Censure - SpeedyLook encyclopedia

History of the censure

August 1st The censure accompanied freedom of expression since the beginning by the History. Thus, the origin of the censure term goes back to the station of Censeur, creates with Rome into -443, of which the goal was to maintain manners (but not to censure).

In the China and the ancient Israel, the censure was regarded as a means of regulation of manners and political life. The first law on the censure was founded in China in 300. The most famous case of ancient censure is that of Socrate, condemned to drink the conium “to have encouraged the young people with the vice”.

The combat for freedom of expression also goes up far, Euripide already defending freedom of expression at the 4th century.

The birth of the Catholic church, and its need to maintain orthodoxy, developed the censure exponentially. Many measurements of censures were applied for éradiquer the threats Hérétiques to the Christian Dogme, such as for example with the Concile of Nicée. However, they were not enough, and the number of illicit works written and copied exploded, and escaped control from the Church, which founded more Draconian measurements.

With the arrival of the Printing works, the civil authorities and religious feel the need to create a more solid framework with the censure, and legislate on the censure.

Censure by the religious authorities

Censure by the civil authorities

In 1534, after having been excommunicated and proclaimed chief of the Church of England, the king Henri VIII founds the obligation to obtain an approval of its private council before a book can be printed. Under the reign of Elisabeth Anger, the Master off the Revels is charged to approve the plays. In 1662 the Parliament English vote the licensing act .

Following the Business of the Wall cupboards (October 18th 1534), the king François I {{er}} which was hitherto favorable to the novel ideas, orders hunting for the heretics and promulgates an edict against the unsubdued printers. In 1629 Richelieu hitherto laicizes the censure under the responsibility of the Catholic church.

During the French revolution, the declaration of the human rights and the citizen of the August 26th 1789 affirms solemnly: “ No one should not be worried for its opinions, same religious, provided that their demonstration does not disturb the law and order established by the law. ” (article 10) and “ the free communication of the thoughts and the opinions is one of the most invaluable rights of the man; any citizen can speak, write, print freely, except answering of the abuse this freedom in the cases envisaged by the law . ” (article 11). In other words, one can sanction a publication, but in no case to prevent this one.

In 1810, a decree of Napoleon restores officially the censure. A succession of suppression and re-establishment of the censure follows. The censured articles or drawings were then replaced by “white”. The censure disappears officially in 1881, at the time of the Promulgation of the law of the July 29th 1881, on the Freedom of the press. This law entrusts to the legal system the essence of the control of the information published in France. This control is carried out after diffusion what limits the abuses of power. However, the theatrical censure remains until in 1906.

Censure officially restored forever in France, except in time of war, in particular at the time of the two world wars, with the return of the “white” in the pages. Under the Mode of Vichy, one went further and the censure became preventive. Thus the news directors received competent authority of the instructions on information to be highlighted on first page, to eliminate, or to reduce to the state paragraphs in the pages the least read ( the Duck connected at its beginning had to struggle against the censure by adopting its ironic tone to divert it, of many articles, even pain-killers, being censured). For the Guerre of Algeria the capacity innovated and decided to seize the newspapers (in particular those which evoked the acts of Torture).

For the censure in France after 1962, to see low as well as the detailed article Censure in France .

Postal censure

The occult censure of the correspondences was practiced in all Europe, starting from the opening of the royal post offices to the private individuals, in spite of the official recognition of the secrecy of the letters, and this by all the modes, until the end of the reign of Napoleon III (cf black Cabinet) . The postal censure was however restored in time of war by the various belligerents in the name of their national interest, but it then was it in an opened way, with affixing of various marks of censure and bands of closing (cf postal Histoire (general Data)) .

Internet and censure

Other breaches of liberty of expression

In a broader direction the censure gathers various forms of attack to the Freedom of expression.

