There’ve been several stories over the last few days of governments attempting to control the news. Here are links to two of them:
- Judge forces Florida paper to “unpublish” information
According to Columbia Journalism Review, a judge in Florida has forced the Palm Beach Post to take down from its website portions of a transcript of telephone recordings “in which a jailhouse snitch bragged about his ability to elicit confessions from fellow inmates and how he had arranged a deal with prosecutors for a lighter sentence.” There is no evidence that this story meets the level of danger to our country established in previous prior restraint classes and no evidence that the paper acted improperly to get the transcript. Keep your eyes open for updates on the appeals process for this story. Note that the judge was only able to get the transcript off the newspaper’s web site, not off the internet… - Thai publisher of International New York Times redacts story on “Sagging Thailand”
According to a story by reporter Sasiwan Mokkhasen of Khaosod Englis, the Thai edition of the International New York Times had a story about the sagging Thai economy under the current ruling military junta. The paper contained the following message where the story had been scheduled to run:“The article in this space was removed by our printer in Thailand. The International New York Times and its editorial staff had no role in its removal,”
The story remained available online.