In the latest issue of Index on Censorship magazine Spies, secrets and lies: How yesterday’s and today’s censors compare, we look at nations around the world, from South Korea to Argentina, and discuss if the worst excesses of censorship have passed or whether new techniques and technology make it even more difficult for the public to attain information. Subscribe to the magazine.
If you want to learn how bananas helped a journalist smuggle banned magazines into eastern Europe, or how information was passed around via lipstick in Pinochet’s Chile, then join Index on Censorship for the launch of Spies, secrets and lies – our latest magazine featuring stories of censorship and ingenious efforts to evade it.
Expect a lively evening exploring censorship old and new, hear some stories of heroic stands for free expression shared for the first time in the latest magazine, and debate with us what the future of censorship might look like.
From China’s new security laws and South Korea’s new smartphone spies to Eritrea’s agents and the new fighters for free expression online. Where and what are the challenges today and how do they compare to the past?
With an introduction by Stephen Grey, journalist and author of The New Spymasters.
Panelists include Robert McCrum, Xiaolu Guo, Ismail Einashe. Chaired by Rachael Jolley, editor of Index on Censorship magazine.
Attendees receive a free copy of the latest magazine.
Index on Censorship is one of the world’s leading defenders and supporters of the right to free expression internationally.
When: October 13, 6:30pm Where: The Frontline Club, 13 Norfolk Place, London W2 1QJ (Map) Tickets: Sold out. The event will be live-streamed from this page beginning at 6:30pm BST on 13 Oct 2015.
More on the speakers:
Stephen Grey is an award-winning British investigative journalist and author, perhaps best known for uncovering the CIA’s program of ‘extraordinary rendition’. His latest of three books, The New Spymasters, looks at spying in the digital age and how it has changed since the Cold War. The London-based reporter has also reported from conflicts in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan and covered the subjects of national security, terrorism and security agencies extensively.
Xiaolu Guo is a fiction writer, filmmaker and political activist. Her award-winning works include Village of Stone, I Am China, and the acclaimed film She, a Chinese. Guo, named one of the ‘Best of Young British Novelists’ by Granta Magazine and an outspoken critic of communist oppression in China, has developed her own unique vision of the country’s past and globalised future.
Robert McCrum is an associate editor of the Observer. For nearly 20 years he was editor in chief of the publishing firm of Faber and Faber and is co-author of the Story of English as well as six highly acclaimed novels: In the Secret State, A Loss of Heart, The Fabulous Englishman, Mainland, The Psychological Moment, and Suspicion. He was the literary editor of the Observer from 1996 to 2008, and has been a regular contributor to the Guardian since 1990.
Ismail Einashe is a freelance journalist, researcher and an associate editor at Warscapes, a foreign affairs magazine. He has worked for national and international media including Prospect, the Guardian and the BBC since he first came to the UK as a child refugee.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed a decree on Wednesday 16 September banning at least 38 international journalists and bloggers from Ukraine for one year. The decree, published on the presidential website, says those listed are banned for being “actual or potential threat to national interests, national security, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.”
Poroshenko said the people targeted were involved in Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and the current aggression in eastern Ukraine.
“This ban is a serious blow to media freedom,” Index senior advocacy officer Melody Patry said. “There is no explanation whatsoever on what press coverage constitutes an actual or potential threat to national security. We appreciate that the situation in eastern Ukraine is sensitive but preventing journalists from reporting from within the country is not the solution and it’s undermining freedom of information.”
The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that the 34 journalists and seven bloggers named in the ban come from Bulgaria, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Macedonia, Moldova, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
The original list included three BBC media staff members – Moscow correspondent Steve Rosenberg, producer Emma Wells and cameraman Anton Chicherov – who were later removed from the ban list, media reported.
“We cannot accept that kind of censorship”, said Mogens Blicher Bjerregård, president of the European Federation of Journalists. Censorship is never the right answer, even to counter propaganda or to sanction journalists who allegedly crossed the Russian-Ukrainian border illegally. The ban is simply inappropriate. Peace and Development of our democracies need press freedom not banning journalists. We and the international society must firmly urge the Ukraine government to lift immediately the ban on named journalists.”
