Slashdot Mirror
YouTube Removal Highlights Media Self-Censorship
jamie writes "On 'Larry King Live' Wednesday night, Bill Maher said many of 'the people who really run the underpinnings of the Republican Party are gay... Ken Mehlman, OK, there's one I think people have talked about. I don't think he's denied it.' When CNN re-aired the interview, the mention of Mehlman was edited out with no indication anything was missing. When a minute-long video of the original vs. censored clips was posted on YouTube, a DMCA takedown removed it (the original poster plans to resubmit a shorter clip he hopes will qualify as fair use — good luck, since the DMCA doesn't recognize fair use). Relatedly, the Washington Post today was caught silently editing its published stories to make them less informative. Unnamed GOP officials are also saying that Mehlman will step down from his post when his term ends in January."
Why should any politician step down because they are gay? It's ridiculous.
cat
Censorship and speech issues aside, should we really be encouraging gay witch-hunts like this?
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
That outing gay repulicans is good because they are all evil.
Outing anyone else though is a hate crime and the democrates will see to it that you will go to jail if you do so.
Even if Ken Mehlman is gay, and even he's being a hypocrite, I don't see what business Bill Maher has attempting to out Mehlman or anyone else. Any individual should have the right to some basic privacy concerning his/her private life, regardless of whatever position they hold. IMHO CNN and YouTube did exactly the right thing - enabling gross violations of privacy can't be considered OK.
You're dead on. I read the guys blog. Next to promotions for his "Why Bush is Evil" NYT best-seller (not the real title) and the "keep Roe v Wade in place!" ads, we're supposed to act as though this has any relevance to technology? The entire point of the post was not, blog author's protestations to the contrary, about the behavior of the Washington Post (let alone technology) - it was about how President Bush lied and isn't that awful.
The thing is, there could be an interesting story here about how the internet catches mainstream media self-censoring. But A - that's not really news and B - that's not the focus of this story. We could even ask more politically-minded questions like "why does the media self-censor" and I think that would be worth discussing. Personally, I think it comes down to cowardice. The mainstream media is under economic pressure as the barrier to entry for their particular market has all but completely eroded and as a result they want to present sensational news, but not seriously controversial news. I can think of no other realistic reason to explain the two examples of self-censoring noted.
But oh no! We get treated to a long exposition of the Bush Lie versus the Bill Clinton Lie. It's got nothing to do with tech, and as an ethics discussion goes, it's pretty poor there too. Are we honestly going to pretend that all lies are the same now? That "Honey, of course I didn't sleep with the babysitter!" is equivalent to "No! That doesn't make you look fat!"
On every single level, this "news" article fails dismally.
-stormin
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
You might not have noticed, but he's the head of a political party that just lost a huge election. It's natural that he'd be resigning because of the defeat. The absurd notion that he's resigning because of this random (and wholly unsubstantiated) comment on CNN is totally stupid. You're jumping to conclusions that aren't necessarily warranted.
David
>
>On 'Larry King Live' Wednesday night, Bill Maher said many of 'the people who really run the underpinnings of the Republican Party are gay... Ken Mehlman, OK, there's one I think people have talked about. I don't think he's denied it.' When CNN re-aired the interview, the mention of Mehlman was edited out with no indication anything was missing. When a minute-long video of the original vs. censored clips was posted on YouTube, a DMCA takedown removed it (the original poster plans to resubmit a shorter clip he hopes will qualify as fair use -- good luck, since the DMCA doesn't recognize fair use). Relatedly, the Washington Post today was caught silently editing its published stories to make them less informative. Unnamed GOP officials are also saying that Mehlman will step down from his post when his term ends in January."
Slashdotter tackhead unbellyfeel oldspeak rewrite newspeak:
Slashdotter jamie unbellyfeel Amsoc. refs unhappenings. Render unperson.
Oldthinker Maher CNN reporting ungood refs sexcrimes Mehlman rewrite fullwise antefiling. Oldthinker youtube refs unhappenings malquote maher. DMCA quickwise vidmove memhole. Plusgood duckspeakers Wapo rewrite fullwise upsub antefiling.
It's not like CNN is run by some right wing conspiracy. I think you have to be pretty far out on the political fringe to get all excited about CNN's minor editorial decision.
