Is the New York Times being hypocritical when it publishes a spate of press censorship stories?
My take is that the Times is composed of factions. There is a faction of honest working journalists who are only too happy to promote the issue of press freedom. Then there are factions of cagey pseudo-journalists who underhandedly carry out conspiracies meant to throttle the press on behalf of variois power players.
No doubt some are incensed over the doctoring of books by Timesman Arthur Gelb and columnist Robert D. Novak, as I reported on my Znewz1 blog at http://znewz1blog.blogspot.com/
In recent days the Times has featured a story on cyberattacks on journalists (see my Znewz1 post of that title), communist China's ever-expanding efforts at electronic censorship, a "national security" censorship scandal rocking Israel and a report on the WikiLeaks muckraking web site that included a Pentagon warning that the site imperils national security.
In fact, the Times has been fairly consistent in exposing censorship issues -- when the censorship isn't really draconian, in which case it backs down, as in the evidence of 9/11 coverup.
Heads up: the next post will discuss the tactic of marginalizing honest journalists.
Of interest
* Go to http://prisonplanet.com/ for a story about a drastic internet censorship bill that slipped through Britain's House of Commons in the dead of night with few MPs present. The Tories fully supported Labor's bill.
* Go to The Public Record at http://pubrecord.org/, where David DeGraw tells of Google declining to list his news service, meaning Amped Status reports don't turn up in Google news searches. How many other small news outfits are similarly barred?
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