Over 380 people in total have been banned, including activists and Russian officials.
This measure was added to the Mapping Media Freedom platform, which monitors and map threats and violations to media freedom in Europe, including Ukraine and Russia.
The environment for media freedom in Ukraine has been deteriorating against the backdrop of the conflict in the eastern part of the country, making it one the the deadliest countries for journalists, with at least eight media workers killed since the beginning of 2014.
This statement was updated to reflect the later removal of three BBC journalists from the ban list.
Mapping Media Freedom
Click on the bubbles to view reports or double-click to zoom in on specific regions. The full site can be accessed at https://mappingmediafreedom.org/
Judy Blume (Photo: Elena Seibert) This article is part of the autumn issue of Index on Censorship magazine looking at comparisons between old censors and new censors. Copies can be purchased from Amazon, in some bookshops and online, more information here.
“Why did you kill the pet turtle?” The question took author Judy Blume by surprise on a recent US book tour. The child asking it was referring to a novel first published in 1972, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, where Dribble, the pet turtle, is accidentally swallowed by the protagonist’s younger brother. “I’d never heard that complaint before,” Blume told Index on a recent trip to the UK. “People found it funny before, but now I can expect animals-have-feelings-too complaints. Those sorts of questions strike you as funny, but it’s awful too. It’s the adults behind them that are the problem.”
Blume, who has sold 80 million books and been translated into 32 languages, has nothing against turtles, or indeed children’s attachment to pets. But she talks of the “new, very protective” approach to reading that she is seeing more and more. “It’s the job of a parent to help children deal with unexpected things that happen,” said the Florida-based writer, best known for her teen titles. “I often get letters saying, ‘We didn’t like it when this thing happened in your book, so we’re not going to read any of them again.’”
By tackling coming-of-age issues, including sex and puberty, she has experienced various cries of outrage along the way, as well as outright bans by some schools and libraries. In 2009, her publisher even had to send her a bodyguard, after she was deluged with hate-mail and threats for speaking out in support of Planned Parenthood, a US pro-choice group. Five Judy Blume books feature in the 100 most frequently challenged list (1990 to 1999), compiled by the American Library Association, which tracks attempts to ban or censor literature, often by US school boards.
Like many people, I grew up with Judy. I was 11 by the time I had devoured most of her back catalogue. I remember a battered paperback of Forever – the infamous teen sex novel – being passed around my class like contraband, although all our parents and teachers must have known we had it. Her writing about periods was far more enlightening than anything we were taught at school. I still remember the nurse who came into our class and frightened the hell out of us by waving a super-size tampon in the air. “My mum has those!” one school friend said proudly. Her mum was French. I was sure mine didn’t mess with such things.
A US website, Flavorwire, recently compiled a list of “awkward Judy Blume moments” from people’s youth. There was one where a local librarian lent her eight-year-old grandson the novel about a girl’s first period and he wept at the sheer horror of it. There was another about a nine-year-old who had a public tantrum and screamed “Censorship!” at the top of her voice when told she was “not ready” for Judy. Perhaps the most enlightening, however, was the person who admitted trying to get Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret removed from the library because she thought it questioned the existence of God. “I didn’t read it until years later, far past the time when my fundamentalism had lapsed,” she confessed, inadvertently playing a part in the long tradition that sees the most vocal criticism of books coming from those who haven’t read them.
“I’ve always said censorship is caused by fear,” Blume told Index, while on tour to launch her latest book In the Unlikely Event. As a board member of the National Coalition Against Censorship in the US, she has long spoken with passion about her views on the freedom to read, and against books being censored.
Among the most recent children’s books to be targeted in the US are Jeanette Winter’s The Librarian of Basra and Nasreen’s Secret School, which are based on true stories from Iraq and Afghanistan, respectively. Parents from Florida’s Duval County created a petition in July to object to the books references to Islam and war.