The struggle between news writers/reporters and their management chain and the tendency of the management to cover their backsides and not publish anything unfavorable to {advertisers, the legal department, the higher-ups} has been ongoing ever since the invention of the newspaper. Indeed, in some form, it probably dates back even farther. This is nothing new, happens every day, and should be criticized when it occurs (particularly internally within the organization), but it's not particularly newsworthy.
The best way to handle this sort of thing is to decide what is more important---the bits from the story or your job. If you decide that the higher-ups are censoring something that needs to be heard, you tell your news director "the story airs as-is or I quit" (ideally after you have been there for a while). Sadly, most journalists don't have the stomach for that these days, but when this occurs you have to stand up for yourself or the upper management will walk all over you. Of course, this also points to a weak and ineffectual news director who doesn't have the guts to protect his/her reporters from the upper management.
However, that's probably not what happened in the case of CNN. What probably happened here is that they condensed the interview for time and cut out bits that they considered less important. This, too, happens every day. Unless the reporter was pressured to remove those pieces (and there's no reason to believe that this is the case), there's really not a story here at all. It's just the normal, day-to-day operation of a TV news outfit.
The Washington Post story, however, is very disturbing. If the reports of them changing their story are true, and if, in fact, Bush said the things claimed in the original version of the story, their editorial staff should be held accountable for their actions in turning a factually accurate story into a factually inaccurate story and deliberately removing highly relevant factual content from their story.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
And somewhat related: Who cares what someones sexual preference is? If you need to know, perhaps you need to get a life. Judge a person on his job performance, not what he/she does on their own time, which is really none of your business anyway.
That's a very nice sentiment and would be fine if the person in question did almost anything except politics. In the case of politics, specifically republican politics, there is a platform of most things gay being "wrong, bad, perverted, or evil, etc." If a top member of this group is gay then you run into quite a few dilemmas. The laws that the GOP push affect everyone, all the time, so it very much matters what someone does "on their own time."
Admittedly, I didn't read TFA, but I think the relevance to technology is pretty solid. The networks are making it so that ordinary people can call out the old-guard information monopolists. It is widely known that most broadcasting companies long ago internalized the values of the establishment, with the consequence that people are not exposed to criticism of the establishment ... in the absence of official censorship!. Cf. "The Propaganda Model"
Youtube's not going to save us all, but it can and should start a trend toward egalitarian broadcasting of serious content & criticism.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Kind of has that feel, doesn't it?
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Removing details about someone's personal life, revealed by a third party, is not censorship, it's good taste. CNN is a news network, and the fact that a station made an editorial decision to remove rumors from its newscast is not censorship.
The entire post except for ONE line was about media self-censoring on the Mehlman thing. And that one line was about WP self-censorship (albeit on another subject). I really have no idea how the post can be construed as being party-specific, unless you consider any post about censorship to be left-wing. Heck, even the linked article about the WP censorship was about the censorship itself rather than the lie involved, regardless of what the other content was on the site. The only ideology I see here from /. is that censorship is bad. And I don't think most of the people reading this site have a problem with that particular point of view.
You seem to be missing the point. It's not about CNN not getting sued. It's about being RESPONSIBLE with an explosive charge when CNN doesn't know the facts.
David
But why is calling someone gay such a terrible declaration? People on TV accuse others of all kinds of things but they rarely get censored for it. Yet when someone suggests someone else is gay they censor it? Also can you really "accuse" someone of being gay? Normally "accuse" is attached to doing something wrong. It just reflects society's judgment that being "gay" is wrong or odd. Imagine someone "accused" someone else of being straight would there be the same reaction?
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
That is a terribly naive statement. If a journalist just presented whatever interview subjects told them -- without regard to what's fair or accurate -- they would be terribly irresponsible. When I was a journalist, I was routinely told things about people I covered. Almost all of what I heard was unfair and inaccurate rumor. A responsible journalist tries to make sure what he is putting out there is factual. Otherwise, there is even less credibility than there already is (for the news media).
David
If Ken Mehlman resigns from the RNC Chair, it's not because he may or may not take it in the ass, it's because he was the chair when the whole party took it in the ass on election day.
When I first started scanning the stories at Digg, people would cram all kinds of political stories in there, and they would shoot straight to the top. People would whine about it, then be called "fuck-tards" for complaining about it, invited to leave, etc. Finally, Digg introduced more categories, which you can ignore if you wish. Maybe /. is headed there too?
At least this one has something to do with YouTube. But you could tell from the story summary that we would be talking about gay Republicans.
