Japanese Government Will Censor Fukushima "Illegal Information"

dgilzz writes "The Japanese government says that the damage caused by earthquakes and by the nuclear accident are being magnified by irresponsible rumors, and the government must take action for the sake of the public good. The project team has begun to send letters of request to such organizations as telephone companies, internet providers, cable television stations, and others, demanding that they take adequate measures based on the guidelines in response to illegal information. The measures include erasing any information from internet sites that the authorities deem harmful to public order and morality."

Comments

Re:You free speech defenders

[jd]

Then ban misleading or wilfully degenerate presentation. (I wish the US would. Get rid of Talk Radio, most of the news channels, over 50% of politicians, 100% of the campaign ads AND Sarah Palin in one go.)

Information can be true or it can be false. That's it. I've no objection to Japan banning false information, provided it is indeed false, but the claims seem to have nothing to do with false information.

Presentation can be deceptive and frequently is. The best lies contain only truths, merely truths selectively chosen and couched so as to present a picture utterly different from reality. AGWers and NeoCons use the technique all the time. Banning perversions of reality that are designed to mislead or corrupt is not such a bad idea, again provided (a) it's actually a perversion of reality and not just something the politicos don't like, and (b) it really is designed to mislead (see: Time Travel in China story for details on the hilarity that ensues when alternative realities are banned when it's obious to anyone that they're intended as fiction).

Getting rid of the genuinely sick and twisted scaremongering, along with the genuinely sick and twisted efforts to hide the reality of the situation, would not be so bad. But that's clearly not what is intended here. What is intended here is to convince people that the Japanese parliament is The Word Of God. This isn't the first time that the Japanese government has decided it was a Living God. Didn't end well, the last time, did it?