“I don’t use age ratings. There’s no reason why someone who wants to, can’t read it. I don’t believe in saying books are for certain age groups,” said Blume, when asked, at a recent UK event at King’s Place, London, if she thought her newest book, written for adults, should be restricted to readers of a certain age.
If censorship had an agony aunt, it would be Blume. Throughout her long career, she’s tackled the big issue openly and without judgement. “Am I being a censor?” a mother asked her recently, after confessing she omitted a section of Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing when she read it to her children. It was a segment where a father is left in charge of his two sons and makes a real hash of it by not knowing how to handle them. “The mother decided not to read that part to her own boys, because she didn’t want them to know how other dads are,” said Blume. “That’s your choice. But my advice is read it all. Talk about it, laugh about it. Say: ‘Aren’t we glad our dad is different?’ No, it’s not censorship. It’s your decision. But are you going to do them any favours by trying to protect them?”
And then comes the thing that makes Blume “very, very upset”: trigger warnings. These are cautions put on books or reading lists to warn of potentially upsetting content, and they are becoming a growing practice at US colleges. Blume only came across the term recently, but instantly took it very seriously. “Why do college students need to be warned that what they are about to read might make them feel bad? These are 20-year-olds, but they need a professor to warn them? What kind of education is that? It makes me crazy.”
The author, who was listed by the US Library of Congress in the living legend category of writers and artists in 2000, also expressed concern about hearing of writers being “dis-invited” from US schools and universities for things they have written or said. “This can be over one incident in a 400-page book,” she said. “I thought the idea of education was to exchange ideas and discuss. How we learn from one another?” Nonetheless, she’s optimistic that this fearful attitude can be fought against. She has already seen professors and teachers standing up to it.
One thing Blume adamantly doesn’t want to see is a return to 1980s America, which was the worse period she has witnessed for freedom to read, and when controversial books were stripped out of classrooms. She believes there has been a return from the precipice of the Reagan era, yet there are still attempts to exert too much control. She referred, very enthusiastically, to The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, which has also caused a stir and was pulled from the curriculum in Idaho schools. What’s the problem with it I ask? “The language, the sexuality, all things related to life as a teenage boy. It’s like saying it’s a bad thing to be a teenage boy!”
“It’s the kids’ right to read,” she said resolutely as our conversation came to a close and she prepared to continue her whirlwind tour. It’s a mantra she’s been repeating for decades. At 77 and still as dynamic as ever, she shows no sign of stopping anytime soon.
This article is part of the autumn issue of Index on Censorship magazine looking at comparisons between old censors and new censors. Copies can be purchased from Amazon, in some bookshops and online, more information here.
In conjunction with the Cambridge Festival of Ideas 2015, we will be publishing a series of articles that complement many of the upcoming debates and discussions. We are offering these articles from Index on Censorship magazine for free (normally they are held within our paid-for archive) as part of our partnership with the festival.
Have we created a media culture where politicians fear voicing an opinion that’s not the party line? Max Wind-Cowie reports
We are often, rightly, concerned about our politicians censoring us. The power of the state, combined with the obvious temptation to quiet criticism, is a constant threat to our freedom to speak. It’s important we watch our rulers closely and are alert to their machinations when it comes to our right to ridicule, attack and examine them. But here in the West, where, with the best will in the world, our politicians are somewhat lacking in the iron rod of tyranny most of the time, I’m beginning to wonder whether we may not have turned the tables on our politicians to the detriment of public discourse.
Erica Jong explains why pornography is to art as prudery is to the censors
Pornographic material has been present in the art and literature of every society in every historical period. What has changed from epoch to epoch – or even from one decade to another – is the ability of such material to flourish publicly and to be distributed legally. After nearly 100 years of agitating for freedom to publish, we find that the enemies of freedom have multiplied, rather than diminished.
Norma Klein, the American writer of children’s books, describes how she successfully defended her Confessions of an Only Child before a school board meeting
I used to feel distinguished, almost honoured, when my young books were singled out to be censored. Now, alas, censorship has become so common in the children’s book field in America that almost no one is left unscathed.