The operation of the Média S implies many people having each one on her level a capacity of modification even of suppression of certain initially made proposals. Many are those which compare such an action to censure in the facts, which rather largely extends the definition of the censure. Even if it does not remain about it less than the owners of the media obviously avoid publishing what can displease with customers, with the State, trade unions, etc and which even the professionals generally abstain from simply proposing a potentially litigious article (Auto-censure).

Sometimes, specific information and Single whose true existence is hardly known general public, is kept in a subtle situation of quasi-censures, being classified like “subversive” or “improper”. The text of 1978 of Michel Foucault, the law of decency , for example - defends the abolition of the age of the assent, and since August 2006, is almost completely invisible on Internet, that it is in French or English, and does not even appear on the Web sites specialized on Foucault.

Paradoxically, the calls to the censure often constitute a true publicity which, by waking up the curiosity of the public, causes the opposite effect with that required. The films Amen. and the Last Temptation of Christ , the novel the satanic Verses received a publicity which they would undoubtedly not have had without the threats whose these works or their authors were the target.

DEBATEs on the censure and freedom of expression

Since Spinoza, the Freedom of expression became one of the bases of the political Philosophie, whether it is liberal or republican. One thus defines the censure as the limitation Arbitraire by the Gouvernement of freedom of expression: the censure is exerted of in top. Certain philosophers, however, legitimated such a censure in certain given situations. Thus, Kant justified the “enlightened Despotisme” and, if he affirmed the ethical requirement of the Aude sapere (Ose knowledge) in Was STI Aufklarüng? (What Lights?), it assigned also limits with this freedom of expression. It wrote there as follows:

“ the citizen cannot refuse to pay the taxes of which it is indebted; a moved criticism such loads, when it must itself pay them, can even be punished like scandal (likely to cause generalized acts of insubordination). Nevertheless that one does not contravene the duty of a citizen if it publicly expresses, as a scientist, his thoughts against incongruity or the illegitimacy of such impositions. In the same way a priest is held to make his talk with his catechumens and his parish according to the symbol of the church which it serves, because it is in this condition that it was committed. But, as a scientist, it has full freedom, and it is even its vocation, to communicate to its public the carefully examined and quite disposed thoughts that it conceived on the imperfections of this symbol as well as proposals for a better organization of the religious affairs and ecclesiastics. ”

It is what it called the “private use of the reason”. Thus, freedom of expression was guaranteed in this framework, Kant maintaining thus the safeguarding of the Law and order. The current laws limiting freedom of expression in the name of the maintenance of law and order (but being opposed to the censure itself) are thus of Kantian inspiration. The opponents with any censure affirm not only the Freedom of thought, but defend the right of each one “all to say”, including with their worst enemies. It is for this reason, for example, which Noam Chomsky could defend the right of the Négationniste S to make public their speech, although it is in complete dissension with this one. Thus, the debate on the laws restricting the speeches Révisionnistes continue to agitate the contemporary world, by in particular opposing the United States and the Anglo-Saxon world to the continent of Europe - which admittedly with fact the direct experiment of the Holocauste - which, as a whole, represses such remarks. The problem is of course complex, and the positions in general moderate, although firm. Thus, if Chomsky takes party for an unlimited freedom of expression, the historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet tolerated in the same way the right of each one to express himself, while affirming that one does not discuss with negationnists, in the same way that a “Astronome does not discuss with a Astrologue”.

Lastly, the right to freedom of expression constitutes the base of the liberal Démocraties, while the Marxisme could justify the temporary restriction of certain speeches, in the name of a design of the “Dictatorship of the proletariat” (no matter what one understands by there). The Marxist tradition recalled thus that if the liberals defend the formal right to freedom of expression, they do not ensure of them necessarily the average materials to exert it: thus, this one can be restricted by the economic capacities (censures economic), inter alia by the means of the Concentration of the media (with work also in the field of the edition). For this reason, the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci wrote in the Avanti! , on April 18th, 1919:

