eChurch Blog

As I’ve seen quite a few articles popping up on the Interweb over the last few days, referring to this report on Internet censorship; I thought I’d highlight it here.

The report was conducted by National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) and the American Center for Law and Justice and is entitled: An Examination of the Threat of Anti-Christian Censorship and Other Viewpoint Discrimination on New Media Platforms.

Before I highlight a little of the report, it’s interesting to note that although this is a US based study, one of the major incidents involving Google, revolves around the UK based Christian Institute:

When The Christian Institute in England sought to take out an advertisement on Google it was initially prohibited from doing so. As a Christian legal organization, The Christian Institute wanted to buy ad space that attracted readers to its website with text that read: “Key views and news on abortion law from The Christian Institute.” At the time, Google representatives refused the ad on the grounds that its “policy did not permit the advertisement of Web sites that contain ‘abortion and religion-related content.’” It was only after The Christian Institute sued Google under Britain’s Equality Act 2006 that Google relented, permitted the ad, and agreed to revise its policy. According to Google, the new policy permits “religious associations to place ads on abortion in a factual way.”

Here’s part of the Executive Summary:

The policies and practices of several major Internet-interactive “new media” communications platforms and service providers were examined and evaluated in order to determine the risk of those entities committing anti-Christian viewpoint censorship. The companies reviewed were: Apple and its iTunes App Store; Facebook; MySpace; Google; Twitter; and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon. Our conclusion is that Christian ideas and other religious content face a clear and present danger of censorship on web-based communication platforms.

Four distinct factors support this conclusion. (1) Some of these new media companies have already banned Christian content, and others have adopted public positions that make such censorship all but inevitable. (2) With the single exception of Twitter, all the new media platforms and services that we examined have issued written policies governing citizen users that are clearly inconsistent with the free speech values of the U.S. Constitution. In First Amendment cases in other contexts, the Supreme Court has condemned comparable policies with similar proscriptions. (3) These new media companies have been shown to be responsive to market forces and the demands by pressure groups calling for censorship of those otherwise lawful viewpoints that are reasonably debatable but are deemed to be politically incorrect. (4) The ongoing technological convergence of these various new media platforms suggests that these free speech-inhibiting practices and unconscionable policies will be further entrenched unless corrective action is taken immediately.

Here’s the key findings:

Apple has twice removed applications that contained Christian content from its iTunes App Store. In both instances, Apple admitted that these apps were denied access because it considered the orthodox Christian viewpoints expressed in those applications to be “offensive.” One app had expressed the traditional, heterosexual view of marriage as set forth in the Bible; the other had stated the view that homosexuality is inappropriate conduct that can be changed through a Christ-centered spiritual transformation. Of the 425,000 apps available on Apple’s iPhone, the only ones censored by Apple for expressing otherwise lawful viewpoints have been apps with Christian content.

The search engine giant Google has committed past practices of anti-religious censorship. For content reasons, it refused to accept a pro-life advertisement from a Christian organization, an issue that prompted litigation in England. Google is also alleged to have blocked a website in America that had conservative Christian content. It had blacklisted certain religious terminology on its China-based Internet service, and in the United States it bowed to questionable copyright infringement threats from one religious sect, which had complained when a blog site criticizing it had quoted from the sect’s materials. Google blocked that blog site on alleged copyright violation grounds, disregarding the obvious “fair use” provisions of copyright law. Such a practice could block the ability of Christian “apologetics” ministries to quote from primary source materials when using Google platforms to educate the public on the teachings of certain religious groups. Also, in March of 2011, Google established new guidelines for its “Google for Non-Profits,” a special web tool program, but specifically excluded churches and other faith groups, including organizations that take into consideration religion or sexual orientation in hiring practices.

Facebook has partnered with gay rights advocates to halt content on its social networking site deemed to be “anti-homosexual,” and it is participating in gay-awareness programs, all of which suggest that Christian content critical of homosexuality, same-sex marriage, or similar practices will be at risk of censorship.

It’s notable that Twitter come out completely unscathed in this report.

Anyway, you can read the entire report in PDF format here.

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Tags: Christianity, Internet & Technology

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 22nd, 2011 at 7:54 am and is filed under Webmaster's Ramblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.