Dark Reflection
It'll be interesting to see if a challenge is mounted to the VA gay-marriage ban, on U.S. Constitutional grounds; it seems as though it might violate the Equal Protection clause, at least as long as heterosexual people get certain tax benefits and exemptions as a result of being married.
Frankly, I would like to see them just eliminate all the "pro-family" marriage subsidies as a result of this. Let the homophobes keep marriage, just make it a totally religious, nonsecular distinction. Get rid of it from tax law, probate and inheritance law, and other aspects where it usually comes across. If people want those things, they can lobby their congresspeople for tax breaks for everyone, not just married people; write a will and medical-power-of-attorney to sort out the inheritance and medical decision-making issues, and have the "benefits" of marriage with whomever they want.
It's ridiculous that we still have the State sanctioning marriage and childbearing, as if we really need to be encouraging people to pump out more babies. If we need more workers, we can just import them from Mexico or India. Given the state of our educational system, they'll probably be more qualified anyway.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
The fact is though, that Ken Mehlman is widely known in Washington to be gay. He doesn't hide it, not even to the press. He just doesn't want it reported, and thus cost the Republicans the bigot vote. It's like Mark Foley. "I'm out, but not in the media." It's called, "the glass closet." There are LOTS of powerful gay Republicans. There's nothing wrong with them being gay per se. There's lots wrong with them being hypocrites for courting the anti-gay bigot vote while being gay themselves.
So what you have is actually a case of someone letting the rest of the country on to the open secret. Bill Maher revealed nothing more than something on the level of, "Did you know. Don Rumsfield is married?" (Oh wait! We've never seen his wife! That's completely UNSOURCED! Strike that from the record!)
Yes. CNN is part of a conspiracy of silence to ensure that the Republicans can continue their cynical play on bigotry.
How is this insightful? It is a terrible analysis.
The point of the article is that the mass media/news in the United States is being censored. What might be more to the point is 'who cares who is doing the censorship?'. This is akin to lying to the public by withholding information.
Some of this might be due to the networks being afraid of lawsuits, but again, who cares what the reason is. This is just another example of the poor journalism exhibited in America. When I lived there, it was very difficult to find any good investigative journalism (for fear of lawsuits... e.g. CBS and the tobacco industry), nor any reference to other country's contributions to foreign projects (something is done by America or basically 'some other guys'), or even bend the story so that America is the hero even if it is Americans being rescued (e.g. a Canadian team flying in to rescue sick Americans at the south pole in the dead of winter when no one else could because of the extreme conditions... CNN reported the sick Americans as heroes and did not mention the Canadians who seriously risked their lives flying in there).
People in other countries wonder why Americans seem so ignorant of other countries. Considering the amount of time they are glued to the TV you would think they would learn more of the outside world. But the poor journalism (even somewhat xenophobic journalism) in the U.S. sure doesn't help. Censorship is just the icing on this botulism infested cake.
I liked living in the U.S., but their news services absolutely sucked. Thank goodness from living in other countries I knew what good news looked like and could find it on the internet. Interestingly, even though it is as full of bullshit propaganda as many U.S. news services like Fox (e.g. Bill O'Reilly, Hannity), you could not even get the Aljazeera news service in the U.S., at least while I was there... that is direct censorship.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
If this is correct, then I actually like the DMCA! Based on reading Slashdot, I've always assumed it was:
Entity A posts some content to service C.
Entity B alleges that he is the copyright owner, that the content A posts infringes his copyright and that he wants C to remove it.
C removes it. C renders no opinion on this; he simply removes it as required by the DMCA.
The End.
How come I hear all these stories about "oh, they DMCA'd me and now my content is gone and there is nothing I can do!" stories, when it sounds like all they have to do is reply stating that it does not infringe and why, and then the content is back up. This law seems like an excellent way to take down obviously infringing content quickly, while giving someone who has real content a valid way to get out of it. It might be better if they get a change to reply FIRST though, before the content is taken down.
Then you need to get out more.
In large sections of the country, although Republicans may be more socially conservative than Democrats, they're certainly not anywhere near the level of the rabid, religiously-motivated, hateful far-right (really authoritarian) bloc that seems to be most Democrats' stereotype of conservatives.
Given the bipolar political system, if you want a political party that supports lower taxation and doesn't believe in providing "bad luck insurance" by punishing people who plan ahead (say, by saving up money or property to give to their children rather than spending it) to pay for others' mistakes, you don't have a lot of choices.