“ With the “private initiative” which is promised - by the plots, the dagger, daring gestures - to destroy the dash irresistible of the class struggle, carried out by the proletariat for its autonomy in the industrial production and agricultural and the obscure meanders of the international policy, the authoritative apparatus of the official organization adds heavy artillery of its institutions: censure, the monopoly of the telegraph, the telephone, the post office, railroads Stefani the agency. The light artillery of private initiative tackles the proletarian class (…) The heavy artillery of the apparatus of State protects devastations from light artillery (…) But the history which is primarily freedom, and truth, is not let lock up in a bottle like the devil by the magician (…) Yesterday the newspapers of the middle-class of Milan and Turin did not appear: the class solidarity of the typos removed for one day disloyalty and the lie antiprolétarien. The Truth, mutilated, triumphed in this modest edition inhabitant of Turin over the Avanti! (…) the working class and country appears, with an always increased effectiveness, like the Anti-State, which can oppose at the capitalist State a colossal apparatus of forces (…) The newspaper is the great trench of the class struggle; but the newspaper is manufactured by the workmen, it is thanks to the work of the workman that the news and the opinion take a significant form (…) Each unfavourable force must be fought with adequate forces: to the censure of the lie and disloyalty, which wants with impunity to continue and intensify the increased work of the private delinquency, with the lie and disloyalty, the proletarian class must oppose, in its qualified corporations, the red censure. ”

Thus, the Marxist theorist not thought the problem in the terms of the formal freedom of expression, but in an opposition of power struggles, censures against censure. By putting the question of the Ideology, the Marxists thus underline the effect of an insidious censure, the Hégémonie, which it is advisable to fight by opposing a free and offensive speech to him. Consequently, it is advisable to distinguish between several types of censure, policy, economic, etc, and, according to Gramsci, to not oppose an individual freedom of expression, but a red censure to them, forces collective opposition.

Censure in the world today

Reporters without borders (RSF) presented in 2005 the list of the 15 countries which censure more of which the China, the Bielorussia, the Iran, the Vietnam, the Saudi Arabia, the Maldives and the Tunisia.

In the more democratic countries, the censure of general, political or commercial information is generally exerted by way of legal decisions and not by the control of a perennial body of censure.

As a Popular republic of China

See also: Censure of the Internet in RPC

The Chinese Communist party, sole party of RPC, all systematically that censures concerns:

the Manifestations of the place Tian' anmen in 1989
the independence of the Tibetans
the independence of the Ouïghour S
and in a general way, all that can call into question its legitimacy.

The Chinese still do not have access to least independent information on these subjects.

There exists a Ministry for the Propagande which keeps the hand on the media. The Office of film controls the diffusion of films in China: it for example made withdraw rooms the American film Da Vinci Code in the month of June 2006. Television does not escape the censure since the government issued that the cartoons (the majority are Japanese or American) will be prohibited between 17:00 and 20:00 starting from September 1st, 2006. The Office of the cinema can prohibit a film under various pretexts: thus, the film of Lou Ye, Palais of summer was censured with the reason which it comprised “too many sexual scenes and sensitive topics.” The scenario writers must obtain an authorization to turn their works.

In France

In Russia

The independence of the Russian media is questioned when it is known that the two principal public television channels (ORT and RTR) are controlled by the government. According to Marie Mendras, at least half of the tv news of these chains is dedicated to the actions of president Putin. Since 2003-2004, Moscow tightened its influence on the television channels deprived such as NTV. After the Taken hostages of Beslan in 2004, the Izvestia had published several photographs of the tragedy and editor association had been returned immediately.

Only the Internet, the radios and the Muscovite press independent ( Novaïa Gazeta , Kommersant , Radio operator Echo of Moscow or Radio Freedom) escape the seizure today from the capacity. However, 20 to 30% of the Russian population only has access to the Web.

In Ivory Coast

In Ivory Coast, CNCA is the organization which has, in others, for role to censure.

censured Documents :

Clips judged near to the pornography

2nd clip of Jet Dj
Environment Mapouka
Déshabillement

etc

References

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