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Censorship of Movies
"Any journalist may publish an article, any demagogue may deliver a speech without giving notice to the government or obtaining its license."
George Bernard Shaw
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Times Film Corp.
v.
City of Chicago
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Censorship of Movies
Justice Douglas Dissent
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January 23, 1961
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Excerpt:
Footnote 3: ...And see the testimony of George Bernard Shaw in the report, Joint Select Committee of the House of Lords and the House of Commons on the Stage Plays (Censorship)(1909) Shaw, three of whose plays had been suppressed, caused a contemporary sensation by asking, and being refused, permission to file with the committee an attack on censorship that he had prepared. Shaw's version of the story and the rejected statement can be found as his preface to THE SHEWING-UP OF BLANCO POSNET. He says in his statement: "Any journalist may publish an article, any demagogue may deliver a speech without giving notice to the government or obtaining its license. The risk of such freedom is great; but as it is the price of our political liberty, we think it worth paying. We may abrogate it in emergencies ... just as we stop the traffic in a street during a fire or shoot thieves on sight after an earthquake. But when the emergency is past, liberty is restored everywhere except in the theatre. Censorship is a permanent proclamation of martial law with a single official substituted for a court martial."
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