The Growing Threat of Soft Censorship

This paper examines the indirect restrictions on freedom of expression worldwide. This style of censorship-not entirely new, but increasingly employed around the world-is subtle, indirect, and sophisticated.1 To control critical voices, it prefers to inflict financial pain, manipulate regulatory leverage or act under the disguise of the law-as opposed to the more “traditional” methods of beating and arbitrarily detaining journalists, or burning down media houses. Not even established democracies are immune to this syndrome: the Bush administration has reportedly paid journalists to plant covert propaganda pieces, in both United States and Iraqi media.