Censorship

There is big concern in the news about censorship in the social media but this is not new, only a new censor. For years people got their news from newspapers and newspapers got their news from the wire service. Each day far more news came over the wires than the newspaper had room to print so they had people who would select what would be printed. In other words a small group of individuals in each community would determine what the rest of the community would see. While censorship by government is illegal this does not apply to private media. Some papers were conservative and some were liberal and they censored accordingly. The public knew which papers were which and so had a pretty good idea of what was happening. Today we have so many more news outlets that it requires some effort to find out which lean one way or the other. One thing different today is the increase in the number of stories that are completely fabricated and the astute reader can use common sense to weed out most of these. It requires effort but it is better to have access to all the news and then select what the reader wants instead of having some local editor selecting.