If you google "Tianamen Square" in China, no results pop up. Stateside, the FCC doesn't want you to hear George Carlin saying certain words on the radio or see Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunctions, whereas violent movies and video games have been generally tolerated.
How does limiting access to information shape you? And, who's watching the watchers?
The Commonwealth Club's uncensored panel discusses who decides what we hear, if they can be trusted, and what we can do about it.
Bio
Brian Cuban
Brian Cuban is a Dallas Attorney working for Mark Cuban Companies. He is also the Executive Director of the Mark Cuban Foundation currently administering The Fallen Patriot Fund.
Austin Heap
Austin Heap is an IT consultant in San Francisco. He maintains a regular blog where he writes about politics and technology.
Paul Krassner
Paul Krassner was the founder, editor and a frequent contributor to the freethought magazine The Realist, first published in 1958. With the radical humor of his publication shattering taboos and breaking barriers, Krassner became a key figure in the counterculture of the 1960s.
Peter Phillips
Peter Phillips joined the Sociology Department in 1994 after completing a Ph.D. at U.C. Davis. He teaches courses Political Sociology, Power, Sociology of Media and Media Censorship.
Dr. Phillips is the director of Project Censored an internationally known media research program that annually identifies the Most Censored news stories in the United States. The annual research book produced by Project Censored is entitled Censored: The News That Didn't Make the News, and is available from Seven Stories Press.
John Wildermuth
John Wildermuth is a journalist and contributor to SFGate. He has worked as a journalist for 34 years. He is a native of San Francisco.
a 1,000 bloggers is just as bad as one editor. Knowing what is true and false from many opinions and so called evidence is just as difficult with the invention of photoshop these days, but propaganda has always existed.
People are either going to accept the story from one or pick what they like according to what conforms to their model of the world.
How do we separate credible independent sources from the lunatics and conspiracy theorist?(18:35) Unfortunately, Peter Philips doesn't provide a straightforward answer to this question.Instead he points out that big newspapers, such as SF Chronicles, often cover the false stories. I believe that in the age of new media, when everybody can publish pretty much anything on internet, time is the only factor which determines on whether the source will be considered credible or not. No matter how you're promoting your information or news, if it is bogus it is really hard to survive on the long run.