The Republican party over the past few years has been almost completely hijacked by religious-right, and by ultra-hawks who have run up the deficit in order to fund the war. However, this doesn't mean that the Democrats are any more attractive than they have always been; basically offering only marginally more fiscal control, in order to fund welfare and other social programs. It's only because of the depths to which the Republican party has fallen, and sold out its core values, that the Democrats look fiscally responsible.
I would say that many Republicans that I have met in New England (and if you look at 'Yankee Republicans' in general) are not really that socially conservative on an absolute scale, and are torn between disliking the quasi-socialist fiscal policies of the Democrats (particularly New England Democrats), and the authoritarian social policies of Midwest and Southern Republicans. I suspect if you looked at stances on the issues, many Northeast Republicans (say, Olympia Snowe) would actually be very fiscally conservative Democrats, if they were in another part of the country, and vice versa.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
It's not an explosive charge by any stretch. It's a guy being funny.
Also, this isn't a news show. It's an interview show. Different rules can and should apply. I mean, if you tried to censor every lie the average Republican guest on that show spouts, you'd end up reairing two of the episodes back to back in the same time slot as one. You can't fact check every random thing an interviewee says on an interview show, and if you start picking and choosing which pieces of an interview to air based on your own personal biases and based on guesses of factuality, you're skewing the interview, which is a journalistic no-no.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Remember when John Kerry brought up a mention of Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter? That kind of backfired.
FOX News link -- too lazy to do better. IMHO the hypocracy of the Republicans is one problem, but the farce of "family values" when your dad is actively legislating against your life is even more astonishing.
Of course, they definitely kept Mary Cheney out of the public eye. In fact, the Cheneys overall seem to be kept in a locked box somewhere and only unleashed when it's time to sling some serious shite.
The YouTube is definitely a case of censorship. The Washington Post MAY have simply been editing the article for length. The blog regarding the WP contains a lot of insinuations, but but it does not carry any substantial evidence to support the insinuations or conclusions.
Again, the blogger insists that the blog subject is about the WP comitting censorship, not abut the President's evasiveness. IMO, the public has a right to know, but the administration has an agenda and a strategy, and we are not automatically entitled to know what that is. We, as the public, are not entitled in all cases, to pass on decisions that we have delegated to out elected representatives. The solution is to find a way to elect people who make good decisons in a trustworthy environment. Neither of those conditions exists at this time.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
Sorry Bill or Larry or who ever in the media companies where threatened and told to abuse this law. You just made the case.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
Yea- I don't think most people realize how ruthless marriage was before the jewelry and movie business got ahold of it.
Marriages were about *PROPERTY* not about "true love".
Agree on the other points too- you raise children, then maybe the state gives you a break since we currently view it as good for society (I don't but I think we are overpopulating ourselves to death).
Otherwise, why should a childless couple of any gender mix be able to form a legal contract governing inheritance, power of attorney, distribution of property, support (alimony), etc. that is banned to other couples?
Separate MARRIAGE (religious) from CIVIL UNION (Secular). And then separate MARRIAGE (Catholic, Baptist) from MARRIAGE (Other religion that is cool with gay marriages). You shouldn't be able to force the catholic church to marry two gays because it's against their religion. You shouldn't be able to bar a pro-gay marriage religion from marrying gays.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Unfortunately most of the people in your group do the exact same thing and try to impose your values and beliefs on the Republicans. Gay marriage, abortion, freedom to practice religion, etc.
Where exactly are the liberals forcing Republican women to have abortions, or forcing heterosexual Republicans to marry gays? Sorry, they aren't forcing their beliefs on you. If the Republicans don't want to have abortions, don't have them. Don't want to be in a gay marriage, don't marry one. No forcing going on. Republicans are forcing their views on others by preventing everyone from doing things they disagree with.
Freedom to practice religion is a good thing. You are free to practice yours. Just don't try to force yours on me.
The Fed *SHOULD* be running a debt in the bad times, it should be running up lots and lots of debt, and in good times it should be making a surplus.
Then the only 'good times' we've had in the past 26 years was for a few when a DEMOCRAT was in office and rejecting crappy budgets by Republicans who were putting too much in them. The debt has been growing at an astronomical rate for the past 26 years. Anyone who thinks this is sustainable or a good idea is an idiot.
Maybe think a little for yourself rather than repeat partisan talking points.
Other choices that would also be made more attractive include moving all or parts of the company to other countries.