How Media Censorship Affects the News

Adam Berry/Getty Images News/Getty Images

Protecting a Person's Privacy

This is probably the least controversial form of media censorship.

When a minor commits a crime, his identity is concealed to protect him from future harm -- so he isn't turned down from getting a college education or a job. That changes if a minor is charged as an adult, like in the case of violent crime.

Most media outlets also conceal the identity of rape victims, so those people don't have to endure public humiliation. That was not the case for a brief period at NBC News, when it decided in 1991 to identify the woman accusing William Kennedy Smith (part of the powerful Kennedy clan) of raping her. NBC quickly reverted to the common practice of secrecy.

Avoiding Graphic Details and Images

Every day, someone commits a heinous act of violence or sexual depravity. In newsrooms across the country, editors have to decide whether saying a victim "was assaulted" suffices in describing what happened.

In most instances, it does not. So a choice has to be made on how to describe the details of a crime in a way that helps the audience understand its atrocity without offending readers or viewers, especially children.

It's a fine line. In the case of Jeffrey Dahmer, the way he killed more than a dozen people was considered so sick that the graphic details were part of the story.

That was also true when news editors were faced with the sexual details of Pres. Bill Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky and the accusations of sexual harassment Anita Hill made about then-U.S. Supreme Court justice nominee Clarence Thomas. Words that no editor had ever thought of printing or a newscaster had ever considered uttering were necessary to explain the story.

Those are the exceptions. In most cases, editors will cross out information of an extremely violent or sexual nature, not to sanitize the news, but to keep from offending the audience.

Concealing Security Information

The U.S. military, intelligence and diplomatic operations function with a certain amount of secrecy. That confidentiality is regularly challenged by whistleblowers, anti-government groups or others who want to remove the lid on various aspects of U.S. government.

In 1971, The New York Times published what's commonly called the Pentagon Papers, secret Defense Department documents detailing the problems of American involvement in the Vietnam War in ways the media had never reported. The Nixon administration went to court in a failed attempt to keep the leaked documents from being published.

Decades later, WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange are under fire for posting more than a quarter million secret U.S. documents, many involving national security. When The New York Times published these U.S. State Department papers, the U.S. Air Force responded by blocking the newspaper's website from its computers.

These examples show that media owners face a difficult relationship with the government. When they approve stories containing potentially embarassing information, government officials often try to censor it.

Advancing Corporate Interests

Media companies are supposed to serve the public interest. Sometimes that's at odds with the conglomerate owners who control traditional media voices.

Such was the case when The New York Times reported that executives from MSNBC owner General Electric and Fox News Channel owner News Corporation decided it wasn't in their corporate interests to allow on-air hosts Keith Olbermann and Bill O'Reilly to trade on-air attacks. While the jabs seemed mostly personal, there was news that came out of them.

The Times reported that O'Reilly uncovered that General Electric was doing business in Iran. Although legal, G.E. later said it had stopped. A cease-fire between the hosts probably wouldn't have produced that information, which is newsworthy despite the apparent motivation for getting it.

Cable TV giant Comcast faces a unique charge of censorship. Shortly after the Federal Communications Commission approved its takeover of NBC Universal, it hired FCC commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker who had voted for the merger.

While some denounced the move as a conflict of interest, a single tweet is what unleashed Comcast's wrath. A worker at a summer film camp for teenage girls questioned the hiring through Twitter. Comcast responded by yanking $18,000 in funding for the camp.

The company later apologized and offered to restore its contribition. Camp officials say they want to be able to speak freely without being hushed by corporations.

Hiding Political Bias

Critics often lambast media for having political bias. While viewpoints on the editorial pages are clear to see, the link between politics and censorship is harder to spot.

The ABC news program Nightline once devoted its broadcast to reading the names of more than 700 U.S. servicemen and women killed in Iraq. What appeared to be a solemn tribute to military sacrifice was interpreted as a politically-motivated, anti-war stunt by Sinclair Broadcast Group, which didn't allow the program to be seen on the seven ABC stations it owned.

Sinclair is the same company that a media watchdog group says called more than 100 members of Congress "censorship advocates" for raising concerns to the FCC about Sinclair's plans to air the film Stolen Honor. That production was blasted for being propaganda against then-presidential candidate John Kerry.

Sinclair responded by saying it wanted to air the documentary after the major networks refused to show it. In the end, bowing to pressure on several fronts, the company aired a revised version that only included parts of the film.

Communist countries that once stopped the free flow of information may have largely disappeared, but even in America censorship issues keep some news from reaching you. With the explosion of citizen journalism and internet platforms, the truth will now have an easier way of getting out.

View original post here:
How Media Censorship Affects the News