Should concerns about privacy after the NSA revelations change the way we use the web? Jason DaPonte asks the experts about state spying, corporate control and what we can do to protect ourselves
“Government may portray itself as the protector of privacy, but it’s the worst enemy of privacy and that’s borne out by the NSA revelations,” web and privacy guru Jeff Jarvis tells Index.
In the drive to tackle extremism, debate is being undermined and fear is driving the agenda. Conor Gearty makes the case for common sense.
I object to the ‘age of terror’ title. My anxiety about this is that it is already putting people like me at a disadvantage. I am forced to work within an assumption, which is shared by all normal, sensible people, that we live in ‘an age of terror’. Therefore the point of view that I am about to put – about the total appropriateness of the criminal law; about the relative security in which we live; about the fact of our being pretty secure in comparison with many previous generations – is deemed to be sort of eccentric, if not obstructive.
When it comes to depicting war, humour can be a critic’s most dangerous weapon, says Martin Rowson as he trips through the history of cartoons.
As a political cartoonist, whenever I’m criticised for my work being unrelentingly negative, I usually point my accusers towards several eternal truths. One is that cartoons, along with all other jokes, are by their nature knocking copy. It’s the negativity that makes them funny, because, at the heart of things, funny is how we cope with the bad – or negative – stuff.
In China, as hundreds of millions leave the countryside to seek employment in the cities, they are left without official jobs, legal protection or school places for their children. Jemimah Steinfeld and Hannah Leung report
When Liang Hong returned to her hometown of Liangzhuang, Henan province, in 2011, she was instantly struck by how many of the villagers had left, finding work in cities all across China. It was then that she decided to chronicle the story of rural migrants. During the next two years she visited over 10 cities, including Beijing, and interviewed around 340 people.
As refugees flee one of the world’s most repressive and secretive regimes, Ismail Einashe talks to Eritreans who have reached the UK but who still worry about the risks of speaking out
Television journalist Temesghen Debesai had waited years for an opportunity to make his escape, so when the Eritrean ministry of information sent him on a journalism training course in Bahrain.
Data journalist Raymond Joseph reports on how low-cost technology is helping African newsrooms get hold of information that they couldn’t previously track
Deep in Mpumalanga province, in the far north-east of South Africa, a poorly resourced newspaper is using a combination of high and low tech solutions to make a difference in the lives of the communities it serves.
For Index on Censorship magazine Samira Ahmed takes a look at 15 years of multiculturalism and how some people’s ideas of it are getting in the way of freedom of expression.
In 1999, the neo-Nazi militant David Copeland planted three nail bombs in London – in Brixton, Brick Lane and Soho – targeting black people, Bangladeshi Muslims and gays and lesbians. Three people died and scores were injured.
Free Thinking! A unique partnership in 2015, Cambridge Festival of Ideas are working with Index on Censorship to offer in-depth articles and follow-up pieces from leading artists, writers and activists on all of our headline events.
When: Saturday 24 October: 1:00pm – 2:30pm Full details.
Anti-terror legislation has been used in several countries to effectively gag free speech about sensitive political issues, but can writing or painting be a terrorist act and what role do they play in radicalisation? Join Index on Censorship CEO Jodie Ginsberg at the Cambridge Festival of Ideas to explore the intersection of art and terrorism.
When: Sunday 25 October, 1:00pm – 6:00pm Full details.
Question Everything is an unconventional, unwieldy and disruptive day of talks, art and ideas featuring a broad range of speakers drawn from popular culture, the arts and academia. Are we in a drought of new options? Start imagining the world anew with a series of provocateurs. Dissent encouraged. Hosted by Index on Censorship CEO Jodie Ginsberg.
In the latest issue of Index on Censorship magazine Spies, secrets and lies: How yesterday’s and today’s censors compare, we look at nations around the world, from South Korea to Argentina, and discuss if the worst excesses of censorship have passed or whether new techniques and technology make it even more difficult for the public to attain information. Subscribe to the magazine.
