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Why prisons in Missouri censor The Economist
▻http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21584016-why-prisons-missouri-censor-economist-sense-and-censorship
If you are reading this in a prison in Missouri, you probably didn’t see the June 29th issue of The Economist (pictured). We recently received a letter from the Missouri Department of Corrections informing us that it had been censored.
The problem was not the cover, although it does show a semi-naked woman. Rather, the prison authorities objected to a photo accompanying an article about the Supreme Court’s recent rulings on race. The picture showed a Klansman with a noose, to remind readers what race relations were like before the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
In this section
The censors thought it might instil “violence or hatred among the offender population”. This is not absurd: you could imagine some of the nuance of the article being lost if, say, a white inmate were to shove the picture of the Klansman in the face of a black prisoner. Under the state’s all-or-nothing rules, the entire issue was thrown out.