-- On 12 Dec 2001, at 10:39, Declan McCullagh wrote:
* Is it appropriate to use the powerful word "censorship" to describe what happened when the National Review dropped Ann Coulter? Coulter has other outlets that will publish her work; she is not muzzled. Like other news organizations with a certain perspective, the National Review has an implicit contract with their writers that says something like our-publication-has-a-distinct-point-of-view-and-we-don't-w ant-to-run- stuff-far-outside-of-it. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, it's reasonable to assume that she understood this implicit agreement when she signed up. More to the point, she (I recall) took her initial grievance over not running the column public and slammed the editors, who then axed her. Using "censorship" to characterize the facts of this dispute weakens the term for when it's really needed -- to describe government action that puts people in prison cells.
There has been far more concern about opponents of the war being intimidated than supporters. Yet the nearest thing to real censorship happened to Ann Coulter, for calling for holy war against Muslims. Meanwhile college professors loudly complain that the occupants of the trade towers had it coming to them for imperialism, colonialism, and oppression, and keep their jobs, and a comic strip spits on the flag, and is not dropped. What happened to Ann Coulter is not censorship, but it is lot closer to censorship than the fact that the tenured supporters of terror find themselves mentioned as tenured supporters of terror. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG ECRQ3GNzWa3w1DfiuPn0yEoQADgEGvtt2hHaEfve 4/reRMzTElycsdxaYn+TsS9bCQ0dkjGh1f8NApxoB