{"id":13811,"date":"2014-03-24T18:19:48","date_gmt":"2014-03-25T01:19:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/?p=13811"},"modified":"2014-03-24T18:22:23","modified_gmt":"2014-03-25T01:22:23","slug":"government-censorship-in-the-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2014\/03\/24\/government-censorship-in-the-news\/","title":{"rendered":"government censorship in the news"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some interesting government censor stories…<\/p>\n

Item… Government Agency in Turkey tries to block Twitter, doesn’t hold<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 Everyone takes to Twitter to complain and kvetch.<\/p>\n

Finally fed up, Mr. Erdogan tried to shut Twitter down on Thursday \u00e2\u20ac\u201d 10 days before important local elections \u00e2\u20ac\u201d after lashing out at the social network at a rally in the western town of Bursa, saying that he did not care about international reaction if national security was at stake.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Twitter, mwitter!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (the rough equivalent of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Twitter, schmitter!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) Mr. Erdogan said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We will root out all. They say, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcSir, the international community can say this, can say that.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t care at all. Everyone will see how powerful the state of the Republic of Turkey is.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/em><\/p>\n

Nonetheless, the ban appeared to backfire, fomenting a loud and raucous backlash on Twitter, with the hashtags #TwitterisblockedinTurkey, #occupytwitter, #turkeyblockedtwitter, and #dictatorerdogan quickly becoming popular trending topics globally. <\/em><\/p>\n

According to Twitturk, which records the statistics of Turkey\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s roughly 12 million Twitter users, more than half a million tweets were posted in just 10 hours, despite the ban. Statista, a New York statistics portal, lists Turkey as the fourth-largest Twitter community in the world after the United States, Britain and Japan.<\/em><\/p>\n

One posting circulated featuring a flock of Twitter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s blue birds pounding Mr. Erdogan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s head with bird excrement. Another superimposed the prime minister\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s face on a campaign poster of President Obama, with the slogan, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Yes we ban.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/em><\/p>\n

Then there’s … Pakistan.<\/a>.. where, this is actually an age old item.\u00c2\u00a0 It happened in Batista’s Cuba when they needed to squelch reports that Fidel Castro was alive.<\/p>\n

An article about Pakistan<\/span>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s relationship to Al Qaeda, and its knowledge of Osama bin Laden<\/span>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s last hiding place within its borders, was censored from the front page of about 9,000 copies of the International New York Times in Pakistan on Saturday, apparently removed by a local paper that has a partnership to distribute The Times. <\/em><\/p>\n

An image of the front page \u00e2\u20ac\u201d with a large blank space where the article appeared in other editions \u00e2\u20ac\u201d traveled rapidly around social media on Saturday. A spokeswoman for The New York Times, Eileen Murphy, said that the decision by the partner paper, The Express Tribune, had been made \u00e2\u20ac\u0153without our knowledge or agreement.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/em><\/p>\n

The partner was recently the subject of an attack by an extremist group, she said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153While we understand that our publishing partners are sometimes faced with local pressures,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153we regret any censorship of our journalism.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Though the article appeared to have been excised from all copies of the newspaper distributed in Pakistan, the story seemed to be available to Pakistani readers online, Ms. Murphy said. There was no answer at a number listed for the partner paper\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s parent company, the Lakson Group, on Saturday.<\/em><\/p>\n

It can’t be this story<\/a>, as it was in the New York Times Magazine … alongside a piece about bi-sexuals having to prove their worth in the gay community as actual bi-sexuals.\u00c2\u00a0 Hard to picture which story would offend and enflame the political religious climate more…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some interesting government censor stories… Item… Government Agency in Turkey tries to block Twitter, doesn’t hold.\u00c2\u00a0 Everyone takes to Twitter to complain and kvetch. Finally fed up, Mr. Erdogan tried to shut Twitter down on Thursday \u00e2\u20ac\u201d 10 days before important local elections \u00e2\u20ac\u201d after lashing out at the social network at a rally in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13811"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13811\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13813,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13811\/revisions\/13813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}