Word Finder - censorship

definition

The use of state or group power to control freedom of expression or press, such as passing laws to prevent media from being published or propagated.

definition

The role of the censor (magistrate) in Ancient Rome.

He wrote according to order, and no question of censorship arose.

The tendency towards a stricter censorship was shown by a proposal which was carried through the Prussian parliament for controlling the instruction given at the universities by the Privatdozenten.

Gerlach (1872), dealing especially with the censorship of Claudius.

Press censorship was of course very rigid throughout the Dual Monarchy, but many Yugoslav newspapers were suppressed altogether.

A rigid censorship was exercised concerning the publication of information as to the production of munitions, measures of defence, bombardments, air raids, arrests, trials and executions of spies, etc.

Various other reforms, notably the abolition of the spy system and the censorship, were announced soon afterwards.

There was no freedom of the press, however, until 1821, when the abolition of the censorship and the constitutional struggle in Portugal gave rise to a politicaldiscussion that marked the opening of a new era in the development of the nation, and aroused an intellectual activity that has been highly productive in journalistic and polemical writings.

This change, however, only applied to censorship by the Foreign Office, and messages were still liable to censorship from the point of view of other departments (Admiralty, War Office, Home Office or Treasury, for instance) consulted by the Press Bureau - a system which continued until 1919.

The submission to censorship which this entailed was sufficiently inconsistent and she wrote to the emperor one of the unfortunate letters, at once undignified and provoking, of which she had the secret.

With both he took all imaginable pains to avoid offending the censorship; for Voltaire had, more than any other man who ever lived, the ability and the willingness to stoop to conquer.

The municipal authority in those times claimed the right to exercise a censorship over the citizens' private life.

Although converted to Roman Catholicism in 1625, Holstenius showed his liberal-mindedness by strenuously opposing the strict censorship exercised by the Congregation of the Index.

On the 18th of December a new censorship law was issued, to secure the orthodoxy of all published books; and finally, in 1791, a sort of Protestant Inquisition was established at Berlin (Immediat-Examinationscommission) to watch over all ecclesiastical and scholastic appointments.

He was always chosen by the emperor and usually from men who had held the consulship; his office was regarded, like the censorship under the republic, as the crowning honour of a long political career.

Whenever opinions did happen to be expressed which could be construed as criticism of Austria or Germany the offenders were speedily punished, and it was not long before the political leaders of the Czechs and Slovaks found themselves in confinement, some of them under sentence of death, while the Czech and Slovak press was subjected to a rigorous censorship and many of its organs prohibited from appearing.

His censorship - which he retained for five years, in spite of the lex Aemilia which limited the tenure of that office to eighteen months - was remarkable for the actual or attempted achievement of several great constitutional changes.

The World War brought about various forms of restriction of publicity in the shape of a censorship, which provides a new chapter in the history of the Press Laws.

It remains to deal with the censorship of messages from authorized British correspondents on the several fronts.

The difficulties were accentuated by the lack of association between the correspondents and the real head of the censorship at G.H.Q.

Censorship can have the effect of simply hiding institutional sexism, for example.

It had ended the schism, ratified the censorship of books introduced by Alexander VI.

The suffrage was restricted, the Press was placed under a strict censorship, and the right of public assemblage was unknown.

In Naples King Ferdinand retained some of the laws and institutions of Murats rgime, and many of the functionaries of the former government entered Naples his service; but he revived the Bourbon tradition, the odious police system and the censorship; and a degrading religious bigotry, to which the masses were all too much inclined, became the basis of government and social iife.

Taxation was somewhat reduced, the censorship was made less severe, political amnesties were granted, humaner officials were appointed and the Congregations (a sort of shadowy consultative assembly) were revived.

After the failure of Contarini's attempt at reconciliation with the Protestants (1541) the papacy committed itself to the reaction advocated by Caraffa; the Inquisition and censorship were set up (1542, 1 543), and the extermination of heresy in Italy undertaken with vigour.

Until the reform of the comitia centuriata (probabl' during the censorship of Gaius Flaminius in 220 B.C.; *see Comitia),` the equites had voted first, but after that time this privilege was transferred to tine cenfury selected by lot from the centuries of ' the equites and the first class.

