Saturday, December 23, 2006

Censorship in the 21st Century

Here is a New York times, complete with blacked out sections as per the White House. Here are the authors' reflections on what those deleted contained and why they should not have been omitted from the article. When will the press stand up to the administration? My guess is no time soon.

10 comments:

J-hole said...

Wasn't it the CIA who censored it and don't their security clearances require that whatever they publish must first be submitted to the CIA?

Red A said...

Seeing as how we have had multiple leaks of very serious national security matters into the New York Times and yet no reporter is in jail, I think you're overwrought Bread. They could print whatever they wanted and would not worry too much, I think. (Oh, wait, Judith Miller, a rather pro-administration reporter did go to jail over the whole Plame affar. Which ended up being nothting about nothing.)

Just an example would be the SWIFT monitoring program that the NYT decided to publish about...you know, the one that is LEGAL, and was used to catch Hambali, but the NYT decided that it should be public knowledge. If the administration could censor the media, wouldn't they have done it there?

Personally, I am far more concerned that news outlets seeking "access" in Iran will self-censor. I saw some of this on CNN previously.

Bread said...

i think the point of the woman's article was that the white house stepped in and asked the CIA to make legit the deletions which the white house had already deemed needed to be made.

Anonymous said...

Executive Branch is in charge of what again? Oh, yeah - execution...sounds like they were simply doing their job - you may disagree with them, but it's within their job description.

Anonymous said...

Maybe that wasn't clear: The CIA works for the Executive Branch, and is not independent. If a dem was in charge, you'd call it management or oversight, but with Bush it becomes "censorship in the 21st century." LOL. I gues we'll be switching shoes come 2008 though.

Bread said...

nice post anonymous, as always. if a dem was in office i'd call it censorship, too. and the cia does report to the white house, you are correct. of course, they also work for the people. and by the way, i haven't voted for a democratic presidential candidate since clinton's first term. may want to be careful on the assumptions...

Red A said...

Anonymous was me, but for some reason I couldn't sign in, so I said screw it.

My points were more general and not specific to that case. Of course, since the writers submitted it to the CIA, they must think that some censorship is good for national security or they would have simply published anyways. The whole problem of what should and should not be "secret" is big kettle of fish, and my main point is that with all the huge leaks we have had with the CIA, I am not seeing a lot of effective censorship happening.

The CIA works for the people, but is not elected. Thus when an elected office, i.e. the White House steps in, it should be BETTER for the nation (in theory.) For all we know this could be just a case of an individual asshat or CYA though.

Yeah, I know you are voting Green lately, so I should praise you for your leader's courage in defeating the NBA.

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/78154

http://gershkuntzman.homestead.com/files/Nader_s_on_the_Ball.htm

Anonymous said...

Sometime particular details don't get classified where an aggregation of details does. (ex. everything John Phillips used in his nuclear bomb design some 20 odd years ago was public domain unclassified information, but his actual design wound up classified)

The vast majority of information CIA deals with is common as dirt. The aggregations they construct are akin to a unique database "view" on that ocean of information.

The NYT did print the articles that the blacked out stuff came from, so I don't see this as a big deal. The one who wrote the article was in a position to do such information aggregation at CIA so their particular POV and contractual constraints isn't necessarily that of the press. The NYT wasn't censored here -- it was the writer who was ex-CIA.

Bread said...

all this stuff about authors submitting their goodies voluntarily...as if they had a choice. you guys want to believe the stuff was deleted in a benevolent factor for the good of us all, that's fine. i respectfully disagree. it's one thing to censor plans for a nuclear bomb, it's another thing to censor common facts about a country (as the author is implying) in order to present a negative attitude about that country. but it's just because i'm a lefty that i feel that way, i'm sure.

Red A said...

Bread, I believe he had to submit it because he was ex-CIA. I think there is a contractual obligation for them when they sign up. If you wrote the article, they could politely ask you not to print something, but not much more.

I am not saying it was deleted benevolently, as I also said, maybe its an asshat, maybe its CYA, or who knows. That's the whole problem with national security secrets - who knows. But the fact that many other anti-administration stories are being printed left right and center, make me not so worried about censorship. Censoring common facts would seem to be particularly stupid, but hey it's government so I would not be surprised. It seems to me that the Iranian leaders are doing a pretty good job of creating a negative attitude all by themselves.

BTW, I wouldn't label you a lefty really.