Archive for the ‘Censorship’ Category

Jeffrey Wright Says a Replacement Actor Dubbed His Lines When He Refused to Censor the N-Word – PEOPLE

Jeffrey Wright is recalling a time when he refused to censor an explicit word in a line reading for Ride with the Devil.

In the 1999 western drama, Wright, 58, played Daniel Holt, a freed Black man fighting in an informal Confederate militant unit during the Civil War, alongside a cast that included Tobey Maguire, Jewel and Skeet Ulrich.

While promoting his new movie American Fiction, Wright shared during an appearance on Entertainment Weekly's Around the Table series with costars Tracee Ellis Ross, Sterling K. Brown and Erika Alexander that he was asked to censor the N-word in a pivotal scene while re-recording dialogue for a version of the film intended to play on airplanes.

"In this scene in which he has kind of the apex of his awakening, his need to emancipate himself, he says 'being that man's friend was no more than being his n----- and I will never again be anyone's n-----,' " Wright recalled. "It's such a self empowering, empowering statement and understanding of the word."

When Wright said he completed "the airplane version of dialogue," he was asked to substitute the N-word in that scene and instead walked away from the dialogue recording session entirely.

"There were a few curse words, and they [said] the [N-word] here, we'd like to change that to Negro or whatever the choice was," he recalled. "And I said, 'Nah, nah that's not happening,' and I headed out the door to my car."

The actor then added, "They found some other [actor] to come in and do that one word, apparently, so that the airplane folk would be comfy and in the darkness of their own ignorance of the language of race."

Everett

Both Ross, 51, and Brown, 47, appeared visibly surprised by Wright's story. Ross placed her hand on Wright's shoulder and said, "No they did not!" Brown, meanwhile, could be heard reacting with, "Wow" and "Are you serious?"

Ride with the Devil, which came roughly a decade after Wright first broke into Hollywood, did not make a significant impression on audiences. It only ever grossed $635,096 in its limited theatrical release, per Box Office Mojo.

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Wright shared the story as he and his costars spoke to the themes of America's relationship with race at play in American Fiction. He said the anecdote relates to "understanding the meaning or meanings of the N-word," as it is used in the new movie.

Bryan Bedder/Variety via Getty

In American Fiction, Wright plays author Thelonious "Monk" Ellison, described in an official synopsis as "a frustrated novelist whos fed up with the establishment profiting from 'Black' entertainment that relies on tired and offensive tropes."

"To prove his point, Monk uses a pen name to write an outlandish 'Black' book of his own, a book that propels him to the heart of hypocrisy and the madness he claims to disdain," the synopsis adds, stating that the film "confronts our cultures obsession with reducing people to outrageous stereotypes."

American Fiction is in theaters now.

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Jeffrey Wright Says a Replacement Actor Dubbed His Lines When He Refused to Censor the N-Word - PEOPLE

Comedian and musician Tom Smothers dies at 86: A victim of government and corporate censorship in the late 1960s – WSWS

Tom Smothers died last week, on the day after Christmas. The comedian and folk musician was 86. He died of causes related to cancer. Smothers and his brother Dick performed as a duo for some 60 years. Their act ostensibly centered on performing folk songs, but they developed ahumorous patterrooted in sibling rivalry early on in their joint career, which established them as acomedy act.

In the late 1960s, Tom Smothers demonstrated an anti-establishment streak, in relation not only to the Vietnam War but other social issues, which led CBS executives, in April 1969, to cancelThe Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, a popular and influential prime-time weekly program, at the end of its third season. Although they eventually prevailed in a lawsuit against the television network, the brothers never regained their position in the national limelight. They demonstrated principle and paid the economic and career price.

In light of the various efforts at present to suppress widespread opposition to the policies of both parties, and in particular protests against the homicidal Israeli onslaught in Gaza, funded and fully endorsed by the White House, it is worth recalling that a willingness to launch fierce attacks on freedom of speech and democratic rights runs freely in the veins of the American ruling elite. The threat that a message of resistance to official policy will reach broad layers of the population has always especially terrified the powers that be in the US. At various points in the 20thcentury, and now in the 21st, the government, in close alliance with big business, has launched vicious campaigns against performers and other figures who defy what is proclaimed to be the national consensus.

Tom (born 1937) and Dick Smothers (born 1938) at first glance would seem to have been unlikely candidates for political iconoclasm.

