The National Religious Broadcasters have been monitoring censorship on the new
media platforms through their John Milton Project for Religious Free Speech. Their
conclusion is ominous. The report says: “The free speech liberty of citizens who use the
Internet is nearing a crisis point.” Various new media companies like Apple with its
iTunes app store, Google, YouTube, and Facebook have been censoring Christian
content.

Craig Parshall is Vice President and General Counsel for National Religious
Broadcasters and also Director of the John Milton Project. He was on my radio program
recently to talk about the threat of censorship from the new media.

There are lots of examples. Apple pulled an iPhone app created for the Manhattan
Declaration. The declaration, which was the work of Chuck Colson and others, is an
ecumenical document that upholds the biblical perspective on life and marriage. It was
pulled because of pressure from homosexual groups. Apple also pulled another app
created by Exodus International also because of pressure.

A pastor’s support of traditional marriage and opposition to same-sex marriage
was stripped from YouTube. The same thing happened to Lila Rose after she posted her
investigative reports on Planned Parenthood.

Last year, Facebook pulled a page by former Governor Mike Huckabee that
called for “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day.” The page was taken down for about 12 hours
before appearing again. A Facebook representative reportedly said the company deleted
the page because the “content violated our policies not because of public sentiment.”

The National Religious Broadcasters published free speech guidelines for Internet
technology companies. It calls on new media companies to “permit all manner of content,
information, and opinions on their web-based platforms, regardless of the viewpoint
expressed, unless that content, information or opinion fits squarely within one of the
traditional, well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech.”

I encourage you to express your concern to the new media companies about what
they are doing to censor Christian speech.