The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Monday on whether the Biden administration violated the First Amendment in combating what it said was misinformation on social media platforms. It is the latest in an extraordinary series of cases this term requiring the justices to assess the meaning of free speech in the internet era. The […]
Read MoreTag: Censorship
How Trump’s Allies Are Winning the War Over Disinformation
In the wake of the riot on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, 2021, a groundswell built in Washington to rein in the onslaught of lies that had fueled the assault on the peaceful transfer of power. Social media companies suspended Donald J. Trump, then the president, and many of his allies from the platforms they […]
Read MoreRussia Strengthens Its Internet Controls in Critical Year for Putin
Russia is ratcheting up its internet censorship ahead of elections this weekend that are all but assured to give President Vladimir V. Putin another six years in power, further shrinking one of the last remaining spaces for political activism, independent information and free speech. The Russian authorities have intensified a crackdown against digital tools used […]
Read MoreA Historic Visit to an Abortion Clinic, and What Could Happen to TikTok
The New York Times Audio app is home to journalism and storytelling, and provides news, depth and serendipity. If you haven’t already, download it here — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter. The Headlines brings you the biggest stories of the day from the Times journalists […]
Read MoreAttempts to Ban Books Accelerated in 2023
After several years of rising book bans, censorship efforts continued to surge last year, reaching the highest levels ever recorded by the American Library Association. Last year, 4,240 individual titles were targeted for removal from libraries, up from 2,571 titles in 2022, according to a report released Thursday by the association. Those figures likely fail […]
Read MoreA Conservative Court Rebukes Republican Censorship
March 5, 2024, 1:29 p.m. ET March 5, 2024, 1:29 p.m. ET “I was a little disappointed that Katie Porter chose to run,” Karl Rubin, an emeritus professor of math, told me on the patio of a community center on the campus of the University of California, Irvine, on Monday morning. He said that Porter, […]
Read MoreChina Cancels a News Conference, Shutting a Window for Its People
For more than 30 years, the Chinese premier’s annual news conference was the only time that a top leader took questions from journalists about the state of the country. It was the only occasion for members of the public to size up for themselves China’s No. 2 official. It was the only moment when some […]
Read MoreHe Cursed at a Police Officer. Now He’s Caught in a Free Speech Fight.
Tony Rupp didn’t intend to become a fighter for the First Amendment. He was really just out for some pasta. In December 2016, Mr. Rupp, a Buffalo-area lawyer, was leaving Chef’s Restaurant, a popular Italian place in the city’s downtown, when he said he saw a black SUV — its lights off — bearing down […]
Read MoreLife Imitates Art as a ‘Master and Margarita’ Movie Stirs Russia
By all appearances, the movie adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s cult favorite novel “The Master and Margarita,” in Russian theaters this winter, shouldn’t be thriving in President Vladimir Putin’s wartime Russia. The director is American. One of the stars is German. The celebrated Stalin-era satire, unpublished in its time, is partly a subversive sendup of state […]
Read MoreChina’s Investors Are Losing Faith in Its Markets and Economy
Like many Chinese people, Jacky hoped that he could make enough money investing in China’s stock markets to help pay for an apartment in a big city. But in 2015 he lost $30,000, and in 2021 he lost $80,000. After that, he shut down his trading account and started investing in Chinese funds that track […]
Read MorePakistan’s Military Is Swaying Elections, Now More Than Ever
Tucked away on a patch of dying grass on the outskirts of Islamabad, the gathering hardly looked like a political rally at the height of an election season. Two dozen men sat on plastic chairs in silence. There were no posters to promote a campaign, no microphones to deliver speeches, no sound system to amp […]
Read More‘My Heart Sank’: In Maine, a Challenge to a Book, and to a Town’s Self-Image
Rich Boulet, the director of the Blue Hill Public Library, was working in his office when a regular patron stopped by to ask how to donate a book to the library. “You just hand it over,” Mr. Boulet said. The book was “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters,” by the journalist Abigail Shrier. […]
Read MoreFighting Book Bans, Librarians Rally to Their Own Defense
During 12 years as a youth librarian in northern Idaho, Denise Neujahr read to and befriended children of many backgrounds. Devout or atheist, gay or straight, all were welcome until a November evening in 2021, when about two dozen teens arriving at the Post Falls library for a meeting of the “Rainbow Squad” encountered a […]
Read MoreRepublicans Have a Sneaky New Plan to Ban Kids From Queer Content
If KOSA’s supporters are trying to distance the bill from harm to queer and trans youth, having NCOSE leadership be part of a panel at the Heritage Foundation following Wednesday’s Senate Judiciary hearing was an odd choice. In a way, NCOSE fits right in at Heritage: Its senior legal team is drawn from the ranks […]
Read MoreThe GOP Has a Plan for “Online Safety.” It Involves Censoring LGBTQ Content.
