It is common knowledge that there is no censorship in the Western and Democratic world. In fact one of the early signs that democracy is in danger is when a government curtails freedom of the media, of the press.
But there is another form of censorship, subtle but insidious.
It is the censorship of an editor, whether of the news, of a TV or radio interview or of the printed media. The editor is free to decide what to report and what to ignore. Thus certain events are systemically ignored.
Sure you can change stations, buy a different paper but there seems to be a certain homogeneousness which means you can never know what is deliberately being kept from you. That is the reason for ‘points to ponder’ – to bring to your attention things that are deliberately kept from you.
Someone wanted to publicize the Charter of Hamas in order to show clearly that it is a terrorist organisation sworn to the destruction and eradication of Israel. How to do this? Place a full page advert in the local Sunday paper. Here’s what happened to that fully paid for advert.
That’s hardly subtle censorship. So let’s see what is.
What do you know about Gaza? Extreme poverty (of course due to the Israeli blockade); broken down buildings; ruins left by Israeli bombing raids. Take a look at the pictures which never appear in the media so you can hardly be blamed for not knowing.
Someone more famous than I once said: “We don’t know what we don’t know”.
How true.
