Daily Archives: October 4, 2012

LONDON (Reuters) - A leading media watchdog has accused Iran of trying to cow journalists into silence and self-censorship, adding to international pressure on Tehran over its treatment of activists and the press.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)said Tehran, which is facing tough international economic sanctions over its nuclear program, was also trying to restrict internet access.

"The situation for independent journalists is Iran is worsening by the day," CPJ Deputy Director Rob Mahoney said in a statement on Wednesday.

"High-profile persecutions and imprisonments are an attempt by the authorities to intimidate the media into silence and self-censorship. The international community must speak out against such actions."

The United Nations human rights office called on Tuesday for the immediate release of prominent activists and journalists arrested or intimidated in what it called an apparent clampdown on critical voices ahead of next year's presidential election.

The CPJ expressed concern about Ali Akbar Javanfekr, press adviser to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and head of the state-run IRNA news agency, who was jailed for six months for insulting the Supreme Leader and Reuters Bureau Chief Parisa Hafezi on trial on charges of spreading lies and propaganda.

In citing a series of arrests of print journalists, it said Iranian authorities had maintained a 'revolving-door' policy, freeing some temporarily as they took others into custody.

In March, the Iranian government suspended the press accreditation of all Reuters staff in Tehran after publication of a video script on women's martial arts training that erroneously referred to the athletes as "assassins". Since then, Reuters has been unable to report from Iran.

Reuters, the news arm of Thomson Reuters, the global news and information group, corrected the script after the martial arts club complained and apologized for the error.

Reuters' Bureau Chief in Iran, Iranian national Parisa Hafezi, was subsequently charged on several counts including spreading lies and propaganda against the establishment. Hafezi had not been involved in drafting the video script.

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Media watchdog accuses Iran of intimidating journalists

KENT: The Kent Free Library is celebrating Banned Books Week, which runs from Sept. 30 through Saturday. Banned Books Week is an annual national event sponsored by the American Library Association with the dual purpose of promoting reading and generating attention to the issues surrounding censorship.

"We've been participating for over 5 years now, each year we try to create an interesting display of challenged and banned titles," said Melissa Ziminsky, Adult Services Manager at the library.

The ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom receives reports from communities around the country where certain books are being challenged or are in danger of being banned and compiles lists, including "Banned/Challenged Classics," "Frequently Challenged Books of the 21st Century," "100 Most Frequently Challenged Books by Decade" and "Most Frequently Challenged Authors pages of the 21st Century."

The ALA's official position is condemning censorship and advocating for free access to information.

According to the association's website, for every book that is reported as challenged by libraries, schools or community groups nationwide, an estimated four books that are challenged go unreported. The ALA's compiles its lists using two sources: newspapers and reports submitted by individuals.

Decisions on banned books are specific to the organization or entity banning them, such as a school district or local library. When a book is banned, it is then unavailable in the library that banned it or not taught in the school district that made the decision.

To generate awareness for the cause of freedom of information, the ALA hosts Banned Books Week each fall, typically during the last week of September. As part of the event, the association encourages book retailers, librarians, publishers, teachers and readers to get involved in the effort to advocate for freedom of information.

Also, for the second straight year, the ALA is co-sponsoring the Banned Books Virtual Read-Out, which invites readers to upload videos of themselves reading from their favorite banned or challenged books.

Books are banned for any number of reasons, as illustrated by the ALA's list of the most-banned books for 2011. The No. 1 book on the list, "ttyl" by author Lauren Myracle, has been banned in some communities for offensive language, religious viewpoints, sexually explicit content and being deemed inappropriate for its target age group.

Sexually explicit content is a common reason for books being banned, as are religious issues and racism. Not all of the books are recent, as the 1960 Harper Lee classic "To Kill a Mockingbird" was tenth on the list. The list is heavy on fiction, but there are non-fiction entries as well.

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Kent Free Library brings attention to censorship with participation in Banned Books Week

With increasingly complicated issues of censorship and freedom of expression reverberating around the globe - from the suppression of artist Ai Weiwei to the protests against "Innocence of Muslims" in the Arab world - a glance back toward "Degenerate Art," the notorious 1937 Munich exhibition presented by the Nazis, seems as on point as ever.

"A War on Modern Art: The 75th Anniversary of the Degenerate Art Exhibition" at Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University may not include any of the exact pieces displayed at the original show, artworks that were attacked as "un-German," immoral and undesirable by Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels. Instead, it presents a small, focused selection of 19 prints, watercolors and books by modernists included in the 1937 exhibition of 650 works, drawing mainly on the Cantor Center's permanent collection.

"It's kind of strange, I think, to quote, unquote commemorate something as horrible as this exhibition," says curator Hilarie Faberman by phone from Stanford. "But on the other hand, there were very much issues of censorship and degeneracy in art, continuing through the '80s and '90s."

The sensation created by the photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe came quickly to mind. "In other words, censorship is very much an issue that's alive in our society."

"A War on Modern Art" includes watercolors by Wassily Kandinsky and Conrad Felixmuller, as well as a 1921 self-portrait by Oskar Kokoschka, two lithographs depicting the poor from Otto Dix's 1924 "Hunger!" portfolio, a linoleum cut of a young woman by Christian Rohlfs and two inward-looking prints by Lovis Corinth. The visually dense "Madhouse," "The Yawners" and "Lovers II" by Max Beckmann are part of the same portfolio of prints, some of which were shown in the 1937 exhibition.

"The ideas the artists are working with here are similar," Faberman says. "I think what offended the Nazis about those were the style of the prints and the way space is condensed. You've got all the mentally ill people in the print, which were considered disgusting and dissolute, like anyone who wasn't a part of this pure Aryan ideal - Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, the physically challenged. Hitler used the show as a tool to show what they thought was sickness in society and how the culture needed to be purified."

Abstract art was considered the offensive purview of the elite, while some more-realistic artists, such as Dix and George Grosz, were attacked by the Nazis for their leftist leanings and unidealized, ugly imagery.

Working off the idea for "A War on Modern Art" from one of her assistants, Mariko Chang, and looking into the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's noted 1991 restaging of the original exhibition, Faberman never before had a chance to sit down and read about the 1937 show.

"It is astounding to see what was in the original exhibit," she says now. "Almost everything we consider important to understanding modern art was labeled as degenerate."

Through Feb. 24. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday; until 8 p.m. Thursday. Free. Marie Stauffer Sigall Gallery, Lomita Drive at Museum Way, Stanford. museum.stanford.edu.

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Cantor revisits 1937 degeneracy, censorship