The latest episode took place in Buenos Aires, a few days ago.
Argentinean agency, Aicha, made it known that the English Wikipedia site had blocked the publication of scientific information against abortion, despite the repeated efforts of a group of youths in the country, who tried to give the site’s users the possibility to provide access to accredited studies on post-abortion syndrome.
A group of students from the College of Buenos Aires Mallinckrodt, motivated by a survey carried out in biology class on post-abortion syndrome (PAS) proved that the English Wikipedia site, tried to deny that PAS is recognized by "any medical or psychological organization and that its risks of depression or suicide are not recognized by the scientific literature."
According to Aicha, "these young people collected extensive documentation containing international medical and scientific knowledge and tried to load the data obtained from official institutions and NGOs from various countries onto Wikipedia for general information."
"We wanted to demonstrate that the syndrome has been addressed scientifically in many books, by many scientists such as Dr. Reardon, director of the Elliot Institute in Springfield, or Dr. Philip Ney, who has carried out many studies on this subject, and Mika Gissler, Elina Hemminki, Jouko Lonnqvist, among others," the students said.
"We just wanted to load 'data' obtained from reputable sites such as Stakes (a Finnish Centre for health and well-being) from a study conducted in Finland, results that had been published in the British Medical Journal and the World Economic Forum, or the study conducted by Dr. Elard Koch in Chile, which was presented in January 2010, at the inaugural meeting of the International Working Group for Global Women's Health Research in Washington; and others from the University of Minnesota, plus studies of the Bio-Ethical Reform Center obtained by the Alan Guttmacher Institute and Planned Parenthood's Family Planning Perspectives, and more."
The information uploaded by the youths was visible for a few hours; But "shortly afterwards, this disappeared, and was replace by a message forbidding us to continue publishing information for the following 24 hours."
"After 24 hours we published that same information again, in a clearly descriptive tone and with a lot of quoting, but this time they argued that we did not sufficiently justify what we were saying. At this point we received a message that blocked us for two weeks, warning us that if we continued to publish this data we would be permanently blocked from Wikipedia."
"We began to talk about this on the discussion forums and we managed to post the Chilean study; but they responded, offering no argument in support, saying that it was not valid; and from then on they have not allowed us to publish anything." The students naturally expressed their outrage over this censorship, and for the discrimination they suffered.
But a more general warning arrives from Nashville, where the National Religious Broadcasters Report, in a study entitled "True freedom in the era of New Media" states that "Christian ideas and in general, religious content face the clear and present danger of censorship on the part of the network-based communications platforms."
If Christian content is "censored" by new media platforms such as the iTunes App Store, Facebook, Google, "the gospel of the good news could become yet another victim of institutionalized religious discrimination," said Frank Wright, president of the organization, which was founded in 1944 to monitor and control government policies and regulations, and the decisions of the major terrestrial broadcasters, which at the time made it impossible for evangelical ministers to buy space on radio programs.
Some media companies have simply banned Christian content, while others have taken positions that make it make it impossible “for censorship not to be inevitable.”
“According to the study, apart from Twitter, all other platforms and services examined adopt policies "clearly at odds with the values of freedom of speech of the U.S. Constitution."
New Media companies are sensitive to "market forces" and to the demands of "pressure groups calling for the censorship" of points of view that are, incidentally, entirely legitimate.
As examples of "anti-Christian censorship" the study cited the removal from the Apple iTunes App Store of the app of the Manhattan Declaration defending traditional marriage between a man and a woman.
The store also removed an app by Exodus International, which stated that homosexuality constitutes inappropriate conduct that can be changed through a spiritual transformation.
The search engine Google has refused to accept advertising from a pro-life Christian organization in England, and its China-based Internet service has blacklisted some religious terms.
The guidelines of the company's advertising explicitly ban the phrase "abortion is murder" with the excuse that it is "macabre" language. The study lists Facebook and other services among those trying to ban what they call a "religious political agenda."
But in the meantime, Facebook has begun, with the defenders of the homosexual platform, to block "anti-homosexual" content, and participates in programs of homosexual awareness.
This means that Christian content that is critical of homosexuality and gay marriage, is banned.
Apple, Facebook, MySpace, Google, Comcast, AT&T and Verizon forbid what is called "hate speech", which the study calls a "dangerously vague politically correct term" that is often used to silence Christian communicators.
The study highlights the increasing risk of automatic censorship, and asks instead that companies follow "a paradigm of freedom of speech" guided by the rules of the first amendment. And demand that the Federal legislation or regulations prohibit "the censorship of points of view."
The vice president of the National Religious Broadcasters Report, Craig Parshall said: "When we started the project on freedom of speech a year ago, I had the feeling that a storm was brewing. Now, just over a year later, at the end of a very large study, I am convinced that the religious rights of freedom of speech will be threatened by a hurricane, if we do not act immediately."