Daily Illini censorship delves into the Orwellian
Sweet babbling Jesus:
A Republic, Madam, If You Can Keep It
Because the Daily Illini has requested that Google remove the cached version of the Muhammad cartoons it ran, I am reproducing the entirety of Acton Gorton’s statement accompanying the printing here.
After this paragraph, the blogger — a U of I student named Stephen Donohue — goes on to reprint the column writen by Acton Gorton, the editor of the Daily Illini. Gorton was suspended for two weeks andfaces certain termination for printing this column and six of the cartoons that Islamofascists are using as an excuse to riot and kill people all over the world, but especially in Europe.
Let Mr. Donohue’s words sink in: It’s not enough that they got rid of two editors because they printed what they did, the Daily Illini wants to remove from history all record of what they did. Not only do the bosses at Illini Media think it was wrong to print accurate information, they don’t think the public has the right to see what it was that got the two editors canned.
They actually took steps to remove content from the Internet.
This is the most despicable, most anti-free-press, anti-free-thought action I’ve ever seen or heard of a publisher taking. And I used to work for Conrad Black.
It’s Orwellian: “Oceania is at War with Eurasia. Oceana has Always has been at War with Eurasia.” Never mind that all the newspapers reported differently when Oceania was at was with Eastasia. Good little members of the State are too patriotic to remember. Like Orwell’s Big Brother, Illini Media is trying to rewrite history. I should be astounded that people who work in the news business would consider something like this. But, I am not.
Ugh.
Billy Dennis is a former reporter and editor at small daily and weekly newspapers in Illinois and Missouri. He comments on media, news and politics. He also owns and operates 
A comment on this…
I saw that post a while back and heard rumors of such “remove the record from Google.” etc.
However, it seemed odd that I have heard nothing of the sort from the newsroom about removing the Google cache.
Further, why not have the same lawyers tell ME to take down my PDF file, which is a scan of the original newsprint page at my blog?
http://thenextfrontier.net/2006/02/10/fair-use-of-daily-illini-copyrighted-material/
Who knows? I will be sure to inquire when I get the chance, but seeing as how Google is refusing to cower to even the Feds these days, what makes the IMC have such clout? It seems shady to suspect such.
This makes no sense. My bet is that google’s crawler/spider/whatever hit the page after the editorial and cartoons had been taken down, Steve saw the cached broken page, misinterpreted it, and blogged about it.
It’s really funny that someone as authoritarian/statist as you actually has the nerve to quote Orwell. Plus your connection is trite and laughable, and really makes no sense in the context of the story. This is possibly the worst use of hermeneutics (my five dollar word for the day) I have ever seen. Re-read your Orwell, please. The Orwell quote you give is out of nowhere, and really when you think about it has no connection with a shitty, little state college newspaper trying to protect itself from being thought of as anti-Muslim. It’s not Orwellian, Bill, it’s simple cowardice. Just call it what it is, and give the sci-fi a rest. Maybe you should read some of Orwell’s essays to get yourself some footing in the real world.
Once again, I’m just disagreeing with your misuse of Orwell, and the power that you give an act of cowardice. To say they’re re-writing history, would be to give The Daily Illini editors a lot a lot lot lot more power than they deserve. If they read this you probably boosted their egos. I am however, not disagreeing that their attempt to stifle free speech is wrong, once again, it’s simple cowardice.
You don’t need a team of lawyers to remove a cached version from Google- all you need to do is send an E-mail to them and they’ll gladly do it. I’ve used the service myself, such as when I’ve made revisions to an old post with factual errors that continues to come up higher in the google search algorithm (and therefore prompting people to send me e-mails.
I’m absolutely certain that the cached version is indeed removed. When you type in the first two paragraphs of the explanation by Gorton, only a few sites come up, none of which are the DI cached version. Also, the cached version was previously linked and visible on Michelle Malkin’s blog, but if one now follows the link, they’ll be told that the link has been moved- the page has been erased from google memory.
If I had a business and one of my employees had done something in my name which I did not condone, I would not hesitate to try and expunge the records. Why should my organization retain a black eye for something it did not support?
That is a legitimate question, Vonster.
I guess it harkens back to the idea that newspapers aren’t supposed to be JUST a business. When I was in journalism school, all the literature talked about newspapers as being “semi public institutions,” Basically, that means that while newspapers were for-profit companies, they served a public purpose and that publishers had a committment to perform a vital public service.
After all, journalism enjoys a specific protection under the 1st Amendment. In my mind, that suggests that journalism organizations owe the public their best efforts.
That meant that sometimes pure self interest took a backseat to the need to keep the public informed. This sometimes meant running the story about the publisher’s son getting a DUI, or pulling the full-page ad to make room for coverage of a Space Shuttle explosion. It means running the correction AND an apology.
Trying to remove from site any evidence that the newspaper printed what it actually DID print, especially when what it did print because a huge news story itself — strikes me a massively at odds with the notion of bewspapers being a semi-publis institution. It lowers newspapers to the ethical level of, say, the Illinois-AmericanWater Company, which has demonstrated the willingness to sacrifice truth for a few dollars more.
Pardon the rant.
So, Steve, how can we distinguish your scenario from mine?
I thought Mr. Hummels was going to leave all of us ignoramuses in the blogosphere. I’m surprised he’s been able to tear himself away from his Mensa Research Journal long enough sneer at Bill’s literary shortcomings.