Originally Posted by Sini
Originally Posted by rhaikh
More importantly, what that statement does instead is to confirm that they believe that as a result of their ability to promote an opinion through their platform, they intend to be careful about not doing so.


Could you explain to me what is practical difference between "careful not to promote" and outright censorship?


Well, I am of the opinion that censorship is an action only the government, not private citizens or organizations, can take, because my definition of censorship is the inability to exercise speech. Unlike the government, private organizations don't have total control over all of an individual's ability to exercise speech. So doing anything as a private organization is by definition not censorship.

For example, I don't believe an "NC-17 rating" by the MPAA is tantamount to censorship, even though it functionally suppresses distribution, because that is an internal decision by a private organization about whether the content is appropriate for them. As the creator is still free to pursue other outlets, they are able to exercise speech and therefore they are not censored. The market ultimately does not have an obligation to provide the exercise of speech. I think there are probably edge cases here worth thinking about, like having your only available broadband provider decide to not serve certain websites, but I don't think these specific cases are applicable in a general sense.

Censorship, by contrast, is what happened to the film Birth of a Nation in the early 20th century when state governments prevented it from being shown after being petitioned to do so.

Originally Posted by Sini
I think Fox News is a special case that you cannot generalize from. Fox News is awful because they intentionally mislead and withhold information. Ghomeshi's essay does not have these characteristics. If you disagree, please point to specifics with explanation.


I do think his essay had falsehoods and lies of omission, but honestly I don't think it's important here. I don't even think the degree of impartiality of the editorial staff at NYRB is important, except that it shows their awareness of their ability to promote through publishing and how that relates to my argument and informs their action of the removal of their editor. Even if they were lying and were in fact just reacting to market pressure, their stated reason is insightful to this debate.

As a for profit organization, it's within their right (and arguably their obligation in case of regulated public companies) to fire someone because of sufficient market pressure, just as it would be within their right to begin promoting some opposing ideology or to demand increased impartiality.

Fox is a special case in the sense that they were initially impervious to market pressure due to massive initial capital, and through that have managed to cultivate their own self sustaining audience. I think there's a lot to be learned from this formula, and how it's being used by other organizations.


Edit:
Originally Posted by rhaikh
The market ultimately does not have an obligation to provide the exercise of speech.


I actually wish this were not strictly true. For example, I would support measures that would require the media to allocate a limited portion of their airtime to partisan political content, so long as it was distributed among eligible candidates fairly... somehow. But I think this is another edge case since I don't think it should be applied to every idea that could possibly be political in nature.

Last edited by rhaikh; 10/10/18 05:57 PM.

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