Things I wish I had known: Censorship
Things I wish I had known part 2. Censorship! This is an article series about things the author wish she had been aware of when starting out her professional career within equestrian media.
Censorship is being explained by Wikimedia as: the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information.
The Cambridge dictionary defines it according to the following: a system in which an authority limits the ideas that people are allowed to express
So in all it is a limitation of freedom of opinion. A limitation of freedom of speech. A limitation of freedom of the [ever so important] press and media.
Being pure and innocent I could never ever imagine this would be a problem writing about equestrian sport.
Not as a sole publisher of a news blog, nor later on as the editor in chief for a smaller media outlet.
But you know what they say, you live, you learn!
One of the most vivid memories of this censorship thing was when I, by checking out the results of a horse, noticed the horse’s name had changed.
A name change leaving this horse connected to a very specific and unique kind of sponsor of the sport.
Knowing the rider in person I rang her up and as surprised as she was to give the first comment about it, she was not surprised the Curious George character that is me had found this big scoop all by myself.
So she confirmed, gave me a quote. I wrote my article and we pressed that amazing and exciting “publish now” button.
It took less than an hour before someone of higher powers related to this big headline news rang up my colleague and forced him to take down the article. Because this was not to become public news just yet.
