Tag: censorship

Eyeing big China box office, Hollywood bows to censorship

The lure of the massive Chinese market has led Hollywood to readily self-censor its films to please Beijing, according to a new report by Pen America, an anti-censorship group.

Screenwriters, producers and directors in the huge US film industry are changing scripts, deleting scenes and altering other content, afraid of offending Chinese censors who control the gateway to the country’s 1.4 billion consumers, according to the report released Wednesday.

The actions include everything from deleting the Taiwanese flag from Tom Cruise’s bomber jacket in the upcoming “Top Gun: Maverick,” to removing China as the source of a zombie virus in 2013’s “World War Z.”

But it also means completely avoiding sensitive issues including Tibet, Taiwan, Hong Kong politics, Xinjiang and the portrayal of LGBTQ characters, the report said.

Faced with blacklisting and other punitive measures, Hollywood producers are even censoring films not targeting the Chinese market, in order to not impact others planned for Chinese theaters, Pen America says.

“Steadily, a new set of mores has taken hold in Hollywood, one in which appeasing Chinese government investors and gatekeepers has simply become a way of doing business,” the report said.

Keep reading

The threat to free speech is universal

A culture of fear is undermining ordinary people’s freedom of expression, as a new report into self-censorship in the US attests.

The headline statistic of the report, produced by the Cato Institute, is that 62 per cent of Americans agree with the statement, ‘The political climate these days prevents me from saying things I believe because others might find them offensive’. This figure has risen from 58 per cent in 2017.

The report demonstrates a number of key points. One is that concern for the health of free speech is not the preserve of the right. Though conservatives are more likely to say they self-censor (77 per cent), just over half of liberals (52 per cent) and nearly two thirds of moderates (64 per cent) say they do, too. Indeed, ‘strong liberals’ are the only group who disagree with the above statement by a majority – and even among them, there has been a 12 percentage-point increase since 2017 in those who feel they have to self-censor. This is a greater increase than that among moderates and conservatives.

As for the percentage of those who fear for their job prospects due to their views, this is very similar across political lines: 34 per cent of conservatives, 31 per cent of liberals and 30 per cent of moderates ‘worry they could miss out on job opportunities or get fired if their political views became known’.

Free-speech worries cross ethnic divides, too. Sixty-five per cent of Latino Americans – one percentage point more than white Americans – ‘have political views they are afraid to share’. Meanwhile, 49 per cent of African Americans are in the same position.

Keep reading

Frontline COVID Doc Stella Immanuel Locked Out of Twitter For 6 Days For Asking Patients Who Have Been Cured by HCQ to Share Their Stories Online

How many Americans have died of COVID-19 because the Democrat-media complex lied about Hydroxychloroquine?

Dr. Stella Immanuel bravely came out on Monday and said that she has personally treated over 350 patients suffering from COVID-19 with Hydroxychloroquine, Zinc, and Zithromax and they have all recovered.

The doctor also disclosed that she put herself and her staff on Hydroxychloroquine as a preventative.

On Tuesday, Dr. Immanuel asked for help getting the truth about Hydroxychloroquine out to the public.

“WE NEED YOUR HELP. We are being attacked, ridiculed and discredited. We need our patients to SPEAK UP.” she said in a since-deleted Twitter post.

“If you have been cured by this drug, share your story online using this hashtag #HCQWorks.” Dr. Immanuel added.

Wednesday evening Dr. Immanuel was locked out of her Twitter account for 6 days and 14 hours for “violating the Twitter rules.”

Keep reading

Arizona GOP chair had Twitter account ‘temporarily limited’ for spreading COVID misinformation: report

The medical doctor who runs the Arizona Republican Party had her Twitter account “temporarily limited” for spreading misinformation during the coronavirus pandemic.

“Twitter has ‘temporarily limited’ the account features of Arizona Republican Party Chairwoman Kelli Ward after determining she violated its policy on spreading misleading and ‘potentially harmful’ information about the COVID-19 pandemic,” the Arizona Republic reported Tuesday. “Ward, a physician, has downplayed the severity of the virus’s spread in Arizona, even as caseloads skyrocketed and the state spiraled into a national hot spot.

Keep reading