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I don't understand why you keep calling this "censorship." Perhaps we have a different understanding of the terminology? To me, "censorship" is when the government prevents somebody from publishing something. "Profit-oriented media with numbskull subscribers" is when the press doesn't bother to publish something because they don't think it will make them any money.

Perhaps this is a topic worthy of EuroTrib, which I wasn't sure about at first: It seems to poke at a fundamental difference in viewpoint regarding liberty between the two cultures. I think that a big part of it has to do with differing expectations.

To expand the discussion a bit, why do you allow your government to so intrusively require you to have a license to have a television RECEIVER in the Europe? Aren't those little trucks that drive around detecting illegal receivers just the government keeping track of who might be watching the wrong station? And isn't the revenue used to fund the Official Government Media?
http://www.turnoffyourtv.com/international/bbc.html

Here in the U.S., such a system would be considered a severe invasion of privacy and restriction on liberty. Our National Public Radio and TV control tiny subsets of the market: We have no government media at all.

The contrast is interesting: Europeans who live with media that is largely (about half of broadcast TV market share in U.K.) and LITERALLY controlled by the government, calling "censorship" on American media that is bad, but completely independent of government.

This is the "difference in expectations" that I hope will be brought to light by European Tribune...

by asdf on Tue Jun 14th, 2005 at 02:36:09 PM EST

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