The PC and Perpetually Offended Brigade

[Juggz]

The state of modern journalism is absolutely atrocious. There are people out there writing great stuff but they're getting harder and harder to find when "news" articles consists of collecting what a few people wrote on Twitter. It's pure content over quality

Absolutely. The Twitter thing is a massive peeve of mine. Twitter is fine but it has no place embedded in news. That slyly plants the seed that an uninformed opinion is as valid as that of an expert, diluting the value placed on insight and accuracy, that it doesn't matter what opinion you get, once you get an opinion.

[astfgyl]

It's almost as if all this nonsense was a convenient distraction.

Well said, Juggz

[Emphyrio]

Wasn't there something recently about some kids books being banned. Something as innocent as fuckin Enid Blyton or some such.
Books being banned!!! Fairly sure that features prominently is lots of sci-fi dystopia novels.

So, based on something that maybe happened, we don't know where or in what context because there's no source given, you're pushed to using three exclamation marks and comparing to dystopian sci-fi novels. Noise, so much noise.

I'm not submitting a thesis, so go on out of it with going to the effort of sourcing it. You also state that it'd be 'absolutely retarded' if I was to put up a link to it.

And surely a man as supposedly learned as you, would take issue with books etc being banned?

Supposedly indeed.

[Emphyrio]

Anyway, I don't think putting one's head in the sand is the right thing to do. And it's not all tabloid stuff. At least I don't think so. Today FM and newstalk, while maybe not to everyone's taste, are surely above that level, and this has more than permeated into their content. So it's clearly something prevalent.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Of course I'm against books being banned. But if some random primary school in Something-shire, UK or Whatever County, US decides to ban some books (something which has been happening since time immemorial), I'm not going to bemoan the decline of western civilization over it, despite how desperately the tabloid reporting it wants me to.

Newstalk reported that HSE story exactly as reported (in the most skewed way imaginable) by the Daily Mail. If no "primary source" is given with a story, that story ain't worth shit. The primary source in the HSE story, for example, being the actual 112 page report the half a sentence the tabloids decided to twist for profit appeared in.

"According to the Daily Mail, pet names like 'dear', 'love', 'girls' and 'lads' are to be banned on wards - with patients only to be referred to by their first name."
https://www.newstalk.com/HSE-rolling-out-new-guidelines-to-prevent-pet-names-for-patients

And just to insist on it, now compare to the primary source:
https://www.thejournal.ie/factcheck-pet-names-hosital-4374213-Dec2018/

[Emphyrio]

Look, I'm no fan of the media so I'm not even going down that route. That's a different argument altogether to what I'm complaining about.

The point I'm talking about is the censorship of art. Now, that term can be used loosely when referring to that shitty Christmas song but how long til Fairytale in New York is banned. I'd argue it should have been banned years ago for being so annoying but I digress.

If songs are being taken off the radio, that's a symptom of the larger issue. What next?

After your last post I did a quick Google of banned books. I didn't have time to read an article but there was a list which includes Catcher in the Rye, The Great Gatsby,  To Catch a Mockingbird. Now these may or may not be banned anywhere but my point is, are these books safe in the future?

I'd argue that ignoring the problem now could be detrimental in the future.

[Giggles]

We live in a time where Apu is being written out of The Simpsons for being a "racist stereotype" 

[astfgyl]

It's all gone a bit National Enquirer these days. A real pain to have to meticulously source and fact check everything we see hear or read.

I don't watch the news, I only read the sport in the papers and I stay a mile away from 99% of websites.

I question the real motivation behind any news that I do happen to come across but it is tiring, and that is why I spend my time on music forums.

[Pentagrimes]

The Apu thing..Different thing surely? There's a gulf of difference between a  large racial group taking issue with their portrayal  because it reinforces a stereotype and some confusion over what sign to put on a bathroom door.  I'd be fairly fucking offended if one of the main characters in a TV show for 25 years was a thick Irish alcoholic.

I really don't want to get into this discussion because any time we have it things go south quickly -  I'm left leaning but do kind of get the "people are far too over sensitive" thing some of you are getting at.. but I do think it's hilarious that the ultra right wing/edgelord/Gavin McInnes brigade are just as easily offended when people see them as a bunch of cunts.

Fanaticism and intolerance on either extreme does noone any favours.

[Juggz]

I'd argue that ignoring the problem now could be detrimental in the future.

