SPEECH IS FREE. . . IF YOU'RE A BIG CORPORATE SPONSOR

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DIANE WACHTELL, COUNTERPUNCH  -   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?

http://www.counterpunch.org/wachtell05142007.html

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