Their father, a career soldier, was killed in the last days of World War II, while a prisoner of war of the Japanese, apparently by friendly fire. His POW ship was mistakenly bombed by Allied pilots en route from the Philippines to Korea. Their mother, according to author David Bianculli, inDangerously Funny: The Uncensored Story of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,was in and out of rehab and state hospitals, leaving her children with others as she tried, with little success, to conquer her alcoholism. The family (including a sister) lived in southern California.

The brothers began performing together as a duo in 1960. Their influences were Burl Ives, the Kingston Trio, the Limeliters and other relatively innocuous acts. They intended to be straightforward folk singers, but feared they lacked the necessary musical skills. What eventually made them different was Toms nervous, obviously fictitious introductions to various songs, his generally mischievous or sometimes frightened demeanor, and the conflicts that inevitably arose between the brothers. They discovered an ability to improvise, and the naturalness of the comic friction between them rapidly attracted audiences.

Repeated appearances onThe Jack Paar Show(officiallyThe Tonight Show), starting in January 1961, made them nationally prominent figures. ANew York Timesreview in 1961 observed that Toms foolery reflects the speech pattern of a frightened tenth-grader giving a memorized talk at a Kiwanis meeting, while Dicks cherubic look suggests that he may have just won a Boy Scout merit badge for bass-playing.

The brothers were featured in a situation comedy,The Smothers Brothers Show, which lasted only one season, 1965-66, on CBS. Tom fought with executives of the production company.

He was determined to wield more creative control in the brothers next television venture, a variety series,The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, which was aired on Sunday nights at 9:00 p.m. starting in February 1967, against one of the most popular programs on network television, the long-running Western,Bonanza.

The shows 71 episodes appeared in the midst of highly explosive political and social events, including major inner-city riots; the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy; the eruption of mass protests against the Vietnam War and the various bloody battles and campaigns of that conflict, including the Tet Offensive; the decision by Lyndon B. Johnson not to run again for the presidency; the brutal police attacks on protesters at the 1968 Democratic National Convention; and many others. Globally, of course, this was a period of upheaval with revolutionary implications, in Western Europe, Latin America and elsewhere.

To their credit, the Smothers Brothers, unlike most of the television personalities of the time, had the audacity to bring many of these events, and individuals with something to say about them, onto their program.

A number of controversial decisions led to a state of almost continuous warfare with CBS executives. One of the most memorable was the decision to invite veteran left-wing folk singer Pete Seeger to perform during the second season of theComedy Hour. Seeger had been blacklisted on prime time US television for 17 years after being listed inRed Channels, which identified individuals and organizations it claimed had affiliations with, or sympathy for, the Communist Party. This publication (byCounterattackmagazine, the newsletter of facts to combat Communism, started by three former FBI agents) fed the communist witch hunts and gave ammunition to Republican senator Joseph McCarthy from Wisconsin (Dangerously Funny).

Not only was Seeger scheduled to appear, but he planned to sing his new composition, Waist Deep in the Big Muddy, a song, although set in World War II, that was an obvious reference to the ongoing Vietnam War and the role of Lyndon Johnson in prosecuting it. As David Bianculli explains, The sixth and final stanza was the one that made CBS brass the most apoplectic. Every time I read the papers, Seeger sang, that old feeling comes onwere waist deep in the Big Muddy, and the big fool says to push on. Seeger was singing this five weeks after Johnson had committed more troops to Vietnam, and CBS found it unacceptable. CBS excised the song from the show, on a night when more than one in five US households tuned in to see Seeger sing.

Five months later, in February 1968, Seeger returned to the program, sang Waist Deep in the Big Muddy, and CBS raised no objections. As Bianculli notes, Tom Smothers had kept up a steady campaign against the act of censorship, but attitudes toward the Vietnam War, including attitudes within sections of the media and political establishment, had shifted. Also on CBS, only two days after Seegers second appearance, longtime news anchor Walter Cronkite appeared in a special and argued that it seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate and that more troops would not affect the probable outcome.

The Smothers Brothers also aroused the ire of CBS by opening their third season, in September 1968, with an appearance by Harry Belafonte, another veteran radical performer, with his own history of association with the Communist Party, or its artistic periphery. In one of his segments on the program, Belafonte sang a calypso medley built around Dont Stop the Carnival, written originally about the frenzied madness of a Mardi Gras celebration, but with new lyrics added to refer to the Democratic National Convention [one month earlier]as footage from the convention, and of police dragging and arresting protesters outside the hall, is projected behind him. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley was clearly shown in clips that were, to put it lightly, not at all flattering (Dangerously Funny).

