User:Tmsuva/sandbox

Organization of censorship and censorship areas
There was no official censorship in the GDR, which is why there also weren't any official censorship organs. Censorship was applied in multiple different areas and was implemented locally, so usually through the responsible ministries and through the party (SED). The main areas in which censorship was applied were Literature, Media and Art and Culture.

Censorship in Literature
The control mechanism for Literature in the GDR was two-fold: Control was applied through the SED itself and through the responsible ministries, sectors and divisions. The censoring process followed specific steps which enabled the government to plan and control the literature which would be published in the GDR. Authors worked together with editors from the publishing houses who were responsible for removing any problematic content from the manuscripts. In order to publish a manuscript, it had to be evaluated by a series of official and unofficial reviewers whose role it was to check the manuscripts for political and cultural appropriateness. After the writer and the editor were done with the manuscript, it was reviewed by two outside readers and an in-house committee for ideological implications. The last instance of power laid within the Ministry of Culture, where the print approval was given. The branch responsible for giving the approval for print was called head office for publishing companies and bookselling trade (Hauptverwaltung Verlage und Buchhandel, HV). Especially difficult texts sometimes were given to a special SED central committee for additional reviewing. With the editor being the first instance of censorship, the outside readers and the committee were the second and the HV the third instance of governmental control over literary publications.

Censorship of Media
Censorship of mass media in the GDR began with the restructuring and centralization of the media networks in the GDR. Production was set up centrally in Berlin, while print media was outsourced to local SED-offices. The centralized, SED-led news information service ADN (Allgemeine Deutsche Nachrichtendienst) had the monopoly on news distribution and so controlled which information could appear in GDR media. Through this institutional structure, censorship was applied indirectly, which made official censorship unnecessary. Any distribution of non-GDR news was forbidden.

The central organ of the SED (and therefore the main newspaper in the GDR) was called 'Neues Deutschland '. This newspaper owned by the SED reported daily on developments within the party and the state in general. Like the print media, radio and television were also state-controlled. There were five state-controlled TV-channels, which distributed SED-approved information and culturally appropriate entertainment.