Censorship in Saudi Arabia and Self-Censorship in America

A friend and former colleague of mine recently mentioned that, a few years ago, he had shocked a class of young Americans in an international education institution by showing them the cover of a Time magazine he had bought in Saudi Arabia where certain pictures and texts had been blacked out by the censor's black magic marker.

This is my reply:

  

I am sure the naive American students were shocked to see a cover of Time magazine blacked out with magic marker.  But what is infinitely more insidious and dangerous is the type of self-consorship and pro-government propaganda found increasingly by the American media, of which Time is no exception.

One of the best examples you could have given your students is the cover of the November 6, 1972, issue of Time.   The cover depicted a stylized dove of peace and a gigantic headling stretching diagonally across the page reading "The Shape of Peace."   The November 6, 1972 issue of Time came out just before election day, when the country was in the throes of the Vietnam War.  Who was running?  Richard Nixon for re-election and Democrat George McGovern.

Thanks in part to the Time cover, Richard Nixon won the election in a landslide, because voters were bamboozled into believing that he had a "plan for peace" and that a conclusion to the Vietnam War was imminent.  Nixon was re-elected on November 7, 1972, in one of the largest landslides in American history. He defeated McGovern with over 60 percent of the popular vote, losing only in Massachusetts and the District of Colombia..

Of course, Nixon was lying and Time was spreading that lie.  In point of fact, Nixon intensified the Vietnam War after the election.  Hardly a month after he was re-elected, on December 18-29, 1972, he lauched Operation Linebacker II, a massive bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong..  The offensive destroyed much of the remaining economic and industrial capacity of North Vietnam.  Millions of American voters realized that they had been hoodwinked by Nixon--and by the Time cover--but it was too late.

Shortly afterwards, however, the Watergate Scandal erupted.  Nixon resigned in disgrace on August 9, 1974.   

The Vietnam War did not end until April 30, 1975.

View the infamous Time cover.

Jagor