CBS officials on both the West and East Coast were adamant in their refusal to broadcast the number. A bitter conflict between Tom Smothers and the CBS hierarchy erupted. The season premiere was broadcast without the Belafonte Carnival sequence. Adding insult to injury, CBS sold some five minutes of the space created by their censorship to the Republican Party as a campaign spot for presidential candidate Richard Nixon.

Conflicts between the brothers, Tom in particular, and CBS raged throughout the third and final season. Continued and sustained criticism of the Vietnam quagmire, mockery of religion (featuring comic David Steinberg), attacks on police brutality, references to interracial relationships, double entendres about drug use and sexuality and, as a new feature, the skewering of Nixon (including an Arthurian-era tale, Bianculli comments, with Sir Richard of Nixon, also known as Tricky Dicky, that probably put the Smothers Brothers on Nixons radar), all of this only added fuel to the fire.

The Smothers Brothers also made an effort to present music which young people were listening to. Among the groups and individuals who appeared on the program were George Harrison, Buffalo Springfield, Cream, the Who, Donovan, the Doors, Janis Ian, Jefferson Airplane, Peter, Paul and Mary, Steppenwolf, Simon and Garfunkel, Ray Charles and Ike and Tina Turner.

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An appearance by folk singer Joan Baez produced another bitter dispute between Tom Smothers and corporate headquarters. Baez introduced a song by explaining that it was dedicated to her husband, David Harris, who was going to be going to prison, probably in June, and hell be there for three years. The reason he was going, she continued, is because he refused to have anything to do with the draft, or selective service, or whatever you want to call itmilitarism in general.

CBS, under newly installed president Robert Wood, butchered Baezs appearance, cutting out her explanation of the reasons for Harris being sentenced to prison.

In the end, on April 4, 1969, CBS used the fact that the Smothers brothers had not provided executives and affiliates a videotape version of an upcoming show in time for them to make changes and cuts as an excuse for firing them. Murray Kempton in theNew York Post, Bianculli writes, saluted the bravery of the brothers in bringing on guests Pete Seeger and Joan Baez, and quoted Toms self-effacing but accurate assessment of the blandness of 1960s television: We stand out, Kempton quoted Tom as saying, because nothing else is being said. Wed be moderates anywhere else.

The political and social stakes were high. The urban riots, mass protests over Vietnam and unrest on college campuses and a major strike wave in major industries, in addition to the specter of revolution in France and other parts of the world, terrified the American ruling class. It should be remembered that the Smothers Brothers and their social commentary, in a different technological and media universe, were being viewed by between 30 to 35 million people a week. The show was one of the top five American television series most watched by people under 35. The satirical and other attacks, moderate as they may have been, were unacceptable.

Bianculli acknowledges that there is no smoking gun connecting the White House to the demise of the Smothers Brothers program, but there is considerable circumstantial evidence, including Nixons general vindictiveness, his drawing up of an enemies list and his determination to eliminate critics in artistic and academic circles.

In 1973, Bianculli points out, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of theWashington Postexposed the fact that a former New York City policeman had been hired to conduct more than 20 secret probes between 1969 and 1971 ordered by the White House and instigated by Watergate co-conspirators H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman. One of the targets was the Smothers Brothers.

Tom Smothers refused to back down in face of the effort to suppress the series. He never apologized or exhibited repentance. He and his brother continued to perform as a duo for decades. In December 2022, the brothers announced that they would tour in 2023.

On a 1988 reunion show, they sang, to the tune of Those Were the Days, new lyrics written for the occasion by Mason Williams: Once upon a time we were on TV / Every Sunday night we knocked em dead / We stirred up trouble, so the network fired us / I guess that it was something that we said / Those were the days, my friends...

In 2008, Steve Martinone of the writers on the brothersComedy Hourpresented Tom Smothers with an Emmy award for writing on the 1968-69 series. (Smothers had excluded his name from the list of writers submitted for the award that year because he was afraid it was too volatile.)

