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Jul
11
Local Gov’t Officials Censoring Newspaper’s Forum?
Filed Under Democratic Party, Hammond Indiana, Lake County, Northwest Indiana Times, corruption, life online
The Northwest Indiana Times calls on a local Democratic party mayor to stop censoring its message boards after it discovered IP addresses leading back to Hammond, Indiana’s government.
Supporters of Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott Jr. who have been interfering with public discourse on Hammond issues need to be reined in. And the one to reel them is the mayor himself.
Unfettered public dialogue on the issues is one of the founding principles of democracy. It’s important enough that the Founding Fathers put it in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
And yet that public discourse has been under attack in Northwest Indiana. Comments unfavorable toward McDermott have been under attack on The Times message boards.
It’s a sad day in America when a newspaper has to ask a government official — a Democratic mayor — to tell workers using government computers stop censoring items on its website.
It’s another piece of evidence that shows why it is always important to not give government officials unlimited control over our lives and our businesses because they can use their control of these things to limit our freedom and liberties. When the government feeds and takes care of people, it can also withhold those same necessities to those it does not like. If the government is so afraid of dissent it is willing to censor its opponents, what else is it willing to do to its opposition? Unfortunately, world history is replete with examples of the horrors that power-drunk governments commit on their citizens.
In the heart of anyone in a power position in government, there is the potential to become ultimately corrupt like King George III, Stalin, Pol Pot or Robert Mugabe. We’re seeing this evil tendency at work right at home when government officials censor the Northwest Indiana Times’ message board in an effort to silence the opposition.
It’s just another reason why the northern part of the county continues to lose population and businesses. Why put up with corruption, waste and now censorship when there are better places to live and work?
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Comments
9 Responses to “Local Gov’t Officials Censoring Newspaper’s Forum?”
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[...] Hedges, a blogger up in the Region had this to [...]
I think a lot of my comments get censored…
Because I have left several recently that I don’t see, anytime I leave a link my comment is zapped
Hi Dan,
I haven’t been over to the NWI.com forums for a while because they weren’t a very friendly community.
There is an anti-blogger mentality on the board — probably because it is harder to censor bloggers.
While there were some friendly people there — I received some words of encouragement from one of the liberal guys on the site — most of the people seemed interested in just flaming each other and playing net cop.
I found it wasn’t worthwhile to spend too much time over on the forums.
Best thing we can do is help nwi forum members move to our legitimate blogs. Perhaps once a week I head into the Porter County forum and comment on the posts there and leave links out to Porter County Politics.
Little by little the forum participants are coming out to blog world.
I did comment on the forum last week, using one of my profile names “who would want to participate on this forum if the Times is going to censor and identify posters by location when politicians get ticked at comments?” That’s definitely not free speech.
Shame on the Times for letting their attorneys talk them into Soviet style censorship.
Hi Steve,
It’s a good idea to draw people out into the blogging world — maybe some of the forumites will end up creating their own blogs.
I don’t necessarily blame the newspaper — they probably don’t have the staff to keep up with what is going on in the forum. However, they might need to “deputize” some trust folks who can volunteer as moderators — rather than allow the political elites to cut the tongues out of those who dare to speak against them.
[...] with the Times’ forums is that they are dominated by the local political elites, so much that dissent is deleted from the forums by people using local government computers using tools that allow participants to “self-police” the site. Share and [...]
Here in Fort Myers local government cajoled, threatened an terrorized the owner of a private discussion board that was discussing things that made them uncomfortable. This is a wide spread problem that is not new. What is new is that with the Internet it is now out in the open. Good Luck!
Joe
Fort Myers FL
http://truthtribune.com
Hi Joe,
Thanks for sharing the story of what happened in Fort Myers. You’re right that its an old story that has updated for the modern times. All too often, government officials forget they are there to serve to public — not the other way around.