberties Union
• Center for Democracy and Technology
• Electronic Frontier Foundation
• International Freedom of Expression Exchange
• American Library Association
• National Coalition Against Censorship

• Administration of the Invention Secrecy Act
• Banned Magazine, the online journal of censorship and secrecy
• Fairness Doctrine Vetoed by both Ronald Reagan and G.H.W. Bush
• Music censorship incidents and issues in the US - reported by Freemuse