Smothers told the audience, clearly referring to the Bush administration and the Iraq war, Its hard for me to stay silent when I keep hearing that peace is only attainable through warand theres nothing more scary than watching ignorance in action. I dedicate this Emmy, he continued, to all people who feel compelled to speak out, and are not afraid to speak to power, and wont shut up, and refuse to be silenced.

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Comedian and musician Tom Smothers dies at 86: A victim of government and corporate censorship in the late 1960s - WSWS

U.S. Supreme Court must now free this government’s dissenters from the stocks of social media censorship and the … – Heartlander News

It was actually a crime to criticize the royal government in colonial America. Untold thousands were fined, imprisoned and shamed for the impertinence, not incidentally silencing many thousands more.

We owe it to them, not to mention ourselves and our progeny, to wonder: Is the current U.S. government bringing back such a law without saying so?

The crime of seditious libel, instituted by Parliament in 1275, made it illegal to spread any slanderous News or false News or Tales where by discord or occasion of discord or slander may grow between the King and his people or the other great men of the Realm.

Our colonial forebears rebelled against it, and thank God for that. Courageous newspaper publishers and editors made certain of it, against the certainty of persecution and prosecution. Thus emboldened, the common man accelerated the rebellion in the years before the revolution, in discussions of free-minded men in coffee houses and taverns.

And even with no stated power to do so, juries increasingly acquitted their peers of seditious libel, which only added to the acidity of the local newspaper rants against tyranny and taxes.

As recalled in Stephen D. Solomons Revolutionary Dissent, the colonials delicious subversiveness was also inspired by earlier essays in England from a pair of liberty lovers writing under the anonymous name of Cato, the ancient Roman senator. Among their 144 essays, they were bold enough to assert, in the shadow of the king himself:

Neither the king nor his handpicked colonial overseers bought into any of that nor does the federal government of the United States of America seem to in 2024.

Indeed, it appears the current regime is set on reanimating the centuries-dead monster of seditious libel without proclamation and with sad little protest.

The landmark free speech case Missouri v. Biden, now before the U.S. Supreme Court, has only begun to expose the breadths and depths the Biden administration has traveled to suppress dissent most notably on COVID-19 origins, restrictions, masks and vaccines, as well as the integrity of the 2020 election, but truly on any matter the intelligentsia considers disinformation. Think Hunter Biden laptop, which saw an entire major newspaper, the New York Post, have its Twitter account deactivated.

The laptop story, turns out, was more than legitimate, the suppression of which is reminiscent of this: Solomon writes of a seditious libel case against newspaper editor John Peter Zenger, ultimately acquitted in no small part thanks to his audacious attorney Andrew Hamilton, who told the jury that the suppressing of evidence ought always to be taken for the strongest evidence.

Its an argument we should hold to today.

The Twitter Files most famously exposed government/Big Tech collusion to suppress speech disfavored by our ruling elite, dissent that the former Twitter, Facebook and other platforms silenced altogether or removed to a quiet corner in social media purgatory.

This is not an inconsequential marriage, this unholy matrimony between government and Big Tech. Social media has become what coffee houses and taverns and newspapers were in 1700s America: the proverbial town square where ordinary citizens collaborate on keeping their government accountable and their own necks free of yokes.

If only the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world had an iota of the integrity and authority-defying pluck of our colonial newspapermen. Alas, they appear instead to actually be colluding with the government to silence or sideline disfavored speech. A trial judge and an appeals court have issued separate injunctions preventing it.

The [trial] court found that Big Tech changed its terms-of-service policies at the demand of the White House, explains Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey. They changed their algorithms to satisfy the federal officials demand.

Indeed, the Missouri v. Biden plaintiffs claim that as early as 2018, congressional staffers actually showed social media companies copies of potentially adverse legislation if they did not censor online content. Bailey says that in emails to social media companies, Biden officials said they didnt care what content was true or untrue they simply wanted a specific narrative put out, and other views silenced.

Amazingly, Bailey says that in a hearing before the trial judge last year Biden administration lawyers wouldnt even concede Americans unfettered right to criticize the president or question the legitimacy of the 2020 election or COVID measures. Well, it depends, was their answer.

Well, no, it doesnt.

Todays heavy-handed government overseers surely realize what the Cato essays warned of, and are therefore doing precisely and purposefully what they are doing: Whoever would overthrow the Liberty of a Nation must begin by subduing the Freeness of Speech.