He then passed the laws on the press, suppressing the censorship. By reorganization of the finances, the protection of industry and the carrying out of great public works, France regained its economic prosperity, and the ministry became popular.

Chenier attacked the censorship in three pamphlets, and the commotion aroused by the controversy raised keen interest in the piece.

He devoted his leisure to the improvement of his economic treatise, which had for some time been out of print, but which the censorship did not permit him to republish; and in 1814 he availed himself (to use his own words) of the sort of liberty arising from the entrance of the allied powers into France to bring out a second edition of the work, dedicated to the emperor Alexander, who had professed himself his pupil.

But the paper, under the censorship of the Austrian officials, ran for a year only, and the society itself was broken up by the government.

This ignorance of the very nature of science leads to under-estimation of the elemental force which science possesses; for only thus can we explain the pertinacity with which Ultramontanism, even at the present day, strives to subject her work to its own censorship and control.

By the promotion to the cardinalate of such men as Contarini, Caraffa, Pole and Morone, and the appointment of a commission to report upon existing evils and their remedy, the way was opened for reform; while by the introduction of the Inquisition into Italy (1542), the establishment of the censorship and the Index (1543), and the approval of the Society of Jesus (1540), most efficient agencies were set on foot for combating heresy.

It is possible that he is the Drusus mentioned by Plutarch as having died in 109, the year of his censorship.

Precisely as to-day inventions are guarded by patents, and literary and artistic creations by the law of copyright, so, at that period, the papal bull and the protection of the Roman Church were an effective means for ensuring that a country should reap where she had sown and should maintain the territory she had discovered and conquered by arduous efforts; while other claimants, with predatory designs, were warned back by the ecclesiastical censorship. In the Vatican the memory of Alexander VI.

In carrying out the regime of Rampolla, which was, in every respect, a bad imitation of that of Antonelli, the Vatican left no stone unturned in its attempt to coerce the conscience of the French royalists; it did not even stop at dishonour, as was evidenced by the case of the unhappy Mgr d'Hulst, who, in order to evade the censorship of his pamphlet on Old Testament criticism, had to abandon both his king and his principles, only to die in exile of a broken heart.

During the World War he issued, in 1915, an order barring unneutral envelopes and cards from the mails, and after America became a belligerent he instituted a censorship designed to suppress treasonable and seditious newspapers.

The Jesuits now gained the upper hand; one by one the liberal provisions of the constitution were modified or annulled; the Protestants were harried and oppressed; and a rigorous censorship forbade any free discussion of internal politics.

The theory of the physiocrats now found powerful advocates in Denmark; and after 1755, when the press censorship was abolished so far as regarded political economy and agriculture, a thorough discussion of the whole agrarian question became possible.

But in September 1799 under strong pressure from the Russian emperor Paul, the Danish government forbade anonymity, and introduced a limited censorship.

It will be seen that the Press Bureau had no power to insist upon the submission of matter for censorship. The responsibility rested with the editor, who could publish what he thought fit, subject to complying with the Defence of the Realm Regulations.

Cable and Postal Censorship. - In addition to the Press Bureau, censorships of incoming and outgoing cables, letters and parcels, were established by the War Office at the commencement of the war with the three-fold object of preventing information of military value from reaching the enemy, of acquiring similar information for British purposes and of checking the dissemination of information likely to be useful to the enemy or prejudicial to the Allies.

The cable censorship extended throughout the Empire, and the number of persons employed in the United Kingdom, exclusive of those in the Press Bureau, was about 200.

In the postal censorship, exclusive of clerical and post-office employees, a staff of 5,500 was employed comprising 3,451 women and persons with a knowledge of almost every foreign language.

The navy had its own censorship department at the Admiralty, under the superintendence of Sir Douglas Brownrigg.

As a method of suppression the censorship during the war may be regarded as having been a complete success.

Owing to the action of the British censorship, this fact is still imperfectly understood in other countries.

It must, however, be recognized that the censorship bristled with difficulties.

The Federal Government had no traditions of censorship except the disastrous ones in connexion with the Alien and Sedition laws of 1798.

The adherence of Congress and the President to the traditions of a free press and free speech in simply requesting a voluntary censorship was striking, but it was more in appearance than in reality.

The regulations in no way modified the voluntary censorship exercised by the Press over itself.