HNewsWire: How Media Censorship Affects the News You See ( VIDEO )

megaphone-2

Advisory: Be careful of what you read on social media. The algorithms used by these platforms have no regard for Biblical truth. They target your emotions to keep you engaged on their site so their advertisers can drop more ads. These platforms exist to enrich their stockholders. Consider God’s promise to Believers in James 1:5, “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.”

Featured Story

5 Ways Media Censorship Blocks Information from Reaching You

Media censorship takes many forms in the way you get your news. While news stories are often edited for length, there are many choices that are made that are designed to keep some information from becoming public. Sometimes these decisions are made to safeguard a person’s privacy, others to protect media outlets from corporate or political fallout.

Protecting a Person’s Privacy

This is probably the least controversial form of media censorship.

When a minor commits a crime, his identity is concealed to protect him from future harm — so he isn’t turned down from getting a college education or a job. That changes if a minor is charged as an adult, like in the case of violent crime.

Most media outlets also conceal the identity of rape victims, so those people don’t have to endure public humiliation. That was not the case for a brief period at NBC News when it decided in 1991 to identify the woman accusing William Kennedy Smith (part of the powerful Kennedy clan) of raping her. NBC later reverted to the common practice of secrecy.

Avoiding Graphic Details and Images

Every day, someone commits a heinous act of violence or sexual depravity. In newsrooms across the country, editors have to decide whether saying a victim “was assaulted” suffices in describing what happened.

In most instances, it does not. So a choice has to be made on how to describe the details of a crime in a way that helps the audience understand its atrocity without offending readers or viewers, especially children.

It’s a fine line. In the case of Jeffrey Dahmer, the way he killed more than a dozen people was considered so sick that the graphic details were part of the story.

That was also true when news editors were faced with the sexual details of Pres. Bill Clinton’s relationship with Monica Lewinsky and the accusations of sexual harassment Anita Hill made about then-U.S.

Supreme Court justice nominee Clarence Thomas. Words that no editor had ever thought of printing or a newscaster had ever considered uttering were necessary to explain the story.

Those are the exceptions. In most cases, editors will cross out information of an extremely violent or sexual nature, not to sanitize the news, but to keep it from offending the audience.

Concealing Security Information

The U.S. military, intelligence, and diplomatic operations function with a certain amount of secrecy. That confidentiality is regularly challenged by whistleblowers, anti-government groups or others who want to remove the lid on various aspects of U.S. government.

In 1971, The New York Times published what’s commonly called the Pentagon Papers, secret Defense Department documents detailing the problems of American involvement in the Vietnam War in ways the media had never reported. The Nixon administration went to court in a failed attempt to keep the leaked documents from being published.

Decades later, WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange are under fire for posting more than a quarter million secret U.S. documents, many involving national security. When The New York Times published these U.S. State Department papers, the U.S. Air Force responded by blocking the newspaper’s website from its computers.

These examples show that media owners face a difficult relationship with the government. When they approve stories containing potentially embarrassing information, government officials often try to censor it.

Advancing Corporate Interests

Media companies are supposed to serve the public interest. Sometimes that’s at odds with the conglomerate owners who control traditional media voices.

Such was the case when The New York Times reported that executives from MSNBC owner General Electric and Fox News Channel owner News Corporation decided it wasn’t in their corporate interests to allow on-air hosts Keith Olbermann and Bill O’Reilly to trade on-air attacks. While the jabs seemed mostly personal, there was news that came out of them.

The Times reported that O’Reilly uncovered that General Electric was doing business in Iran.

Although legal, G.E. later said it had stopped. A cease-fire between the hosts probably wouldn’t have produced that information, which is newsworthy despite the apparent motivation for getting it.

Cable TV giant Comcast faces a unique charge of censorship. Shortly after the Federal Communications Commission approved its takeover of NBC Universal, it hired FCC commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker who had voted for the merger.

While some denounced the move as a conflict of interest, a single tweet is what unleashed Comcast’s wrath. A worker at a summer film camp for teenage girls questioned the hiring through Twitter. Comcast responded by yanking $18,000 in funding for the camp.

