SpeakSpeak News

Fighting indecency complaints, fighting groups like the Parents Television Council, doesn’t mean you’re advocating for prime-time smut. It doesn’t mean you’re a pervert. It doesn’t mean you hate America.

It means you believe in free speech. It means you know how to turn your television off. It means you don’t want a group of mobilized politicos to determine what is or isn’t suitable entertainment for you and your family.

So fight it. Speak up.

Help us help you fight.

SpeakSpeak is entirely volunteer-run. We’re as grassroots as it gets, baby. We’re building a coalition of people like you who are fed up with government censorship (un-American), right-wing intolerance (un-Christian), and general cultural idiocy (un-Smart).

Help us.

Support SpeakSpeak. It only takes $5, or $10, or $whatever. And it’s a donation that matters.

Regardless of your ability to donate, speak up now!

Ask incoming FCC Chairman Kevin Martin to stand up for free speech.

In 2004, the FCC fined broadcasters over $8 million for indecency violations. But in recent months, the FCC denied over 40 indecency complaints filed by groups like the Parents Television Council.

In order to give life to this trend of sensible action on the part of the FCC, you need to speak up.

If you don’t, who will?

It takes approximately 42 seconds.

Speak up now.

Agape Press reports that a program to train Christians to become Hollywood execs and writers, and to infiltrate major studios, has been a success.

“There was a realization that there is a need for more Christians behind the desks at the studios and the networks,” the director of the project said. “People who have the authority to choose which projects get made and which don’t.”

Part of the program, he says, is “to include training that deals with the dangers inherent in Hollywood’s infamous culture.”

“We’re trying to raise up leaders who know how to be in the world of entertainment,” the director explained, “but not of it.”

Conservatives Infiltrating Hollywood, at Focus on the Family.

An Anchorage man is challenging a school district’s decision to include Isabel Allende’s “House of the Spirits” in his son’s AP English class. The man’s 17-year-old son was disturbed by the novel’s magical realism, including the main character’s ability to levitate.

From the Anchorage Daily News (via Blog of a Bookslut).

From the Wall Street Journal: Broadcasters are hoping to reach a niche market with religious-themed programming.

A Business Week columnist asserts that the public is not too keen on the idea of cable and satellite indecency regulation, and that the GOP could be in for a rude awakening at the polls should it continue the drive.

FCC and GOP May Over Reach If They Go After Cable TV, Business Week.

The New York Times Reports that a Russian court has ruled against a museum director and curator for an art exhibit that some felt was critical of the Russian Orthodox Church. After the installation opened, six men from the Orthodox church stormed the museum and ransacked the exhibit.

Criminal charges against those men were dropped; the issue was tried based on case law that set the foundations for prosecuting artists who “offend the faithful.”

From the New York Times.

Paul McMasters, of the First Amendment Center, writes about censorship in the Naples (FL) Daily News.

For some government officials, the temptation to censor is sometimes irresistible. They are convinced that some Americans just can’t be trusted with freedom of speech — high school students, library patrons, artists and others who, they believe, should be just sort-of citizens when it comes to First Amendment protections.

Power in the hands of the censor, of course, is like a chainsaw in the hands of a fool. Something is going to get mangled sooner or later. Often it is logic and common sense.

For example, we usually think of the censor’s wrath as directed at obscenity, hate speech, violence in the media, that sort of thing. More often, however, the target of the censor is much more mundane and the reasons given for suppression much more convoluted than we have a right to expect.

Inside the First Amendment: Censors say the darnedest things

The Detroit Free Press has this to say about the possibility of increased indecency fines:

Most parents rightly want their children shielded from the dicey language, sexual innuendo and seamy behavior that sometimes erupt on the airwaves. Heck, lots of adults cringe at this stuff.

But until more people turn off the TV than sit vacuously in front of it, the situation won’t change. Bigger fines won’t stop cultural drivel. Changing the channel is the marketplace, consumer-driven solution – without the downside of having networks shy away from serious topics for fear of offending someone in Washington.

From the Freep.

New York’s Yellow Cabs will no longer sport strip club ads. Clear Channel, the owner of the cab top ads, has decided that the sexy ads are bad business.

From the NY Post (via I Want Media).

The Indian government is considering lifting a 50-year ban on the publication of foreign newspapers. While India has not historically banned the sale of foreign news media, it has forbidden foreign papers to be printed in India. Papers printed in neighboring countries are typically delivered during the next day’s news cycle.

“Our mind is now not as closed to the publication of foreign newspapers as it has been,” said S. Jaipal Reddy, minister for information, broadcasting and culture, at a seminar on the newspaper industry on Thursday. “We have not yet taken a view, but the uncertainty should lift within a month or so.”

Lifting the ban on foreign newspapers – will India cross the bridge? (via I Want Media)