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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
This all seemed unlikely to me, and reading the original letter:
1) The only mention of the DMCA is in the return address. They're not claiming any DMCA violation
2) DMCA or not, there's no fair-use right to be able to put content on YouTube. The guy isn't being sued.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
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)
You're confusing two very different parts of the DMCA.
One part deals with circumvention of copy protection devices. That part does not recognize a fair use exemption. It doesn't apply here since the content was not copy-protected.
The other part deals with take-down notices. The way it works is:
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.
A files a counter-notice with C that he believes the content does not infringe the copyright because of fair use or any other reason. The reason doesn't matter: having received the counter-notice, C is required to restore the content.
C then restores the content and provides B with the name and address of A (required in the counter-notice).
B then sues A under the old pre-DMCA copyright infringement laws.
A and B go to court.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Towards whom am I suppose to direct my geek anger here, YouTube, the DMCA or the Republicans? I'm looking forward to being indignant, I just want to make sure I'm on the same page as everyone else.
If random Person A goes on a live show and makes a COMPLETELY UNSOURCED accusation that Person B is gay, it would be completely unethical and irresponsible for CNN to leave it in a subsequent broadcast of the show. I used to be a journalist, and I guarantee that most reasonable (non-ideological) journalists would make the same decision. It's not censorship. It's a responsible editorial decision regarding an completely unsubstantiated charge. The guy may or may not be gay. I haven't a clue (and don't care), but you don't broadcast something like that without having some reasonable basis for believing it's TRUE.
David
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.
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The point of Maher doing this is to expose the blatant hipocrisy that is going on. The current Republican leadership has been hostile towards gay and lesbian people and their rights. They pander to an audience of religious fundamentalists on a platform that alienates a minority group while being part of that group themselves. If they kept their own internal struggles and self-loathing private then I'd say they have a right to privacy. However, as it stands their public actions and policies have the potential to make life miserable for a group of people so their hipocrisy deserves to be brought under public scrutiny. Just because the minority group happens to be gays doesn't make this ok, there would be an uproar if you had a black man advocating segregation or making interracial marriages illegal, for example.
No, they didn't. You rerun the interview or you don't, and you don't ask Bill Maher back because he acted like an asshole in an interview. It's that simple. You don't just edit it out because it's not politically correct, especially if it's billed as the original interview.
Now, I haven't a clue who Ken Mehlman is, but if he is a politician, or political operative, who creates or influenced policy on issues affecting homosexuals, then his orientation may indeed be salient.
I'm not trying to say Bill Maher is wrong or right (back when I was born, it used to be a free country), but a news organization altering facts and then using copyright law to cover up that modification is certainly not okay.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
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.
"And somewhat related: Who cares what someones sexual preference is?"
The republicans do. They want to limit what rights you have if you are gay. These rights include serving in the military, teaching, joining civic organizations and marriage amongst others.
evil is as evil does
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.
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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.
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