Free Speech and... a Muzzle | Blog#42
Practicing what one kvetched about...
I stopped my New York Times subscription two years ago after years of being dissatisfied with the tinkering around with the prioritization of what is important news and the increasingly obvious bias being injected into the opinion pages. I mostly followed Charles M. Blow and Paul Krugman, although I did read Maureen Dowd and a few others regularly enough.
Then, the issue of the outright suppression or withholding of comments in the comment section of certain types of articles began to come up. For years, I was able to comment at will, not only on Krugman’s blog posts and opinion pieces, but also on virtually anything I read in the paper. I was even recognized, along with other readers, for my contributions: The Times sent out a photographer and I was interviewed for the feature. Nice.
Some time after that, things began to change more obviously, with the comment section being throttled, comments disappearing or being held up until the comment section was closed for comments. This seemed to happen in tandem with a perceptible change in prioritization and focus.
To be honest, for the longest of time, I thought Krugman was a willing partner in the progressing rightward tilt of the paper on the news side, but mostly in the topics and tone of the analyses and opinions presented during times of crisis and especially during election cycles. My old blog is full of pieces about Krugman’s (and others’) treatment of progressives, especially Bernie Sanders, which is kind of funny given the fact that Biden’s legacy achievements are rooted in Bernie Sanders’ work. But I digress… Krugman says he left the NYT because:
“One more thing: I faced attempts from others to dictate what I could (and could not) write about, usually in the form, “You’ve already written about that,” as if it never takes more than one column to effectively cover a subject. If that had been the rule during my earlier tenure, I never would have been able to press the case for Obamacare, or against Social Security privatization, and—most alarmingly—against the Iraq invasion. Moreover, all Times opinion writers were banned from engaging in any kind of media criticism.”
OK. That tells us Krugman has feelings about suppressing speech. That’s good, right?
One would think…
I subscribed immediately when Krugman started to write on Substack, as a paying subscriber, figuring I would find the more wonky posts useful. I still follow all my favorite economists, so it seemed a logical choice.
Thus, I resumed happily commenting… including on the post in which he explained why he left the New York Times. I was happy to write a supportive comment, fully believing that he meant the stuff he wrote about being muzzled and free speech. It was all good until yesterday, when someone who goes under a handle and not their own names posted a reply to my comment:
Then, very early this morning, shortly after receiving notification of a new Krugman post:
I never received a notice informing me of this ban and the reasons for it.
"If you believe in freedom of speech,
you believe in freedom of speech for views you don't like."
- Noam Chomsky
It’s his blog and he’s welcome to ban anyone he likes. Onward and forward!
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