Category: Censorship Free Speech

Shenderovich then confirmed on Facebook he was “barred from his own performance in London” but still did not explain the reasons behind the incident. He also mockingly thanked “all the idiots” responsible “for such an incredible promotion.”  The author eventually moved to nearby Regent’s Park together with his would-be audience, where he held an impromptu performance “in the natural setting,”…

  ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Gov. Ron DeSantis is asking that a federal judge be disqualified from the First Amendment lawsuit filed by Disney against the Florida governor and his appointees, claiming the jurist’s prior statements in other cases have raised questions about his impartiality on the state’s efforts to take over Disney World’s governing body. DeSantis ‘ attorney filed…

NEW YORK – When Ms Raegan Zelaya and Mr Shua Wilmot decided to include their pronouns at the end of their work e-mails, they thought they were doing a good thing: following what they viewed as an emerging professional standard and also sending a message of inclusivity at the Christian university where they worked. But their bosses at Houghton University,…

Penguin Random House, the largest publisher in the U.S., has sued a Florida county school board over its decisions to ban and restrict access to books. Joining the lawsuit are five authors, two parents of students and the advocacy group PEN America. A new federal lawsuit alleges that recent decisions by officials in a Florida county to ban and restrict…

WASHINGTON —Indian authorities have arrested Vivek Raghuvanshi, a defense journalist and longtime correspondent for Defense News, and accused him of espionage, according to reports in the Indian press. Raghuvanshi’s arrest drew a condemnation from Sightline Media Group, the publisher of Defense News and Military Times. “We call for the immediate release of freelance reporter Vivek Raghuvanshi following his arrest in…

The platform’s Global Government Affairs account issued a statement on Monday outlining its recent decisions in light of the Turkish court orders, saying it was forced to take action against four accounts and 409 individual tweets.  “We received what we believed to be a final threat to throttle the service – after several such warnings,” it said, adding that it deleted the accounts and posts “in order to keep Twitter available over the election weekend.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — China was the biggest global jailer of journalists last year with more than 100 behind bars, according to a press freedom group, as President Xi Jinping’s government tightened control over society. Xi’s government also was one of the biggest exporters of propaganda content, according to Reporters without Boarders. China ranked second to last on the group’s annual…

NEW YORK (AP) — Fox News is opposing a renewed effort by three news organizations to unseal documents related to its recently settled defamation lawsuit, saying it would do nothing but “gratify private spite or promote public scandal.” The Associated Press, The New York Times and National Public Radio asked a Delaware judge earlier this week to reveal mostly private…

A new law that seeks to give Canadian artists a leg up online has left many influencers and tech giants alike seeing red.

They took out subway ads, they posted TikToks, but in the end, the score was Silicon Valley-0, Ottawa-1.

After many twists and turns, and over two-and-a-half years of review, the Canadian government has passed a new law that makes tech giants like YouTube and TikTok support Canadian cultural content.

The law, dubbed Bill C-11, gives the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) broad authority to regulate these platforms, much like they already do with radio and television.

The government says it is necessary to stop streaming giants from getting a free ride, and to promote local artists.

Although it’s still unclear what those final regulations will look like, the law has raised the ire of everyone from TikTokers to esteemed author Margaret Atwood.

Last weekend, Russian authorities moved one step closer towards potentially locking up Oleg Orlov, one of Russia’s most prominent and outspoken human rights defenders. On April 29, the prosecutor’s office formally indicted him on charges of repeatedly “discrediting” the Russian military, for which he faces a maximum three-year prison sentence. Authorities should immediately drop the charges.

Orlov is co-chair of Memorial, a leading Russian rights group. The government shut down Memorial in 2022 as part of the Kremlin’s effort to stifle critics and human rights work. Yet Memorial’s core activists continued their human rights work, some from abroad, and some, like Orlov, from inside the country.

On March 21, criminal investigators in Moscow interrogated Orlov, informing him they had opened a criminal investigation against him for repeated acts of “discrediting” Russian armed forces, based on his single-person anti-war pickets and his social media post containing his trenchant criticism of the war and of the government’ slide toward totalitarianism and fascism.  They released him later that day on his own recognizance.

US President Joe Biden on Saturday, in a possible preview of a 2024 presidential campaign theme, attacked news outlets he said used “lies told for profit and power” to stir up hatred in the United States, as he coupled his remarks with pointed jokes about Fox News.

Speaking at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, Mr Biden referred to “truth buried by lies,” in an apparent reference to false conspiracy theories that his 2020 election win was the result of a massive voter fraud.

“Lies told for profit and power… lies of conspiracy and malice repeated over and over again designed to generate a cycle of anger and hate and even violence,” Mr Biden said.

That cycle, Mr Biden added, has emboldened local jurisdictions to ban books, and “the rule of law and our rights and freedoms to be stripped away”.

Zeroing in on what he characterised as “an extreme press,” Mr Biden at the same time joked that if he called Fox News “honest, fair and truthful, then I can be sued for defamation”.

On Thursday, April 13 at 19:30 GMT: Colombia topped the list for human rights defenders killed in 2022, according to the latest report from the rights group Front Line Defenders.

Germans appear to be particularly susceptible to what Bild described as Moscow’s “propaganda,” the newspaper said, adding that experts in the West are “alarmed” over this development. The tabloid then blamed this tendency on the “historically friendly relations” between the two nations, as well as the “legacy” of East Germany, which was once a part of the “socialist camp” and “a large number of Russian-speaking people” living in Germany nowadays. The paper then admitted that pro-Russian views have been spreading both among native Germans and the Russian-speaking part of the population.

  MOSCOW (AP) — Jailed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich has been charged with espionage in Russia and has entered his official denial, Russian state news agency Tass reported Friday. Tass said a law enforcement source informed the news agency that Russia’s Federal Security Service officially charged the American journalist with espionage. Tass did not specify if the action…

The Committee has learned that while Mr. Taibbi was describing his findings of government abuse and civil liberties violations, an IRS revenue officer appeared at Mr. Taibbi’s personal residence in New Jersey — leaving a note for Mr. Taibbi to call the IRS four days later. When Mr. Taibbi called the IRS, the IRS informed him that the reason for the visit was because his electronic 2018 and 2021 tax return filings had been rejected due to concerns of identity theft.

According to Mr. Taibbi, the IRS notified his accountant that the IRS had accepted his 2018 filing, and in the four-and-a-half years since then, the IRS has never notified Mr. Taibbi or his accountant of any issue with this return — until the day he was testifying before Congress. With respect to his 2021 return, the IRS rejected Mr. Taibbi’s electronic filing twice, even after his accountant filed with an IRS-provided pin number. In both cases, the IRS informed Mr. Taibbi after the agency visited his home that the problems were not “monetary”; in fact, the IRS apparently owed Mr. Taibbi a “considerable” tax return.