>From the point of view of a journalist, it always pains me when someone
raises the red flag of "censorship" in this inaccurate manner.
Censorship is when some entity, usually government, decides what you can or
cannot read. Or write. The Soviet Union declaring "Dr. Zhivago" not in
keeping with Soviet ideology and not permitting it to be published is
censorship.
A journalist covering a story, having a dozen factual points with time/space
to report six, is not censoring, he is choosing. You may argue whether he
chose correctly, but it is not censorship. Please! The role we journalists
play in that regard has a name -- "gatekeeper." Yes, we have to decide what
bits of information get through the gate. The training is to get the most
relevant through and hold back the deadwood and chaff. I'm not going to say
every journalist operates that way, but the good ones do. Just as every
racer doesn't take turn 1 the same way, neither does every journalist agree
on what the most important elements of every story are. Those differing
opinions may indeed reflect the journalists' biases, but that is the worst
it is -- a difference of opinion. The very fact another journalist may
report the same event in a different light only illustrates the utter lack
of censorship involved.
My local paper recently chose not to print a column by Ann Coulter. The
publisher just decided she'd gone over the edge and he chose not to provide
her space. Censorship? Not when, in the same statement -- openly
published -- he also provided URLs where any reader who really wanted could
find the column (including on the paper's own website.) But of course some
screamed "censorship." No, dear readers, censorship would be when some
entity decreed Ann Coulter would not be allowed to write her column, and
enforced the degree with legal punitive measures against both writers and
publishers (see Boris Pasteryak, who had to renounce his Nobel Prize because
of censorship).
Censorship is an ugly color. Dip your brush in it with care.
--Rocky Entriken
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