Category: media

USA Today’s Pop Candy Blog Spotlights CBLDF

Earlier this week, Zack Smith took some time to spotlight CBLDF’s Spirit of Giving campaign for the Pop Candy blog on USAToday.com. Smith touched base with CBLDF Executive Director Charles Brownstein, who described the campaign in the opening paragraph to…

PayPal Showing Signs of Censorship Once Again

Is PayPal up to old tricks? Despite agreeing to lift a ban on serving publishers of erotic works earlier this year, author Amelia C. Gormley says the company refused to process payment on her commissioned book cover. Gormley recently blogged about the…

EFF Wins Battle for Erotic Fiction Against Internet “Gatekeeper”

Securing a victory for constitutionally protected free speech, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has convinced online payment provider Stripe to overturn their earlier decision to suspend the account of the Nifty Archive Alliance, a “nonprofit entity that supports the Nifty Erotic…

The New York Times Highlights CBLDF as a Hero of Comics

George Gustines with The New York Times recently took a moment to explore the charitable organizations that help support the comics industry. In his article, “In Comics World, Needy Have Heroes of Their Own,” Gustines describes three major charitable efforts…

DOH! Channel 4 Censors “Gay” From The Simpsons

British broadcaster Channel 4 recently censored the word “gay” during a recent airing of The Simpsons, according to an article from The Independent. The censored episode, which originally aired in 1994, was run during the midday Sunday programming on the…

KPFA’s Project Censored Talks Banned Books

As we were wandering about the interwebs this morning, we came across a pretty amazing recording from Banned Books Week. Barbara Jones, who heads up ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom, joined Joan Bertin, executive director of the National Coalition Against…

Editorial Cartoonist Fired for Drawing Political Cartoons

South African cartoonist Jeremy Nell (aka Jerm) was fired from the publication The New Age. Their reason for terminating Jerm’s contract was that his cartoons made political statements. It’s surprising that Jerm would be fired for something that falls within his…

Otaku: Japan’s Favorite Scapegoat — and Tourist Draw

Japan has long had a checkered relationship with its subculture of otaku, a word whose nuances cannot easily be translated to English but which more or less means “geeks whose hobbies border on the fanatic” (Ito). More often than not,…

Virtual Read-Out: AND TANGO MAKES THREE

It’s Banned Books Week, and bookstores, libraries, authors, and readers around the country are celebrating by participating in the Virtual Read-Out, an officially sponsored YouTube channel that compiles videos of people reading their favorite banned and challenged literature. Stephanie Hartwell-Mandella,…

Bill Moyers Calls Out Book Censors for Banned Books Week

Award-winning broadcast journalist Bill Moyers discusses book banning and the harms of censorship in a new video essay to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Banned Books Week. Banned Books Week is an annual event sponsored by the American Library Association…