The New Censorship

The New Censorship
Author: Joel Simon
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2014-11-11
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0231538332

An examination of how the media is under fire and how to safeguard journalists and the information they seek to share with the public. Journalists are being imprisoned and killed in record numbers. Online surveillance is annihilating privacy, and the Internet can be brought under government control at any time. Joel Simon, the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, warns that we can no longer assume that our global information ecosystem is stable, protected, and robust. Journalists are increasingly vulnerable to attack by authoritarian governments, militants, criminals, and terrorists, who all seek to use technology, political pressure, and violence to set the global information agenda. Reporting from Pakistan, Russia, Turkey, Egypt, and Mexico, among other hotspots, Simon finds journalists under threat from all sides. The result is a growing crisis in information—a shortage of the news we need to make sense of our globalized world and fight human rights abuses, manage conflict, and promote accountability. Drawing on his experience defending journalists on the front lines, he calls on “global citizens,” U.S. policy makers, international law advocates, and human rights groups to create a global freedom-of-expression agenda tied to trade, climate, and other major negotiations. He proposes ten key priorities, including combating the murder of journalists, ending censorship, and developing a global free-expression charter to challenge the criminal and corrupt forces that seek to manipulate the world's news. “Wise and insightful. [Simon] offers hope to all who care about maintaining the free flow of information in a world full of would-be censors.”—Ann Cooper, Columbia Journalism School

The Star That Set

The Star That Set
Author: Samuel B. Hand
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 374
Release: 2003
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780739106006

For over a century, from 1854, the year the party was organized, until 1958, Vermonters never failed to elect Republicans to its state and national offices, and every four years they returned a slate of electors pledged to the Republican presidential nominee. The Vermont GOP was trumpeted as the star that never set in the Republican Party's political firmament, until the decline of family farms and the influx of Democrat-leaning urbanites in the 1960s and 1970s eroded the bedrock of Vermont's GOP base. Encompassing the years 1854 to 1974, Samuel Hand's superb historical study documents the rise and fall of Vermont republicanism, exploring the personalities and the religious, political, and social institutions that constituted the Vermont Republican Party. More than simply the authoritative telling of a remarkable century of hegemony for the Vermont GOP, The Star That Set is a compelling story of the waning importance of party in modern American political life.