If KOSA’s supporters are trying to distance the bill from harm to queer and trans youth, having NCOSE leadership be part of a panel at the Heritage Foundation following Wednesday’s Senate Judiciary hearing was an odd choice. In a way, NCOSE fits right in at Heritage: Its senior legal team is drawn from the ranks […]
Read MoreHow China Censors Critics of the Economy
China’s top intelligence agency issued an ominous warning last month about an emerging threat to the country’s national security: Chinese people who criticize the economy. In a series of posts on its official WeChat account, the Ministry of State Security implored citizens to grasp President Xi Jinping’s economic vision and not be swayed by those […]
Read MoreAmazon’s ‘Expats’ Was Filmed in Hong Kong, But People Can’t Watch It There
At the height of Hong Kong’s Covid restrictions, the government gave Nicole Kidman and several others a rare exemption from the weeks of hotel quarantine required for travelers so that they could film a series about the malaise of privileged expatriates. That series from Amazon Prime, “Expats,” which stars Ms. Kidman, aired its first two […]
Read MoreCan the MAGA Shrew Be Tamed?
Maureen Dowd has a cold. Hmmm. Not quite the same ring as “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” Gay Talese’s legendary 1966 Esquire profile of the crooner. Nonetheless, I did catch a cold in arctic Des Moines. So on caucus night, I stayed in my hotel room watching TV and munching on Cheez-Its, flipping between wins […]
Read MoreTaiwan’s Democracy Draws Envy and Tears for Visiting Chinese
At the Taipei train station, a Chinese human rights activist named Cuicui watched with envy as six young Taiwanese politicians campaigned for the city’s legislative seats. A decade ago, they had been involved in parallel democratic protest movements — she in China, and the politicians on the opposite side of the Taiwan Strait. “We came […]
Read More‘It’s State Propaganda’: Ukrainians Shun TV News as War Drags on
Since the early days of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, the people of Ukraine have had access to a single source of television news — an all-day broadcast packed with footage of Ukrainian tanks blasting Russian positions, medics operating near the frontline and political leaders rallying support abroad. The show, Telemarathon United News, has been […]
Read MoreConservatives See Harvard President Claudine Gay’s Resignation as a Victory
The resignation of Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay, on Tuesday followed a lengthening catalog of plagiarism allegations that appeared to steadily sap her support among the university’s faculty, students and alumni. But for many of Dr. Gay’s critics, her departure was also a proxy victory in the escalating ideological battle over American higher education. Taking down […]
Read MoreThe Best Sentences of 2023
Over recent days, I took on a daunting task — but a delightful one. I reviewed all the passages of prose featured in the For the Love of Sentences section of my Times Opinion newsletter in 2023 and tried to determine the best of the best. And there’s no doing that, at least not objectively, […]
Read MoreTom Smothers, Comic Half of the Smothers Brothers, Dies at 86
Tom Smothers, the older half of the comic folk duo the Smothers Brothers, whose skits and songs on “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” in the late 1960s brought political satire and a spirit of youthful irreverence to network television, paving the way for shows like “Saturday Night Live” and “The Daily Show,” died on Tuesday […]
Read MoreSubstack Says It Will Not Ban Nazis or Extremist Speech
Under pressure from critics who say Substack is profiting from newsletters that promote hate speech and racism, the company’s founders said Thursday that they would not ban Nazi symbols and extremist rhetoric from the platform. “I just want to make it clear that we don’t like Nazis either — we wish no one held those […]
Read MoreDefending Free Speech Is Not ‘Moral Relativism’
This claim is a Christianized cousin of the secular idea that defending the free-speech rights of those with whom you vehemently disagree is, in essence, providing aid and comfort to racism, sexism, homophobia or transphobia. In this view, your role as a citizen is first to determine whether any given speech meets with your moral […]
Read MoreWang Gang’s Egg Fried Rice Video and Free Speech in China
The United States is entangled in an emotional debate about antisemitism and free speech on college campuses. The latest speech debate in China is about a chef’s video on how to make egg fried rice. Egg fried rice is a staple of Chinese home cooking and one of the first dishes many Chinese learn to […]
Read MoreState Dept.’s Fight Against Disinformation Comes Under Attack
A Republican-led campaign against researchers who study disinformation online has zeroed in on the most prominent American government agency dedicated to countering propaganda and other information operations from terrorists and hostile nations. The agency, the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, is facing a torrent of accusations in court and in Congress that it has helped […]
Read MoreCampus Speech Codes Should Be Abolished
The tentative, lawyerly answers given last week by three university presidents at a House committee hearing investigating the state of antisemitism on America’s college campuses have generated widespread revulsion across the partisan divide. When none of the presidents — representing Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania — could muster a […]
Read More‘I Have No Future’: China’s Rebel Influencer Is Still Paying a Price
In November 2022, Li Ying was a painter and art school graduate in Milan, living in a state of sadness, fear and despair. China’s strict pandemic policies had kept him from seeing his parents for three years, and he was unsure where his country was heading. In China, after enduring endless Covid tests, quarantines and […]
Read MoreThe Right and Wrong Ways to Deal with Campus Antisemitism
As I watched the presidents of Harvard, M.I.T. and the University of Pennsylvania struggle last week to respond to harsh congressional questioning about the prevalence of antisemitism on their campuses, I had a singular thought: Censorship helped put these presidents in their predicament and censorship will not help them escape. To understand what I mean, […]
Read MoreAs Fury Erupts Over Campus Antisemitism, Conservatives Seize the Moment
For years, conservatives have struggled to persuade American voters that the left-wing tilt of higher education is not only wrong but dangerous. Universities and their students, they’ve argued, have been increasingly clenched by suffocating ideologies — political correctness in one decade, overweening “social justice” in another, “woke-ism” most recently — that shouldn’t be dismissed as […]
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