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."

Comments

WTF

[coolgeek]

Why should any politician step down because they are gay? It's ridiculous.

Re:WTF

[heauxmeaux]

Because I refuse to take it in the ass twice from the government.

Re:WTF

[GreatBunzinni]

Why should any politician step down because they are gay?

Because the party he belongs to has a strong anti-gay agenda and a strong anti-gay electorate. Politicians may not mind being blatantly hypocritical but once their election chances are jeopardized then they will scramble to avoid that.

Re:WTF

[aevan]

He also used an intern as a humidor...don't think he holds marriages THAT sacred.

Re:WTF

[KingSkippus]

In reality, the vast majority of people who identify themselves as aligning with the Republican Party do so because of economic reasons not social policies.

This is patently untrue. Did you see the exit polls for this election? It was all about two things: 1) The war in Iraq/Terrorism (which are, thanks to the Republicans, the same thing now and much worse than either were before), and 2) Corruption.

Did you see the exit polls from the last election? The number one issue back then was "moral values."

The Republicans have a history of fiscal irresponsibilities. The two presidents who hold the record for running our deficit up are, you guessed it, George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. They also have a history of passing legislation that is great for corporations and rich folks, but bad for the average schmoes and poor people. You know that booming economy we keep hearing about? Guess who's getting all of that money. Yup, corporations and the generally rich folks who own them.

The majority of Republicans aren't rich, they're middle-class folks who like to think, and who the Republicans have told, that they'll be rich someday, or at the very least, they'll be pretty much where they are now. They're betting their current economic situation on a brighter future, and for most of them, that doesn't come true. (These are the same folks who go out and charge up their personal debt to their eyeballs because today doesn't matter and the future is just a vague notion.)

So why would they take a gamble like that? Because the Republicans are packaging a nice and tidy message that these folks want to hear with their "family values" and morality speeches. They're telling these middle-class folks not to worry about economics, because what really matters is not allowing gays to get married, "pre-born" babies to be killed, and so on. The sad truth is that most Americans aren't content to just live and let live, but want their morality and beliefs imposed on others, and their message sells really well.

Meanwhile, the rest of us have to suffer having other people's morality and beliefs imposed on us while we get downsized and outsourced and take jobs with pay cuts, while we lose our health insurance and retirement benefits, while we get raises that don't keep up with the cost of living, and while our country's financial foray into the red numbers just keeps getting deeper, and deeper, and deeper.

I'm sorry, but anyone who is a Republican for economic reasons is either 1) very well off or 2) pretty damn stupid.

Re:WTF

[LurkerXXX]

In reality, the vast majority of people who identify themselves as aligning with the Republican Party do so because of economic reasons not social policies.

Perhaps it will allow the Republican Party to purge these idiotic socially ultra-conservative nuts and return to being economically conservative instead (which is the *real* base of the Republican Party).

Sorry, I'm an old-timer fiscal conservative. Which means I've hated the Republican party since Reagan came into office. Before 1980 the Republicans were for smaller government and less spending. But for the past quarter century, they have been spend crazy. They have created a far far bigger bloated government than any Democrats ever did. For the past 26 years, the Democrats have acted much more fiscally conservative than Republicans. If you are a fiscal conservative and still a Republican these days, you are as ignorant of the world around you as people who claimed 'the world changed on 9/11'. Wake up.

DMCA confusion

[Spazmania]

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.

I'm confused (again).

[gklinger]

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.

In my day, it was Roosevelt's crutches

[dgatwood]

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.