Rupert Murdoch's MySpace censors anti-war websites

Politics International Politics
1

MySpace Censors Anti-War Websites

[quote]Rupert Murdoch’s MySpace has been caught in another act of alternative media censorship after it was revealed that bulletin posts containing links to Prison Planet.com were being hijacked and forwarded to MySpace’s home page. MySpace has placed Prison Planet on a list of blocked websites supposedly reserved for spam, phishing scams or virus trojans.

…

Earlier this year, MySpace were caught red-handed when a moderator unwittingly admitted that Prison Planet.com was one of the alternative media websites that MySpace was blocking from its messageboards and bulletin posts.

In a discussion thread, a MySpace user complained that his Ron Paul post had been censored, to which a MySpace moderator responded, “Ron Paul wasn’t being censored, it was the prisonplanet.com part of the message that was being filtered out.” [/quote]

Now the alternative argument will most likely be something along the lines of “This is a privately owned website; they can alter or delete whatever they like.”

Yup. They sure can. However, don’t go saying something like that, and then ask me why this nation doesn’t need NPR and PBC and other publicly-owned news sources! And don’t try to tell me we should trust the rest of Murdoch’s media monolith; why should its commitment to freedom of expression be any less subject to its owner’s political favoritism?

2

I was upset about the title of this thread, and then I noticed the “anti-war” message that was censored was from prisonplanet. have you ever read prison planet? It’s Basically Ann Coulter/Jerry Falwell type stuff, except riddled with more lies and rooting for the other side.

prisonplanet.com/

Here, go ahead, it would be funny if so many people didn’t believe it.

3

How good of a source Prison Planet is is irrelevant. First of all, your personal opinion of the website doesn’t count for dick, sorry. Others may disagree. Second, freedom of speech means allowing voices to be heard, regardless of whether their point of view deviates radically from the mainstream (as this website obviously does, and in my view there’s nothing at all wrong with THAT; the mainstream is far to complicit in what’s been happing this past six years).

Chomsky once said that something to the effect that the freedom of speech in our society is undermined by the artifice of maintaining an apparently lively debate, but narrowly confining the scope of that debate. What you’re suggesting is that such a practice is acceptable.

And if they can do it to this website, they can do it to ANYBODY.

4

I had a look. Prisonplanet.com is a bit strident, but seems basically truthful and well-intentioned. I don’t see what could have upset Murdoch so much about it.

5

Freedom of speech may have been a good idea in George Washington’s day when it was thought up but it’s bad idea in this age of terrorism. That’s because if anyone, even some nutcase, breaks through and challenges our version of reality the whole thing could pop like some big bubble and then where would we be.

Also, we don’t want to give them a forum for their hate. That’s what the internet is for.

6

I hate your freedom, spook.

7

You’re not the only one, SJ.

[color=brown]“Guantánamo Bay is the anti-Statue of Liberty.”[/color]

[quote]Roger Dow, president of the Travel Industry Association, told me that the United States has lost millions of overseas visitors since 9/11 — even though the dollar is weak and America is on sale. “Only the U.S. is losing traveler volume among major countries, which is unheard of in today’s world,” Mr. Dow said.

Total business arrivals to the United States fell by 10 percent over the 2004-5 period alone, while the number of business visitors to Europe grew by 8 percent in that time. The travel industry’s recent Discover America Partnership study concluded that “the U.S. entry process has created a climate of fear and frustration that is turning away foreign business and leisure travelers and hurting America’s image abroad.” Those who don’t visit us, don’t know us.

I’d love to see us salvage something decent in Iraq that might help tilt the Middle East onto a more progressive pathway. That was and is necessary to improve our security. But sometimes the necessary is impossible — and we just can’t keep chasing that rainbow this way.

Look at our infrastructure. It’s not just the bridge that fell in my hometown, Minneapolis. Fly from Zurich’s ultramodern airport to La Guardia’s dump. It is like flying from the Jetsons to the Flintstones. I still can’t get uninterrupted cellphone service between my home in Bethesda and my office in D.C. But I recently bought a pocket cellphone at the Beijing airport and immediately called my wife in Bethesda — crystal clear.

I just attended the China clean car conference, where Chinese automakers were boasting that their 2008 cars will meet “Euro 4” — European Union — emissions standards. We used to be the gold standard. We aren’t anymore. Last July, Microsoft, fed up with American restrictions on importing brain talent, opened its newest software development center in Vancouver. That’s in Canada, folks. If Disney World can remain an open, welcoming place, with increased but invisible security, why can’t America?

We can’t afford to keep being this stupid! We have got to get our groove back. We need a president who will unite us around a common purpose, not a common enemy. Al Qaeda is about 9/11. We are about 9/12, we are about the Fourth of July — which is why I hope that anyone who runs on the 9/11 platform gets trounced.[/quote]