Added Samuel Adams: There is nothing so fretting and vexatious; nothing so justly terrible to tyrants, and their tools and abettors, as a FREE PRESS. the bulwark of the Peoples liberties. For this reason, it is ever watched by those who are forming plans for the destruction of the peoples liberties, with an envious and malignant eye.

The British government centuries ago prohibited the printing of anything without a license ahead of time, assuring that dissent came stillborn to the world, Solomon writes. In Missouri v. Biden two separate courts have already seen ample evidence that todays government is doing the same through social media censorship.

We look hopefully now to the countrys most Supreme Court for affirmation of our right to dissent so hard-won by our intrepid ancestors in courts, public squares and drafty 18th-century jail cells.

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U.S. Supreme Court must now free this government's dissenters from the stocks of social media censorship and the ... - Heartlander News

Polish pavilion selection at Venice Biennale gets political as rejected artist cries censorship – Art Newspaper

The artist selected to represent Poland at the 2024 Venice Biennale last year says that the new Polish governments decision to cancel his project at the worlds most prestigious exhibition is an act of censorship.

Ignacy Czwartos was selected by the previous administration led by the right-wing party Law and Justice (PiS). But in a statement issued on 29 December the ministry, under new prime Minister Donald Tusk, called off Czwartoss project.

Czwartos tells The Art Newspaper that his exhibition proposal Polish Practice in Tragedy. Between Germany and Russiawas initially selected in an open competition. On 31 October, Polands Ministry of Culture announced that it would indeed present an exhibition by Czwartos at the countrys national pavilion at the Biennale.

The announcement came at a time when Poland was waiting to see what form its next government would take, following a general election on 15 October. Czwartos was recommended by a jury convened by Warsaws Zachta National Gallery of Art.

PiS emergedas the largest party in the October election but failed to win a majority; Donald Tusk has subsequently formed a new centrist coalition government. Tusk was previously prime minister of Poland between 2007 and 2014, later becoming European Council president.

The selection took place in accordance with the legal procedures. The verdict of the competition jury was accepted by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage. The contract between me and Zachta Gallery, the institution responsible for the realisation of the exhibition has been signed, Czwartos adds.

Nevertheless, on 29 December, I received the information that the new Minister of Culture and National Heritage, Bartomiej Sienkiewicz, had stopped the project. No reasons were given to justify the decision and, what is more, this decision is contrary to the regulations in force. I perceive it as censorship. The ministry was contacted for comment.

The Polish ministry of culture said in an online statement that after analysing the competition procedures for the exhibition and after [gathering] the opinions and voices of the communities, accepted the decision not to implement the project [Polish Practice in Tragedy. Between Germany and Russia]." Poland will now be represented by Open Group, a collective that includes Yuriy Biley, Pavlo Kovach, and Anton Varga.

A spokesperson for Zacheta tells us: As per the regulations, Sienkiewicz has given the go-ahead to the back-up exhibition project, Repeat after Me, submitted by curator Marta Czy and featuring Open Group. Zachta National Gallery of Art will remain responsible for organising and producing the exhibition, as well as fully overseeing the Polish Pavilion in Venice.

In a proposal document submitted to the Biennale, Czwartoss exhibition,Polish Practice in Tragedy. Between Germany and Russia, was described as a profound reflection by a contemporary Polish artist on the tragic history of the 20th century.

Czwartos says: My project, through a set of paintings and objects, presents Polish experience of the clash between two totalitarianisms: Soviet communism and German National Socialism. The project refers also to the present day, above all to Putin's brutal attack in Ukraine. It is not an anti-European project at all, but rather it refers to the forces that had destroyed Europe in the past and today.

However, Czwartoss project faced a backlash from critics last year who said it was too closely aligned with the agenda of the Law and Justice (PiS) party. Those criticising Czwartos nomination included some former Zachta staff and three members of the museums jury: Jagna Domalska, Joanna Warsza and Karolina Zibiska-Lewandowska.

They told The Art Newspaper: To us the decision to select Ignacy Czwartos seems like a tragic Endspiel after eight years of right-wing rule... we regret that after the most open, welcoming, transnational and complex art of Magorzata Mirga-Tas [who represented Poland at the 2022 Biennale], we move to the most narrow-minded, ideologically paranoid and shameful position.

