When creating a game, there is a setting screen that allows you to modify the game settings.

It will say something like:

Game Settings
Strength of Independants: 3
Special site Frequency: 40
World Richness: Normal

etc.

After Random Events, there is a setting called:

Score Graphs enabled. Click on this and it will change it to "Info on other nations is disabled" and again to Disable the entire thing.