The company later apologized and offered to restore its contribution. Camp officials say they want to be able to speak freely without being hushed by corporations.

Hiding Political Bias

Critics often lambast media for having political bias. While viewpoints on the editorial pages are clear to see, the link between politics and censorship is harder to spot.

The ABC news program Nightline once devoted its broadcast to reading the names of more than 700 U.S. servicemen and women killed in Iraq. What appeared to be a solemn tribute to military sacrifice was interpreted as a politically-motivated, anti-war stunt by Sinclair Broadcast Group, which didn’t allow the program to be seen on the seven ABC stations it owned.

Sinclair is the same company that a media watchdog group says called more than 100 members of Congress “censorship advocates” for raising concerns to the FCC about Sinclair’s plans to air the film Stolen Honor. That production was blasted for being propaganda against then-presidential candidate John Kerry.

Sinclair responded by saying it wanted to air the documentary after the major networks refused to show it. In the end, bowing to pressure on several fronts, the company aired a revised version that only included parts of the film.

Communist countries that once stopped the free flow of information may have largely disappeared, but even in America censorship issues keep some news from reaching you. With the explosion of citizen journalism and internet platforms, the truth will now have an easier way of getting out.

thebalance.com

Duck

All Original Content Copyright** ©**2017  hnewswire.com All Rights Reserved.

watchman-on-wall

Tagged In

Newsletter

Must Read

Long-Journey-Home-1
One-Thing
Mark-Cahill-Ministries-1
One-Blinding-Vision

Other Sources

USSANews

Latest News

Watchman: Rumble Defies Global Censorship Trends, Takes Stand Against New Zealand’s Free Speech Crackdown

By StevieRay Hansen | April 26, 2024

HNewsWire: The CEO of Rumble, a free-speech YouTube competitor, says that global censorship levels are on the rise, but that what’s particularly noticeable are censorship…

Read More

Twitter Is Suppressing Free Speech Under the Direct Orders of the Government. So What Else Is the Government Hiding?

By StevieRay Hansen | April 26, 2024

HNewsWire: After a cache of papers detailing Twitter’s censoring efforts before the 2020 presidential election was released, CEO Elon Musk implied that the company was working…

Read More

Watchman: Once Satan’s Soldiers Eliminate Free Speech, Life Becomes a Cheap Ruse—Brazil Imprisons a Conservative Congressman for Eight Years Over a YouTube Video, America Is Next, Google Is Evil and Tribulation On Steroids

By StevieRay Hansen | April 26, 2024

True Tyranny Always Begins With the Censoring of Free Speech, As U.S. Founding Dad Benjamin Franklin said, “Man will ultimately be governed by God or…

Read More

Watchman: At Some Point, You’re Going to Realize That Twitter Is Just Like Fox News, Which Has Turned On Its Conservative and Christian Audience. Mr. Musk Is a Globalist and Satan Worshiper, and He Has Misled You Into Thinking That Twitter Belongs to the Free Speech Audience. Not True…

By StevieRay Hansen | April 26, 2024

SRH: Linda Yaccarino Was Employed by the Biden Administration From 2021 to 2022 and Subsequently Joined the WEF in 2019. Was the Appointment of the……...

Please join to continue reading. The truth is paywalled, but the lies are free. This content is for Monthly and Annual members only.
Login Join Now
Read More

Watchman’s Daily Devotional, A Lie Is Offered to Those Who Will Not Love the Truth. Truth-Seekers Face Constant Opposition Until They Choose to Reject the Last Lies

By StevieRay Hansen | April 26, 2024

Daily Devotional: 2 Thessalonians 2:9-11 9The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with the work of Satan displayed in all kinds of…

Read More
Focused-Protection-1
Place Your Ad Here

We make every effort to acknowledge sources used in our news articles. In a few cases, the sources were lost due to a technological glitch. If you believe we have not given sufficient credit for your source material, please contact us, and we will be more than happy to link to your article.

StevieRay Hansen

In his riveting memoir, "A Long Journey Home", StevieRay Hansen will lead you through his incredible journey from homeless kid to multimillionaire oilman willing to give a helping hand to other throwaway kids. Available on Amazon.

Leave a Comment