Regulatory Censorship in the Middle East
As I have understood during my classes, censorship is an intangible concept that has quite different meanings for different people in different eras and is defined as a never-ending phenomenon. As is seen in historic events, in the heart of Russian and African lands, censorship has played a significant role in the national politics of these countries. However, censorship is not limited to these geographic places. Other countries and areas, in the past and today, have endured censorship by governmental powers and in a sense still do. An example is the Middle East, where information flows, such as news, is regulated by censorship. In this short blog I have chosen to use the Arab-Israeli conflict of 1973 as a key example of my analysis of the influence and type of censorship in the Middle East, whereby I have used information that I’ve gained during the classes ‘Censorship and Social Transformation’.
During the Arab-Israeli conflict, journalists from around the world tried to enter the Middle East in order to cover news stories for their country of origin. (Smith 43) The contradictory information given by Israeli and Arab spokesmen and the restrictions to enter the battle zones made it almost impossible for news reporters to report the true events that occurred in the middle eastern arena as is noted in the quote below:
Furthermore, people had to follow these censor
rules otherwise they could be punished by disobeying the authorities. For
instance,
The Middle Eastern censorship
is comparable with the Russian case in the 20th century, where Lenin
had demolished the independent press and took control over the news, injecting
it with his propaganda. Spreading the ‘knowledge’ he wanted to teach the people. (Pipes 294)
Thus, by censoring the news reports, not only the Arab and Israeli subjects were censored but the whole world has been censored, as it were the authorities that decided what the masses could know and how they could get the information. They were the ones that spread the information and regulated the information (see image). Hence, a regulatory institutional type of censorship was used during the war.
Thus, by censoring the news reports, not only the Arab and Israeli subjects were censored but the whole world has been censored, as it were the authorities that decided what the masses could know and how they could get the information. They were the ones that spread the information and regulated the information (see image). Hence, a regulatory institutional type of censorship was used during the war.
Work Cited
Pipes, Richard. Russia Under The Bolshevik Regime.
New York: A.A. Knopf, 1993. Print.
Google image ‘Censorship in
the Middle East’.
<https://www.google.com/search?q=censorship+in+the+middle+east+news&newwindow=1&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=Uy7jVLQIjcI8j5WAgA4&ved=0CAsQ_AUoBA&biw=1366&bih=667#imgdii=_&imgrc=bEFoXfjFrEFRmM%253A%3BdZurHERH-EhjiM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fdrshem.com%252Fwp-content%252Fuploads%252F2012%252F04%252FCensorship.png%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fdrshem.com%252F2012%252F04%252F28%252Ffrom-internet-censorship-to-real-time-content-manipulation%252F%3B594%3B250 >
<https://www.google.com/search?q=censorship+in+the+middle+east+news&newwindow=1&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=Uy7jVLQIjcI8j5WAgA4&ved=0CAsQ_AUoBA&biw=1366&bih=667#imgdii=_&imgrc=bEFoXfjFrEFRmM%253A%3BdZurHERH-EhjiM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fdrshem.com%252Fwp-content%252Fuploads%252F2012%252F04%252FCensorship.png%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fdrshem.com%252F2012%252F04%252F28%252Ffrom-internet-censorship-to-real-time-content-manipulation%252F%3B594%3B250 >
No comments:
Post a Comment