Censorship in the Digital Age
Monday, April 12th, 2010
Last week Acronym Blog, produced by the American Society for Association Executives (ASAE), added a thought-provoking post titled, “Consultant Wasteland,” with the first sentence reading, “Why Consultants Suck.”
The content of the post wasn’t scandalous, but the dramatic title and first sentence struck some people as offensive and the post was quickly removed — but not before several regular association bloggers had already read and commented on the post (and not before the post arrived in various feed readers, which saved the post in spite of it no longer being available on the main website).
ASAE eventually responded in the mounting list of comments to their replacement post explaining the deletion, but that did not seem to quell the conversation’s hungry spirit. Association bloggers and ASAE members connected by social media networks continue to debate and discuss the reasons behind the retraction of the article. To be honest, there hasn’t been much of a debate as most of the people talking seem to agree matters were handled poorly in this case.
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But what should ASAE have done? Several suggestions have been made, some of which include:
1. The post should have been reviewed before it was posted so that a phrase like, “Why Consultants Suck” wouldn’t have been released in the first place.
2. The post should have been edited after discovering the parts that angered people, and had those parts removed.
3. The post should have remained “as is” and ASAE’s official response been made in the comments or as a follow-up post.
In reading up about other blog censoring issues, I ran across the Washington Post case from earlier this year involving a controversial stance and some pointed phrases being eliminated from a piece about DC schools chancellor Michelle Rhee. http://blog.coreknowledge.org/2010/01/28/who-censored-the-washington-posts-rhee-item/
What the Washington Post example showed me was that even if the article had been altered to have “watered down” language, the response would have remained the same.
People are having issues with not being allowed the chance to review and comment on the post and with the very real possibility that this instance may cause people to self-censor potentially important controversial subjects that need to be discussed in open with other association professionals.
Many voices from the ether seem to be saying, “We are adults. Allow us to deal with these subjects on our own.”
Times have a’changed, folks. We can’t make something like a controversial blog post just disappear, so we have to approach it in another fashion. We have to smartly address issues head on and in public (gasp!) and not be afraid to anger the people who rather shut uncomfortable conversations down than see unpleasant words on their association blog.
There are two sides to every story. Ultimately, we need to recognize that from this particular situation there is obviously a need to discuss consultant-client relationships and expectations AND a need to identify procedures for controversial public blog posts in an age when nothing disappears.
What do you think?
-KiKi
NOTE: Somewhere in the thick of the conversation, someone asserted that this wasn’t a case of censorship…so just to be clear -
Definition:
Censorship is the suppression of speech or deletion of communicative material, which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient to the government or media organizations as determined by a censor.Censorship. (2010, April 2).
In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 17:44, April 2, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Censorship&oldid=353475013
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