Media Censorship
During January, strikers were banned from television and all but one radio station. Many co-ordinated their activity through SMS messages. Rumours spread that the state-owned network Sotelgui were deliberately blocking texts.
After martial law was declared on 12 February, almost all media ceased to appear. Radio stations including Familia FM and Liberté FM were forcibly closed; the only station permitted to remain on air was music-only Nostalgie FM. Radiodiffusion Télévision Guinéenne restricted its broadcasting to governmental and army statements. All internet cafes were ordered to shut, and all four of the nation's Internet Service Providers were taken offline. Newspapers were only permitted to publish if their content was approved by military commanders. In the event, most chose not to appear, and many outlets refused to sell those that did.
Read more about this topic: 2007 Guinean General Strike
Famous quotes containing the words media and/or censorship:
“One can describe a landscape in many different words and sentences, but one would not normally cut up a picture of a landscape and rearrange it in different patterns in order to describe it in different ways. Because a photograph is not composed of discrete units strung out in a linear row of meaningful pieces, we do not understand it by looking at one element after another in a set sequence. The photograph is understood in one act of seeing; it is perceived in a gestalt.”
—Joshua Meyrowitz, U.S. educator, media critic. “The Blurring of Public and Private Behaviors,” No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior, Oxford University Press (1985)
“... censorship often boils down to some male judges getting to read a lot of dirty books—with one hand.”
—Robin Morgan (b. 1941)