University of Incarnate Word Cancel NYT Subscription in Protest
This comes from the Mitch Hedberg's "I am against protesting but I don't know how to show it" file.
UIW has canceled their subscription to the New York Times after the paper exposed a secret government program that monitors financial transactions in the hopes of finding suspected terrorist.
"Since no one elected the New York Times to determine national security policy, the only action I know to register protest for their irresponsible action (treason?) is to withdraw support of their operations by canceling our subscription as many others are doing," Mendell D. Morgan Jr. wrote Wednesday in an e-mail to library staffers. "If enough do, perhaps they will get the point."Good thing Morgan took an immediate and calculated action. NYT will now receive $100 less in revenue and the UIW has officially censored students by holding back information from them. To any UIW student or faculty that needs their NYT fix, here is the website.
posted by Matt Glazer @ 7:40 AM
5 comments
5 Comments:
Since when does a school have to provide the NY Times to students to avoid censorship? The students can simply get their own subscriptions.
when you remove an item because you disagree with its politics, and you don't want others to read it, then that is by definition censorship.
It would not be censorship if it were poorly written or had false statements, but it isn't and it didn't.
That is why it is censorship.
It is not censorship of the paper. It can still be printed and sold anywhere on campus. The librarian simply decided that he would not suppor the NY Times by subsidizing it for the students of UIW.
The New York Times is the standard paper of record for the United States. It is censorship to remove it from the library for stupidly partisan reasons. Removal harms the students academically when conducting research and is censorship much like shutting down a paper and saying anyone else can start up another one would be.
I note that the dean of library services has blocked his email since the article came out. Phone numbers are still available.
Removing the NY Times from the UIW library was simply a form of protest protected by the 1st amendment. It is not stupidly partisan to insist on the utmost discretion when dealing with matters of national security.
Any student can still buy the NY Times, but UIW will no longer subsidize it. Why should the school be forced to directly support the NY Times if it disagrees with its choices.
It's time that people start realizing that we are in a war with extremists that want to blow us up. We need to do everything possible to ensure that they don't succeed. The NY Times made a bad decision, and I'm sure they can handle the consequences of bad publicity and a few cancelled subscriptions. America, however, may not be able to handle the damage done by the numerous leaks to the press of secret programs (NSA, CIA prisons in Europe, Financial surveillance).
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