Recently, Martha Bayles of The Atlantic published a hilariously misleading essay calling for Hollywood to produce more pro-American propaganda, in the face of the Chinese government’s increased role in the entertainment industry. While FAIR have put out a solid rebuttal of Bayles’ hack quackery (hat tip to Max Parry who pointed me to these articles) their piece is a little tame, and the problem of US government censorship of films is far greater than they outline.
I have specialised in the issue of government manipulation of Hollywood for several years, which has included filing hundreds of FOIA requests to gain documents detailing how the US government has censored and influenced Hollywood scripts. As such, I feel the need to offer my own dissection of Bayles’ awful misrepresentation of the reality of goverment control in Hollywood, so we’re going to take it claim-by-claim.