CBC bans Hitler

So now we too play by German rules (full text subscriber only).

A Booker Prize-winning Canadian writer was forbidden from reading from one of the world's most controversial anti-Semitic books on CBC Radio during Canada's Freedom to Read Week.

Life of Pi author Yann Martel said staff at CBC Radio Saskatchewan told him half an hour before a scheduled interview last Thursday that he wasn't allowed read excerpts of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf on the air.

[...]

The CBC had asked Martel to do an interview on The Afternoon Edition because the author was planning to read from the book that evening at a Saskatoon Public Library event for Freedom to Read Week, an annual campaign raising public awareness about intellectual freedom in Canada.

The library asked Mr. Martel to read from any banned or challenged book, and Mr. Martel chose Mein Kampf.

"It's a horrible book, but a horribly important book, because you get in the brain of one of the monsters of the 20th century," Mr. Martel said.

David Cozac of PEN Canada, a human rights organization for writers, said the incident shocked him.

"The CBC really ought to know better than to do something as silly as this," Mr. Cozac said, noting that CBC has just completed a week-long program about censorship issues around the world...

Know your enemy--and I mean it.

Mark C.

Posted by markc at March 7, 2007 08:21 PM