The Censorship Issue

The word censorship evokes Communist Russia or North Koreanot exactly sleepy, friendly Santa Fe.

Yet according to Tiffany Shackelford, the executive director for the national Association for Alternative Newsmedia (of which SFR is a member), thats exactly what happened to SFR last week.

In case you missed the breathless TV newscasts (A provocative cover for an unconventional paper! KOAT proclaimed), last Wednesday, a disgruntled reader confiscated some 400 copies of SFR shortly after the most recent issue hit newsstands.

People who steal papers just to keep information from getting out to the public are actively engaging in acts of censorship, Shackelford says. Thats an act of censorship.

It started with an anonymous call around 10 am. The caller said the paper was filthy and said he planned to remove copies of SFR from newsstands around town. Although he didnt specify what, exactly, he considered filthy, the cover of the paper featured the headline Nuts to Buttsa reference to a controversial prison shakedown technique, and the topic of that weeks cover story. The image showed the backs of a mans bare legs (actually, the legs of SFR staff writer Joey Peters), with an orange prison jumpsuit around his ankles.

Here at SFR, angry calls about less-than-G-rated material arent exactly uncommonbut rarely do they turn into acts of censorship.

Ultimately, it probably did less harm than good. By the end of the day, we had ordered 1,000 additional copies of the Nuts to Butts issue and taped two TV interviews for that nights 10 pm broadcast. Only around 400 of the 19,500 papers wed printed were actually taken, and the rest were flying off the stands.

When theres something in there that someone doesnt want people to read, they wanna read it, you know? says Brian Clarey, the editor of the Greensboro, NC-based YES! Weekly, an alternative weekly paper that experienced a similar incident in 2009. There really is no such thing as bad publicity. Ive had to repeat that to myself over and over and over again, but something like this is great.

But to Shackelford and others, the ease with which free papers like SFR can be suppressedand the lack of recourse when it comes to prosecuting censorshippoint to more worrisome trends.

When the government doesnt fully prosecute people, theyre aiding and abetting censorship, Shackelford says. Were talking a lot about transparency these days, and how the government is getting allegedly better on things like freedom of information, yet theres a major, major issue with censorship.

Link:
The Censorship Issue