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Polish pavilion selection at Venice Biennale gets political as rejected artist cries censorship - Art Newspaper

CNN admits it runs all Gaza coverage through bureau monitored by Israeli military censor – Salon

CNNhas long been criticized by media analysts and journalists for its deference to the Israeli government and the Israel Defense Forces in its coverage of the occupied Palestinian territories, and the cable network admitted Thursday that it follows a protocol that could give Israeli censors influence over its stories.

A spokesperson for the networkconfirmedtoThe Interceptthat its news coverage about Israel and Palestine is run through and reviewed by theCNNJerusalem bureauwhich is subject to the IDF's censor.

The censor restricts foreign news outlets from reporting on certain subjects of its choosing and outright censors articles or news segments if they don't meet its guidelines.

Other news organizations often avoid the censor by reporting certain stories about the region through their news desks outside of Israel,The Interceptreported.

"The policy of running stories about Israel or the Palestinians past the Jerusalem bureau has been in place for years," the spokesperson told the outlet. "It is simply down to the fact that there are many unique and complex local nuances that warrant extra scrutiny to make sure our reporting is as precise and accurate as possible."

The spokesperson added thatCNNdoes not share news copy with the censor and called the network's interactions with the IDF "minimal."

But James Zogby, founder of the Arab American Institute, said the IDF's approach to censoring media outlets is "Israel's way of intimidating and controlling news."

ACNNstaffer who spoke toThe Intercepton condition of anonymity confirmed that the network's longtime relationship with the censor has ensuredCNN'scoverageof Israel's bombardment of Gaza and attacks in the West Bank since October 7 favors Israel's narratives.

"Every single Israel-Palestine-related line for reporting must seek approval from the [Jerusalem] bureauor, when the bureau is not staffed, from a select few handpicked by the bureau and senior managementfrom which lines are most often edited with a very specific nuance," the staffer said.

Jerusalem bureau chief Richard Greene announced it had expanded its review team to include editors outside of Israel, calling the new policy "Jerusalem SecondEyes." The expanded review process was ostensibly put in place to bring "more expert eyes" toCNN's reporting particularly when the Jerusalem news desk is not staffed.

In practice, the staff member toldThe Intercept, "'War-crime' and 'genocide' are taboo words. Israeli bombings in Gaza will be reported as 'blasts' attributed to nobody, until the Israeli military weighs in to either accept or deny responsibility. Quotes and information provided by Israeli army and government officials tend to be approved quickly, while those from Palestinians tend to be heavily scrutinized and slowly processed."

Meanwhile, reporters are under intensifying pressure to question anything they learn from Palestinian sources, including casualty statistics from the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

The Ministry of Health is run by Hamas, which controls Gaza's government. The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugeessaidin October, as U.S. President Joe Biden waspublicly questioningthe accuracy of the ministry's reporting on deaths and injuries, that its casualty statistics have "proven consistently credible in the past."

Despite this,CNN's senior director of news standards and practices, David Lindsey, told journalists in a November 2 memo that "Hamas representatives are engaging in inflammatory rhetoric and propaganda... We should be careful not to give it a platform."

Another email sent in October suggested that the network aimed to present the Ministry of Health's casualty figures as questionable, with the News Standards and Practices division telling staffers, "Hamas controls the government in Gaza and we should describe the Ministry of Health as 'Hamas-controlled' whenever we are referring to casualty statistics or other claims related to the present conflict."

Newsroom employees were advised to "remind our audiences of the immediate cause of this current conflict, namely the Hamas attack and mass murder and kidnap of Israeli civilians" on October 7.

At least 22,600 people have beenconfirmed killedin Gaza and 57,910 have been wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7. Thousands more are feared dead under the rubble left behind by airstrikes. In Israel, the death toll from Hamas' attack stands at 1,139.

Jim Naureckas, editor of the watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting,notedthat the Israeli government is controlling journalists' reporting on Gaza as it's been "credibly accused of singling out journalists for violent attacks in order to suppress information."

"To give that government a heightened role in deciding what is news and what isn't news is really disturbing," he toldThe Intercept.

Meanwhile,pointed outauthor and academic Sunny Singh, even outsideCNN, "every bit of reporting on Gaza in Western media outlets has been given unmerited weight which not granted to Palestinian reporters."

"Western medianot justCNNhas been pushing Israeli propaganda all through" Israel's attacks, said Singh.

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CNN admits it runs all Gaza coverage through bureau monitored by Israeli military censor - Salon