It's already detrimental. The concept of physical ownership of anything is vanishing, spurned for the instant fix of streaming. It's handing the ability for instand cencorship to the media companies who control what they make available to their customers. When you can't source a physical book or CD or DVD anymore, are you really going to trust Spotify or Netflix or Amazon or Youtube/Google to remain impartial and permit content which their owners find objectionable? We can't send enough of our data into their clouds quick enough. The digital age will make censorship easier than ever in an era when it has never been easier to directly access and manipulate people at an individual level. Create outrage/remove content. Easy peasy.

[The Butcher]

But it's not even happening on a grand scale or across multiple countries, you'd swear a vast majority were banning these books/songs etc left right and centre! That's not the reality. Plus you can never fully censor something, especially with the internet age so I'd argue these books/songs are safe in the future. Don't be caught up in the internet whirlwind. There's a balance to be had but unfortunately media sinks to the lowest common denominator and highlights the extremes for the masses to feed the beast. The example there is perfect, Newstalk quoting Daily Mail, shows how desperate they are to get a piece of the click-bait market.

I couldn't give a fiddles what songs are banned by an insignificant ultra liberal radio station, same goes for a ultra right Christian US radio station.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Look, I'm no fan of the media so I'm not even going down that route. That's a different argument altogether to what I'm complaining about.

The point I'm talking about is the censorship of art.

There is a polarization of positions underway. It would be an unjustified exaggeration to say that the media are orchestrating this, but at the very least they are intentionally feeding it in order to cash in on it. I'm not suggesting anyone go to the hassle of checking the primary sources for all stories. But we can at least check to see if a story links to one or even quotes directly from one. That whole HSE thing, not a single quote from the report in the Daily Mail article, and yet it was cited as a source by dozens of other "news" sites. I've seen this over and over again from media sources in Ireland, the UK, the US, France, and others.

Anyone who fears an increase in censorship is a prime click-bait target for any story exaggerating tales of censorship. On the whole, there is nothing to worry about for those books or for x, y, z album or movie or whatever else. In the immediate, there are real things to worry about, things that endanger the future of all books and all their writers and all their readers in a much more definitive manner. And, strangely, the voices harping on about censorship are very often those downplaying the more concrete problems of resource availability and resource purity (including in that the water we drink and air we breathe).

No story which panders to the market-research-identified biases of its readership can be trusted, whether that be in The Sun or The Guardian or wherever. Pandering of that type should be the very definition of "tabloid". So maybe political correctness is going mad. But on the other hand, the political class has already gone completely fucking bonkers and is taking the planet with them in order to pander to their financial backers... many of whom are major share-holders in the media.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

I'd argue that ignoring the problem now could be detrimental in the future.

It's already detrimental. The concept of physical ownership of anything is vanishing, spurned for the instant fix of streaming. It's handing the ability for instand cencorship to the media companies who control what they make available to their customers. When you can't source a physical book or CD or DVD anymore, are you really going to trust Spotify or Netflix or Amazon or Youtube/Google to remain impartial and permit content which their owners find objectionable? We can't send enough of our data into their clouds quick enough. The digital age will make censorship easier than ever in an era when it has never been easier to directly access and manipulate people at an individual level. Create outrage/remove content. Easy peasy.

This is also a good point. Thankfully, I think hackers will always be one step ahead when it comes to free distribution of content - they always have been (for better or worse). It will remain up to the individual to decide whether they want to dig a little deeper to get at something that hasn't been pre-filtered for maximum bingeability/viewer etherization.

[Emphyrio]

I couldn't give a fiddles what songs are banned by an insignificant ultra liberal radio station, same goes for a ultra right Christian US radio station.

1. I fully agree.
2. Is it outside the bounds of possibility that it could happen on mainstream radio?
3. At what stage do you think censorship has gone too far? If at all.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Interesting to be reminded in the film Bohemian Rhapsody that the video to "I Want To Break Free" was banned on MTV back in the 80s, supposedly because it was perceived as promoting transvestism. We all seem to have survived and then recovered from the Tipper Gore years, the Mary Whitehouse years, etc., just fine though. There'll always be someone complaining about something, and always others pushing back against their complaints. I don't think there's any need for those not actively engaged in the pushing or pulling to be losing their shit over it like it's the end of freedom as we know it. Is there?