| Written by Dave Bohon |
| Sunday, 18 September 2011 16:15 |
The National Religious Broadcasters (NRB), the official organization representing the interests of Christian broadcasters and ministries, has released a report showing that social media websites are actively censoring Christian viewpoints. According to an NRB press release, the group’s study examined “the practices of Apple and its iTunes App Store, Google, Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, as well as Internet service providers AT&T, Comcast and Verizon,” The findings, said the NRB’s senior vice president and general counsel, Craig Parshall, were “ominous.”| Commenting on the report, the NRB’s president and CEO, Dr. Frank Wright, noted that nearly 70 years ago “NRB was founded in the fires of adversity when government regulations, combined with policy decisions by major networks, made it virtually impossible for evangelical ministers to buy radio airtime.” In today’s world, he said, “millions of individuals use radio, television, and the Internet to listen to the broadcasts, live web streaming, and podcasts of NRB member organizations.” If the viewpoints and content of Christian groups continue to be targeted for censorship by new media companies, warned Wright, the message of the Christian faith “could become one more casualty of institutionalized religious discrimination.” The NRB found that among the major players in new media, only Twitter had shown fairness toward Christian opinions. “There’s actually a pattern of anti-Christian censorship that’s already occurred among several of them,” said Parshall. “And, then, when we looked farther, looked at their written policies, we found that [anti-Christian policy with] everyone of them, except for Twitter.” He added that Twitter received an “A+” from the religious broadcast group. “The rest of them get failing grades.” Colby May of the American Center for Law and Justice, who partnered with the NRB in the year and a-half study, told CBN News, “There is a kind of viewpoint censorship that’s going on. And we need to go ahead and stand up and say, ‘Stop. Not here. Don’t do it. Wrong way. Turn around now.’” One of the most conspicuous examples of censorship the NRB found was that targeting viewpoints that challenged the notion that homosexuality is a normal and healthy lifestyle. As reported by The New American, over the past year Apple has bowed to pressure from homosexual activists to pull two iPhone apps — one by Exodus International, a group that helps individuals leave the homosexual lifestyle, and another “that included the text of a Christian document entitled the Manhattan Declaration, which among other things, makes a strong declaration of the sanctity of life, the scriptural view of traditional marriage, and the importance of religious liberty.” The NRB study found that of the 425,000 or so apps available through Apple’s iTunes App Store, only these two were taken down solely because of the viewpoints they expressed on homosexuality. May said that “you have to ask yourself, ‘Why just these two viewpoints of the hundreds of thousands that you have?’ And when you get the explanation, it’s ‘Well, some people were ruffled. They felt they were offended by it.’” He warned that when the opinions of a particular group can determine the content allowed online, it means that society is crossing over “into this netherworld where offense is now the justification upon which the rights we have as Americans to fully engage in the culture and to debate all issues is going to be decided.” Among the other findings of the NRB study, part of its John Milton Project for Religious Free Speech: • Facebook has indicated that it will delete all instances of content that it considers to be anti-homosexual. Ironically, reported the Christian Post, in “a January 2010 interview with TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington, Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg praised social networking for opening people up to share ‘more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people.’” ... continued |
