Across the Southeast, where a number of healthy state papers once flourished, a growing number have been effectively neutered by conservative trustees who place strict limits on what stories can be published and what opinions the editor can express.
Such self-censorship makes it impossible to have a truly free press, turning robust newspapers into promotional publications.
Monday, September 19, 2005
Free Press for Louisiana Baptists Drowns
Kudos to Tony Cartledge for his blog "Another Loss in Louisiana" about the Louisiana Baptist newspaper being absorbed by the Louisiana Baptist Convention. Cartledge writes:
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2 comments:
living in the state I can tell you that this was shady.
4 months prior they took a vote and overwhelmingly voted NO
then after some arm twisting...
they now vote yes, because some of the moderates "didn't show up" for the vote...
bad politics...bad politics
I was amused by what David Hankins said in the BP. His comments were:
?I am excited about the prospect of John Yeats serving as our director of communications for the Louisiana Baptist Convention, and am hopeful the convention will bring the paper under his direction. I believe that if the process goes forward, as is recommended, it will put us light years ahead of where we are in the communications process for our convention.
"Light years ahead" quoted by a fundamentalist can better be translated "light years backward" in the conventional terms of free Baptists. Free Baptists have never controlled the free press. Free Baptists have never used the press as an organ for transmitting propaganda.
There is no free press for Baptists in Oklahoma. And when Yeats gains control of the Louisiana Baptist paper, the same will be true in Louisiana. Louisiana Baptists are headed straight for the dark ages in a hand basket with regard to freedom of the press...
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