Lecture 9 - Censorship & Truth

Censorship & Truth

- Notions of censorship and truth
- The indexical qualities of photography and rendering truth
- Photographic manipulation and the documentation of truth
- Censorship in advertising
- Censorship in art and photography

- Pravada* 
- Newspaper used to censor and filter what was printed, presented to Russians and Easter Europeans

The Gulf War:
- Planned
- Covered up the real story
- Photojournalism that wasn't allowed to be published

Censor
- 'A person authorised to examine films, letters or publications, in order to ban or cut anything considered obscene or objectionable.
- 'To ban or cut potions of (a film, letter or publication)'

Morals
- Principles of behaviour in accordance to standards of right and wrong

Ethics
- A code of behaviour, especially of a particular group, profession or individual

The Miller Test (1973):

1. Whether 'the average person, applying contemporary community standards' would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest.
2. Whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct.
3. Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.