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[IP] Debunking Time censorship rumor (Was: why did TIME censor George H.W. Bush's quotes from its web-site?!




rom: Declan McCullagh <declan@xxxxxxxx>
Subject: Debunking Time censorship rumor (Was: why did TIME censor George H.W.
 Bush's quotes from its web-site?!
X-Sender: declan@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
To: Jim Warren <jwarren@xxxxxxxx>, dave@xxxxxxxxxx

It is silly to claim that Bush Sr. and Scowcroft would strong-arm Time Inc. into removing an article from time.com -- when that article was an excerpt from their book that you can buy today from Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0679432485/002-4329529-5336027?v=glance

Unfortunately the Memory Hole (which has done yeoman's work in the past documenting real instances of censorship) forgot to mention that.

See page 489 of the book, A World Transformed (on sale for $21!), via Amazon's full text search:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0679432485/ref=sib_books_ref/002-4329529-5336027?v=search-inside&keywords=While%20we%20hoped%20that%20popular%20revolt%20or%20coup%20would%20topple%20Saddam

Other explanations seem more likely. Perhaps the article was lost in a redesign? Or perhaps Time Inc. inked a deal with the publisher that it would only be available on time.com for a few years?

A quick search suggests the second explanation. This is an excerpt from Jack Shafer's May 30, 2003 article for Slate:
http://slate.msn.com/id/2083796/
At the time of the Memory Hole posting, Sept. 21, 2002, the essay could still be found on Time's Web site. When the essay disappeared from Time's site sometime afterward, the Memory Hole noted its disappearance in a text box accompanying the essay. The essay doesn't exist in Time's Nexis archives, either. The suggestion is that Time might cleanse its archives for political reasons. But Time Managing Editor Jim Kelly says, "There's nothing nefarious here." He explains that book publishers often insist on limiting online use of an excerpt to the period the physical magazine is on the newsstand. "I don't know when the Bush-Scowcroft excerpt came off [Time's site], but the deal with that particular publisher is that it's on for a week. If we took it off recently, it's because we realized it should just be on for a week," Kelly says. "When we do a book excerpt, we always try to get the publisher to agree to keep it on our archives forever, like we do the rest of the contents of the magazine, but publishers being publishers don't like that."

-Declan
(former employee of Time Inc.)


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