The Many Forms of Censorship

There has been much in the news lately about censorship. The major media have been reporting on Vladimir Putin's efforts to keep the Russian people from hearing the truth about his war against Ukraine and what President Biden has called war crimes.

Dictionary.com offers this definition of a censor: "an official who examines books, plays, news reports, motion pictures, radio and television programs, letters, cablegrams, etc., for the purpose of suppressing parts deemed objectionable on moral, political, military, or other grounds." That "official" can be a head of state, like Putin, the head of a news operation, or even an individual reporter. Anyone who chooses to suppress a story or fails to investigate one because it does not conform to their worldview could be labeled a censor.

Which brings me to the Hunter Biden laptop story the "discovery" by The New York Times that his laptop and its contents are real, after all. Not only did the Times and other major and social media ignore the story, in some cases the story was deemed fraudulent and blocked on several platforms.