Blogging and Censorship.

Since I began blogging on January 11, 2008, I have learned a great deal about blogging, the lessons and the responsibilities that come with it. Some of these I have learned on my own, others from my bloggers, and others from reading the various blogs I have frequented over the years, some still active, others defunct.

The first lesson I learned as a neophyte blogger was from my very good friend, Sad Old Goth. After the election last November, I blogged about Obama voters being lazy and uninformed, and I used a video to illustrate my point, which, on retrospect, was the wrong video to illustrate my point, which Sad Old Goth pointed out in an intelligent and rational manner, so being the nOOb that I was, I deleted the entire post (comments and all), which in turn brought forth an email from Sad Old Goth about never deleting posts and comments as a blogger, but to elaborate on the rational for the post, and let the chips fall where they may. Sound and sage advice, I must say, one which I still follow to this day.

Another incident occurred when a comment was left in a post that another blogger found highly offensive, which in turn lead this humble little blog to be delinked. After many emails back and forth between us, the situation was cleared up when I advised them that I while I do monitor comments, my TOS states that I do not delete comments from my visitors, because they own those written words, not me, and as such, it is not my responsibility to delete them if I happen to disagree with them...which brings me to the point I am trying to make...

I have been reading various blogs (that I refuse to link to or name) which have reported , as truths, utterances supposedly made by Rush Limbaugh regarding race, slavery, and James Earl Ray, which have proven to be completely false. Yet, these bloggers maintain that these malicious rumors are true, and have gone to the extreme length of banning individuals who called them out on it, thus censoring any discourse on the subject, except of course, the blogger's own statements and the sycophants who blindly follow them.

In my view, a blogger must maintain integrity, and use the old maxim of "Trust, but verify" when writing a post and using quotes attributed to another person. As my fellow bloggers who I link to know, using reputable sources (and wikipedia ain't one of them) for quotes is paramount.

And if you use known false quotes, or quotes you cannot verify as being true, than for me the bottom line is that censorship must be a self imposed discipline that should be instituted, and thus should not be imposed on those commentators that you disagree with, especially those that show you, categorically, that what you posted is erroneous.

But what do I know, I am just a small fish in a big pond.