Closing the Censorship Loop

Censorship is nothing new: ever since there has been power, it has feared knowledge. The trouble is, as people become more dependent on online information, it gets easier to censor, as well as easier to find out information. It all depends on the structure of information access.

That's what makes this story about the LA Times censoring the Internet feed into its newsroom deeply troubling. Since the censorship will naturally block out lots of uncomfortable things - like censorship - this closes the loop, at least in that environment. Journalists there might not even know that they don't know about something.

Let's just hope that the LA Times journalists have lots of fast Internet connections at home, and that they do plenty of Web wandering to find out alternative points of view.