Counterpunch: The Real Imus Lesson

(Slowly but surely, some people are getting it. Here is a piece from Counterpunch)

By DIANE WACHTELL
One lesson we should not take away from the Imus
debacle is how great it was that CBS pulled the plug on Imus once General
Motors, American Express, Sprint Nextel, GlaxoSmithKline, TD Ameritrade, and
Ditech.com threatened to yank their corporate sponsorships. Although the
corporate cards may have been played in the public's favor in this case, the
recent dance of the corporate initials, in which GM pulls the strings and CBS
jumps, is nothing to celebrate.

For each rare instance when media conglomerates swat down a bigot,
there are dozens and dozens of examples when a different kind of censorship
occurs. At The New Press, an independent not-for-profit book publisher, we were
contacted a few years back by a whistleblower at a cigarette manufacturer about
a box of internal memos indicating that cigarette manufacturers had long been
aware of the detrimental health implications of smoking. We were ultimately
unable to publish these "cigarette papers," because we were advised that the
litigation sure to ensue from the cigarette companies would probably have
exceeded the maximum payout of our libel policy.

Just last month, a college in the Northeast notified The New Press that
our book Literature
from the "Axis of Evil" had been selected by a committee of professors and
deans as a required book for all 750 incoming members of its Freshmen class next
year, as part of a Freedom of Expression initiative. We ordered a new printing,
only to learn two weeks later that the college president had vetoed the
committee's choice. He apparently was worried that the title of the book, which
is an anthology of literature from Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, might put off
potential funders of the university.

And next month we'll be publishing a book that examines a race-based
miscarriage of justice in Columbus, Georgia. The book, which impugns the
reputations of some stalwarts of the Columbus legal and social establishment,
was scheduled to be launched at a reception at a major Columbus cultural
institution. Then, some stalwarts of the Columbus legal and social establishment
threatened to pull funding from the local cultural institution, and the event
was abruptly cancelled.

The point is that the First Amendment too often exists at the pleasure
of monied and politically powerful interests, from corporations to university
fundraisers. (In fact, other efforts to enjoin New Press books from publication
have come from sources as disparate as the US Treasury Department, the US
Supreme Court, and Alan Dershowitz.)

To celebrate the demise of Don Imus is to endorse a selective approach
to free speech in which the advertisers become "the deciders" and get to run the
editorial department. Modern forms of censorship are insidious and often obscure
to the public, a public who naively rejoice when "the marketplace" rejects an
Imus. We may be pleased not to have Imus in the morning, but what happens to
that report on GlaxoSmithKline's payments to doctors in the afternoon?

Diane Wachtell is the Executive Director of The New Press,
a public interest, not-for-profit book publisher based in New York
City.